than the first and second
parts of Henry IV. 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. This 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
absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the
prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so proud,
as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think
his interest of importance to the duke of Lancaster. 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. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous
or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but
that it may be borne for his mirth