his expense; the Welsh Parson and the French Doctor are also baulked of their revenge, just as they are getting over the preliminary pains and vexations; and, while pluming themselves with anticipated honours, are suddenly deplumed into “vlouting-stogs”:  Page, too, and his wife no sooner begin to exult in their success than they are taken down by the thrift of a counter stratagem, and left to the double shame of ignobly failing in an ignoble undertaking:  and Ford’s jealousy, again, is made to scourge himself with the very whip he has twisted for the scourging of its object.  Thus all the more prominent persons have to chew the ashes of disappointment in turn; their plans being thwarted, and themselves made ridiculous, just as they are on the point of grasping their several fruitions.  Falstaff, indeed, is the only one of them that rises by falling, and extracts grace out of his disgraces.  For in him the grotesque and ludicrous is evermore laughing and chuckling over itself:  he makes comedies extempore out of his own shames and infirmities; and is himself the most delighted spectator of the scenes in which he figures as chief actor.

This observation and enjoyment of the comical as displayed in himself, which forms one of Sir John’s leading traits, and explains much in him that were else inexplicable, is here seen however labouring under something of an eclipse.  The truth is, he is plainly out of his sphere; and he shows a strange lapse from his wanted sagacity in getting where he is:  the good sense so conspicuous in his behaviour on other occasions ought to have kept him from supposing for a moment that he could inspire the passion of love in such a place; nor, as before observed, does it seem likely that the Poet would have shown him thus, but that he were moved thereto by something outside of his own mind.  For of love in any right or even decent sense Sir John is essentially incapable.  And Shakespeare evidently so regarded him:  he therefore had no alternative but either to commit a gross breach of decorum or else to make the hero unsuccessful,—­an alternative in which the moral sanity of his genius left him no choice.  So that in undertaking the part of a lover the man must needs be a mark of interest chiefly for what is practised upon him.  For, if we may believe Hazlitt, “wits and philosophers seldom shine in that character”; and, whether this be true or not, it is certain that “Sir John by no means comes off with flying colours.”  In fact, he is here the dupe and victim of his own heroism, and provokes laughter much more by what he suffers than by what he does.

But Falstaff, notwithstanding all these drawbacks, is still so far himself, that “nought but himself can be his conqueror.”  If he be overmatched, it is not so much by the strength or skill of his antagonists as from his being persuaded, seemingly against his judgment and for the pleasure of others, into a line of adventure where he is not qualified to shine, and where genius, wit, and understanding