n, let us
not say cowardly, but disinclined to action, who finds himself engaged
in a fight. Lever has used him a score of times (beginning with Mr.
O'Leary in the row at a gambling-hall in Paris), and whether he runs or
whether he fights, his efforts to do either are grotesquely laughable.
Shakespeare puts that view of Falstaff too: Prince Hal words it. But
Falstaff, the humorist in person, rises on the field of battle over the
slain Percy and enunciates his philosophy of the better part of valour.
Falstaff's estimate of honour--"that word honour" ("Who hath it? he that
died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it?"), the "grinning honour" that Sir
Walter Blunt wears where the Douglas left him--is necessary to complete
the humorist's vision of a battle-piece. Lever will scarcely visit you
with such reflections, for the humorist of Lever's type never stands
apart and smiles; he laughs loud and in company. Still less will he give
you one of those speeches which are the supreme achievement of this
faculty, where the speaker's philosophy is not reasoned out liked
Falstaff's, but revealed in a flash of the onlooker's insight. Is it
pardonable to quote the account of Falstaff's death as the hostess
narrates it?

"How now, Sir John, quoth I, what, man! be of good cheer. So a'
cried out God, God, three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid
him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to
trouble himself with any such thoughts yet."

Humour can go no farther than that terrible, illuminating phrase, which
is laughable enough, heaven knows, but scarce likely to make you laugh.
Contrast the humour of that with the humour of such a story as Lever
delighted in. There were two priests dining with a regiment, we all have
read in _Harry Lorrequer_, who chaffed a dour Ulster Protestant till he
was the open derision of the mess. Next time they returned, the
Protestant major was radiant with a geniality that they could not
explain till they had to make their way out of barracks in a hurry, and
found that the countersign (arranged by the major) was "Bloody end to
the Pope." Told as Lever tells it, with all manner of jovial
amplifications, that story would make anyone laugh. But it does not go
deep. The thing is funny in too obvious a way; the mirth finds too large
an outlet in laughter; it does not hang about the brain, inextricable
from the processes of thought; it carries nothing with it beyond the
jest. And j