' Well, he was destined to outlive another decade;
and, selfishly, who can wish such a life as his, or such a Life as
Boswell's, one jot shorter?
Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk
who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in
history or in legend as having died of laughter. Strange, too, that
not to one of all the characters in romance has such an end been
allotted. Has it ever struck you what a chance Shakespeare missed when
he was finishing the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth? Falstaff
was not the man to stand cowed and bowed while the new young king
lectured him and cast him off. Little by little, as Hal proceeded in
that portentous allocution, the humour of the situation would have
mastered old Sir John. His face, blank with surprise at first, would
presently have glowed and widened, and his whole bulk have begun to
quiver. Lest he should miss one word, he would have mastered himself.
But the final words would have been the signal for release of all the
roars pent up in him; the welkin would have rung; the roars, belike,
would have gradually subsided in dreadful rumblings of more than
utterable or conquerable mirth. Thus and thus only might his life have
been rounded off with dramatic fitness, secundum ipsius naturam.
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