Tis not very easy to determine which way of writing he was
most excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his
comical humours; and tho' they did not then strike at all ranks of people,
as the Satyr of the present age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is
a pleasing and a well-distinguish'd variety in those characters which he
thought fit to meddle with. _Falstaff_ is allow'd by every body to be a
master-piece; the Character is always well-sustain'd, tho' drawn out into
the length of three Plays; and even the account of his death, given by his
old landlady Mrs. _Quickly_, in the first act of _Henry_ V., tho' it be
extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there
be any fault in the draught he has made of this lewd old fellow, it is,
that tho' he has made him a thief, lying, cowardly, vain-glorious, and in
short every way vicious, yet he has given him so much wit as to make him
almost too agreeable; and I don't know whether some people have not, in
remembrance of the diversion he had formerly afforded 'em, been sorry to
see his friend _Hal_ use him so scurvily, when he comes to the crown in
the end of the second part of _Henry_ the Fourth. Amongst other
extravagances, in _The Merry Wives of_ Windsor, he has made him a
Deer-stealer, that he might at the same time remember his _Warwickshire_
prosecutor, under the name of Justice _Shallow_; he has given him very
near the same coat of arms which _Dugdale_, in his Antiquities of that
county, describes for a family there, and makes the _Welsh_ parson descant
very pleasantly upon 'em. That whole play is admirable; the humours are
various and well oppos'd; the main design, which is to cure _Ford_ of his
unreasonable jealousie, is extremely well conducted. _Falstaff's
Billet-Doux_, and Master _Slender_'s

Ah! Sweet _Ann Page_!

are very good expressions of love in their way. In _Twelfth-Night_ there
is something singularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward
_Malvolio_. The parasite and the vain-glorious in _Parolles_, in _All's
Well that ends Well_, is as good as any thing of that kind in _Plautus_ or
_Terence_. _Petruchio_, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, is an uncommon piece
of humour. The conversation of _Benedick_ and _Beatrice_, in _Much Ado
about Nothing_, and of _Rosalind_ in _As you like it_, have much wit and
sprightliness all along. His clowns, without which character there was
hardly any play writ