(Vol. iii., p. 218.; Vol. iv., p. 37.)
MR. HICKSON seems to court opinion as to the justness of his
interpretation of _rack_. I therefore express my total and almost
indignant dissent from it.
Luckily, neither in the proposition itself, nor in the manner in which
it is advocated, is there anything to disturb my previous conviction as
to the true meaning of this word (which, in the well-known passage in
the _Tempest_, is, beyond all doubt, "haze" or "vapour"), since few
things would be more distasteful to me than to encounter any argument
really capable of throwing doubt upon the reading of a passage I have
long looked upon as one of the most marvellous instances of
philosophical depth of thought to be met with, even in Shakspeare,--one
of those astonishing speculations, in advance of his age, that now and
then drop from him as from the lips of a child inspired,--wherein the
grandeur of the sentiment is so out of all proportion to the simplicity
and absence of pretension with which it is introduced, that the reader,
not less surprised than delighted, is scarcely able to appreciate the
full meaning until after long and careful consideration.
It is only lately that the nebular theory of condensation has been
advanced, for the purpose of speculating upon the probable formation of
planetary bodies. Yet it is a subject that possesses a strange
coincidence with this passage of Shakspeare's _Tempest_.
Perhaps the best elucidation I can give of it will be to cite a certain
passage in Dr. Nichols' _Architecture of the Heavens_, which happens to
bear a rather remarkable, although I believe an accidental, resemblance
to Shakspeare's words: _accidental_, because if Dr. Nichols had this
passage of the _Tempest_ present to his mind, when writing in a
professedly popular and familiar style, he would scarcely have omitted
allusion to it, especially as it would have afforded a peculiarly happy
illustration of his subject.
I shall now quote both passages, in order that they may be conveniently
compared:
"Our revels now are ended--these our actors
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air--INTO THIN AIR:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all that it inherit--shall dissolve--
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."
"---- in the laboratory of the chemist matter easily passes
through all conditions, the solid, liquid, and gaseous, as if _in
a sort of phantasmagoria_; and his highest discoveries even now
are pointing to the conclusion, that the bodies which make up the
solid portion of our earth may, simply by the dissolution of
existing combinations, _be ultimately resolved into a permanently
gaseous form_."--Nichols' _Architecture of the Heavens_, p. 147.
Had we no other presumption to lead us to Shakspeare's true meaning but
what is afforded by the expression, "into air--thin air," it ought, in
my opinion, to be amply sufficient; for no rational person can entertain
a doubt that Shakspeare intended the repetition, "thin air," to have
reference to the simile that was to follow. The globe itself shall
dissolve, and, like this vision, leave not a _rack_ behind! In what was
the resemblance to the vision to consist, if not in melting, like it,
into _thin_ air? into air unobscured by vapour, rarified from the
slightest admixture of rack or cloud.
Shakespeare knew that atmospheric rack is not insubstantial; that it is
corporeal like the globe itself, of which it is a part; and that, so
long as a particle of it remained, dissolution could not be complete.
And shall we reject this exquisite philosophy--this profundity of
thought--to substitute our own mean and common-place ideas?