It should not, therefore, be lost sight of by the reader of _Tartarin de Tarascon_ and of _Tartarin Sur Les Alpes_ that this is a caricature. Every line is true, but modified a little by the 'mirage' that Alphonse Daudet so deftly satirises; it is only so much distorted as irony demands. _Tartarin de Tarascon_ is by far the best of the three books; it is the most compact, and within its hundred-odd pages the picture of Tartarin is completely painted; the sequel is merely the response of the author to the demand of a public who so loved Tartarin as to buy five hundred thousand copies of his adventures. As for _Port Tarascon_, the beginning of Tartarin's end, it should not have been written, for it closes on a new Tartarin who no longer believes in his own triumphs--a sober, disillusioned Tartarin, shorn of his glory, flouted by his compatriots and ready to die in a foreign town. Alphonse Daudet had probably tired of his hero, for he understood him no longer. The real Tartarin could not be depressed by misadventure, chastened by loss of prestige: to cast him to earth could only bring about once more the prodigy of Anteus. He would have risen again, more optimistic and bombastic than ever, certain that no enemy had thrown him and that he had but slipped. And if Tartarin had to die, which is not certain, for Tartarin's essence is immortal, he could not die disgraced, but must die sumptuously--like Cleopatra among her jewels, or a Tartar chief standing on his piled arms on the crest of a funeral pyre. 2. FALSTAFF Like Hamlet, Tartuffe, Don Quixote, Falstaff has had his worshippers and his exegetists. The character Dr. Johnson dwelled on still serves to-day to exercise the critical capacity of the freshman; he is one of the stars in a crowded cast, a human, fallible, lovable creature, and it is not wonderful that so many have asked themselves whether there lurked fineness and piety within his gross frame. But, though 'his pyramid rise high unto heaven,' it is not everybody has fully realised his psychological enormity, his nationality; the tendency has been to look upon him rather as a man than as a type. I do not contend that it is desirable to magnify type at the expense of personality; far from it, for the personal quality is ever more appealing than the typical, but one should not ignore the generalities which hide in the individual, especially when they are evident. It is remarkable that Dr Johnson should have so completely avoided this side of Falstaff's character, so remarkable that I quote in full his appreciation of the fat Knight[5]:-- [Footnote 5: Following on the second part of _King Henry IV._, Dr Johnson's edition, 1765.]