The magician Profpero raising a storm; witches performing infernal rites; or any other exertion of the fuppofed powers and qualities of the agent, were easily credited by the vulgar.

The genius of Shakespear informed him that poetic fable must rise above the fimple tale of the nurfe; therefore he adorns the Beldame, Tradition, with flowers gathered on claffic ground, but ftill wifely fuffering thofe fimples of her native foil, to which the established superstition of her country has attributed a magic spell, to be predominant. Can any thing be more poetical than Profpero's address to his attendant spirits before he difmiffes them ?

PROSPERO.

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

And ye that on the fands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune; and do fly him
When he comes back; ye demy-puppets, that
By the moonshine, the green four ringlets make,

Whereof

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whofe paftime

Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice

To hear the folemn curfew; by whofe aid
(Weak mafters tho' ye be) I have bedimm'd

The noon-tide fun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green-fea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the ftrong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar graves at my command
Have wak'd their fleepers; op'd, and let them forth,
By my fo potent art.

Here the popular ftorics concerning the power of magicians are agreeably collected. The incantations of the witches in Macbeth are more folemn and terrible than those of the Erichtho of Lucan, or of the Canidia of Horace. It It may be faid, indeed, that Shakespear had an advantage derived from the more direful character of his national fuperftitions.

A celebrated writer, in his ingenious

letters

letters on Chivalry, has obferved, that the Gothic manners, and Gothic fuperstitions,

are more adapted to the uses of poetry, than the Grecian. The devotion of those times was gloomy and fearful, not being purged of the terrors of the Celtic fables. The Prieft often availed himself of the dire inventions of his predeceffor, the Druid. The church of Rome adopted many of the Celtic fuperftitions; others, which were nct established by it, as points of faith, ftill maintained a traditional authority among the vulgar. Climate, temper, modes of life, and inftitutions of government, feem all to have conspired to make the superftitions of the Celtic nations melancholy and terrible. Philosophy had not mitigated the aufterity of ignorant devotion, or tamed the fierce fpirit of enthusiasm. As the Bards, who were our philofophers and poets, pretended to be poffeffed of the dark fecrets of magic and divination, they certainly encouraged the ignorant credulity, and anxious fears, to which fuch impostures owe their fucK

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cefs and credit. The retired and gloomy fcenes appointed for the most folemn rites of devotion; the aufterity and rigour of Druidical discipline and jurifdiction; the fafts, the penances, the fad excommunications from the comforts and privileges of civil life; the dreadful anathema, whose vengeance purfued the wretched beyond the grave, which bounds all human power and mortal jurifdiction, muft deeply imprint on the mind every form of fuperftition, which fuch an Hierarchy prefented. The Bard who was fubfer

vient to the Druid, had mixed them in his heroic fong; in his hiftorical annals; in his medical practice: genii affifted his heroes; dæmons decided the fate of the battle; and charms cured the fick, or the wounded. Nay after the confecrated groves were cut down, and the temples demolished, the tales that fprung from them were ftill preserved, with religious reverence, in the minds of the people.

The Poet found himself happily fituated

amidst

amidst enchantments, ghofts, goblins; every element supposed the refidence of a kind of deity; the Genius of the mountain, the Spirit of the floods, the Oak endued with facred prophecy, made men walk abroad with a fearful apprehenfion

Of powers unfeen, and mightier far than they.

On the mountains, and in the woods, ftalked the angry Spectre; and in the gayest and most pleasing scenes, even within the cheerful haunts of men, amongst villages and farms,

Tripp'd the light fairies and the dapper elves.

The reader will eafily perceive what refources remained for the Poet, in this vifionary land of ideal forms. The general fcenery of nature, confidered as inanimate, only adorns the defcriptive part of poetry; but being, according to the Celtic traditions, animated by a kind of Intelligences, the bard could better make use of them, for his moral

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