Since I came to this isle: and in the morn
I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
Of these, our dear belov’d, solemnized;
And thence, retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.”
It is true this man has made himself a magician for the purposes of the poem; yet the reflection is that of a Christian turning away from the most splendid paths of this world to prepare himself for the next. Of the Tempest it may be said, in passing, that over it hangs a beautiful mystery which has not, that I am aware of, yet been explained. There is some deeper meaning in the extraordinary contrast of characters, in the delicate and harshly used Ariel—in the brutish and diabolical Caliban,
“Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill;”
and yet, by a mysterious exercise of power, obliged to obey an art sufficiently strong to control his “dam’s god Setebos.” I am so accustomed, in the works of Shakspeare, as in those of nature, to look for meaning where all seems most capricious, that I dwell with a kind of delightful curiosity over the grand and not yet all explained lessons of this fascinating creation. What a delightful amusement for an old age of leisure to relieve its graver moments by a habitual study of Shakspeare!