might otherwise have troubled
you with. Those I now send you are such as I marked on the margin of the
copy you were so kind to communicate to me, and bear a very small
proportion to the miscellaneous collections of this sort which I may
probably put together some time or other." Farmer did not carry out this
intention, and the _Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare_ remains his only
independent publication.

Maurice Morgann.

Morgann has himself told us in his Preface all that we know about the
composition of his _Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff_.
The result of a challenge arising out of a friendly conversation, it was
written "in a very short time" in 1774, and then laid aside and almost
forgotten. But for the advice of friends it would probably have remained
in manuscript, and been destroyed, like his other critical works, at his
death. On their suggestion he revised and enlarged it, as hastily as he
had written it; and it appeared anonymously in the spring of 1777. The
original purpose of the Essay is indicated by the motto on the title-page:
"I am not John of Gaunt your grandfather, but yet no Coward, Hal"; but as
Morgann wrote he passed from Falstaff to the greater theme of Falstaff's
creator. He was persuaded to publish his Essay because, though it dealt
nominally with one character, its main subject was the art of Shakespeare.
For the same reason it finds a place in this volume.

In 1744 Corbyn Morris had briefly analysed the character of Falstaff in
his _Essay towards fixing the true standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery,
Satire, and Ridicule_; Mrs. Montagu had expressed the common opinion of
his cowardice in her _Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare_;
the _Biographia Britannica_ had declared him to be Shakespeare's
masterpiece; while his popularity had led Kenrick to produce in 1766
_Falstaff's Wedding_ as a sequel to the second part of _Henry IV._; but
Morgann's Essay is the first detailed examination of his character. He was
afterwards the subject of papers by Cumberland in the _Observer_ (1785,
No. 73), and by Henry Mackenzie in the _Lounger_ (1786, Nos. 68, 69), and
in 1789 he was described by Richardson in an essay which reproduced
Morgann's title. None of these later works have the interest attaching to
James White's _Falstaff's Letters_ (1796).

The _Essay on Falstaff_ was republished, with a short biographical
preface, in 1820, and a third and last edition came out