Are like invulnerable: if you could hurt,
Your fwords are now too massy for your strengths,
And will not be uplifted: But, remember,
(For that's my business to you,) that you three
From Milan did fupplant good Profpero;
Expos'd unto the fea, which hath requit it,
Him, and his innocent child: for which foul deed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have
Incens'd the feas and shores, yea, all the creatures,
Against your peace: Thee, of thy for, Alonfo,

we were long indebted for our only English Dictionary. In a small book, entitled Humane industry: or, A History of most Manual Arts, printed in 1661, page 93, is the following passage: "The woolbeating trees in Ethiopia, which Virgil speaks of, and the Eriophori Arbores in Theophraftus, are not fuch trees as have a certain wool or DOWL upon the outside of them, as the small cotton; but short trees that bear a ball upon the top, pregnant with wool, which the Syrians call Cott, the Græcians Goffypium, the Italians Bombagio, and we Bombafe. " -" There is a certain shell-fish in the fea, called Pinna, that bears a mofly DOWL, or wool, whereof cloth was spun and made. Again, page 95: "Trichitis, or the hayrie stone, by fome Greek authors, and Alumen plumaceum, or downy alum, by the Latinifts: this hair or DOWL is spun into thread, and weaved into cloth." I have fince discovered the fame word in The Ploughman's Tale, erroneoufly attributed to Chaucer, v. 3202:

" And fwore by cock' is herte and blode,

"He would tere him every doule." STEEVENS.

Cole in his Latin Dictionary 1679, interprets "young dowle." by lanugo. MALONE.

9

the elements

Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well

Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at ftabs
Kill the ftili-closing waters, as diminish

One dowle that's in my plume; my fellow minifters

Are like invulnerable:] So, in Phaer's Virgil, 1573:

" Their fwords by them they laid

"And on the filthy birds they beat

"But fethers none do from them fal, nor wound for strok

doth bleed,

" Nor force of weapons hurt them can." RITSON.

1 ( 1

They have bereft; and do pronounce by me,
Ling'ring perdition (worse than any death
Can be at once,) shall step by step attend

You, and your ways; whose wraths to guard you

from

(Which here, in this most desolate ifle, else falls Upon your heads,) is nothing, but heart's forrow, And a clear life ensuing.3

He vanishes in thunder: then, to Soft musick, enter the Shapes again, and dance with mops and mowes 4 and carry out the table.

PRO. (Afide.) Bravely the figure of this harpy haft thou

Perform'd, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring: Of my inftruction haft thou nothing 'bated,

In what thou hadst to say: so, with good life,

2-clear life-) Pure, blameless, innocent. JOHNSON.
So, in Timon: -roots you clear heavens." STEEVENS.

3 is nothing, but heart's forrow,
And a

clear

ife ensuing.) The meaning, which is fomewhat obfcured by the expreffion, is, - a miferable fate, which nothing but contrition and amendment of life can avert. MALONE,

4 - with mops and mowes - So, in K. Lear:

STEEVENS.

،، -and Flibbertigibbet of mopping and mowing. " The old copy, by a manifest error of the press, reads-withmocks. So afterwards :---،، Will be here with mop and mowe."

MALONE.

To mock and to mowe, seem to have had a meaning somewhat fimilar; i. e. to infult, by making mouths, or wry faces. STEEVENS. s-with good life,) With good life may mean, with exact presentation of their feveral characters, with obfervation ftrange of their particular and diftin& parts. So we fay, he acted to the life. JOHNSON.

Thus in the 6th Canto of the Barons' Wars, by Drayton :
" Done for the last with such exceeding life,

66

As art therein with nature feem'd at strife.,”

Good life, however, in Twelfth Night, seems to be used for innocent jollity, as we now say a bon vivant: " Would you (fays

And observation strange, my meaner ministers
Their several kinds have done : 6 my high charms

work,

And these, mine enemies, are all knit up
In their diftractions: they now are in my power;
And in these fits I leave them, whilft I vifit
Young Ferdinand (whom they suppose is drown'd,).
And his and my lov'd darling.

(Exit PROSPERO from above.

GON. I' the name of fomething holy, fir, why

stand you In this flrange flare?

ALON.
O, it is monftrous! monftrous!
Methought, the billows spoke, and told me of it;
The winds did fing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd
The name of Profper; it did bass my trefpafs."

the Clown) have a love song, or a fong of good life" & Sir Toby
anfwers,
A love fong, a love song; Ay, ay, (replies Sir
Andrew) I care not for good life." It is plain, from the character
of the last speaker, that he was meant to mistake the fenfe in which
good life is used by the Clown. It may therefore, in the prefent
inftance, mean, honeft alacrity, or cheerfulness.

