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down all unkindness." If I were required to point to the portrait of a genuine, indigenous Englishman, throughout the whole of the works of Shakespeare, Page would be the man. Every thought of his heart, every motion of his body, appears to be the result of pure instinct; he has nothing exotic or artificial about him. He possesses strong yeoman sense, an unmistakable speech, a trusting nature, and a fearless deportment; and these are the characteristics of a true Englishman. He is to be gulled-no man more so; and he is gulled every day in the year-no proof, you will say, of his "strong yeoman sense;" but an Englishman is quite as frequently gulled with his eyes open as when they are hoodwinked. He has a conceit in being indifferent to chicanery. He confides in his own strength when it behoves him to exert it; and then he abates the nuisance. The English have never yet been fooled to their ruin; and my belief is, that they never will be. They go on bearing the most insolent injustice with an apathy that is inscrutable to foreigners, who know their character when they are opposed: at length they wake up, come to the sudden conclusion that this thing has lasted long enough, and then down it goes. Your true Englishman is confiding; and for that very reason he is an "awkward customer" when his confidence is betrayed. And yet, "nevertheless and notwithstanding," (as the lawyers say,) our brother John does at times contrive to make a prodigious Tom-noddy of himself. And he has lately been kicking up his heels in that fashion to a wonderful extent. I am not launching into politics. It is neither the place nor the oссаsion. But this, and no more, I will say:--When all the Frenchmen in the world are turned into gnats, we may then dread being taken unawares by an invasion of a million of them upon some fine, calm day, with a south wind-and not till then. And if they do come, not one will go back alive. But our revered brother John not only allows himself to be bamboozled, but, worse than that, to be hectored over by a very low and very presumptuous minority of his family. And he has a positively sleepless horror of that ubiquitous lady, "Mrs Grundy," who has only to stare him in the face, when he would do something without consulting her, and down will his whole soul, courage and all, sink into his shoes. I knew a fine hulking fellow, with limbs of iron, and a heart of honey, who could have tried a fall with Goliath-and he did belabour and half kill a first-class prize-fighter; yet that man's wife (a little, shrewd, waspish woman) so crowed over, and would so peck and spur him, that he was a totally different man when in her company, and seemed not to have a soul of his own. She was his "Mrs Grundy," and he was afraid of her. Now Page was of a better breed in the race than this. When Ford makes his almost abject apology to his injured wife, Page says:

"'Tis well, 'tis well; no more :

Be not as extreme in submission
As in offence."

The commentators have called Page "uxorious;" which, in plain-spun English, means that he is in love with his wife : it is a term of contempt, applied by men who are Turkish in their homes, and whose wives are their freehold servants. But, so far from seeing any disgrace in a man being thoroughly in love with his wife, I only hope the complaint may become more and more epidemic. What is fighting for our hearths but fighting for our wives? and what is a hearth worth without a wife? Where there is something at home worth struggling for, the whole world in arms, all the turbulent malcontents, and all the brood of zig-zag politicians will go screaming down the wind. Page was a thoroughly kindhearted man. He joins in the hoax of the squabble between Sir Hugh and the Frenchman, but he says he "had rather

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hear them scold than fight." Mrs Quickly bears testimony to the transparency and unsuspecting kindness of his nature in that speech to Falstaff, wherein his generosity is inferred from the liberty of action he allows his wife. The woman Quickly says:—

"Truly, Master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does :-do what she will, say what she will, take all, pay all; go to bed when she list, rise when she list, all is as she will; and truly she deserves it, for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she is one."

