N° 69. SATURDAY, May 27. 1786.

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

O a man of pleasure of fuch a constitution

Tas Falstaff, temper and good humour

were neceffarily confequert. We find him therefore but once I think angry, and then not provoked beyond measure. He conducts himfelf with equal moderation towards others; his wit lightens, but does not burn; and he is not more inoffenfive when the joker, than unoffended 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 expreffion), and takes in the points of all affailants 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 paffions rife beyond

this controul of reafon, of felf-intereft, or of indulgence..

Queen Elifabeth, with a curiofity natural to a woman, defired Shakespeare to exhibit Falstaff as a lover. He obeyed her, and wrote the Merry Wives of Windfor; but Falstaff's love is only fac'tor for his intereft, and he wishes to make his miftreffes "his Exchequer, his Eaft and West Indies, to both of which he will trade."

Though I will not go fo far as a paradoxical critic has done, and afcribe valour to Falstaff; yet if his cowardice is fairly examined, it will be found to be not fo much a weakness as a principle. In his very cowardice there is much of the fagacity I have remarked in him; he has the fenfe of danger, but not the difcompofure of fear. His prefence of mind faves him from the fword of Douglas where the danger was real; but he fhews no fort of dread of the fheriff's vifit, when he knew the Prince's company would probably bear him out: When Bardolph runs in frightened, and tells that the fheriff, with a moft monftrous watch, is at the door, "Out, you rogue ! (anfwers he) play out the play; I have much to fay in behalf of that Falstaff." Falstaff's cowardice is only proportionate to the danger; and so would every wife man's be, did not other feelings make him valiant.

Such

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

"Like the fat weed

"That roots itself at eafe on Lethe's wharf,”

he is contented to repofe on that earthy corner of fenfual 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 greateft refinement of morals, as well as of mind, is produced by the culture and exercise of the imagination, which derives, or is taught to dérive, its objects of purfuit, and its motives of action, not from the fenfes merely, but from fu ture confiderations which fancy anticipates and realizes. Of this, either as the prompter, or the reftraint of conduct, Falstaff is utterly devoid yet his imagination is wonderfully quick and creative in the pictures of humour and the affocia tions of wit. But the "pregnancy of his wit," according to his own phrafe," is made a tapfter;" and his fancy, how vivid foever, ftill fubjects itself to the groffness of those sensual con

ceptions

ceptions which are familiar to his mind. We are aftonished at that art by which Shakespeare leads the powers of genius, imagination, and wifdom, in captivity to this fon of earth; 'tis as if transported into the enchanted island in the Tempeft, we saw the rebellion of Caliban fuccefsful, and the airy fpirits of Profpero miniftering to the brutality of his flave.

Hence perhaps may be derived great part of that infinite amufement which fucceeding audiences have always found from the representation of Falstaff. We have not only the enjoyment of thofe combinations, and of that contraft to which philofophers have afcribed the pleasure we derive from wit in general, but we have that fingular combination and contraft which the grofs, 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 converfation perpetually displays.

In the immortal work of Cervantes we find a character with a remarkable mixture of wifdom and abfurdity, which in one page excites our highest ridicule, and in the next is entitled to our highest respect. Don Quixote, like Falstaff, is endowed with excellent difcernment, fagacity, and genius; but his good fenfe holds fief of his diseased imagination, of his over-ruling_madness

for

it

for the atchievements of knight-errantry, for heroic valour and heroic love. The ridicule in the character of Don Quixote confifts in raising low and vulgar incidents, through the medium of his difordered fancy, to a rank of importance, dignity, and folemnity, to which in their nature they are the moft oppofite that can be imagined. With Falstaff it is nearly the reverfe; the ridicule is produced by fubjecting wisdom, honour, and other the moft grave and dignified principles, to the controul of groffness, buffoonery, and folly. 'Tis like the paftime of a familymasquerade, where laughter is equally excited by drefling clowns as gentlemen, or gentlemen as clowns. In Falstaff, the heroic attributes of our nature are made to wear the garb of meannefs and abfurdity. In Don Quixote, the common and the fervile are clothed in the dreffes of the dignified and the majeftic; while, to heighten the ridicule, Sancho, in the half deceived fimplicity, and half difcerning threwdness of his character, is every now and then employed to pull off the mafk. “

7

If you would not think me whimfical in the parallel, continued my friend, I fhould fay that Shakespeare has drawn, in one of his immediately fubfequent plays, a tragic character very much refembling the comic one of Falstaff, I mean

that