Ch. Juft. Have you your wits? know you what 'tis you speak?

Fal. My king! my Jove! I fpeak to thee, my heart!
King. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers:
How ill white hairs become a fool and jefter!
I have long dream'd of fuch a kind of man,
So furfeit-fwell'd, fo old, and fo 3 profane;
But, being awake, I do defpife my dream.
Make lefs thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing. 4 Know, the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men:
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;
Prefume not, that I am the thing I was:

For heaven doth know, fo fhall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou doft hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou waft,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:

3

profane ;] In our author it often fignifies love of talk without the particular idea now given it. So in Othello," Is "he not a profane and very liberal counfellor." JOHNSON. Know, the grave doth gape

4

For thee thrice wider than for other men.

Reply not to me with a fool-born jeft;] Nature is highly touched in this paffage. The king having fhaken off his vanities, fchools his old companion for his follies with great feverity: he affumes the air of a preacher; bids him fall to his prayers, feek grace, and leave gormandizing. But that word. unluckily prefenting him with a pleasant idea, he cannot forbear pursuing it. Know, the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider, &c. and is juft falling back into Hal, by an humorous allufion to Falstaff's bulk; but he perceives it immediately, and fearing Sir John fhould take the advantage of it, checks both himself and the knight, with

Reply not to me with a fool-born jeft;

and fo refumes the thread of his difcourfe, and goes moralizing on to the end of the chapter. Thus the poet copies nature with great skill, and fhews us how apt men are to fall back into their old cuftoms, when the change is not made by degrees, and brought into a habit, but determined of at once on the motives of honour, intereft, or reafon. WARBURTON,

Till then I banish thee on pain of death,
As I have done the reft of my mis-leaders,
5 Not to come near our perfon by ten miles.
For competence of life, I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will according to your ftrength and qualities
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To fee perform'd the tenor of our word.

Set on.
[Exit King, &c.
Fal. Mafter Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.
Shal. Ay, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to
let me have home with me.

Fal. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I fhall be fent for in private to him. Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not

5 Not to come near our perfon by ten miles.] Mr. Rowe obferves, that many readers lament to fee Falstaff fo hardly used by his old friend. But if it be confidered, that the fat knight has never uttered one fentiment of generofity, and with all his power of exciting mirth, has nothing in him that can be efteemed, no great pain will be fuffered from the reflection that he is compelled to live honeftly, and maintained by the king, with a promife of advancement when he shall deferve it.

I think the poet more blameable for Poins, who is always reprefented as joining fome virtues with his vices, and is therefore treated by the prince with apparent diftinction, yet he does nothing in the time of action, and though after the bustle is over he is again a favourite, at last vanishes without notice. Shakefpeare certainly loft him by heedleffnefs, in the multiplicity of his characters, the variety of his action, and his eagerness to end the play. JOHNSON.

The difmiffion of Falstaff was founded on a historical fact. Stowe fays, that "K. Henry, after his coronation, called unto "him all thofe young lords and gentlemen that were the fol"lowers of his young acts, to every one of whom he gave rich

gifts; and then commanded, that as many as would change "their manners, as he intended to do, should abide with him "in his court; and to all that would perfevere in their former "like converfation, he gave exprefs commandment, upon pain "of their heads, never after that day to come in his pre" fence." STEEVENS.

your

your advancement; I will be the man yet that fhall make you great.

Shal. I cannot perceive how; unless you give me your doublet, and stuff me out with ftraw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thoufand.

· Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word. This, that you heard, was but a colour.

Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, Sir John.

Fal. Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come, lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be fent for foon at night.

Re-enter the Chief Justice, and prince John.

6

Ch. Juft. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet, Take all his company along with him.

Fal. My lord, my lord

Ch. Juft. I cannot now fpeak. I will hear you foon. -Take them away.

Pift. Si fortuna me tormenta, fpera me contenta.

Manent Lancaster and Chief Justice.

[Exeunt.

Lan. I like this fair proceeding of the king's, He hath intent, his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for;

But they are banish'd, till their conversations
Appear more wife and modest to the world.
Ch. Juft. And fo they are.

to the Fleet.] I do not fee why Falstaff is carried to the Fleet. We have never loft fight of him fince his difmiffion from the king; he has committed no new fault, and therefore incurred no punishment; but the different agitations of fear, anger, and furprize in him and his company, made a good fcene to the eye; and our author, who wanted them no longer on the ftage, was glad to find this method of fweeping them away. JOHNSON,

Lan.

Lan. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord.
Ch. Juft. He hath.

Lan. I will lay odds, that ere this year expire,
We bear our civil fwords and native fire
As far as France. I heard a bird fo fing,

Whofe mufick, to my thinking, pleas'd the king.
Come, will you hence 7?

[Exeunt.

7 I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most lame and impotent conclufion!" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth.

In that Jerufalem fhall Harry die.

These scenes which now make the fifth act of Henry the Fourth might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do unite very commodiously to either play. When thefe plays were reprefented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakespeare feems to have defigned that the whole feries of action from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, fhould be confidered by the reader as one work, upon one plan, only broken into parts by the neceflity of exhibition.

None of Shakespeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever in two plays afforded fo much delight. The great events are intercling, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the flighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, fufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diverfified with the utmoft nicety of difcernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.

The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragie part, is a young man of great abilities and violent paffions, whofe fentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whofe virtues are obfcured by negligence, and whofe undertanding is diffipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loofe than wicked; and when the occafion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roufed into a hero, and the hero again repofes in the trifler. This character is great, original, and juft.

Piercy is a rugged foldier, choleric, and quarrelfome, and has only the foldier's virtues, generofity and courage.

But Falstaff unimitated, animitable Falstaf, how fhall I defcribe thee? Thou compound of fenfe and vice; of fenfe which may be admired, but not efteemed, of vice which may be defpifed, but hardly detefted. Falstaff is a character loaded with

faults,

faults, and with thofe faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boafter, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and infult the defencelefs. At once obfequious and malignant, he fatirizes in their abfence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is fo proud as not only to be fupercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his intereft of importance to the duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus defpicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that defpifes him, by the moft pleafing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the iplendid or ambitious kind, but confifts in eafy efcapes and fallies of levity, which make sport, but raife no envy. It must be obferved, that he is ftained with no enormous or fanguinary crimes, fo that his licentioufnefs is not fo offenfive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

The moral to be drawn from this reprefentation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honefty ought to think themselves fafe with fuch a companion when they fee Henry feduced by Falftaff. JOHNSON.

EPI