of life associated us, and of whom the exercise of prudence demanded that we should form an accurate estimate, we should say—

"Too bad for a blessing, too good for a curse,

I wish from my soul thou wer' t better or worse."

But we are called upon for no such judgment when the poet presents to us a character of contra. dictory qualities. All that we have then to ask is, whether the character is natural, and consistent with the circumstances amidst which he moves? We have no desire to reconcile our hearts to Bertram; all that we demand is, that he should not move our indignation beyond the point in which his qualities shall consist with our sympathy for Helena in her love for him. And in this view, the poet, as it appears to us, has drawn Bertram's character most skilfully. Without his defects the dramatic action could not have proceeded; without his merits the dramatic sentiment could not have been maintained. Shakspere, from the first, makes us understand that the pride of birth in Bertram constrained him to regard Helena as greatly his inferior. His parting with her is decisive: — "The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you." This is the kindness of one who had known her long, and pitied her dependent state. But he leaves no doubt as to the sense which he entertains of her condition: "Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her." When the King proposes Helena to him as his wife, he assigns but one reason for his rejection of her-but that is all in all :—

"I know her well;

She had her breeding at my father's charge:
A poor physician's daughter my wife!"

If Bertram had seen Helena with the eyes of his mother, as

"A maid too virtuous

For the contempt of empire "—

or with those of the King and of Lafeu-he would not have rejected her, and the comedy would have been only a common love-tale. Johnson says. he marries Helena "as a coward." This is unjust. Johnson overlooked the irresistible constraint to which his will was subjected, and the scorn with which he spoke out his real purposes even at the moment of submission :—

"Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit

My fancy to your eyes: When I consider
What great creation, and what dole of honour,
F.ies where you bid it, I find, that she, which late
Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now
The praised of the king; who, so ennobled,
Is, as 't were, born so."

Nothing can be less like cowardice than this speech. It is the bitterest irony of a desperate will, bowed for a time, but not subdued. Nor does Bertram leave Helena as a profligate." We, who know the intensity of her love, which he could not know, may think that he was unwise to fly from his own happiness; but he believed that he fled from constraint and misery; from

"The dark house, and the detested wife."

The Bertram of the Florentine wars has something to recommend him besides his ancestry: * he has done worthy service." But the young, proud, courageous Bertram, is also a libertine. Schlegel asks, "Did Shakspere ever attempt to mitigate the impression of his unfeeling pride and giddy dissipation? He intended merely to give us a military portrait." This is quite true The libertines of the later comedy are the only generous, spirited, intellectual persons of the drama; the virtuous characters are as dull as they are discreet. Shakspere goes out of his usual dramatic spirit in this play, to mark emphatically the impression which Bertram's actions produce upon his own associates. In the third scene of the fourth act they comment with indignation upon his desertion of Helena, and his practices towards Diana :-" As we are ourselves what things are we!" But then, all the Shaksperian tolerance is put forth to make us understand that Bertram is not isolated in his vices, and that even his vices, as those of all other men, are not alone to be regarded in our estimates of character:-"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues." This is philosophy, and, what is more, it is religion--for it is charity. In this spirit the poet undoubte lly intended that we should judge Bertram. He is certainly not a

hypocrite; and, when he returns to Rousillon, we are bound to believe him when he speaks of Helena as

"She, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself

Since I have lost have lov'd."

For ourselves, we can see no poetical injustice that he is "dismissed to happiness;" for, unless he has become a "sadder and a wiser man," he will not be happy.

"In this piece," says Schlegel, "age is exhibited to singular advantage: the plain honesty of the King, the good-natured impetuosity of old Lafeu, the maternal indulgence of the Countess to Helena's love of her son, seem all, as it were, to vie with each other in endeavours to conquer the arrogance of the young Count." The general benevolence of these characters, and their particular kindness towards Helena, are the counterpoises to Bertram's pride of birth, and his disdain of virtue, unaccompanied by adventitious distinctions. The love of the Countess towards Helena is habit,— that of the King is gratitude: in Lafeu the admiration which he perseveringly holds towards her is the result of his honest sagacity. He admires what is direct and unpretending, and he therefore loves Helena: he hates what is evasive and boastful, and he therefore despises Parolles.

