nt marvels with which their fancies were
prepossessed.

Concurrent with all this is the internal evidence of the play itself.
The style, language, and general cast of thought, the union of
richness and severity, the grave, austere beauty of character which
pervades it, and the organic compactness of the whole structure, all
go to mark it as an issue of the Poet's ripest years. Coleridge
regarded it as "certainly one of Shakespeare's latest works, judging
from the language only." Campbell the poet considers it his very
latest. "_The Tempest_," says he, "has a sort of sacredness as the
last work of a mighty workman. Shakespeare, as if conscious that it
would be his last, and as if inspired to typify himself, has made his
hero a natural, a dignified, and benevolent magician, who could
conjure up 'spirits from the vasty deep,' and command supernatural
agency by the most seemingly-natural and simple means. Shakespeare
himself is Prospero, or rather the superior genius who commands both
Prospero and Ariel. But the time was approaching when the potent
sorcerer was to break his staff, and bury it fathoms in the ocean
'deeper than did ever plummet sound.' That staff has never been and
will never be recovered." But I suspect there is more of poetry than
of truth in this; at least I can find no warrant for it: on the
contrary, we have fair ground for believing that at least _Coriolanus,
King Henry the Eighth_, and perhaps _The Winter's Tale_ were written
after _The Tempest_. Mr. Verplanck, rather than give up the notion so
well put by Campbell, suggests that the Poet may have _revised The
Tempest_ after all his other plays were written, and inserted the
passage where Prospero abjures his "rough magic," and buries his
staff, and drowns his book. But I can hardly think that Shakespeare
had any reference to himself in that passage: for, besides that he did
not use to put his own feelings and purposes into the mouth of his
characters, the doing so in this case would infer such a degree of
self-exultation as, it seems to me, his native and habitual modesty
would scarce permit.

* * * * *

No play or novel has been discovered to which Shakespeare could have
been at all indebted for the plot or matter of _The Tempest_. There is
indeed an old ballad called _The Inchanted Island_, which was once
thought to have contributed something towards the play: but it is now
generally held to be more modern than the