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
uncompromising directness put them down as mere improper plays, the
amusing qualities of which were insufficient to excuse their
coarseness, and which were manifestly unfit for the "gentle Ellen's"
eyes.

   In fact, humor would at all times have been the poorest excuse to
offer to Miss Bronte for any form of moral dereliction, for it was
the one quality she lacked herself and failed to tolerate in others.
Sam Weller was apparently as obnoxious to her as was Falstaff, for
she would not even consent to meet Dickens when she was being
lionized in London society—a degree of abstemiousness on her part
which it is disheartening to contemplate. It does not seem too much
to say that every shortcoming in Charlotte Bronte's admirable work,
every limitation in her splendid genius, arose primarily from her
want of humor. Her severities of judgment—and who more severe than
she?—were due to the same melancholy cause; for humor is the
kindliest thing alive. Compare the harshness with which she handles
her hapless curates and the comparative crudity of her treatment,

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