PRO. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have

cramps,

Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins3 Shall, for that vast of night that they may work *,

"As wicked dew-" Wicked; having baneful qualities. So Spenser says, wicked weed; so, in opposition, we say herbs or medicines have virtues. Bacon mentions virtuous bezoar, and Dryden virtuous herbs.

JOHNSON.

So, in the Book of Haukyng, &c. bl. I. no date : "If a wycked fellon be swollen in such a manner that a man may hele it, the hauke shall not dye." Under King Henry VI. the parliament petitioned against hops, as a wicked weed. See Fuller's Worthies: Essex. STEEvens.

3 urchins] i. e. hedgehogs.

Urchins are enumerated by Reginald Scott among other terrific beings. So, in Chapman's May Day, 1611:

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to fold thyself up like

an urchin." Again, in Selimus Emperor of the Turks, 1584: What, are the urchins crept out of their dens, "Under the conduct of this porcupine!"

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Urchins are perhaps here put for fairies. Milton in his Masque speaks of "urchin blasts," and we still call any little dwarfish child, an urchin. The word occurs again in the next act. The echinus, or sea hedge-hog, is still denominated the urchin. STEEVENS.

In The Merry Wives of Windsor, we have "urchins, ouphes, and fairies;" and a passage to which Mr. Steevens alludes, inclines me to think, that urchins here signifies beings of the fairy kind:

"His spirits hear me,

"And yet I needs must curse; but they'll nor pinch,
"Fright me with urchin-shews, pitch me i' the mire," &c.

MALONE.

In support of Mr. Steevens's note, which does not appear satisfactory to Mr. Malone, take the following proofs from Hormanni Vulgaria, 4to. 1515, p. 109:—“ Urchyns or Hedgehoggis, full of sharpe pryckillys, whan they know that they be hunted, make them rounde lyke a balle." Again, Porpyns have longer prykels than urchyns." DOUCE.

for that VAST OF NIGHT that they may work,] The vast of night means the night which is naturally empty and deserted, without action; or when all things lying in sleep and silence, makes the world appear one great uninhabited waste. So, in Hamlet :

"In the dead waste and middle of the night." It has a meaning like that of nox vasta.

All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinch'd
As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made them.

CAL.

I must eat my dinner.

This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou tak 'st from me. When thou camest I

first 5,

Thou strok'dst me, and mad'st much of me; would'st give me

Water with berries in't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I lov'd thee,
And shew'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place, and fertile;

Cursed2 be I that did so !—All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

*First folio, cam'st.

† First folio, curst.

Perhaps, however, it may be used with a signification somewhat different, in Pericles Prince of Tyre, 1609:

"Thou God of this great vast, rebuke the surges."

Vastum is likewise the ancient law term for waste, uncultivated land; and, with this meaning, vast is used by Chapman in his Shadow of Night, 1694:

"When unlightsome, vast, and indigest,

"The formeless matter of this world did lye."

It should be remembered, that, in the pneumatology of former ages, these particulars were settled with the most minute exactness, and the different kinds of visionary beings had different allotments of time suitable to the variety or consequence of their employments. During these spaces, they were at liberty to act, but were always obliged to leave off at a certain hour, that they might not interfere in that portion of night which belonged to others. Among these, we may suppose urchins to have had a part subjected to their dominion. To this limitation of time Shakspeare alludes again in K. Lear:-" He begins at curfew, and walks till the second cock." STEEVENS.

5 Which thou tak'st from me.

might read

When thou CAMEST first,] We

"Which thou tak'st from me. When thou cam'st here first."

RITSON.

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty

me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest of the island.

PRO.

Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness: I have us'd

thee,

Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodg'd

thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.

CAL. O ho, O ho!-'would it had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans.

PRO.

Abhorred slave 7;

Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,

O ho, O ho!] This savage exclamation was originally and constantly appropriated by the writers of our ancient Mysteries and Moralities, to the Devil; and has, in this instance, been transferred to his descendant Caliban. STEEVENS.

