“For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have;” revealing thus the magnificence of his own character, in his readiness, for the sake of his friend, to part with his chief renown. But the Historic Muse could not believe that fat Jack Falstaff had killed Hotspur, and therefore she would not record the claim. In the second part of the same play, act i. scene 2, we find Falstaff toweringly indignant with Mr. Dombledon, the silk mercer, that he will stand upon security with a gentleman for a short cloak and slops of satin. In the first scene of the second act, the hostess mentions that Sir John is going to dine with Master Smooth, the silkman. Foiled with Mr. Dombledon, he has already made himself so agreeable to Master Smooth, that he is “indited to dinner” with him. This is, by the bye, as to the action of the play; but as to the character of Sir John, is it not “Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind”--_kinned--natural_? The _conceit deceitful_ in the painting, is the imagination that means more than its says. So the words of the speakers in the play, stand for more than the speakers mean. They are _Shakspere’s_ in their relation to his whole. To Achilles, his spear is but his spear: to the painter and his company, the spear of Achilles stands for Achilles himself. Coleridge remarks upon _James Gurney_, in “King John:” “How individual and comical he is with the four words allowed to his dramatic life!” These words are those with which he answers the Bastard’s request to leave the room. He has been lingering with all the inquisitiveness and privilege of an old servant; when Faulconbridge says: “James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while?” with strained politeness. With marked condescension to the request of the second son, whom he has known and served from infancy, James Gurney replies: “Good leave, good Philip;” giving occasion to Faulconbridge to show his ambition, and scorn of his present standing, in the contempt with which he treats even the Christian name he is so soon to exchange with his surname for _Sir Richard_ and _Plantagenet; Philip_ being the name for a sparrow in those days, when ladies made pets of them. Surely in these words of the serving-man, we have an outcome of the same art by which “A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined.” In the “Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene 3, Perdita, dressed with unwonted gaiety at the festival of the sheep-shearing, is astonished at finding herself talking in full strains of poetic verse. She says, half-ashamed: “Methinks I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals: sure, this robe of mine Does change my disposition!”