tion that might be caught in his society, fo it was very skilful to make him as ridiculous as witty, and as contemptible as entertaining. The admirable speech upon honour would have been both indecent and dangerous from any other person. We must allow his wit is every where just, his humour genuine, his character perfectly original, and sustained through every scene, in every play, in which it appears. As Falstaffe, whom the author certainly intended to be perfectly witty, is less addicted to quibble and play on words, than any of his comic characters, I think we may fairly conclude, our author was sensible that it was but a false kind of wit, which he practised from the hard neceffity of the times: for in that age, the Profeffor quibbled in his chair, the Judge quibbled on the bench, the Prelate quibbled in the pulpit, the Statesiman quibbled at the council-board; nay, even Majesty quibbled on the Throne. SECOND PART OF : I HENRY IV. T is uncommon to find the same spirit and interest diffused through the sequel, as in the first part of a play: but the fertile and happy mind of Shakespear could create or diversify at pleasure; could produce new characters, or vary the attitudes of those before exhibited, according to the occafion. He leaves us in doubt, whether most to admire the fecundity of his imagination in the variety of its productions; or the strength and steadiness of his genius in sustaining the spirit, and preserving unimpaired, through various circumstances and situations, what his invention had originally produced. We We shall hardly find any man to-day more like to what he was yesterday, than the persons here are like to what they were in the first part of Henry IV. This is the more aftonishing as the author has not confined himself like all other dramatic writers to a certain theatrical character; which, formed entirely of one passion, presents to us always the Patriot, the Lover, or the Conqueror. These, still turning on the same hinge, describe, like a piece of clock-work, a regular circle of movements. In human nature, of which Shakespear's characters are a just imitation, every paffion is controlled and forced into many deviations by various incidental dispositions and humours. The operations of this complicated machine are far more difficult to trace, than the steady undeviating line of the artificial character formed on one fimple principle. Our poet feems to have as great an advantage over ordinary dramatic poets, as Dædalus had above his predecessors in sculpture. They could make a representation of the |