, "_I am old, I am old_," though she
is seated on his lap, and he is courting her for busses. How _Shakespeare_
could furnish out sentiment of so extraordinary a composition, and supply
it with such appropriated and characteristic language, humour and wit, I
cannot tell; but I may, however, venture to infer, and that confidently,
that he who so well understood the uses of incongruity, and that laughter
was to be raised by the opposition of qualities in the same man, and not
by their agreement or conformity, would never have attempted to raise
mirth by shewing us Cowardice in a Coward unattended by Pretence, and
softened by every excuse of age, corpulence, and infirmity: And of this we
cannot have a more striking proof than his furnishing this very character,
on one instance of real terror, however excusable, with boast,
braggadocio, and pretence, exceeding that of all other stage Cowards the
whole length of his superior wit, humour, and invention.

What then upon the whole shall be said but that _Shakespeare_ has made
certain Impressions, or produced certain effects, of which he has thought
fit to conceal or obscure the cause? How he has done this, and for what
special ends, we shall now presume to guess.--Before the period in which
_Shakespeare_ wrote, the fools and Zanys of the stage were drawn out of
the coarsest and cheapest materials: Some essential folly, with a dash of
knave and coxcomb, did the feat. But _Shakespeare_, who delighted in
difficulties, was resolved to furnish a richer repast, and to give to one
eminent buffoon the high relish of wit, humour, birth, dignity, and
Courage. But this was a process which required the nicest hand, and the
utmost management and address: These enumerated qualities are, in their
own nature, productive of _respect_; an Impression the most opposite to
laughter that can be. This Impression then, it was, at all adventures,
necessary to with-hold; which could not perhaps well be without dressing
up these qualities in fantastic forms, and colours not their own; and
thereby cheating the eye with shews of baseness and of folly, whilst he
stole as it were upon the palate a richer and a fuller _gout_. To this
end, what arts, what contrivances, has he not practised! How has he
steeped this singular character in bad habits for fifty years together,
and brought him forth saturated with every folly and with every vice not
destructive of his essential character, or incompatible with his own