In cradle-clothes, our children where they lay,

And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet ;Then would I have his Harry and he mine!"

This is the consideration which, more than any other, rankles in his heart. The high character, the warlike accomplishments, and universal popularity of young Percy, are the themes by which, in the interview in the third act, after pointing out and illustrating, by the contrast of Richard and himself, the dangers of the course which the Prince was pursuing, he chiefly seeks to rouse his own seemingly degenerate heir to a sense of his degradation and his duty. For all these traits, which so finely humanize the character of Henry IV., and redeem it from its more political hardness, Shakspeare obtained scarcely a hint from

Hollingshed, or from the old play, entitled, "The Famous Victories of Henry V.," which is known to have furnished him with the outline, and with some few lines of the two parts of Henry IV. Any one who wishes to see with what inimitable superiority a mind like that of Shakspeare can treat an incident which he adopts from the chronicle, and from his anonymous predecessor, has only to compare the admirable interview in the third act of the first part of Henry IV., between the King and his son, with the corresponding passages in Hollingshed and the old play. The King's part in the dialogue, in particular, is inimitably sustained; his gradual transition from the censure of his son's conduct, to a contrast of it with his own when young, and of the policy by which he had raised himself and the house of Plantagenet to greatness; his contempt for the conduct of Richard, as owing his ruin to the very same thoughtless abasement of the royal dignity in which Prince Henry indulges; the eulogy on Percy, by which, if by any thing, he hopes

to awaken the dormant seeds of shame and good feeling in the heart of his son, and to rouse him to the necessity of manly and honourable exertion, and that burst of natural tears in which it ends, are given with equal grace, pathos, propriety, and characteristic truth.

We pass, however, from the father to the son-a character which

Shakspeare has obviously portrayed in the spirit of love, and has graced, amidst all its wild extravagances, with a thousand amiable and redeeming features. Whence arose this obvious leaning towards this "rascalliest sweet young prince"this evident fellow-feeling with him, who plays off practical mystifications upon waiters, and "robs me his father's exchequer upon Gad's Hill?" Might not all this have some connexion with his own youthful peccadilloes-his moonlight deerstealing excursions at Charlecoteand all those mad frolics by which, long ere he had thought of inditing dramas, he had made Warwickshire

too hot to hold him? In painting this wild early career of Prince Hal, afterwards matured into so brilliant and glorious a manhood, was not the poet, in some sense, pleading his own apology, and proving, by a parallel instance, how often in the seemingly dissolute and careless youth might lie dormant the seeds of the great and accomplished man?

Be that as it may, it is certain that no character has been arrayed by Shakspeare in more attractive, and almost dangerously fascinating, colours. He has endowed him, amidst his errors, with every attractive and amiable quality-with wit, intelligence, generosity, modesty, and courage. He has been anxious, from the first, to make the reader distinctly aware of the great qualities which lie hid under the garb of levity, and to prepare us for their ultimate developement; for, even in the second scene of the first act of the First Part, no sooner have Falstaff and his companion Poins disappeared-after an encounter of tongues, in which the wit is nearly equalled by the profanity, and after the project of stripping Falstaff and his companions of their ill-gotten gains, has been adjust ed between the Prince and Poinsthan he vindicates his present association in the well-known and beautiful lines

"I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyoked humours of your idleness :
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours, that did seem to strangle him."

The Prince was indeed entitled to say that he knew his companions well-for no one more thoroughly appreciated their real worthlessness -including that of their masterspirit Falstaff himself. But the confession would have been more true and complete if he had added that he upheld "the unyoked humours of their idleness" from the real gratification which their society afforded. His heart, indeed, has not been contaminated, nor his high feeling of honour impaired (though the falsehood to which he

resorts in the scene with the Sheriff appears somewhat suspicious), but he has a natural turn for dissipation,. provided only it be redeemed and elevated by wit and humour. He turns with real pleasure from the stiffness and formality of his father's court, where men are measured by the artificial and extrinsic advantages of wealth and rank, to the freedom of the Boar's-head, where they are estimated at their true value. He willingly leaves his place at the council-board to his brother of Lancaster, for there he can play but a secondary part while his father lives, to enjoy the supremacy to which his wit not less than his rank entitle him, in the revels of Eastcheap. He loves to study men in all situations, high and low; and, in truth, is rather inclined to the belief that man is a more agreeable object of study in the latter situation than the former. It is his pride to be master" of all humours that have shown themselves humours since the old days of goodman Adam." And in this investigation he is, for the time, sufficiently engrossed to forget all matters of higher moment. It is sufficiently obvious, from the spirit with which he not only enters into those scenes of low life, but occasionally organizes them, that whatever higher capacities he may feel within him, he cares not how long they lie dormant while Falstaff's exhaustless wit is there to grace these follies with an intellectual character. Nay, so easily is he disposed to be pleased, that even Bardolph, Poins, or Francis, will serve his turn: Bardolph's nose had evidently been so long a mine of wit both to Falstaff and the Prince, that the Prince might have a pride in showing that the vein was even yet not wrought out; and that in the hands of a man of talent, it might still be turned to some account. But the delight which he receives from the dilemma in which he places the foolish Francis, with his single parrot-note of "anon, anon, sir! and the account of his sworn brotherhood with the Drawers, in which he truly says, that he sounded the very base string of humility, evince a still less critical taste. Laughter, no matter how caused, seems to him to be the end of life.

