rgued presence of mind; but it was moreover, what he most
liked, a very laughable joke; and as such he considers it; for he
continues to counterfeit after the danger is over, that he may also
deceive the Prince, and improve the event into more laughter. He might,
for ought that appears, have concealed the transaction; the Prince was too
earnestly engaged for observation; he might have formed a thousand excuses
for his fall; but he lies still and listens to the pronouncing of his
epitaph by the Prince with all the waggish glee and levity of his
character. The circumstance of his wounding _Percy_ in the thigh, and
carrying the dead body on his back like luggage, is _indecent_ but not
cowardly. The declaring, though in jest, that he killed _Percy_, seems to
me _idle_, but it is not meant or calculated for _imposition_; it is
spoken to the _Prince himself_, the man in the world who could not be, or
be supposed to be, imposed on. But we must hear, whether to the purpose or
not, what it is that _Harry_ has to say over the remains of his old
friend.

_P. Hen._ What, old acquaintance! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor _Jack_, farewell!
I could have better spared a better man.
Oh! I shou'd have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a _deer_ to-day,
Tho' many a _dearer_ in this bloody fray;
Imbowelled will I see thee by and by;
Till then, in blood by noble _Percy_ lye.

This is wonderfully proper for the occasion; it is affectionate, it is
pathetic, yet it remembers his vanities, and, with a faint gleam of
recollected mirth, even his plumpness and corpulency; but it is a
pleasantry softned and rendered even vapid by tenderness, and it goes off
in the sickly effort of a miserable pun.(47)--But to our immediate
purpose,--why is not his Cowardice remembered too? what, no surprize that
_Falstaff_ should lye by the side of the noble _Percy_ in the bed of
honour! No reflection that flight, though unfettered by disease, could not
avail; that fear could not find a subterfuge from death? Shall his
corpulency and his vanities be recorded, and his more characteristic
quality of Cowardice, even in the moment that it particularly demanded
notice and reflection, be forgotten? If by sparing a better man be here
meant a _better soldier_, there is no doubt but there were better Soldiers
in the army, more active, more young, more principl