ff_.

Such, I think, is the true character of this extraordinary buffoon; and
from hence we may discern for what special purposes _Shakespeare_ has
given him talents and qualities, which were to be afterwards obscured, and
perverted to ends opposite to their nature; it was clearly to furnish out
a Stage buffoon of a peculiar sort; a kind of Game-bull which would stand
the baiting thro' a hundred Plays, and produce equal sport, whether he is
pinned down occasionally by _Hal_ or _Poins_, or tosses such mongrils as
_Bardolph_, or the Justices, sprawling in the air. There is in truth no
such thing as totally demolishing _Falstaff_; he has so much of the
invulnerable in his frame that no ridicule can destroy him; he is safe
even in defeat, and seems to rise, like another _Antaeus_, with recruited
vigour from every fall; in this, as in every other respect, unlike
_Parolles_ or _Bobadil_: They fall by the first shaft of ridicule, but
_Falstaff_ is a butt on which we may empty the whole quiver, whilst the
substance of his character remains unimpaired. His ill habits, and the
accidents of age and corpulence, are no part of his essential
constitution; they come forward indeed on our eye, and solicit our notice,
but they are second natures, not _first_; mere shadows, we pursue them in
vain; _Falstaff_ himself has a distinct and separate subsistence; he
laughs at the chace, and when the sport is over, gathers them with
unruffled feather under his wing: And hence it is that he is made to
undergo not one detection only, but a series of detections; that he is not
formed for one Play only, but was intended originally at least for two;
and the author, we are told, was doubtful if he should not extend him yet
farther, and engage him in the wars with _France_. This he might well have
done, for there is nothing perishable in the nature of _Falstaff_: He
might have involved him, by the vicious part of his character, in new
difficulties and unlucky situations, and have enabled him, by the better
part, to have scrambled through, abiding and retorting the jests and
laughter of every beholder.

But whatever we may be told concerning the intention of _Shakespeare_ to
extend this character farther, there is a manifest preparation near the
end of the second part of Henry IV. for his disgrace: The disguise is
taken off, and he begins openly to pander to the excesses of the Prince,
intitling himself to the character afterwards given him of being _th