"But the scene with his father," says Horn, "plainly evinces how lit tle the better feelings of his heart had suffered by this unworthy association. That scene, we must recollect, had been already parodied by anticipation by Falstaff; and how natural, how pardonable would it have been, if a smile at the recollection of the lecture of the night had mingled with the morning's audience. Must he not have perceived, as clearly as we, the hollowness and inconsequence of two thirds of his father's reproaches? As a stranger he might, but not as a son. The object of the reproof is in truth more in the right than he who administers it but it is a father who does so, and against him the son can avail himself of no other weapons but patience and love. He admits the justice of the reproach-he asks only forgiveness.

I shall hereafter, my most gracious Lord, Be more myself.'

"With what a noble fire of enthusiasm does he appear inflamed, when the opportunity of great deeds in behalf of his king and country is pre-, sented to him! how generous is his voluntary eulogium on the bravery and knightly worth of Percy!-an eulogium which flows from that sympathy which he feels for all excellence, and which pauses not to consider whether the object on which it is bestowed be friend or foe.

"But does this interview with his father effect a change in Henry's character? Has he really determined in future to change his course, and to avoid this wild and discreditable society? Not a whit.' His better understanding with his father only seems to raise his spirits, and the first place to which he adjourns from the palace is the tavern. He who is so soon to wield so nobly the general's truncheon, must begin by playing upon it like a fife. He allows himself ample time to listen to the delightful squabbles of Falstaff and the Hostess. When, at last, notwithstanding the brilliancy and ful

ness of his own wit, he feels himself fairly overcome by the irresistible flood of Falstaff's humour, he contrives, like a true humorist, to furnish himself with the materials of laughter for a month, by assigning to the poor fat knight 'a charge of foot.' Here the humour almost amounts to cruelty, were it not that his knowledge of Falstaff's resources assures him that he will not really be the sufferer on this occasion any more than on those that have preceded it."

The character of his rival Percy is a simple one: the name of Hotspur describes it at once; he is a being of fire from head to heel. He has many of the great qualities that should adorn kuighthood, high honour, boundless courage, respect to engagements, generosity; but he wants its great ornament, the spirit of love-and its greatest safeguard, reflective prudence. In love his character is altogether deficient: he treats his wife with no tenderness; he intrusts her with no confidence; she is to him but a housekeeper, an indispensable, but on the whole irksome, appendage to his state. Even for friendship he seems to have little. inclination: his attachments take their rise in a spirit of opposition; the best passport to his friendship and protection is that the individual shall have been injured or rejected by others. In prudence he is, if possible, still more deficient. Incapable of reflection, he can form no due estimate of himself and others; impelled by the fire within him, he thinks that every thing must yield to it as he has done himself. His courage is more animal than intellectual; he is far too wordy and too self-laudatory to be a great leader. But out of this very propensity, however, Shakspeare has drawn one of his simple and pathetic touches. "Would to heaven," exclaims Percy but the instant before he falls beneath the sword of the victorious Prince, "thy name in arms were now as great as mine!" Self-confident, secure of conquest, Hotspur only wishes that his victim

were adorned with higher renown, that he might offer him a worthier sacrifice on the altar of his vanity; he never contemplates the alternation, that he himself should so soon stoop his crest to him whom he almost despises as unknown in arms. Such a character as Hotspur would, in ordinary hands, have been an extremely unpleasing one; but Shakspeare has softened its rugged outlines, and given it a peculiar and even pleasing individuality, by the rough humour with which he has invested it, which in this instance is not merely ornamental, but is truly the cementing quality-the spirit of life by which the whole character is moulded into an animated and natural whole.

Shakspeare has given us but a few glimpses of the conspirators, but these few are sufficient to illustrate their characters, and to set us at ease as to the danger of Henry from such a rebellion. The single scene in which they are discovered parcelling out their respective shares of England upon the map;-dividing the bear's skin before they have killed him; their already apparent dissensions, the contempt which Hot spur openly expresses for Glendower's magical pretensions, the firm belief which the Welsh chief entertains in them; his boast of having thrice sent Bolingbroke

"Bootless home, and weather-beaten back,"

and Hotspur's coolly sarcastic rejoinder,

"Home without boots, and in foul

weather too!

How 'scapes he agues, in the devil's name?"

All these admirably prepare us for the jealousies, the divided councils, and rashness which led to the encounter of the rebels with the royal army during the absence of Glendower, and to the defeat and suppression of the rebellion at Shrewsbury. They make us feel how poignantly Northumberland must have afterwards felt the pathetic reproach of Lady Percy-on his failure to bring up his troops to the assistance of his son.

"Let them alone;

The marshal, and the archbishop, are strong: Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,

To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck, Have talked of Monmouth's grave."

