follies which Moliere ridicules are those of affection, not those
of fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants, not absolute simpletons, are
his game. Shakspeare has indeed a vast assortment of fools; but
the precise species of which we speak is not, if we remember
right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool. But his animal
spirits supply, to a certain degree, the place of cleverness. His
talk is to that of Sir John what soda water is to champagne. It
has the effervescence though not the body or the flavour. Slender
and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy
consciousness of their folly, which in the latter produces
meekness and docility, and in the former, awkwardness, obstinacy,
and confusion. Cloten is an arrogant fool, Osric a foppish fool,
Ajax a savage fool; but Nicias is, as Thersites says of
Patroclus, a fool positive. His mind is occupied by no strong
feeling; it takes every character, and retains none; its aspect
is diversified, not by passions, but by faint and transitory
semblances of passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock love, a
mock pride, which chase each other like shadows over its surface,
and vanish as soon as they appear. He is just idiot enough to be
an object, not of pity or horror, but of ridicule. He bears some
resemblance to poor Calandrino, whose mishaps, as recounted by
Boccaccio, have made all Europe merry for more than four
centuries. He perhaps resembles still more closely Simon da
Villa, to whom Bruno and Buffalmacco promised the love of the
Countess Civillari. Nicias is, like Simon, of a learned
profession; and the dignity with which he wears the doctoral
fur, renders his absurdities infinitely more grotesque. The old
Tuscan is the very language for such a being. Its peculiar
simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most
brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a