“And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.”
“Where you shall take your rest For this one night; which (part of it) I’ll waste With such discourse, as I no doubt, shall make it Go quick away: the story of my life, And the particular accidents gone by, Since I came to this isle: and in the morn I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples, Where I have hope to see the nuptial Of these, our dear belov’d, solemnized; And thence, _retire me to my Milan, where_ _Every third thought shall be my grave_.”
It is true this man has made himself a _magician_ for the purposes of the poem; yet the reflection is that of a Christian turning away from the most splendid paths of this world to prepare himself for the next. Of the _Tempest_ it may be said, in passing, that over it hangs a beautiful mystery which has not, that I am aware of, yet been explained. There is some deeper meaning in the extraordinary contrast of characters, in the delicate and harshly used Ariel—in the brutish and diabolical Caliban,
“Which any print of goodness will not take, Being capable of all ill;”
and yet, by a mysterious exercise of power, obliged to obey an art sufficiently strong to control his “dam’s god Setebos.” I am so accustomed, in the works of Shakspeare, as in those of nature, to look for meaning where all seems most capricious, that I dwell with a kind of delightful curiosity over the grand and not yet all explained lessons of this fascinating creation. What a delightful amusement for an old age of leisure to relieve its graver moments by a habitual study of Shakspeare!
To return a moment to the spirit of Hamlet. The _human traces_ found in this pale spectre are great heighteners of our interest in it, and of the probabilities of its existence. The return to Elsinore, and to the platform before the castle, in the night, when the sentinels are on guard—its appearance first to the soldiers on the watch—then to Horatio, who has been induced to watch by the report of it—its sudden appearance, and equally abrupt disappearance—giving an idea of capricious impulses and laws not within the reach of mortal conjecture—its seeking out _its son_ as the confidant of the amazing secret, are all ghost-like, and yet show the shadow of mortality. Its dismal, half-breathed, mysterious revelations of what it is undergoing in its new abode, are spectral to the last degree; but there is nothing which elevates it to a higher and nobler place in our commiseration, than the exquisitely tender allusion to the guilty queen. This is the mortal, always majestic, superior, merciful and refined—but now enlightened and subdued by the influences of its new state.