in its severe beauty and majestic simplicity, its interfusion of the lyrical and the ethical, and in the mellow atmosphere of serenity and composure which envelopes it:  as if on purpose to show the Poet’s mastery not only of both the Classic and Romantic Drama, but of the common Nature out of which both of them grew.  This union of both kinds in one without hindrance to the distinctive qualities of either,—­this it is, I think, that chiefly distinguishes The Tempest from the Poet’s other dramas.  Some have thought that in this play Shakespeare specially undertook to silence the pedantic cavillers of his time by showing that he could keep to the rules of the Greek stage, if he chose to do so, without being any the less himself.  But it seems more likely that he was here drawn into such a course by the leadings of his own wise spirit than by the cavils of contemporary critics; the form appearing too cognate with the matter to have been dictated by any thing external to the work itself.

There are some points that naturally suggest a comparison between The Tempest and A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.  In both the Poet has with equal or nearly equal success carried Nature, as it were, beyond herself, and peopled a purely ideal region with the attributes of life and reality; so that the characters touch us like substantive, personal beings, as if he had but described, not created them.  But, beyond this, the resemblance ceases:  indeed no two of his plays differ more widely in all other respects.

The Tempest presents a combination of elements apparently so incongruous that we cannot but marvel how they were brought together; yet they blend so sweetly, and co-operate so smoothly, that we at once feel at home with them, and see nothing to hinder their union in the world of which we are a part.  For in the mingling of the natural and the supernatural we here find no gap, no break; nothing disjointed or abrupt; the two being drawn into each other so harmoniously, and so knit together by mutual participations, that they seem strictly continuous, with no distinguishable line to mark where they meet and join.  It is as if the gulf which apparently separates the two worlds had been abolished, leaving nothing to prevent a free circulation and intercourse between them.

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Prospero, standing in the centre of the whole, acts as kind of subordinate Providence, reconciling the diverse elements to himself and in himself to one another.  Though armed with supernatural might, so that the winds and waves obey him, his magical and mysterious powers are tied to truth and right:  his “high charms work” to none but just and beneficent ends; and whatever might be repulsive in the magician is softened and made attractive by the virtues of the man and the feelings of the father:  Ariel links him with the world above us, Caliban with the world beneath us, and Miranda—­“thee, my dear one, thee my daughter”—­with