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"I must recount what you have been, which I find you do not remember. This bad witch, Sycorax, for her witchcrafts, too terrible to enter human hearing, was banished from Algiers, and here left by the sailors-; and because you were a spirit too delicate to execute her wicked commands, she shut you up in a tree, where I found you howling. This torment, remember, I did free you from."
They would not have dared to beard this lion in his den, but knowing he had left the county for the time being, they wished, if possible, to interest his mother and sister in the school. As they drew up to the house the dwarf's mother stood in the doorway, her daughter looking over her shoulder. The mother might have been a twin sister of Sycorax, the dam of Caliban.
They lived in a cave or cell, made out of a rock; it was divided into several apartments, one of which Prospero called his study; there he kept his books, which chiefly treated of magic, a study at that time much affected by all learned men: and the knowledge of this art he found very useful to him; for being thrown by a strange chance upon this island, which had been enchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who died there a short time before his arrival, Prospero, by virtue of his art, released many good spirits that Sycorax had imprisoned in the bodies of large trees, because they had refused to execute her wicked commands.
It was on this island, also, that Sycorax, the witch, held sway, when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter Miranda, were wafted to its shores. The isle was then "full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not." Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
They lived in a cave or cell, made out of a rock; it was divided into several apartments, one of which Prospero called his study; there he kept his books, which chiefly treated of magic, a study at that time much affected by all learned men: and the knowledge of this art he found very useful to him; for, being thrown by a strange chance upon this island, which had been enchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who died there a short time before his arrival, Prospero, by virtue of his art, released many good spirits that Sycorax had imprisoned in the bodies of large trees, because they had refused to execute her wicked commands.
To push the metaphor to exaggeration Memory is my Sycorax, and Gloom is the Caliban she conceives. But let me digress from myself to my less idle occupations; I have of late diverted my thoughts in some measure by a recurrence to a study to which I once was particularly devoted history.
These gentle spirits were ever after obedient to the will of Prospero. Of these Ariel was the chief. The lively little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax.
It is perfectly clear what was the one thing that the foul witch Sycorax did which prevented her life from being taken; and it would appear from this that the inhabitants of Argier were far more merciful in this respect than their European neighbours.
Both argue that each island was so situated in the Mediterranean, between Milan or its port and Algiers, whence the sailors landed Sycorax, as to suit the requirements. Elze further urges the name of a town on the opposite African coast, Calibia, as suggesting Caliban's name. The influence of the New World on the writing of 'The Tempest, and all allusions traceable to it.
"I must recount what you have been, which I find you do not remember. This bad witch, Sycorax, for her witchcrafts, too terrible to enter human hearing, was banished from Algiers, and here left by the sailors; and because you were a spirit too delicate to execute her wicked commands, she shut you up in a tree, where I found you howling. This torment, remember, I did free you from."
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