tasteless. The wit of other men seems to be some special faculty or mode of thought, and lies in a quick seizing of remote and fanciful affinities; in Falstaff it lies not in any one thing more than another, for which cause it cannot be defined and I know not how to describe it but as that roundness and evenness of mind which we call good sense, so quickened and pointed indeed as to produce the effect of wit, yet without hindrance to its own proper effect. To use a snug idiomatic phrase, what Falstaff says always fits all round.

And Falstaff is well aware of his power in this respect. He is vastly proud of it too; yet his pride never shows itself in an offensive shape, his good sense having a certain instinctive delicacy that keeps him from every thing like that. In this proud consciousness of his resources he is always at ease; hence in part the ineffable charm of his conversation. Never at a loss, and never apprehensive that he shall be at a loss, he therefore never exerts himself, nor takes any concern for the result; so that nothing is strained or far-fetched: relying calmly on his strength, he invites the toughest trials, as knowing that his powers will bring him off without any using of the whip or the spur, and by merely giving the rein to their natural briskness and celerity. Hence it is also that he so often lets go all regard to prudence of speech, and thrusts himself into tight places and predicaments: he thus makes or seeks occasions to exercise his fertility and alertness of thought, being well assured that he shall still come off uncornered, and that the greater his seeming perplexity, the greater will be his triumph. Which explains the purpose of his incomprehensible lies: he tells them, surely, not expecting them to be believed, but partly for the pleasure he takes in

the excited play of his faculties, partly for the surprise he causes by his still more incomprehensible feats of dodging. Such is his story about the men in buckram who grew so soon from two to eleven; and how "three misbegotten knaves in Kendall green came at my back, and let drive at me; for it was so dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand"; - lies which, as himself knows well enough, are "gross as a mountain, open, palpable." These, I take it, are studied self-exposures, to invite an attack. Else why should he thus affirm in the same breath the colour of the men's clothes and the darkness of the night? The whole thing is clearly a scheme, to provoke his hearers to come down upon him, and then witch them with his facility and felicity in extricating himself. And so, when they pounce upon him, and seem to have him in their toils, he forthwith springs a diversion upon them:

Prince. What trick, what device, what starting-hole canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame ?

Fals. By the Lord, I knew ye as well as He that made ye. Why, hear ye, my masters: was it for me to kill the heir-apparent? Should I turn upon the true Prince? Why, thou know'st I am as valiant as Hercules; but beware instinct: the lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter: I was a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself and thee during my life; I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince.

To understand this aright, we must bear in mind, that according to the general rule of succession Prince Henry was not the true prince. Legally considered, his father was an usurper; and he could have no right to the crown but in virtue of some higher law. This higher law is authenticated by Falstaff's instinct. The lion, king of beasts, knows royalty by royal intuition.

Such is the catastrophe for which the foregoing acts, the hacking of his sword, the insinuations of cowardice, the

boastings, and the palpable lies, were the prologue and preparation. So that his course here is all of a piece with his usual practice of involving himself in difficulties, the better to set off his readiness at shifts and evasions; knowing that, the more he gets entangled in his talk, the richer will be the effect when by a word he slips off the entanglement. I am persuaded that Sir John suspected all the while who their antagonists were in the Gads-hill robbery; but determined to fall in with and humour the joke, on purpose to make sport for the Prince and himself, and at the same time to retort their deception by pretending igno

rance.

We have similar feats of dodging in the scene where Falstaff rails at the Hostess for keeping a house where pockets are picked, and also at the Prince for saying that his ring was copper. The Prince entering just then, the Hostess tells him of the affair, Falstaff goes to railing at her again, and she defends herself; which brings on the following:

Prince. Thou sayest true, Hostess; and he slanders thee most grossly. Host. So he doth you, my lord; and said, this other day, you ought him a thousand pound.

Prince. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?

Fals. A thousand pound, Hal! a million! Thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love.

Host. Nay, my lord, he called you Jack, and said he would cudgel you. Fals. Did I, Bardolph ?

Bard. Indeed, Sir John, you said so.

Fals. Yea; if he said my ring was copper.

Prince. I say 'tis copper: darest thou be as good as thy word now?

Fals. Why, Hal, thou know'st, as thou art but man, I dare; but, as thou

art prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion's whelp.

Prince. And why not as the lion ?

Fals. The King himself is to be feared as the lion. Dost thou think I'll fear thee as I fear thy father?

Prince. Sirrah, there's no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in this

bosom of thine. Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket! Why, thou impudent, emboss'd rascal, if there were any thing in thy pocket but tavern-reckonings, and one poor pennyworth of sugar-candy to make thee long-winded; if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket up wrong: art thou not ashamed!

Fals. Dost thou hear Hal? Thou know'st, in the state of innocency Adam fell: and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.

In all these replies there is clearly nothing more to be said. And thus, throughout, no exigency turns up but that Sir John is ready with a word that exactly fits into and fills the place. And his tactics lie not in turning upon his pursuers and holding them at bay; but, when the time is ripe, and they seem to have caught him, he instantaneously diverts them upon another scent, or else enchants them into a pause by his nimble-footed sallies and escapes.

Elsewhere the same faculty shows itself in a quick turning of events to his own advantage; as at the battle of Shrewsbury, when, being assailed by Douglas, he falls down as if killed, and in that condition witnesses the fall of Hotspur; and then claps up a scheme for appropriating the honour of his death. The stratagem must be given in his own words:

'Sblood! 'twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit! I lie; I am no counterfeit: to die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life. Zwounds! I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How, if he should counterfeit too, and rise? By my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I'll make him sure; yea, and I'll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore, sirrah, with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.

He then shoulders the body and walks off. Presently he meets the Prince and his brother John, throws down the body, and we have the following:

Fals. There is Percy! if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.

Prince. Why, Percy I killed, myself, and saw thee dead.

I

Fals. Didst thou! - Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! grant you I was down and out of breath, and so was he; but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh if the man were alive, and would deny it, zwounds! I would make him eat a piece of my sword.

:

Here his action as exactly fits into and fills the place as his words do in other cases. He carries the point, not by disputing the Prince's claim, but by making it appear that they both beat down the valiant Hotspur in succession. If the Prince left Hotspur dead, he saw Falstaff dead too. And Falstaff most adroitly clinches his scheme by giving this mistake such a turn as to accredit his own lies.

It has been said that Shakespeare displays no great force of invention; and that in the incidents of his dramas he borrows much more than he originates. It is true, he discovers no pride nor prodigality of inventiveness; he shows indeed a noble indifference on that score; cares not to get up new plots and incidents of his own where he finds them ready-made to his hand. Which is to me, as I have elsewhere remarked, good evidence that he prized novelty in such things at its true worth, and chose to spend his force on the weightier matters of his art. But he is inventive enough whenever he has occasion to be so; and in these incidents about Falstaff, as in hundreds of others, he shows