while their contempt and their hatred attended the lowness of his manners, the grossness of his pleasures, and the unworthiness of his vice.

Falstaff is truly and literally ex Epicuri grege porcus,' placed here within the pale of this world to fatten at his leisure, neither disturbed by feeling nor restrained by virtue. He is not, however, positively much a villain, though he never starts aside in the pursuit of interest or of pleasure when knavery comes in his way. We feel contempt, therefore, and not indignation, at his crimes, which rather promotes than hinders our enjoying the ridicule of the situation, and the admirable wit with which he expresses himself in it. As a man of this world, he is endowed with the most superior degree of good sense and discernment of character; his conceptions, equally acute and just, he delivers with the expression of a clear and vigorous understanding and we see that he thinks like a wise man, even when he is not at the pains to talk wisely.

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Perhaps indeed there is no quality more conspicuous throughout the writings of Shakspeare, than that of good sense, that intuitive sagacity with which he looks on the manners, the characters, and the pursuits of mankind. The bursts of passion, the strokes of nature, the sublimity of his terrors, and the wonderful creation of his fancy, are those excellencies which strike spectators the most, and are therefore most commonly enlarged on; but to an attentive peruser of his writings, his acute perception and accurate discernment of ordinary character and conduct, that skill, if I may so express it, with which he delineates the plan of common life, will, I think, appear no less striking, and perhaps rather more wonderful; more wonderful, because we cannot so easily conceive that power of genius by which it tells us what actually exists, though it has never

seen it, than that by which it creates what never existed. This power, when we read the works, and consider the situation of Shakspeare, we shall allow him in a most extraordinary degree. The delineation of manners found in the Greek tragedians is excellent and just; but it consists chiefly of those general maxims which the wisdom of the schools might inculcate, which a borrowed experience might teach. That of Shakspeare marks the knowledge of intimacy with mankind. It reaches the elevation of the great, and penetrates the obscurity of the low; detects the cunning, and overtakes the bold; in short, presents that abstract of life in all its modes, and indeed in every time, which every one without experience must believe, and every one with experience must know to be true.

With this sagacity and penetration into the characters and motives of mankind, which himself possessed, Shakspeare has invested Falstaff in a remarkable degree: he never utters it, however, out of character, or at a season where it might better be spared. Indeed his good sense is rather in his thoughts than in his speech; for so we may call those soliloquies in which he generally utters it. He knew what coin was most current with those he dealt with, and fashioned his discourse according to the disposition of his hearers; and he sometimes lends himself to the ridicule of his companions when he has a chance of getting any interest on the loan.

But we oftener laugh with than at him; for his humour is infinite, and his wit admirable. This quality, however, still partakes in him of that Epicurean grossness which I have remarked to be the ruling characteristic of his disposition. He has neither the vanity of a wit, nor the singularity of a humourist, but indulges both talents, like any other natural propensity, without exertion of mind or warmth of en

joyment. A late excellent actor, whose loss the stage will long regret, used to represent the character of Falstaff in a manner different from what had been uniformly adopted from the time of Quin downwards. He exchanged the comic gravity of the old school, for those bursts of laughter in which sympathetic audiences have so often accompanied him. From accompanying him it was indeed impossible to refrain; yet, though the execution was masterly, I cannot agree in that idea of the character. He who laughs, is a man of feeling in merriment. Falstaff was of a very different constitution. He turned wit, as he says he did disease into commodity.'-'Oh ! it is much, that a lie with a slight oath, and a jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders.'

Z

N° 69. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1786.

(Continuation of the Remarks on the Character of Falstaff.).

To a man of pleasure of such a constitution as Falstaff, temper and good humour were necessarily consequent. We find him therefore but once I think angry, and then not provoked beyond measure. He conducts himself with equal moderation towards others; his wit lightens, but does not burn; and he is not more inoffensive when the joker, than unof. fended when joked upon: I am not only witty myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.' In

the evenness of his humour he bears himself thus, (to use his own expression,) and takes in the points of all assailants without being hurt. The language of contempt, of rebuke, or of conviction, neither puts him out of liking with himself or with others. None of his passions rise beyond this control of reason, of self-interest, or of indulgence.

Queen Elizabeth, with a curiosity natural to a woman, desired Shakspeare to exhibit Falstaff as a lover: he obeyed her, and wrote the Merry Wives of Windsor; but Falstaff's love is only factor for his interest, and he wishes to make his mistresses his Exchequer, his East and West Indies, to both of which he will trade.'

Though I will not go so far as a paradoxical critic has done, and ascribe valour to Falstaff; yet if his cowardice is fairly examined, it will be found to be not so much a weakness as a principle. In his very cowardice there is much of the sagacity I have remarked in him; he has the sense of danger, but not the discomposure of fear. His presence of mind saves him from the sword of Douglas, where the danger was real; but he shows no sort of dread of the sheriff's visit, when he knew the Prince's company would probably bear him out: when Bardolph runs in frightened, and tells, that the sheriff, with a most monstrous watch, is at the door, Out, you rogue! (answers he,) play out the play; I have much to say in behalf of that Falstaff.' Falstaff's cowardice is only proportionate to the danger; and so would every wise man's be, did not other feeling make him valiant.

Such feelings, it is the very characteristic of Falstaff to want. The dread of disgrace, the sense of honour, and the love of fame, he neither feels, nor pretends to feel:

Like the fat weed

That roots itself at ease on Lethe's wharf,'

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he is contented to repose on that earthy corner of sensual indulgence in which his fate has placed him, and enjoys the pleasures of the moment, without once regarding those finer objects of delight which the children of fancy and of feeling fo warmly pursue.

The greatest refinement of morals, as well as of mind, is produced by the culture and exercise of the imagination, which derives, or is taught to derive, its objects of pursuit, and its motives of action, not from the senses merely, but from future considerations which fancy anticipates and realizes. Of this either as the prompter, or the restraint of conduct, Falstaff is utterly devoid; yet his imagination is wonderfully quick and creative in the pictures of humour and the associations of wit. But the " pregnancy of his wit," according to his own phrase," is made a tapster;" and his fancy, how vivid soever, still subjects itself to the grossness of those sensual conceptions which are familiar to his mind. We are astonished at that art by which Shakspeare leads the powers of genius, imagination, and wisdom in captivity to this son of earth; 'tis as if, transported into the enchanted island in the Tempest, we saw the rebellion of Caliban successful, and the airy spirits of Prospero ministering to the brutality of his slave.

Hence, perhaps, may be derived great part of that infinite amusement which succeeding audiences have always found from the representation of Falstaff. We have not only the enjoyment of those combinations, and of that contrast, to which philosophers have ascribed the pleasure we derive from wit in general, but we have that singular combination and contrast, which the gross, the sensual, and the brutish mind of Falstaff exhibits, when joined and compared with that admirable power of invention, of wit, and of humour, which his conversation perpetually displays.

In the immortal work of Cervantes, we find a character with a remarkable mixture of wisdom and ab