256 REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY 



IIL—THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 



There are some words, though not strictly onomatopoeial, yet 

 seem to have arisen out of the appellative, without search or deri- 

 vation ; as our words quick, giddy, glade, suck, comfort, glen, slow, 

 slumber, &c, indeed nearly all the old Saxon words, to which our 

 tongues seem organically adapted. Merry ! the word sounds like 

 fun. " Merry ; gay of heart," says Johnson. Merry, Merry 

 Wives of Windsor ! The title is the theme ; our hearts dance as 

 we read it — Merry Wives ! Young men hope what old men fear ; 

 but, Diana be praised ! Englishwomen can be merry without sin. 



Sir John, the only man who ever made grossness a virtue — "I 

 shall think the better of fat men as long as I've an eye to make 

 difference of men's liking." Slender is the very incarnation of 

 cowardice, the personal antithesis of a lover, the true transcript 

 of a simpleton — not fool enough to pity, nor wit enough to despise, 

 a thing to laugh at without offence, and to ridicule without cruelty. 

 Nim and Pistol are nonpareils of humour. Mrs. Quickly, " I fancy 

 I see her now" — " Where, my lord," — " In my mind's eye, Hora- 

 tio." The merry wives are examples to all sober ones. ° Sweet 

 Anne Page," she has brown hair, and speaks small, like a woman." 

 It is somewhat amusing to observe how the mustard-seed spirits of 

 some men snatch a quarrel. Anne Page's " small talk" has occupied 

 some hundreds of lines, pro and con, whether the poet meant small 

 talk or nice talk. 



** Mrs. Ford— Sir John ? art thou there, my deer ? my male deer ? 



Fal. — My doe with the black scut ! — Let the sky rain potatoes ; let it 

 thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves ; hail kissing-comfits, and snow erin- 

 goes ; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here." 



How perfectly the character of this " creature of bombast" is 

 kept up with the " Fat man" of Hen. IV. so completely resembling 

 it. This boast to Mrs. Ford is the counterpart of the " eleven men 

 in Lincoln Green." That potatoes are provocatives of love, is an 

 old belief. The learned Brown does not mention this as one of the 

 vulgar errors, in his Pseudodoocia Epidemica, though John Ayerton 

 Paris, of digestive celebrity, puts such an hypothesis alongside with 

 the lusty old proverb, " that 'tis good for the health to get drunk 

 once a week." 



Dr. Paris informs us that the supposed aphrodisiac quality of the 

 potato arose from the circumstance of certain plants having ac- 

 quired the names of others very different in their nature, but which 