The part of the Prince is the connecting link between the tragic and the comic portions of Henry IV. The conqueror of Percy is also the companion of Falstaff and his group. "But Falstaff, unimitated, inimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee?" So asked Dr Johnson, breaking out into an unwonted fit of enthusiasm; -for, strange to say, the grave and moral Doctor seems to have been

more

deeply struck with Shakspeare's powers in this comic conception of character than in any of his tragic and dignified creations. Most certainly the effort required for the production of such a character as Falstaff was not less than that by which a Lear, a Caliban, a Macbeth, an Imogen, or a Miranda was called into being. All were equally drawn purely from the regions of imagination; for Falstaff, though represented by Shakspeare, as walking, or rather "larding" this earth, and frequenting some of those haunts with which the poet himself was familiar, was as little the mere result of actual observation, and as purely an ideal conception, as the airiest or most supernatural of his characters. No such being, we may be assured, ever figured at the Globe or graced the festivities of the Mitre or the Mermaid. Gross and earthly as he seems -he has yet come to us from the same region from which those more spiritual visitants had preceded him; from that world of imagination with which Shakspeare was as familiar while he stood a culprit before Sir Thomas Lucy, as when in after life he walked the streets of London, or sat an honoured guest in the hospitable halls of Lord Southampton.

The substance of our English criticism on the subject of Falstaff (except the ingenious but paradoxical attempt of Mr Morgan to prove that Falstaff was neither cowardly nor selfish) is pretty well embodied in the following remarks of Cumberland.*

"To fill up the drawing of this personage, Shakspeare conceived a voluptuary in whose figure and character there should be an assemblage of comic qualities; in his person he should be bloated and blown up to the size of a Silenus, lazy, luxurious; in sensuality a Satyr, in intemperance a Bacchanalian. As he was to stand in the post of a ringleader among thieves and cutpurses, he made him a notorious liar, a swaggering coward, vainglorious, arbitrary, knavish, crafty, voracious of plunder, lavish of his gains, without credit, honour, or honesty, and in debt to every body about him. As he was to be the chief seducer and misleader of the heir-apparent to the crown, it was incumbent on the poet to qualify him for that part-in such a manner as should give probability and even a plea to the temptation; this was only to be done by the strongest touches and the happiest colourings of a master; by hitting off a humour so happy, so facetious, and of so alluring a cast as should tempt even royalty to forget itself, and virtue to turn reveller in his company. His lies, his vanity, and his cowardice, too gross to deceive, were to be so ingenious as to give delight; his cunning evasions, his witty resources, his mock solemnity, his vapouring self consequence, serve to furnish a continual feast of laughter to his royal companion. He was not only to be witty himself, but the cause of wit in others; a whetstone for raillery, a buffoon, whose very person was a jest. Compounded of these humours, Shakspeare produced the character of Sir John Falstaff, a character which neither ancient nor modern comedy has ever equalled, which was so much the favourite of the author as to be introduced in three several plays, and which is likely to be the idol of the English stage as long as it shall speak the language of Shakspeare."

No very substantial addition is made to these observations by the criticism of Schlegel: and, indeed, the features of Falstaff's character are so broad and palpable, that they could hardly be mistaken by those who first attempted to delineate them. The best remark in Schlegel's critique is, that Falstaff employs the activity of his understanding as the

VOL. XXXIX. NO. CCXLVII.

means of obtaining the pleasing repose of sensuality for his body. Situated as Falstaff is-he feels this to be the price which he must pay in order to take his ease in his inn; -and he pays it (the only debt he does pay) honestly, and to the last farthing.

"Falstaff," says Schlegel, "is the summit of Shakspeare's comic invention. He has continued this character through three plays, and exhibited him in every variety of situation, without exhausting him. self: the figure is drawn so definitely and individually, that, to the mere reader, it affords the complete impression of a personal acquaintance. Falstaff is the most agreeable and entertaining knave that ever was portrayed. His contemptible qualities are not disguised: he is old, lecherous, and dissolute; corpulent beyond measure, and always attentive to cherish his body by eating, drinking, and sleeping; constantly in debt, and any thing but conscientious in the choice of the means by which money is to be procured; a cowardly soldier and a lying braggart, a flatterer to the face, and a satirist behind the backs of his friends, and yet we are never disgusted with him. We see that his tender care of himself is without any mixture of ma lice towards others; he would only not be disturbed in the pleasing re pose of his sensuality, and this he attains through the activity of his understanding. Always on the alert, and good-humoured, ever ready to crack jokes on others, and to listen

to those of which he is himself the subject-so that he justly boasts that he is not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others-he is an admirable companion for youthful idleness and levity. Under a helpless exterior, he conceals an extremely acute mind; he has always some dexterous turn at command whenever any of his free jokes begin to give displeasure; he is shrewd in his distinctions between those from whom he has favours to solicit and those over whom he may assume a familiar ascendency. He is so convinced that the part he plays can only pass under the cloak of wit, that even when alone he is never altogether serious, but gives the drollest colouring to his love intrigues,

27