the whistle of a penny trumpet. The fat man has only to move, and it is as the tread of an elephant beside · the skip of a grasshopper. It really does take a deal of wrong to make one actually hate a fat man; and, if we are not always so cordial to a thin man as we ought to be, Christian charity should take into account the force of prejudice which we have to overcome against his thinness. A fat man is the nearest to that most perfect of figures, a mathematical sphere; a thin man to that most limited of conceivable dimensions, a simple line. A fat man is a being of harmonious volume, and holds relations to the material universe in every direction; a thin man has nothing but length; a thin man, in fact, is but the continuation of a point. Well, then, might Falstaff exult in his size; well might he mock at the prince, and his other lean cotemporaries; and accordingly, when he would address the prince in terms the most degrading, he heaps epithet upon epithet, each expressive of the utmost leanness; "Away, you starveling," he exclaims; "you elf-skin; you dried neat's tongue, you stock fish: O, for breath to utter what is like thee!

The gross idea of Falstaff is that of a coward, a liar, a glutton and a buffoon. This idea is so partial, that when taken for the whole character it is untrue. Much more than this there must be, in one among the greatest

of Shakspeare's creations. In the cowardice of Falstaff there is much inconsistency; and much of this, we may suppose, arises from the exaggerations in which the poet has knowingly indulged for the sake of ludicrous position. I do not know otherwise how to interpret the affair at Gad's Hill. The prince, whether as Shakspeare or history represents him, was no lover of dastards; yet the poet allows him to intrust Falstaff with a company; and Falstaff himself, as he gives him to us after the battle of Shrewsbury, says, "I have led my raggamuffins where they are peppered; there's but three of my hundred and fifty left alive." Falstaff willingly goes twice to the wars; and the cool mockery of which he was capable on the field, shows a light heart, and not a timid one. The gayety, the ease, the merriment, the reckless frolic, the immovable selfpossession which he exhibits, preceding the campaign and in it, evinces any other temper than that of cowardice. A coward may have daring in the midst of danger, but he has never levity in it, — spontaneous, unaffected levity. Falstaff, physically, was not a craven. was assuredly attached to life, and to the life of the senses. It was all he had; it was all he hoped; and it was all he wished. He was therefore in no anxiety to lose it; and his philosophy taught him of nothing which was a compensation for endangering it.

He

"Hal," he says, "if thou seest me fall down in battle, and bestride me so, 't is a point of friendship." "Nothing," says the prince, "but a colossus can do that friendship. Say thy prayers, and farewell.”

"I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well."

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'Why, thou owest God a death."

""T is not due yet, and I would be loath to pay him before his day."

This, though banter, is all congruous with his system. And, also, what can he be but joking, when he says to the prince :

"But tell me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard? Thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afeard? doth not thy blood thrill at it?"

No coward reveals his character in this manner, and surely this is not the way in which Shakspeare would reveal it. Falstaff gives us the truth of his character, when he says, "Indeed I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather; but yet no coward, Hal." Falstaff was an epicure, but no glutton. He was not a great eater, for his bill contained a halfpennyworth of bread to an intolerable quantity of sack. And although Falstaff was a large drinker, he was no inebriate. And here we conceive a consummate art in Shakspeare, who

sustains Falstaff throughout in our intellectual respect. He presents to our fancy a character whose life was in the senses; whose atmosphere was the tavern, whose chief good was conviviality, and yet who never once passes the line where mind lies conquered by excess.

If the name of buffoon can be applied to Falstaff, then it is a designation not inconsistent with the richest prodigality of talents. Falstaff companioned with the highest of the land, not only on the ground of his genius, but of his rank. That Falstaff was not unmindful of his genius, appears every where in the spirit of a confident egotism, which never strikes us as puerile or foolish, and he constantly shows the same fact in direct expression. Subscribing a very characteristic letter to the prince, he shows that he was equally confident of his rank, when he writes, "Jack Falstaff, with my familiars; John, with my brothers and sisters; and Sir John, with the rest of Europe." Indeed there is in this signature, consciousness of fame as well as pride of station; and both are distinctive of the man. He was jealous of his position, and next to this, he was jealous of his abilities. While, upon occasions, he seems to abase himself, his self-abasement has always along with it more than an equivalent in self-elation. "Men of all sorts," he says, "take a pride to gird at me; the brain of this foolish compounded clay, man,

is not able to vent any thing that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause of wit in other men." It is plain, too, that he did not esteem himself meanly beside the proudest titles. When Prince John of Lancaster says to him, parting in the forest, "Fare you well, and I in my condition shall better speak of you, than you deserve:" Falstaff mutters after him, “I would you had but the wit, 't were better than your dukedom." As to lies, they were in the way of his vocation. The highest stretch of imagination could not even suspect him of veracity; and if he had any dupes, they were strangely in love with deception. His lies, too, were the lies of a professed and known wit; they were designed only for ludicrous effect, and generally were little more than comic exaggerations. In the events at Gad's Hill, and those that immediately follow them, there is an epitome of the whole character of Falstaff; but there is, at the same time, an evident design on the part of the poet, to bring out his peculiarities with grotesque extravagance; and to produce the broadest and the most comic result. The entire scene is too long to recite, and therefore I can but recall it to your thoughts by a very abbreviated sketch.

Travellers are coming to London with money. The prince, Falstaff, and their companions, lay a plot to