hose that they knew, as those which they did not know,
or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of
despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and
came at his bidding. Harmless fairies "nodded to him, and did him
curtesies:" and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of "his so
potent art." The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real
men and women: and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one
as of the other; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be
supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them.
He had only to think of any thing in order to become that thing, with all
the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character
whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and
feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to
be surrounded with all the same objects, "subject to the same skyey
influences," the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which would
occur in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands before us
with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of
the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange
noises, its hidden recesses, "his frequent haunts and ancient
neighbourhood," are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all
the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole "coheres semblably
together" in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do
not merely learn what his characters say,--you see their persons. By
something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decypher their
peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the bye-play,
as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints a whole scene,
or throws us back whole years in the history of the person represented. So
(as it has been ingeniously remarked) when Prospero describes himself as
left alone in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which he applies to
her, "Me and thy _crying_ self," flings the imagination instantly back
from the grown woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the
first and most trying scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that he
must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff
is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly expostulation of
Malcolm--"What! man, ne'er pull