Life feems to be used in the chorus to the fifth act of K. Henry V. with fome meaning like that wanted to explain the approbation of Profpero:

" Which cannot in their huge and proper life
"Be here presented." SIŁEVENS.

To do any thing with good life, is still a provincial expression in the West of England, and fignifies, to do it with the full bent and energy of mind:-" and obfervation Strange," is with fuch minute attention to the orders given, as to excite admiration. HENLEY.

6 Their feveral kinds have done :) i. e. have discharged the fe veral funaions allotted to their different natures. Thus in Antony and Cleopatra, Ad V. fc. ii. the Clown says" You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind." STEEVENS.

7bafs my trespass.) The deep pipe told it me in a rough bafs found. JOHNSON.

i

Therefore my fon i'the ooze is bedded; and
I'll feek him deeper than e'er plummet founded,
And with him there lie mudded."

SEB.

[Exit.

But one fiend at a time,

I'll fight their legions o'er.
ANT.

I'll be thy second.
[Exeunt SEB. and Ant.

GON. All three of them are defperate; their great

guilt,

Like poison given to work a great time after,
Now 'gins to bite the spirits:-I do beseech you
That are of fuppler joints, follow them swiftly,
And hinder them from what this ecstacy

May now provoke them to.

ADRI.

Follow, I pray you.

So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. II. c. 12: the rolling fea refounding foft

"In his big base them fitly answered." STEEVENS.

7 And with him there lie mudded.

[Exeunt.

But one fiend ] As these hemistichs, taken together, ex ceed the proportion of a verse, I cannot help regarding the wordswith him, and but, as playhouse interpolations.

The Tempest was evidently one of the last works of Shakspeare; and it is therefore natural to suppose the metre of it must have been exact and regular. Dr. Farmer concurs with me in this supposition.

STEEVENS.

8 Like poifon given, &c.] The natives of Africa have been fupposed to be poffeffed of the fecret how to temper poisons with fuch art as not to operate till feveral years after they were administered. Their drugs were then as certain in their effect, as fubtle in their préparation. So, in the celebrated libel called "Leicester's Commonwealth:" "I heard hiin once myfelfe in publique act at Oxford, and that in prefence of my lord of Leicester, maintain that poyfon might be so tempered and given as it should not appear prefently, and yet should kill the party afterwards at what time should be appointed." STEEVENS.

9- this ecstacy-] Ecstacy meant not anciently, as at present, rapturous pleasure, but alienation of mind. Mr. Locke has not inelegantly styled it dreaming with our eyes open. STEEVENS.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

Before Profpero's cell.

Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA.

PRO. If I have too austerely punish'd you, Your compenfation makes amends; for I Have given you here a thread of mine own life,

2-a

-a thread of mine own life, ) The old copy reads-thirds. The word thread was formerly so spelt, as appears from the fol. lowing paffage :

.. Long maist thou live, and when the sisters shall decree

To cut in twaine the twifted third of life,

Then let him die, » &c.

See comedy of Mucedorus, 1619, fignat. C. 3. HAWKINS.

A third of mine own life, is a fibre or a part of my own life, Profpero confiders himself as the stock or parent-tree, and his daughter as a fibre or portion of himself, and for whose benefit he himself lives. In this sense the word is ufed in Markham's English Hufhandman, edit. 1635, p. 146: "Cut of all the maine rootes, within half a foot of the tree, only the small thriddes or twist rootes you shall not cut at all." Again, ibid. "Every branch and third of the root." This is evidently the fame word as thread, which is likewise spelt third by lord Bacon. TOLLET.

So, in Lingua, &c. 1607; and I could furnith many more in flances:

"For as a subtle spider closely fitting

" In center of her web that spreadeth round,
"If the least fly but touch the smallest third,
"She feels it instantly."

The following quotation, however, should seem to place the meaning beyond all difpute. In Acolastus, a comedy, 1540, is this pailage:

-one of wordly shame's children, of his countenance, and THREDE of his body. STEEVENS.

Again, in Tancred and Gifmund, a tragedy, 1592, Tancred, fpeaking of his intention to kill his daughter, fays, "Against all law of kinde, to shred in twaine

" The golden threede that doth us both maintain."

MALONE.