Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/150

120 And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts: Shew thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmozet: I'll bring thee To clust'ring filberds—, and sometimes I'll get thee Young scamels from the rock."

In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Prospero's cell, Caliban shews the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge and greater folly; and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with his music, Caliban to encourage them accounts for it in the eloquent poetry of the senses.

This is not more beautiful than it is true. The poet here shews us the savage with the simplicity of a child, and makes the strange monster amiable. Shakespear had to paint the human animal rude and without choice in its pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure or some germ of the affections. Master Barnardine in Measure for Measure, the savage of