than that which closes the Winter's Tale. With the exception of this striking scene, Shakspeare has done little towards the improvement of the story that he worked from; but he was more successful in his delineation of its principal characters. Nothing that is seen of Egisthus in the novel, can at all compare with the masterly display of the jealousy of Leontes in the second scene of the first act. For dignity and eloquence, Bellaria cannot, for a moment, be put in competition with Hermione. When the dramatist deviated from the novel by sending the infant, born of the queen, to a remote and desert place, he was obliged to create a character for the execution of the important commission: hence Antigonus; whose part is short indeed, for a bear devours him in the third act. The plot for the restoration of Hermione, also, required an agent, not to be met with in the novel; and such an one was supplied in Paulina, the wife of Antigonus. Paulina is not one of Shakspeare's happiest female portraits: however good her heart and her intentions, her manners are not well adapted for a court; her candour is ill-bred bluntness, and her vehemence vulgar passion. The intrinsic worth of Florizel is not very superior to that of Dorastus, but the air of refined sentiment which Shakspeare has thrown over

his actions, elevates him greatly above his predecessor.

The lovely Fawnia is interesting; but what portrait can be compared with Shakspeare's Perdita? She embodies the poetic conceptions of Arcadian innocence and simplicity; and with that truth to nature so peculiar to the characterisations of our dramatist, he has endued the princess, though fostered in a cottage, with innate delicacy of sentiment and elegance of taste.

The old shepherd of the novel has a wife who is naturally visited by some qualms of jealousy when her husband brings an infant home for her to take care of. Shakspeare omits this lady, but, not to leave the rustic without a companion, supplies her place by assigning him a son, who is no bad specimen of a country clown. The amusing awkwardness of the father and son at court is an incident of Shakspeare's own conception.

As is the case in many other of Shakspeare's plays, a character is engrafted on the Winter's Tale of which no traces are to be found in the materials he used, and whose business in the progress of the business of the scene is utterly unimportant. Autolycus is a wit, a songster, a liar, and a thief. He is a shrewd observer of life and manners; his bosom is impenetrable to the necessities of

others, and his vigilance ever awake to administer to his own. His fund of humour is inexhaustible, and his impudence matchless. He is moreover interesting, as connected with the manners of Shakspeare's age-as the representative of a class of persons numerous in the middle ages, but who dwindled away as towns increased, and the wants of life did not depend on wakes and fairs for their satisfaction.

303

TEMPEST.

1611.

COLLINS, the poet, informed Warton that he had once met with a romance in which the principal character was a chemical necromancer who had bound a spirit, like Ariel, to obey his call and perform his services. His account that the story was printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English, in 1588, has not led to its discovery. If such a tale preceded the composition of the Tempest, it may be inferred that Shakspeare, agreeably to his practice on other occasions, availed himself of as much of its contents as he found. suitable to his purpose. Malone advanced the pretensions of the sixth tragical tale of George Turberville, and Greene's

comical history of Alphonsus, king of Arragon, to the honour of having originated a large portion of the plot; but the points of resemblance are extremely few and imperfect, and the other authority is the more natural course.

The use evidently made by Shakspeare, in his representation of the loss of the king's ship, of the printed accounts of the wreck of Sir George Somers in the Bermudas, in 1609, proves this play to have been written subsequent to that period.

Sir George Somers was admiral of the fleet that sailed from England in 1609 for the settlement of a colony in Virginia. The expedition itself was deeply interesting to the country; the separation of Somers from his squadron by a tremendous Tempest, the uncertainty which prevailed respecting his fate for upwards of a year, and his extraordinary shipwreck and adventures on a desert island, were circumstances of a character so romantic as intensely to excite public curiosity; and Shakspeare was thus led to affix a title to his drama, which, having direct reference to these events insured it immediate attention.

Previous to the wreck of Somers and his companions, the Bermudas (or, as Shakspeare calls them, the Bermoothes) were regarded as an