s
judgment and for the pleasure of others, into a line of adventure
where he is not qualified to shine, and where genius, wit, and
understanding are commonly distanced by a full purse and a handsome
person. His incomparable art in turning adversities into commodities;
the good-humoured strategy whereby he manages to divert off all
unpleasant feeling of his vices and frailties; the marvellous agility
and aptness of wit which, with a vesture of odd and whimsical
constructions, at once hides the offensive and discovers the comical
features of his conduct; the same towering impudence and effrontery
which so lift him aloft in his more congenial exploits; and the
overpowering eloquence of exaggeration with which he delights to set
off and heighten whatever is most ludicrous in his own person or
situation;--all these qualities, though not in their full bloom and
vigour, are here seen in triumphant exercise.

On the whole, this bringing-forth of Sir John rather for exposure than
for exhibition is not altogether grateful to those whom he has so
often made to "laugh and grow fat." Though he still gives us wholesome
shakings, we feel that it costs him too much: the rare exhilaration he
affords us elsewhere, and even here, invests him with a sort of
humorous reverence; insomuch that we can scarce help pitying even
while we approve his merited, yet hardly merited, shames and failures.
Especially it touches us something hard that one so wit-proud as Sir
John should be thus dejected, and put to the mortification of owning
that "ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me"; of having to "stand at
the taunt of one that makes fritters of English"; and of asking, "Have
I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that it wants matter to
prevent so gross o'er-reaching as this?" and we would fain make out
some excuse for him on the score of these slips having occurred at a
time in his life when experience had not yet disciplined away the
natural vanity which may sometimes lead a man of genius to fancy
himself an object of the tender passion. And we are the more disposed
to judge leniently of Falstaff, inasmuch as his merry persecutors are
but a sort of decorous, respectable, commonplace people, who borrow
their chief importance from the victim of their mischievous sport; and
if they are not so bad as to make us wish him success, neither are
they so good that we like to see them thrive at his expense. On this
point Mr. Verplanck, it seems to me, has