Parolles has been called by Ulrici "the little appendix of the great Falstaff." Schlegel says, "Falstaff has thrown Parolles into the shade." Johnson goes farther, and declares, "Parolles has many of the lineaments of Falstaff." We have thought, and still think, that this opinion of Johnson exhibits a singular want of discrimination in one who relished Falstaff so highly. Parolles is literally what he is described by Helena :

"I know him a notorious liar,

Think him a great way fool, solely a coward."

For the "fool," take the scene in the second act in which he pieces out the remarks of Lafeu upon the King's recovery with the most impertinent commonplaces-ending "Nay, 't is strange, 'tis very strange, that is the brief and the tedious of it." It was in this dialogue that Lafeu "smoked him;" and he makes no secret, afterwards, of his opinion: "I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou did'st make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass: yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden. I have now found thee." To the insults of Lafeu the boaster has nothing to oppose,neither wit nor courage. His very impudence is overborne. We thoroughly agree with Lafeu, that "there can be no kernel in this light nut." All this is but a preparation for the comic scenes in which he is to play so conspicuous a part-in which his folly, his falsehood, and his cowardice, conspire to make him odious and ridiculous. Before this exhibition he is denounced to Bertram, by his companions in warfare, as "a hilding"-" a bubble"-"a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality." The disclosure which he makes of his own folly before he is seized, when the lords overhear him, is perfectly true to nature, and therefore in the highest degree true comedy :

"Par. Ten o'clock: within these three hours 't will be time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it: They begin to smoke me: and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. I find my tongue is too fool-hardy; but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue.

"1 Lord. This is the first truth that e'er thine own tongue was guilty of.

[Aside. "Par. What the devil should move me to undertake the recovery of this drum; being not ignorant of the impossibility, and knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in exploit: Yet slight ones will not carry it: They will say, came you off with so little? and great ones I dare not give. Wherefore? what's the instance? Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman's mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet's mule, if you prattle me into these perils.

"1 Lord. Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?

[Aside."

The last sentence is worth a folio of "Moral Essays." But Parolles certainly knows himself. There is nothing but plain knavery, mistaking its proper tools, in his lies and his treacheries. The meanness of his nature is his safeguard: after his detection the consolations of his philosophy are most characteristic:

"Yet am I thankful: if my heart were great
'Twould burst at this: Captain I'll be no more;
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft

As captain shall; simply the thing I am

Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart
Let him fear this; for it will come to pass,

That every braggart shall be found an ass.

Rust, sword! cool, blushes! and, Parolles, live

Safest in shame! being fool'd by foolery thrive!
There's place and means for every man alive."

And he will "live.' Lafeu understands him to the last, when he says, "Though you are a fool and a knave, you shall eat."

And is this crawling, empty, vapouring, cowardly representative of the off-scourings of social life, to be compared for a moment with the unimitable Falstaff?-to be said to have "many lineaments in common " with him to be thrown into the shade by him-to be even "a little appendix" to his greatness? Parolles is drawn by Shakspere as utterly contemptible, in intellect, in spirit, in morals. He is diverting from the situations into which his folly betrays him; and his complete exposure and humiliation constitute the richness of the comedy. If he had been a particle better Shakspere would have made his disgrace less; and it is in his charity even to the most degraded that he has represented him as utterly insensible to his own shame, and even hugging it as a good:"If my heart were great

'T would burst at this."

But Falstaff, witty beyond all other characters of wit-cautious, even to the point of being thought cowardly-swaying all men by his intellectual resources under the greatest difficultyboastful and lying only in a spirit of hilarity which makes him the first to enjoy his own detection -and withal, though grossly selfish, so thoroughly genial that many love him and few can refuse to laugh with him-is Falstaff to be compared with Parolles, the notorious liar-great way foolsolely a coward? The comparison will not bear examining with patience, and much less with pains-taking.

But Parolles in his own way is infinitely comic. "The scene of the drum," according to a French critic, "is worthy of Molière."* This is the highest praise which a French writer could bestow; and here it is just. The character belongs to the school of which Molière is the head, rather than to the school of Shakspere.

And what shall we say of the Clown? He is "the artificial fool;" and we do not like him, therefore, quite so much as dear Launce and dearer Touchstone. To the Fool in Lear he can no more be compared than Parolles to Falstaff. But he is, nevertheless, great-something that no other artist but Shakspere could have produced. Our poet has used him as a vehicle for some biting satire. There can be no doubt that he is "a witty fool," "a shrewd knave, and an unhappy."