or cresset lightes, one on the toppe of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the light first appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is good luck; if either lights begin at the top-mast, bowsprit or foreship, and descend towards the sea, it is a sign of tempest. In taking therefore the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero to raise a storm.

Sc. 2. p. 28.

ARI. From the still-vext Bermoothes

The voyage of Sir George Sommers to the Bermudas in the year 1609 has been already noticed with a view of ascertaining the time in which The tempest was written; but the important particulars of his shipwreck, from which it is exceedingly probable that the outline of a considerable part of this play was borrowed, has been unaccountably overlooked. Several contemporary narratives of the above event were published, which Shakspeare might have consulted; and the conversation of the time might have furnished, or at least suggested, some particulars that are not to be found in any of the printed accounts. In 1610 Silvester Jourdan, an eyewitness, published

A discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the ISLE OF DIVELS: By Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Geo. Sommers, and Captayne Newport, with divers others. Next followed Strachey's Proceedings of the English colonie in Virginia 1612, 4to, and some other pamphlets of less moment. From these accounts it appears that the Bermudas had never been inhabited, but regarded as under the influence of inchantment; though an addition to a subsequent edition of Jourdan's work gravely states that they are not inchanted; that Sommers's ship had been split between two rocks; that during his stay on the island several conspiracies had taken place; and that a sea-monster in shape like a man had been seen, who had been so called after the monstrous tempests that often happened at Bermuda. In Stowe's Annals we have also an account of Sommers's shipwreck, in which this important passage occurs, "Sir George Sommers sitting at the stearne, seeing the ship desperate of reliefe, looking every minute when the ship would sinke, hee espied land, which according to his and Captaine Newport's opinion, they judged it should be that dreadfull coast of the Bermodes, which iland were of all nations said and supposed to bee inchanted and inhabited with witches and devills, which grew by reason of

accustomed monstrous thunder, storm, and tempest, neere unto those ilands, also for that the whole coast is so wonderous dangerous of rockes, that few can approach them, but with unspeakable hazard of ship-wrack." Now if some of these circumstances in the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers be considered, it may possibly turn out that they are "the particular and recent event which determined Shakspeare to call his play The tempest," instead of "the great tempest of 1612," which has already been supposed to have suggested its name, and which might have happened after its composition. If this be the fact, the play was written between 1609 and 1614, when it was so illiberally and invidiously alluded to in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew-fair.

PRO. Before the time be out? no more.

The spirits or familiars attending on magicians were always impatient of confinement. Thus we are told that the spirit Balkin is wearied if the action wherein he is employed continue longer

* See Malone's Shaksp. vol. i. part i. p. 379.

than an hour; and therefore the magician must be careful to dismiss him. The form of such a dismission may be seen in Scot's Discovery of witchcraft, edit. 1665. folio, p. 228.

Quaint here means brisk, spruce, dexterous, From the French cointe.

Sc. 2. p. 35.

CAL, As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholsome fen,

Drop on you both! a south-west blow on you,
And blister you all o'er !

The following passage in Batman uppon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum, 1582. folio, will not only throw considerable light on these lines, but furnish at the same time grounds for a conjecture that Shakspeare was indebted to it, with a slight alteration, for the name of Caliban's mother Sycorax the witch. "The raven is called corvus of Corax. . . it is said that ravens birdes be fed with deaw of heaven all the time that they have no black feathers by benefite of age," Lib. xii. c. 10. The same

author will also account for the choice which is made, in the monster's speech, of the South-west wind. "This Southern wind is hot and moyst.

. . . . Southern winds corrupt and destroy; they heat and maketh men fall into sicknesse." Lib. xi. c. 3. It will be seen in the course of these notes that Shakspeare was extremely well acquainted with this work; and as it is likely hereafter to form an article in a Shakspearean library, it may be worth adding that in a private diary written at the time, the original price of the volume appears to have been eight shillings.

Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee.

Although urchins sometimes mean hedge-hogs, it it more probable that in this place they denotefairies or spirits, and that Mr. Malone is right in the explanation which he has given. The present writer's former note must therefore be cancelled, as should, according to his conception, such part of Mr. Steevens's as relates to the hedge-hog. The same term both in the next act, and in the Merry Wives of Windsor, is used in a similar sense.