shakspeare's meaning explained. 81 



brother stedfastly to encounter death, would scarcely 

 have been forwarded by depicting that consummation 

 as attended with great corporal sufferance. Yet 

 such is the effect of the omission of the context !"* 



The Rev. Mr. Bird, after observing, that even 

 " Shakspeare is not an oracle on all points," remarks, 

 "It is somewhat amusing that his words should, in 

 this case, be entirely wrested from their original 

 purpose. His purpose was to show how httle a man 

 feels in dying ; that ' the sense of death is most in 

 apprehension, not in the act ; and that even a beetle, 

 which feels so little, feels as much as a giant does.' 

 The less, therefore, the beetle is supposed to feel, the 

 more force we give to the sentiment of Shakspeare. "f 



To these extracts I shall make no addition ; for 

 additional argument might well appear " wasteful 

 and ridiculous excess." The ungrounded charge has, 

 I hope, been triumphantly refuted. 



Beetles are mentioned by Shakspeare only in the 

 two passages already quoted, and amid the impreca- 

 tions of Cahban agamst the majestic Prospero — 



" All the charms 

 Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, lig-ht on you." 



Tempest, Act I. So. 11. 



None of these imply, on the part of Shakspeare, 



* Note by E. T. Bennett.— Zoological Journal, No. xviii. p. 196. 

 t On the Want of Analogy between the Sensations of Insects and 

 our own. — Entomological Magazine, No. ii. p. 113. 



