our gaiety, cannot be accused of plunging us deliberately into gloom.
He thinks, indeed--and small wonder--that there is "a genuine
difficulty in distinguishing between the comic and the tragic," and
that what we need is some formula which shall accurately interpret
the precise qualities of each, and he is disposed to illustrate his
theory by dwelling on the tragic side of Falstaff, which is, of all
injuries, the grimmest and hardest to forgive. Falstaff is now the
forlorn hope of those who love to laugh, and when he is taken away
from us, as soon, alas! he will be, and sleeps with Don Quixote in
the "dull cold marble" of an orthodox sobriety, how shall we make
merry our souls? Mr. George Radford, who enriched the first volume of
"Obiter dicta" with such a loving study of the fat-witted old knight,
tells us reassuringly that by laughter man is distinguished from the
beasts, though the cares and sorrows of life have all but deprived
him of this elevating grace and degraded him into a brutal solemnity.
Then comes along a rare genius like Falstaff, who restores the power
of laughter, and transforms the stolid brute once more into a man,
and who accordingly has the highest claim to our grateful and
affectionate regard. That there are those who persist in looking upon
him as a selfish and worthless fellow is, from Mr. Radford's point of
view, a sorrowful instance of human thanklessness and perversity. But
this I take to be the enamored and exaggerated language of a too
faithful partizan. Morally speaking, Falstaff has not a leg to stand
upon, and there is a tragic element lurking always amid the fun. But,
seen in the broad sunlight of his transcendent humor, this shadow is
as the halfpennyworth of bread to his own noble ocean of sack, and
why should we be forever trying to force it into prominence? When
Charlotte Bronte advised her friend Ellen Nussey to read none of
Shakespeare's comedies, she was not beguiled for a moment into
regarding them as serious and melancholy lessons of life; but with