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is indeed a most shrewd and searching commentary on what Sir John has just seen and heard. It is impossible to hit them off more felicitously.

I must add, that with Shallow and Silence for his theme Falstaff's wit fairly grows gigantic, and this too without any abatement of its frolicsome agility. The strain of humorous exaggeration with which he pursues the theme in soliloquy is indeed almost sublime. Yet in some of his reflections thereon, as in the passage just quoted, we have a clear though brief view of the profound philosopher underlying the profligate humourist and make-sport; for he there discovers a breadth and sharpness of observation, and a depth of practical sagacity, such as might have placed him in the front rank of statesmen and sages.

I have said that Falstaff, though having a peculiar vein of something very like cowardice, is not a coward. This sounds paradoxical, but I think it just. On this point Mackenzie speaks with rare exactness. "Though," says he, “I will not go so far as to ascribe valour to Falstaff, yet his cowardice, if fairly examined, will be found to be not so much a weakness as a principle: he has the sense of danger, but not the discomposure of fear." In approval of this, it is to be observed that amid the perilous exigencies of the fight his matchless brain is never a whit palsied with fear; and no sooner has he fallen down to save his life by a counterfeit death, than all his wits are at work to convert his fall into a purchase of honour. Certainly his cowardice, if the word must still be applied to him, is not such as either to keep him out of danger or to lose him the use of his powers in it. Whether surrounded with pleasures or perils, his sagacity never in the least forsakes him; and his unabated purlings of humour when death is busy all about him, and even when others are taunting him with cowardice, seem hardly reconcilable with the character generally set upon him in this respect.

As there is no touch of poetry in Falstaff, he sees nothing in the matter of honour but the sign; and he has more

good sense than to set such a value on this as to hazard that for which alone he holds it desirable. To have his name seasoned sweet in the world's regard he does not look upon as signifying any real worth in himself, and so furnishing just ground of self-respect; but only as it may yield him the pleasures and commodities of life: whereas the very soul of honour is, that it will sooner part with life than forfeit this ground of self-respect. For honour, true honour, is indeed a kind of social conscience.

Falstaff is altogether the greatest triumph of the comic Muse that the world has to show. In this judgment I believe that all who have fairly conversed with the irresistible old sinner are agreed. In the varied and delectable wealth of his conversation, it is not easy to select such parts as are most characteristic of the man; and I have rather aimed to quote what would best illustrate my points than what is best in itself. Of a higher order and a finer texture than any thing I have produced is the scene where Falstaff personates the King, to examine the Prince upon the particulars of his life. It is too long for quotation here; and I can but refer to it as probably the choicest issue of comic preparation that genius has ever bequeathed to human enjoyment.

Upon the whole, then, I think Falstaff may be justly described as having all the intellectual qualities that enter into the composition of practical wisdom, without one of the moral. If to his powers of understanding were joined an imagination equal, it is hardly too much to say he would be as great a poet as Shakespeare. And in all this we have, it seems to me, just the right constituents of perfect fitness for the dramatic purpose and exigency which his character was meant to answer. In his solid and clear understanding, his discernment and large experience, his fulness and quickness of wit and resource, and his infinite humour, what were else dark in the life of Prince Henry is made plain; and we can hardly fail to see how he is drawn to what is in itself bad indeed, yet drawn in virtue of something within him

that still prefers him in our esteem. With less of wit, sense, and spirit, Sir John could have got no hold on the Prince; and if to these attractive qualities he had not joined others of a very odious and repulsive kind, he would have held him too fast.

I suppose it is no paradox to say that, hugely as we delight to be with Falstaff, he is notwithstanding just about the last man that any one would wish to resemble; which fact, as I take it, is enough of itself to keep the pleasure of his part free from any moral infection or taint. And, our repugnance to being like him is not so much because he offends the moral feelings as because he hardly touches them at all, one way or the other. The character seems to lie mainly out of their sphere; and they agree to be silent towards him, as having practically disrobed himself of moral attributes. Now, however bad we may be, these are probably the last elements of our being that we would consent to part with. Nor, perhaps, is there any thing that our nature so vitally shrinks away from, as to have men's moral feelings sleep concerning us. To be treated as beneath blame, is the greatest indignity that can be offered

us.

