, and to add surprize to pleasure, he is called in, as if for
another purpose of mirth than what we are furnished with: We now behold
him, fluctuating with fiction, and labouring with dissembled passion and
chagrin: Too full for utterance, _Poins_ provokes him by a few simple
words, containing a fine contrast of affected ease,--"_Welcome, __JACK__,
where hast thou been?_" But when we hear him burst forth, "_A plague on
all Cowards! Give me a cup of sack. Is there no virtue extant!_"--We are at
once in possession of the whole man, and are ready to hug him, guts, lyes
and all, as an inexhaustible fund of pleasantry and humour. _Cowardice_, I
apprehend, is out of our thought; it does not, I think, mingle in our
mirth. As to this point, I have presumed to say already, and I repeat it,
that we are, in my opinion, the dupes of our own wisdom, of systematic
reasoning, of second thought, and after reflection. The first spectators,
I believe, thought of nothing but the laughable scrape which so singular a
character was falling into, and were delighted to see a humourous and
unprincipled wit so happily taken in his own inventions, precluded from
all rational defence, and driven to the necessity of crying out, after a
few ludicrous evasions, "_No more of that, __HAL__, if thou lov'st me._"

I do not conceive myself obliged to enter into a consideration of
_Falstaff_'s lyes concerning the transaction at _Gad's-Hill_. I have
considered his conduct as independent of those lyes; I have examined the
whole of it apart, and found it free of Cowardice or fear, except in one
instance, which I have endeavoured to account for and excuse. I have
therefore a right to infer that those lyes are to be derived, not from
Cowardice, but from some other part of his character, which it does not
concern me to examine: But I have not contented myself hitherto with this
sort of negative defence; and the reader I believe is aware that I am
resolute (though I confess not untired) to carry this fat rogue out of the
reach of every imputation which affects, or may seem to affect, his
natural Courage.

The first observation then which strikes us, as to his braggadocioes, is,
that they are braggadocioes _after the fact_. In other cases we see the
Coward of the Play bluster and boast for a time, talk of distant wars, and
private duels, out of the reach of knowledge and of evidence; of storms
and stratagems, and of falling in upon the enemy pell-mell and putting