One word more upon Page and his wife before their dismissal. He has been strangely enough spoken of, in combination with his comely partner, as "the foolish Page and his no less foolish wife." These are the terms in which the worthy yeoman of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is mentioned by a German critic; who resolves all in Shakespeare's writings into an æsthetic truism, or a mere technicality of art. Can the right worshipful and very ponderous Herr Doctor Ulrici see nothing else than the "folly" of Page, because he makes a mistaken plan for his daughter's bestowal in marriage? Can he see nothing of the "wisdom" of nonmalice-bearing, and a cheerful acquiescence with things that have been done when they cannot be undone, in his prompt forgiveness of his child's young husband, when he finds they have stolen a match? -" Well, what remedy? Fenton, Heaven give thee joy! What cannot be eschewed must be embraced." Can he see nothing of the "wisdom" of frank English hospitality, with hearty English peace-making, and love of making quarrellers reconciled, in Page's "Come, -we have a hot venison pasty to dinner,-come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness." Can he see nothing of the "wisdom" of Page's sturdy English confidence in his wife's honesty, where he says, upon hearing of Falstaff's proposed attempt upon her virtue, -" If he should intend this voyage towards my wife, I would turn her loose to him; and what he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head?" That the reliance is not a blind one, we have already learned from Mrs Page's own words, just previously, where she says of her good man, -" He's as far from jealousy as I am from giving him cause; and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance." Such a speech as that argues but little "foolishness" in the "no less foolish wife." But we have plentiful evidence, too, of Mrs Page being no fool. Witness the ready wit of her arch reply to Ford; when he says,-alluding to the strong attachment subsisting between herself and his own wife, -" I think, if your husbands were dead, you two would marry," she retorts, "Be sure of that-two other husbands." This is no slight to her own lord and master; but only a smart rap on the knuckles for her friend's jealous-pated one. There is anything but "foolishness" in the brisk way with which she carries on the jest, in concert with her gossip, Mrs Ford, against the "greasy knight," as she calls Falstaff. There is anything but lack of wit in her exclamation, "Heaven guide him to thy husband's cudgel; and the devil guide his cudgel afterwards." And though, in anticipation, her sense of humour prompts this lively sally; yet, at the time, her sense of justice, and also her wise kind-heartedness, will not see him beaten too unmercifully.

Upon my life, I can see nothing "foolish" in all this; but, on the contrary, a sprightly, sensible, quick-witted woman, who deserves her husband's confidence-and has it-by her faithful, true-hearted allegiance to him; who secures and preserves his love by her cheerful spirits, and blithe goodhumour; and who seconds her husband in all his hospitable, peace-making schemes; for, at the end of the play, she says, "Let us every one go home, and laugh this sport o'er by a country fire-Sir John and all." In short, they are a perfectly worthy couple;-worthy of each other, in their good temper, good faith, and excellent good sense. To call them "the foolish Page, and his no less foolish wife," is no less than flat blasphemy against the "wisdom" of good-nature. But many persons confound good-nature with weaknessoften, perhaps, with the hope of finding it weak enough to be taken advantage of. It is, doubtless, infinitely more easy to write a flippant, undervaluing word of one of Shakespeare's characters, than to discern and appreciate its multitudinous beauties. Both the Pages are people of kind-hearted common sense; which is as far removed from "foolishness"-quite as far removed as a boring into the mere rules and strictnesses of dramatic art is from a clear perception of the poetry, the philosophy, the harmony, the consistency, the truth to nature, the knowledge of character, and a hundred things beside, that exist in Shakespeare's dramatic art.

And now, with a slight infringement of the plan of these Essays, viz., that of giving extra discussion to "subordinate characters,"-I would speak a word of Falstaff incomparable Sir John Falstaff!-for it would be an absolute indignity to this sunshiny play, (like flouting the sun itself!) to omit mentioning Falstaff when enumerating its characters. He, in himself, is all sunshine; for he is capable of dazzling the eyes with his brilliancy, even while they look upon roguery and vice. The desire to speak of him is in reply to what has frequently, nay, over and over, been asserted, that Falstaff, in the "Merry Wives," does not show to such advantage as in the plays of Henry IV. But if we call to mind some of his finest passages here, we shall find, I think, that he scarcely, if at all, comes short of himself in the other two dramas. For instance, what can exceed the insolent self-possession and sublime coolness, with which he throws overboard the accusations of Shallow and Slender? (in the opening of the

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