from the time of King John downwards. When he arrived at the reign of Henry IV., the dissipated youth and extravagant pranks of the Prince of Wales could not fail to excite his attention, as affording at once a source of moral reflection in the serious department, and a fund of infinite humour in the comic part of the drama. In providing him with associates for his hours of folly and of riot, he probably borrowed, as was his custom, from some old play, interlude, or story, the names and incidents which he has used in the first part of Henry IV. Oldcastle, we know, was the name of a character in such a play, inserted there, it is probable (in those days of the church's omnipotence in every department of writing,) in odium of Sir John Oldcastle, chief of the Lollards, though Shakspeare afterwards, in a protestant reign, changed it to Falstaff. This leader of the gang, which the wanton extravagance of the Prince was to cherish and protect, it was necessary to endow with qualities sufficient to make the young Henry, in his society,

-doff the world aside,

And bid it pass.

Shakspeare therefore has endowed him with infinite wit and humour, as well as an admirable degree of sagacity and acuteness in observing the characters of men; but has joined those qualities with a grossness of mind which his youthful master could

not but see, nor seeing but despise. With talents less conspicuous, Falstaff could not have attracted Henry; with profligacy less gross and less contemptible, he would have attached him too much. Falstaff's was just "that unyoked humour of idleness" which the Prince could "a while uphold," and then cast off for ever. The audience to which this strange compound was to be exhibited were to be in the same predicament with the Prince, to laugh and to admire while they despised; to feel the power of his humour, the attraction of his wit, the justice of his reflections; 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.

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 excellences 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.b

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

It is to this extraordinary conversancy with the human heart, this union and incorporation, as it were, with the character which he delineates, more than to any other of his exalted gifts, that Shakspeare is indebted for his supremacy over all other painters of the manners and passions of mankind; a supremacy which, in spite of every prejudice, whether national or individual, will one day be acknowledged with as much universality throughout the continents of the world as in his native island.

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 enjoyment. 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."

MACKENZIE.J

This evidently points to Henderson, who, notwithstanding the practice here noticed, and which it must be confessed was in more than one instance doubtless misplaced, gave, upon the whole, such a representation of Falstaff with regard to general truth and richness of colouring, as has not since been, and perhaps never will be exceeded.

The Lounger, No. 68, May 20, 1786.