I flamed amazement: sometime I'd divide,
And burn in many places: on the top-mast,

The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,'
Then meet, and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors
O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not: the fire, and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune
Seemed to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,
Yea, his dread trident shake.

Pro.

My brave spirit! Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil?

Would not infect his reason?

Ari.

Not a soul

But felt a fever of the mad,3 and played

Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel,
Then all a-fire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring 4 (then like reeds, not hair),

1 Distinctly.] Soverally at the same moment. There is here an allusion to the meteor sometimes called Saint Elmo. The account in Hakluyt's Voyages, of Robert Tomson's Voyage into Nova Hispania in the year 1555, contains the following passage :-- This light continued aboard our ship about three hours, flying from mast to mast, and from top to top; and sometime it would be in two or three places at once.'

2 Coil.] Tumult.

• Fever of the mad.] Ferer of delirium.

♦ Up-staring.] Standing out. And rearing fiercely their upstaring crests.' Spenser's Faerie Queen, II. xii. 39. 'With ragged weeds, and locks up-staring high.' Ditto, VI. xi, 27. •Casts up her neck, and shakes her staring hair.' Sandys' Ovid, iii. 728. 'Of these one cried and tossed her staring hair,' Compare Hamlet :—

And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.'—i. 5.

Ditto, xi. 6.

Was the first man that leaped; cried, Hell is empty,

And all the devils are here!

Not a hair perished;

On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before; and, as thou bad'st me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle:
The king's son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs
In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot.2

Pro.

The mariners, say, how thou hast disposed,
And all the rest o' the fleet.

Ari.

Of the king's ship,

Safely in harbour

Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes,3 there she 's hid:
The mariners all under hatches stowed;

Whom with a charm, joined to their suffered labour,
I have left asleep and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispersed, they all have met again,

3 Still-vexed Bermoothes.] The ever-vexed Bermudas. The sea around these islands was supposed to be agitated with perpetual storms, and the islands themselves were said to be inhabited by witches and devils.

'The devil should think of purchasing that egg-shell,

To victual out a witch for the Burmoothes.'

Fletcher's Women Pleased, i. 2.

And are upon the Mediterranean flote,1

Bound sadly home for Naples,

Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked,
And his great person perish.

Pro.

Ariel, thy charge

Exactly is performed; but there's more work:

What is the time o' the day?

Ari. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains, Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,

Which is not yet performed me.

Pro.

What is 't thou canst demand?

Ari.

How now! moody?

My liberty.

I pray thee

Pro. Before the time be out? no more!

Ari.
Remember I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served
Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.

Pro.

Dost thou forget

No.

From what a torment I did free thee?

Ari.

Pro. Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the ooze

Of the salt deep,

To run upon the sharp wind of the north,

To do me business in the veins o' the earth

When it is baked with frost.

Ari.

1 Flote.] Wave. Fr. flot.

I do not, sir.

? Two glasses.] Two hours: the hour-glass is referred to.

Pro. Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her? Ari. No, sir.

Pro.

tell me.

Thou hast. Where was she born? speak;

Ari. Sir, in Argier.2

Pro.

O, was she so? I must

Once in a month recount what thou hast been,

Which thou forgett'st. This damned witch Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible

To enter human hearing, from Argier,

Thou know'st, was banished; for one thing she did 3
They would not take her life: is not this true?

Ari. Ay,

sir.

Pro. This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child, And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave,

As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant:
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorred commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thec,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,

Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years;
within which space she died,

1 Sycorax.] This name has been supposed, but in my opinion improbably, to have etymological relation to Corax, the Greek word for a raven.

2 Argier.] An old name for Algiers. Massinger, in the Unnatural Combat, i. 1, refers to 'pirates of Argiers and Tunis.'

For one thing she did, &c.] What thing this was we have no means of determining; but Shakspeare's reference to it has been thought to indicate that he had read some old legend about such a witch as Sycorax.

And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans
As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island-
Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp, hag-born-not honoured with
A human shape.

Pro. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban,
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in: thy groans
Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
Of ever-angry bears; it was a torment
To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax
Could not again undo. It was mine art,
When I arrived, and heard thee, that made gape
The pine and let thee out.

Ari.

I thank thee, master.
Pro. If thou more murmurest, I will rend an oak,
And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till
Thou hast howled away twelve winters.

Ari.

I will be correspondent to command,

And do my spriting gently.2

Pro.

I will discharge thee.

Ari.

"

Pardon, master:

What shall I do? say what: what shall I do?

Pro. Go make thyself like to a nymph o' the sca;

Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible

To every eyeball else. Go, take this shape,

▾ Twelve winters.] It was formerly common to say winters for years. Though that I might a thousand winter tell.' Chaucer's Friar's Tale. I trowe thirty winter he was old.' Chaucer's Ship

man's Tale.

2 Gently.] Meekly, or with good will.