sensual, earthly element—­though somewhat raised—­would run riot, and is therefore compelled to menial service.  The brute force of Stephano and Trinculo is vanquished by mental superiority.  Even the supermundane spirits, now no longer thirsting for the destruction of body and soul, are bound down to the work of carrying out the decrees of truth and justice.  Man is no longer the plaything, but the master of his fate; and he, seeing now the possible triumph of good over evil, and his duty to do his best in aid of this triumph, has no more fear of the dreams—­the something after death.  Our little life is still rounded by a sleep, but the thought which terrifies Hamlet has no power to affright Prospero.  The hereafter is still a mystery, it is true; he has tried to see into it, and has found it impenetrable.  But revelation has come like an angel, with peace upon its wings, in another and an unexpected way.  Duty lies here, in and around him in this world.  Here he can right wrong, succour the weak, abase the proud, do something to make the world better than he found it; and in the performance of this he finds a holier calm than the vain strivings after the unknowable could ever afford.  Let him work while it is day, for “the night cometh, when no man can work.”

131.  It is not a piece of pure sentimentality that sees in Prospero a type of Shakspere in his final stage of thought.  It is a type altogether as it should be; and it is pleasing to think of him, in the full maturity of his manhood, wrapping his seer’s cloak about him, and, while waiting calmly the unfolding of the mystery which he has sought in vain to solve, watching with noble benevolence the gradual working out of truth, order, and justice.  It is pleasing to think of him as speaking to the world the great Christian doctrine so universally overlooked by Christians, that the only remedy for sin demanded by eternal justice “is nothing but heart’s sorrow, and a clear life ensuing”—­a speech which, though uttered by Ariel, is spoken by Prospero, who himself beautifully iterates part of the doctrine when he says—­

                                  “The rarer action is
    In virtue than in vengeance:  they being penitent,
    The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
    Not a frown further."[1]

It is pleasant to dwell upon his sympathy with Ferdinand and Miranda—­for the love of man and woman is pure and holy in this regenerate world:  no more of Troilus and Cressida—­upon his patient waiting for the evolution of his schemes; upon his faith in their ultimate success; and, above all, upon the majestic and unaffected reverence that appears indirectly in every line—­“reverence,” to adapt the words of the great teacher whose opinion about Shakspere has been perhaps too rashly questioned, “for what is pure and bright in youth; for what is true and tried in age; for all that is gracious among the living, great among the dead, and marvellous in the Powers that cannot die.”