Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!
I could have better spared a better man.
Oh! I shou'd have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Tho' many a dearer in this bloody fray;
Imbowelled will I see thee by and by;
Till then, in blood by noble Percy lye.
This is wonderfully proper for the occasion; it is affectionate, it is pathetic, yet it remembers his vanities, and, with a faint gleam of recollected mirth, even his plumpness and corpulency; but it is a pleasantry softned and rendered even vapid by tenderness, and it goes off in the sickly effort of a miserable pun.[47]—But to our immediate [pg 268] purpose,—why is not his Cowardice remembered too? what, no surprize that Falstaff should lye by the side of the noble Percy in the bed of honour! No reflection that flight, though unfettered by disease, could not avail; that fear could not find a subterfuge from death? Shall his corpulency and his vanities be recorded, and his more characteristic quality of Cowardice, even in the moment that it particularly demanded notice and reflection, be forgotten? If by sparing a better man be here meant a better soldier, there is no doubt but there were better Soldiers in the army, more active, more young, more principled, more knowing; but none, it seems, taken for all in all, more acceptable. The comparative better used here leaves to Falstaff the praise at least of good; and to be a good soldier, is to be a great way from Coward. But Falstaff's goodness, in this sort, appears to have been not only enough to redeem him from disgrace, but to mark him with reputation; if I was to add with eminence and distinction, the funeral honours which are intended his obsequies, and his being bid, till then, to lye in blood by the noble Percy, would fairly bear me out.
Upon the whole of the passages yet before us, why may I not reasonably hope that the good natured reader (and I write to no other), not offended at the levity of this exercise, may join with me in thinking that the character of Falstaff, as to valour, may be fairly and honestly summed up in the very words which he himself uses to Harry; and which seem, as to this point, to be intended by Shakespeare as a Compendium of his character. “What,” says the Prince, “a Coward, Sir John Paunch!” Falstaff replies, “Indeed I am not John of Gaunt your grandfather, but yet no Coward, Hal.”