So, in the verses attributed to Shakspeare:

"Oho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe."

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But Shakspeare was led to put this ejaculation in the mouth of his savage, by the following passage: They [the savages] seemed all very civill and very merry, shewing tokens of much thankfulness for those things we gave them, which they expresse in their language by these words-oh, ho! often repeated."

Abstract of James Rosier's Account of Captain Weymouth's Voyage. Purchas. IV. 1661.

MALONE.

7 Abhorred slave ;] This speech, which the old copy gives to Miranda, is very judiciously bestowed by Theobald on Prospero. JOHNSON.

Mr. Theobald found, or might have found, [as Warburton has observed] this speech transferred to Prospero in the alteration of this play by Dryden and Davenant. MALONE.

8 Which any print of goodness will not take,

Being capable of all ill!] So, in Harrington's translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591:

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each

hour

One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but would'st gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known: But thy vile race1,

Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good

natures

Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confin'd into this rock,

Who hadst deserv'd more than a prison.

CAL. You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse: The red plague rid you?, For learning me your language!

"The cruel Esselyno, that was thought

"To have been gotten by some wicked devil,
"That never any goodness had been taught,

"But sold his soule to sin and doing evil." MALOne. 9- when thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning,] By this expression, however defective, the poet seems to have meant-" When thou didst utter sounds to which thou hadst no determinate meaning: " but the following expression of Mr. Addison, in his 389th Spectator, concerning the Hottentots, may prove the best comment on this passage: having no language among them but a confused gabble, which is neither well understood by themselves, or others." STEEVENS.

66

- But thy VILE RACE,] The old copy has vild, but it is only the ancient mode of spelling vile. Race, in this place, seems to signify original disposition, inborn qualities. In this sense we still say The race of wine." Thus, in Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts:

66

"There came, not six days since, from Hull, a pipe
"Of rich canary-

"Is it of the right race?"

and Sir W. Temple has somewhere applied it to works of literature. STEEVENS.

2

Race and raciness in wine, signifies a kind of tartness.

--

BLACKSTONE.

the RED plague RID you,] I suppose from the redness of the body, universally inflamed. JOHNSON.

PRO.

Fetch us in fuel; and be quick,

To answer other business.

Hag-seed, hence! thou wert best,

Shrug'st thou, malice?

If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly

What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps; Fill all thy bones with aches3; make thee roar, That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

The erysipelas was anciently called the red plague. STEEVens. So again, in Coriolanus:

"Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome!"

The word rid, which has not been explained, means to destroy. So, in King Henry VI. Part II. :

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If you ever chance to have a child,

"Look, in his youth, to have him so cut off,

"As, deathsmen! you have rid this sweet young prince."

MALONE.

3 Fill all thy bones with aches: make thee roar,] The word aches is evidently a dissyllable. This would not have required a note but for the ignorant clamour that was raised against Mr. Kemble, because he understood Shakspeare better than the newspaper criticks who censured him, and did not at once violate the measure, and act contrary to the uniform practice of the poet, his contemporaries, and those who preceded and followed him till about the middle of the last century, by pronouncing it as a monosyllable. In Timon of Athens the word twice occurs. vol. xiii. p. 268:

"Aches contract and starve your supple joints." Again, p. 423:

"Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches losses."

See

In Barret's Alvearie, 1580, the verb is spelt with a k, ake, and the substantive ache, to mark the distinction: and that the latter was pronounced in the same way as the letter h, is placed beyond a doubt by a passage in Much Ado About Nothing, vol. vii. p. 99, where a joke is founded upon it, which is illustrated by an epigram from old Heywood. Taylor, the water-poet, at a much later period, is equally facetious in his World runs on Wheels: "Every carthorse doth know the letter G very understandingly: and H hath he in his bones." Sandys, one of the most harmonious of our poets, has this line in his Paraphrase upon Job:

"Stretch out thy hand, with aches pierce his bones." And not to trouble the reader with more instances, which I could easily produce, Swift has the same pronunciation in his City Shower:

Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage."