As to gratify his animal appetites, therefore, is the sole end and aim of his being, every faculty of his mind and body is directed exclusively to this purpose, and he is no further vicious, no further interesting and agreeable than may be necessary to the acquisition of his object. Had he succeeded but partially in the attainment of his views, and consequently by the means usually put in practice, he would have been contemptible, loathsome, and disgusting, but he has succeeded to an extent beyond all other men, and therefore by means of an extraordinary kind, and which have covered the fruition of his plans with an adventitious and even fascinating lustre.

The perfect Epicurism, in short, which he cultivates, requires for the obtention of its gratifications a multitude of brilliant and attractive qualifications; for, in order to run the full career of sensual enjoyment, associated as he was with a man of high rank, and considerable mental powers, it was necessary that he should render himself both highly acceptable and interesting, that he should assume the appearance or pretend to the possession of several virtues, and that he should be guilty of no very revolting or disgustful intemperance.

To perform this task, however, with unfailing effect, demanded, on the part of Falstaff, incessant intellectual vigour, and a perpetual command of temper, and these Shakspeare has bestowed upon him in their full plenitude. His wit is inexhaustible, his gaiety and goodhumour undeviating, his address shrewd and discriminating, and, as the favourable opinion of his associates is, to a certain extent, essential to his enjoyments, he endeavours to impress the prince with confidence in his friendship and courage, his gratitude and fidelity, and to impose on his equals and inferiors a sense of his military and political importance. It is also requisite that, though an incorrigible lover of wine, of dainty fare, and of all libidinous delights, he should exhibit nothing either as the accompaniment or consequence of these pursuits, which should be beastly or loathsome; he is, therefore, never represented as in a state of intoxication, nor loaded with more infirmities than what corpulency produces; but is always himself,

crafty, sprightly, selfish, and intelligent, ever ready to invent and to enjoy the sport, the revel, and the jest.

Thus constituted, his social and intellectual qualities so blending with the dissolute propensities of his nature, that the epicure, and free-booter, the whore-monger and vain-glorious boaster, lose in the composition their native deformity, Falstaff becomes the most entertaining and seductive companion that the united powers of genius, levity, and laughter have ever, in the most felicitous hour of their mirth and fancy, created for the sons of men.

Yet, dangerous as such a delineation may appear, Shakspeare, with his usual attention to the best interests of mankind, has rendered it subservient to the most striking moral effects, both as these apply to the character of Falstaff himself, and to that of his temporary patron, the Prince of Wales; for while the virtue, energy, and good sense of the latter are placed in the most striking point of view by his firm dismissal of a most fascinating and too endeared voluptuary, the permanently degrading consequences of sensuality are exhibited in their full strength during the career, and in the fate, of the former.

It is very generally found that great and splendid vices are mingled with concomitant virtues, which often ultimately lead to self-accusation, and to the salutary agonies of remorse; but he who is deeply plunged in the grovelling pursuits of appetite is too frequently lost to all sense of shame, to all feeling of integrity or conscious worth. Polluted by the meanest depravities, not only religious principle ceases to affect the mind, but every thing which contributes to honour or to grandeur in the human character is gone for ever; a catastrophe to which wit and humour, by rendering the sensualist a more self-deluded and self-satisfied being, lend the most powerful assistance.

Thus is it with Falstaff-to the last he remains the same, unrepentant, unreformed; and, though shaken off by all that is valuable or good around him, dies the very sensualist which he had lived!

We may, therefore, derive from this character as much instruction as entertainment; and, to the delight which we receive from the contemplation of a picture so rich and original, add a lesson of morality as aweful and impressive as the history of human frailty can present.

In order fully to unfold the extraordinary character of Falstaff, it was necessary to throw around him a set of familiar associates, who might, through all the privacies of domestic life, lay open his follies and knaveries, while, at the same time, they themselves contributed, in no small degree, to the amusement of the scene. How admirably the poet has succeeded in this design, the spririted and glowing sketches of Bardolph, Pistol, and Mrs. Quickly, and of Justices Shallow and Silence, will bear an ever-during testimony. Than the scenes in which the two magistrates appear, nothing can be conceived more characteristically pleasant and original. The garrulity, vanity, and knavish simplicity of Shallow; the asinine gravity of Silence when sober, and his irrepressible hilarity when tipsy; Falstaff's exquisite appreciation of their characters, and his patronage of Shallow, are presented to us with a naïveté, raciness, and completeness of conception, which it is in vain to look for elsewhere.

We have further to remark, that the fable of the Two Parts of Henry the Fourth is connected with peculiar skill through the intervention of the comic incidents. It was essential, in fact, for the purposes of representation, that there should be a satisfactory close to each Part, while, at the same time, such a medium of communication should exist between the two, as to form a perfect whole. To effect this, the serious and the ludicrous departments of these dramas are conducted in a different way; the former exhibiting two catastrophes while the latter has but one. Thus the death of Percy in the first play, and the death of Henry the Fourth in the second, form two judicious terminations of the tragic portion, while the rich vein of comedy running through both divisions, is only bounded by the Reformation of Henry the Fifth, and the Fall of his vicious but facetious companion; a denouement at once natural and complete, and

springing from intrinsic causes, being the sole result of firmness and penetration in the prince, and of self-delusion in the knight.

14. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: 1597. We are inclined to prefer this date to that of 1598, in consequence of the two allusions to time noticed by Mr. Chalmers in his Chronology*; and which, as the epóch formerly fixed on by the commentators was founded merely on the fact of this play being registered on the 22d of July, 1598, a circumstance perfectly indecisive as to the period of its composition, ought consequently to possess the privilege of establishing its era.

Of the three plots which constitute this very interesting drama, namely that of the Caskets, that of the Bond, and that of the Elopement of Jessica, the first two appear to have formed the fable of a play entitled The Jew, long anterior to our author's production. "The Jew shown at the Bull," says Gosson in his School of Abuse, 1579, 66 representing the greediness of worldly choosers, and the bloody minds of usurers — these plays," says he, mentioning others at the same time, " are goode and sweete plays." †

Now, there can be no doubt that Shakspeare, in conformity to his usual custom, would avail himself of the labours of this his dramatic predecessor; but it is also evident that he had other resources. "The author of the old play of The Jew," observes Mr. Douce, "and Shakspeare in his Merchant of Venice, have not confined themselves to one source only in the construction of their plot; but, that the Pecorone, the Gesta Romanorum, and perhaps the old Ballad of Gernutus, have been respectively resorted to. It is however most probable that the original play was indebted chiefly, if not altogether to the Gesta Romanorum, which contained both the main incidents; aud that Shakspeare expanded and improved them, partly from his own genius, and partly, as to the bond, from the Pecorone, where the coincidences are too manifest to leave any doubt. Thus, the scene being laid at Venice; the residence of the lady at Belmont; the

VOL. II.

* Supplemental Apology, p. 348.

+ Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 229.

3 D

introduction of a person bound for the principal; the double infraction of the bond, viz., the taking more or less than a pound of flesh and the shedding of blood, together with the after-incident of the ring, are common to the novel and the play. The whetting of the knife might perhaps have been taken from the Ballad of Gernutus. Shakspeare was likewise indebted to an authority that could not have occurred to the original author of the play in an English form; this was, Silvayn's Orator, as translated by Munday. From that work Shylock's reasoning before the senate is evidently borrowed; but at the same time it has been most skilfully improved."

The Orator of Silvayn, translated by Munday from the French, was printed by Adam Islip in 1596, and forms one of Mr. Chalmers's authorities for assigning the composition of the Merchant of Venice to the year 1597.

Of the two English Gesta mentioned by Mr. Douce, that containing the story of the Bond is as old as the reign of Henry the Sixth, and though now only known to exist in manuscript †, might probably have been in print in the time of Shakspeare and the author of the elder play.

The Gesta, including the story of the Caskets, there is reason to think, was translated by Leland and revised by R. Robinson; for a memorandum relative to the first edition of the improved version, written by Robinson himself, and occurring in his Eupolemia, is thus worded: 1577. -“1577. A record of ancyent historyes intituled in Latin Gesta Romanorum, translated (auctore ut supponitur Johane Leylando antiquario) by mee perused corrected and bettered. Perused further by the wardens of the stationer's and printed first and last by Thomas Easte." If the supposition here recorded be correct, it is highly probable that Leland's translation is identical with that referred to

* Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 291.

+ Preserved in the Harleian Collection, No. 7333, and containing 70 stories. Vide Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 424.