CHOICE EXAMPLES OF BOOK ILLUMINATION.
Fac-similes from Illuminated Manuscripts and Illustrated Books of Early Date.
TITLE-PAGE OF THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA.
The present frontispiece belongs to a French translation of the work of Poliphilo, the only book with decorated borders and insertions ever published by the Venetian Aldi. They printed the Hypnerotomachia in 1499, and it was reproduced in a French translation, with the present title-page by the Parisian printer, Jacques Kerver, in 1546. All the profuse embellishments of the Aldine edition were retained, but the title-page here reproduced is from a design of the famous French sculptor, Jean Goujon.
Romeo interrupts him, or he would never end. Let the reader compare with the dialogue of the French theatre this little poem
"Child of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,"[657]
introduced without incongruity in the midst of a conversation of the sixteenth century, and he will understand the difference between the wit which devotes itself to reasoning, or to record a subject for laughter, and that imagination which is self-amused with its own act.
Falstaff has the passions of an animal, and the imagination of a man of wit. There is no character which better exemplifies the fire and immorality of Shakespeare. Falstaff is a great supporter of disreputable places, swearer, gamester, idler, wine-bibber, as low as he well can be. He has a big belly, bloodshot eyes, bloated face, shaking legs; he spends his life with his elbows among the tavern-jugs, or asleep on the ground behind the arras; he only wakes to curse, lie, brag, and steal. He is as big a swindler as Panurge, who had sixty-three ways of making money, "of which the honestest was by sly theft." And what is worse, he is an old man, a knight, a courtier, and well educated. Must he not be odious and repulsive? By no means; we cannot help liking him. At bottom, like his brother Panurge, he is "the best fellow in the world." He has no malice in his composition; no other wish than to laugh and be amused. When insulted, he bawls out louder than his attackers, and pays them back with interest in coarse words and insults; but he owes them no grudge for it. The next minute he is sitting down with them in a low tavern, drinking their health like a brother and comrade. If he has vices, he exposes them so frankly that we are obliged to forgive him them. He seems to say to us, "Well, so I am, what then? I like drinking: isn't the wine good? I take to my heels when hard hitting begins; don't blows hurt? I get into debt, and do fools out their money; isn't it nice to have money in your pocket? I brag; isn't it natural to want to be well thought of?"—"Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty."[658] Falstaff is so frankly immoral, that he ceases to be so. Conscience ends at a certain point; nature assumes its place, and man rushes upon what he desires, without more thought of being just or unjust than an animal in the neighboring wood. Falstaff, engaged in recruiting, has sold exemptions to all the rich people, and only enrolled starved and half-naked wretches. There's but a shirt and a half in all his company: that does not trouble him. Bah: "they'll find linen enough on every hedge." The prince, who has seen them, says, "I did never see such pitiful rascals. Tut, tut," answers Falstaff, "good enough to toss; food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better; tush, man, mortal men, mortal men."[659] His second excuse is his unfailing spirit. If ever there was a man who could jabber, it is he. Insults and oaths, curses, jobations, protests, flow from him as from an open barrel. He is never at a loss; he devises a shift for every difficulty. Lies sprout out of him, fructify, increase, beget one another, like mushrooms on a rich and rotten bed of earth. He lies still more from his imagination and nature than from interest and necessity. It is evident from the manner in which he strains his fictions. He says he has fought alone against two men. The next moment it is four. Presently we have seven, then eleven, then fourteen. He is stopped in time, or he would soon be talking of a whole army. When unmasked, he does not lose his temper, and is the first to laugh at his boastings. "Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold.... What, shall we be merry? shall we have a play extempore?"[660] He does the scolding part of King Henry with so much truth that we might take him for a king, or an actor. This big potbellied fellow, a coward, a cynic, a brawler, a drunkard, a lewd rascal, a pothouse poet, is one of Shakespeare's favorites. The reason is, that his morals are those of pure nature, and Shakespeare's mind is congenial with his own.