you. [To SHALLOW.] But 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. It shows my earnestness of affection.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. My devotion.

Shal. It doth, it doth, it doth.

Fal. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me.

Shal. It is most certain.

Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him: thinking of nothing else; putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there were nothing else to be done, but to see him.

Pist. "Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est :4 "Tis all in every part.

Shal. 'Tis so, indeed.

Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,

And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,

Is in base durance, and contagious prison;

Haul'd thither

By most mechanical and dirty hand :

Rouze up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto's

snake,

For Doll is in; Pistol speaks nought but truth.

Fal. I will deliver her.

[Shouts within, and the Trumpets sound.

4 'Tis all in all, and all in every part.

• Pist. There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor

sounds.

Enter the King and his Train, the Chief Justice among them.

Fal. God save thy grace, king Hal! my royal Hal!

Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy!

King. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain

man.

Ch. Just. Have you your wits? know you what 'tis you speak?

Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

King. I know thee not, old man: Fall to thy

prayers;

How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body, hence," and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know, the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men :-
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ;

Presume not, that I am the thing I was:

For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
6 Henceforward.

5 Child, offspring.

Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots :
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,—
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,-
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life, I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil :
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength, and quali-
ties,-

Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word.-

Set on.

[Exeunt King, and his Train. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. Shal. Ay, marry, sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

Fal. That can hardly be, master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet, that shall make you great.

Shal. I cannot perceive how; unless you give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.

Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard, was but a colour.

Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, sir John.

Fal. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, lieutenant Pistol;-come, Bardolph:-I shall be sent for soon at night.

Re-enter Prince JOHN, the Chief Justice, Officers, &c.

Ch. Just. Go, carry sir John Falstaff to the Fleet; Take all his company along with him.

Fal. My lord, my lord,

Ch. Just. I cannot now speak: I will hear yon

soon.

Take them away.

Pist. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta. [Exeunt FAL. SHAL. PIST, BARD. Page, and Officers.

P. John. I like this fair proceeding of the king's: He hath intent, his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for;

But all are banish'd, till their conversations
Appear more wise and modest to the world.

Ch. Just. And so they are.

P. John. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord.

Ch. Just. He hath.

P. John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords, and native fire,

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,
Whose musick, to my thinking, pleas'd the king.
Come, will you hence ?
[Exeunt.

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most lame and impotent conclusion!" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into Acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth:

"In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."

These scenes, which now make the fifth Act of Henry the

Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth, but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play. When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems to have designed that the whole series of action, from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, should be considered by the reader as one work upon one plan, only broken into parts by the necessity of exhibition,

None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.

The Prince, who is the hero both of the comick and tragick part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just.

Percy is a rugged soldier, cholerick and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage.

But Falstaff 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 character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He 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 ab