sing the same force of
mind, the same wit, and the same incongruity. This, _Shakespeare_ was
fully sensible of, and knew that this character could not be compleatly
dismissed but by death.--"Our author," says the Epilogue to the Second Part
of Henry IV., "will continue the story with Sir _John_ in it, and make you
merry with fair _Catherine_ of _France_; where, for any thing I know,
_Falstaff_ shall dye of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your
hard opinions." If it had been prudent in _Shakespeare_ to have killed
_Falstaff_ with _hard opinion_, he had the means in his hand to effect
it;--but dye, it seems, he must, in one form or another, and a _sweat_
would have been no unsuitable catastrophe. However we have reason to be
satisfied as it is;--his death was worthy of his birth and of his life:
"_He was born_," he says, "_about three o'clock in the afternoon, with a
white head, and something a round belly._" But if he came into the world
in the evening with these marks of age, he departs out of it in the
morning in all the follies and vanities of youth;--"_He was shaked_" (we
are told) "_of a burning quotidian tertian;--the young King had run bad
humours on the knight;--his heart was fracted and corroborate; and a'
parted just between twelve and one, even at the turning of the tide,
yielding the crow a pudding, and passing directly into __ARTHUR'S BOSOM__,
if ever man went into the bosom of __ARTHUR__._"--So ended this singular
buffoon; and with him ends an Essay, on which the reader is left to bestow
what character he pleases: An Essay professing to treat of the Courage of
_Falstaff_, but extending itself to his Whole character; to the arts and
genius of his Poetic-Maker, SHAKESPEARE; and thro' him sometimes, with
ambitious aim, even to the principles of human nature itself.

NOTES.

Nicholas Rowe.

2. _Some Latin without question_, etc. This passage, down to the reference
to the scene in _Henry V._, is omitted by Pope. _Love's Labour's Lost_,
iv. 2, 95; _Titus Andronicus_, iv. 2, 20; _Henry V._, iii. 4.

3. _Deer-stealing._ This tradition--which was first recorded in print by
Rowe--has often been doubted. See, however, Halliwell-Phillipps's _Outlines
of the Life of Shakespeare_, 1886, ii., p. 71, and Mr. Sidney Lee's _Life
of Shakespeare_, pp. 27, etc.

4. _the first Play he wrote._ Pope inserted here the following note: "The
highest date of any I can yet find is _Romeo and Juliet_ in 1597,