In this perplexity I was one morning turning over his pages when
I casually opened upon the comic scenes of Henry IV., and was, in
a moment, completely lost in the madcap revelry of the Boar's
Head Tavern. So vividly and naturally are these scenes of humor
depicted, and with such force and consistency are the characters
sustained, that they become mingled up in the mind with the facts
and personages of real life. To few readers does it occur that
these are all ideal creations of a poet's brain, and that, in
sober truth, no such knot of merry roisterers ever enlivened the
dull neighborhood of Eastcheap.
For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusions of poetry.
A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as
a hero of history that existed a thousand years since and, if I
may be excused such an insensibility to the common ties of human
nature, I would not give up fat Jack for half the great men of
ancient chronicle. What have the heroes of yore done for me or
men like me? They have conquered countries of which I do not
enjoy an acre, or they have gained laurels of which I do not
inherit a leaf, or they have furnished examples of hair-brained
prowess, which I have neither the opportunity nor the inclination
to follow.
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