While with equal perceptive judgment “Falstaff,” says Dr. Johnson, “unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested! Falstaff ... is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering.... Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the Prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy.” One of the most difficult of all poets to quote from, we can only offer detached and fugitive fragments of Shakespeare’s plays; beginning with a bit quoted by Hazlitt and accompanied by his delightful observations thereon. “Shakespeare takes up the meanest subjects with the same tenderness that we do an insect’s wing, and would not kill a fly. To give a more particular instance of what I mean, I will take the inimitable and affecting, though most absurd and ludicrous dialogue, between Shallow and Silence, on the death of old Double.” * * * * * _Shallow._ Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, sir; give me your hand, sir; an early stirrer, by the rood. And how doth my good cousin Silence? _Silence._ Good morrow, good cousin Shallow. _Shallow._ And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter, and mine, my god-daughter Ellen? _Silence._ Alas, a black ouzel, cousin Shallow. _Shallow._ By yea and nay, sir; I dare say, my cousin William is become a good scholar: he is at Oxford still, is he not? _Silence._ Indeed, sir, to my cost. _Shallow._ He must then to the inns of court shortly. I was once of Clement’s inn; where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet. _Silence._ You were called lusty Shallow then, cousin. _Shallow._ I was called anything, and I would have done anything indeed, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man, you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of court again; and, I may say to you, we knew where the bonarobas were, and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. _Silence._ This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?