Falstaff.  You have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich.

Shallow.  Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John:  marry, good air.  Spread Davy, spread Davy.  Well said, Davy.

Falstaff.  This Davy serves you for good uses.

Shallow.  A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet.  By the mass, I have drank too much sack at supper.  A good varlet.  Now sit down, now sit down.  Come, cousin.

The true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we are made of, the practical wisdom with the seeming fooleries in the whole of the garden-scene at Shallow’s country-seat, and just before in the exquisite dialogue between him and Silence on the death of old Double, have no parallel anywhere else.  In one point of view, they are laughable in the extreme; in another they are equally affecting, if it is affecting to show what a little thing is human life, what a poor forked creature man is!

The heroic and serious part of these two plays founded on the story of Henry IV is not inferior to the comic and farcical.  The characters of Hotspur and Prince Henry are two of the most beautiful and dramatic, both in themselves and from contrast, that ever were drawn.  They are the essence of chivalry.  We like Hotspur the best upon the whole, perhaps because he was unfortunate.—­The characters of their fathers, Henry IV and old Northumberland, are kept up equally well.  Henry naturally succeeds by his prudence and caution in keeping what he has got; Northumberland fails in his enterprise from an excess of the same quality, and is caught in the web of his own cold, dilatory policy.  Owen Glendower is a masterly character.  It is as bold and original as it is intelligible and thoroughly natural.  The disputes between him and Hotspur are managed with infinite address and insight into nature.  We cannot help pointing out here some very beautiful lines, where Hotspur describes the fight between Glendower and Mortimer.

     —­When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank,
     In single opposition hand to hand,
     He did confound the best part of an hour
     In changing hardiment with great Glendower: 
     Three times they breath’d, and three times did they drink,
     Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood;
     Who then affrighted with their bloody looks,
     Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
     And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
     Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.

The peculiarity and the excellence of Shakespeare’s poetry is, that it seems as if he made his imagination the hand-maid of nature, and nature the plaything of his imagination.  He appears to have been all the characters, and in all the situations he describes.  It is as if either he had had all their feelings, or had lent them all his genius to express themselves.  There cannot be stronger instances of this than Hotspur’s rage when Henry IV forbids him to speak of Mortimer,