The political interest of the reigns of Henry IV. and V. is divided by the huge bulk of Falstaff, who lightly buffets the tide and emerges with invincible gayety as often as the tragedy closes around him. His wake draws after it a number of disreputable or silly fellows, whom his audacious humor alone prevails upon the tragedy to tolerate. The job of turning them out would include the dismissal of the unbounded man in whom they move and have their being; and the gravity of the political situation is engrossed enough to hold its own ground against them, to prevent a freshet of comedy from washing off its state. They seem to have been the traits of Falstaff which were left over in the making up of his personality; and, this attaining at length to such a circumference that no more matter could be comprised, the surplus revolved as satellites. There is Bardolph who says that Sir John is "out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass;" but he himself is the inflammation which all the monstrous quantity of sack could not suffuse Sir John with, who burns by proxy in his nose. He is the red mark for Falstaff's raillery, but liquor and lodgings keep him companionable, so that, when at last "the fuel is gone that maintained that fire," he has a tear or two, not yet evaporated, to help the obsequies of his master. There is Pistol, a great haunter of play-houses, where he has picked up phrases of bombast, such as swarmed in the bad tragedies of the period; when the sack has reached his head it sets them all afloat, to raffle the company: "Shall packhorses, And hollow-pamper'd jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty miles a day, Compare with Cæsars, and with Cannibals, And Trojan Greeks? nay, rather damn them with King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar." Pistol's love for alliteration puts a _c_ for an _h_ in the third line, and turns the Carthaginian into a Carib.