ACT. II. SCENE iv. (II. iii. 27-8.)

Cold as any stone. Such is the end of Falstaff,

from whom Shakespeare had promised us in his epilogue to Henry
IV. that we should receive more entertainment. It happened to
Shakespeare as to other writers, to have his imagination crowded
with a tumultuary confusion of images, which, while they were yet
unsorted and unexamined, seemed sufficient to furnish a long train
of incidents, and a new variety of merriment, but which, when he
was to produce them to view, shrunk suddenly from him, or could
not be accommodated to his general design. That he once designed
to have brought Falstaff on the scene again, we know from himself;
but whether he could contrive no train of adventures suitable
to his character, or could match him with no companions likely to
quicken his humour, or could open no new vein of pleasantry, and
was afraid to continue the same strain lest it should not find the
same reception, he has here for ever discarded him, and made haste
to dispatch him, perhaps for the same reason for which Addison
killed Sir Roger, that no other hand might attempt to exhibit him.

Let meaner authours learn from this example, that it is dangerous
to sell the bear which is yet not hunted, to promise to the publick
what they have not written.




KING LEAR