* * *

Captain Parolles is verily Shakespeare's most illustrious _pronoun_ of
a man. Several critics have somehow found it in their hearts to speak
of him and Falstaff together. A foul sin against Sir John! who,
whatever else he may deserve, certainly does not deserve that.
Schlegel, however, justly remarks that the scenes where our captain
figures contain matter enough for an excellent comedy. It is indeed a
marvel that one so inexpressibly mean, and withal so fully aware of
his meanness, should not cut his own acquaintance. But the greatest
wonder about him is, how the Poet could so run his own intellectuality
into such a windbag, without marring his windbag perfection. The
character of Parolles is interpreted with unusual fulness in the
piercing comments of the other persons. He seems indeed to have been
specially "created for men to breathe themselves upon." Thus one
describes him as "a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar,
an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality"; and
again, as having "outvillained villainy so far, that the rarity
redeems him." And he is at last felt to be worth feeding and keeping
alive for the simple reason of his being such a miracle of bespangled,
voluble, impudent good-for-nothingness, that contempt and laughter
cannot afford to let him die. But the roundest and happiest delivery
of him comes from the somewhat waggish but high-spirited and
sharpsighted Lord Lafeu, who finds him "my good window of lattice,"
and one whose "soul is in his clothes"; and who says to him, "I did
think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst
make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass: yet the scarfs and
the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing
thee a vessel of too great a burden." The play is choicely seasoned
throughout with the good-humoured old statesman's spicery; and our
captain is the theme that draws most of it out.

That the goddess whom Bertram worships does not whisper in his ear the
unfathomable baseness of this "lump of counterfeit ore," is a piece of
dramatic retribution at once natural and just. Far as the joke is
pushed upon Parolles, we never feel like crying out, _Hold, enough_!
for, "that he should know what he is, and be that he is," seems an
offence for which infinite shames were hardly a sufficient
indemnification. And we know right well that such a hollow, flaunting,
strutting roll of eff