To run upon the sharp wind of the north:
To do business in the veins o' the earth,
When it is bak'd with frost;
—— to dive into the fire; to ride
On the curl'd clouds;
———————— to fetch dew
From the still vex'd Bermoothes;"
what language can express an adequate encomium! All his thoughts and actions, his pastimes and employments, are such as could only belong to a being of a higher sphere, of a more sublimated and ætherial existence than the race of man. Even the very words which he chants, seem to refer to "no mortal business," and to form "no sound that the earth owes."
Of a nature directly opposed to this elegant and sylph-like essence, is the hag-born monster Caliban, one of the most astonishing
productions of a mind exhaustless in the creation of all that is novel, original, and great. Generated by a devil and a witch, deformed, prodigious, and obscene, and breathing nothing but malice, sensuality, and revenge, this fearful compound is yet, from the poetical vigour of his language and ideas, highly interesting to the imagination. Imagery, derived from whatever is darkly horrible and mysteriously repulsive, clothe the expression of his passions or the denunciation of his curses; whilst, even in his moments of hilarity, the barbarous, the grotesque, and the romantic, alternately, or conjointly, sustain, with admirable harmony, the keeping of his character.