Who would not rather be hated by men than be such

as they should not respect enough to hate?

This aloofness of the moral feelings seems owing in great part to the fact of the character impressing us, throughout, as that of a player; though such a player whose good sense keeps every thing stagy and theatrical out of his playing. He lives but to furnish, for himself and others, intellectual wine, and his art lies in turning every thing about him into this. His immoralities are mostly such wherein the ludicrous element is prominent; and in the entertainment of this their other qualities are lost sight of. The animal susceptibilities of our nature are in him carried up to their highest pitch; his several appetites hug their respective objects with exquisite gust; his vast plumpness is all mellow with physical delight and satisfaction; and he converts it all into thought and mirth. Moreover his speech borrows

additional flavour and effect from the thick foldings of flesh which it oozes through; therefore he glories in his much flesh, and cherishes it as being the procreant cradle of jests: if his body is fat, it enables his tongue to drop fatness; and in the chambers of his brain all the pleasurable agitations that pervade the structure below are curiously wrought into mental delectation. With how keen and inexhaustible a relish does he pour down sack, as if he tasted it all over and through his body, to the ends of his fingers and toes! yet who does not see that he has more pleasure in discoursing about it than in drinking it? And so it is through all the particulars of his enormous sensuality. And he makes the same use of his vices and infirmities; nay, he often caricatures those he has, and sometimes affects those he has not, that he may get the same profit out of them.

Thus Falstaff strikes us, throughout, as acting a part; insomuch that our conscience of right and wrong has little more to do with the man himself than with a good representation of him on the stage. (And his art, if not original and innate, has become second nature: if the actor was not born with him, it has grown to him, and become a part of him, so that he cannot lay it off; and if he has nobody else to entertain, he must still keep playing for the entertainment of himself. But because we do not think of applying moral tests to him, therefore, however we may surrender to his fascinations, we never feel any respect for him. And it is very considerable that he has no self-respect. The reason of which is close at hand: for respect is a sentiment of which mere players, as such, are not legitimate objects. Not but that actors may be very worthy, upright men: there have been many capital gentlemen among them: as such, they are indeed abundantly respectable: but in the useful callings men are respected for their calling's sake, even though their characters be not deserving of respect; which seems not to be the case with men of the stage. And as Falstaff is no less a player to himself than to others, he therefore respects himself as little as others respect him.

VOL. II.

It must not be supposed, however, that because he touches the moral feelings so little one way or the other, therefore his company and conversation were altogether harmless to those who actually shared them. It is not, cannot be so; nor has the Poet so represented it. "Evil communications corrupt good manners," whether known and felt to be evil or not. And so the ripe understanding of Falstaff himself teaches us: "It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases one of another; therefore let men take heed of their company." In the intercourse of men there are always certain secret, mysterious influences at work: the conversation of others affects us without our knowing it, and by methods past our finding out; and it is always a sacrament of harm to be in the society of those whom we do not respect.

In all that happens to Falstaff, the being cast off at last by the Prince is the only thing that really hurts his feelings. And as this is the only thing that hurts him, so it is the only one that does him any good: for he is strangely inaccessible to inward suffering; and yet nothing but this can make him better. His character keeps on developing, and growing rather worse, to the end of the play; and there are some positive indications of a hard bad heart in him. His abuse of Shallow's hospitality is exceedingly detestable, and argues that hardening of all within which tells far more against a man than almost any amount of mere sensuality. For it is a great mistake to suppose that our sensual vices, though they may and often do work the most harm to ourselves, are morally the worst. The malignant vices, those that cause us to take pleasure in the pain or damage of others, it is in these that Hell is most especially concentrated. Satan is neither a glutton nor a wine-bibber; he himself stoops not to the lusts of the flesh, though he delights to see his poor dupes eaten up by them: but to gloat over or to feast on the agonies that one inflicts, this is truly Satanic, In the matter about Justice Shallow we are let into those worse traits of Falstaff, such as his unserupulous and un

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