treasure him as we do now; but it is through
the histories that we learn to know and appreciate him, and it is of the
man portrayed there that we always unconsciously think when, in his
humiliating discomfiture, we hear him declare that "wit may be made a
Jack-a-lent when 'tis upon ill employment." For the Falstaff of the
histories is a man of intellect, wisdom, and humour, thoroughly
experienced in the ways of the world, fascinating in his drollery,
human, companionable, infinitely amusing, and capable of turning all
life to the favour of enjoyment and laughter--a man who is passionate in
the sentiment of comradeship, and who, with all his faults (and perhaps
because of some of them, for faultless persons are too good for this
world), inspires affection. "Would I were with him," cries the wretched
Bardolph, "wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell." It is not
Bardolph only whose heart has a warm corner for the memory of the poor
old jovial sinner, wounded to death by the falling off of
friendship--the implacable hardness of new-born virtue in the
regenerated royal mind.

A comprehensive view of Falstaff--a view that includes the afflicting
circumstances of his humiliation and of his forlorn and pathetic death
not less than the roistering frolics and jocund mendacity of his life
and character--is essential to a right appreciation of the meaning of
him. Shakespeare is never a prosy moralist, but he constantly teaches
you, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moral law of the
universe, working continually for goodness and not for evil, operates in
an inexorable manner. Yet it is not of any moral consideration that the
spectator of Falstaff upon the stage ever pauses to think. It is the
humour of the fat knight that is perceived, and that alone. The
thoughtful friends of Falstaff, however, see more in him than this, and
especially they like not to think of him in a deplorable predicament.
The Falstaff of _The Merry Wives_ is a man to laugh at; but he is not a
man to inspire the comrade feeling, and still less is he a man to
impress the intellect with the sense of a stalwart character and of
illimitable jocund humour. Falstaff's friends--whose hearts are full of
kindness for the old reprobate--have sat with him "in my Dolphin
chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire," and "have heard the
chimes at midnight" in his society, and they know what a jovial
companion he is--how abundant in knowledge o