OBSERVANCES OP SHAKSPEAItE. 41 



We leave Ariel to plead his liberty with his stern master, whose 

 introduction of the birth of Caliban, the " duke's jester," is admira- 

 bly managed — 



" Prospero. — Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself 

 Upon thy wicked dam, come forth ! 



Caliban As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd 



With raven's feather from unwholesome fen, 

 Drop on you both !" 



Though Shakspeare must have read very extensively, and proba- 

 bly works not confined to his own language, yet, for the most part, 

 his observations are practical ; he saw readily, and judged correctly. 

 Subtle in his scrutiny of natural phenomena, he ascended from 

 effects to causes, or by a comparison of causes predicted their effects. 

 Stagnation is the matrix of infectious breath, or miasm. The " un- 

 wholesome fen" is the abode of plague, pestilence, and death. In 

 the catalogue of mortal ills, pestilence is the most direful ; millions 

 are yearly sacrificed to the " vapours of decay" that float off the 

 green and livid pools and lakes so common in India. In our own 

 county of Lincolnshire, intermittent fevers are indigenous to the 

 cold, damp soil and marshes that generate them. In America the 

 same evils occur, and from the same causes. 



The poet has admirably chosen the (< wicked dew" for the curse 

 of Caliban, who must be supposed ignorant of the evils which so- 

 ciety inflicts on herself; while the " breath of the noxious south" 

 was slow, insiduous, and fatal, working as a charm. In the 2nd 

 scene, act 2nd, the monster appears again, and renews his curse— 



" Caliban — All the infections that the sun sucks up 

 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him, 

 By inch-meal, a disease." 



This resembles the arrows of Apollo, in the 1st book of the Iliad, 



" Whose direful darts inflict the raging pest,'* 



and exhibits the real workings, cause, and effect of the " pestilence 

 that walketh in darkness." How shudderingly horrible, "inch- 

 meal, a disease I" human revenge could not conceive nor utter such 

 a curse ; the language is part of the monster. 



In the second Act, appear Alonzo, Sebastian, Antonio, and 

 others. This scene somewhat resembles the " Forest of Ardennes, 

 with the deposed Duke and his gay brothers in exile ;" — they come 

 to an encounter of their keen wits, making their " words wanton." 



VOL. V. — NO. XVII. P 



