consider him as giving himself small trouble to depart from the manners which he saw around him—the knights of Elizabeth were men of the highest class. The queen conferred the honor with much difficulty, and insisted that it should not be disgraced. Sir John Falstaff, if his mirth and wit inclined him to lead a reckless life, held no less rank in the society of the day than the Earl of Rochester in the time of Charles II. Henry IV. disapproves of his son's mixing with the loose revellers of the town; but admits Falstaff unreproved to his presence. When he is anxious to break the acquaintance, he makes no objection to the station of Sir John, but sends him with Prince John of Lancaster against the archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland. His objection is not that the knight, by his rank, is no fitting companion for a son of his own, but that he can better trust him with the steadier than the more mercurial of the brothers.

We find by incidental notices that he was reared, when a boy, page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, head of one of the greatest houses that ever was in England, and the personal antagonist of him who was afterward Henry IV.; that he was in his youth on familiar terms with John of Gaunt, the first man of the land after the death of his father and brother; and that, through all his life, he had been familiar with the lofty and distinguished.* We can, therefore, conjecture what had

* It is stated, on the authority of Rowe and Fuller, that the character now known as Falstaff, was originally put upon the stage by Shakespeare, as Sir John Oldcastle, but the change was made because Oldcastle really was a grave, religious man, and not a jovial royster and coward. In truth, however, the character of Sir John Oldcastle occurs in the old play of "King Henry V.," which probably supplied Shakespeare with the idea of the dramas in which the fat knight takes so large a part. The true story of Falstaff may not be out of place here. He was born in 1379. His father, John Fastolfe, who was a Yarmouth mariner, died early. According to the custom of the feudal times, the boy was placed under the guardianship of John Duke of Bedford, the regent of France. He afterward accompanied to Ireland, Thomas Duke of Clarence, on his appointment to the governorship of that

been his youth and his manhood; we see what he actually is in declining age. In this, if I mistake not, will be found the

country. While there, on St. Hilary's day, 1409, he married Millicent, daughter of Sir Robert Tiptoft, and widow of Sir Stephen Scroope, whom, on his wedding-day, he contracted to allow £100 per annum for pin-money; this sum was regularly paid until her death, which took place during her husband's lifetime. The vice-regent's court appears not to have suited the taste of Falstaff, who was more addicted to fighting than lounging about in idleness. He soon, therefore, assumed another character, and, having buckled on his armor, proceeded to France, where abundance of glory was to be obtained. There, his bravery soon made him known. In the accounts of most of the engagements of that period, Falstaff's name occurs in the list of combatants. In Normandy, Gascony, Guienne, Anjou, and Maine, his arm helped to sustain the British power. When Harfleur was taken in 1415, he was made lieutenant of the place, and shortly afterward received the honor of knighthood. At Agincourt, he took a noble prisoner― -no less a person than the Duke of Alençon. He was in the midst of the strife at the taking of Rouen, Caen, Falaise, and Seez, and stormed numbers of strong fortresses and castles; among others, the castle of Sillé le Guillaume, for the capture of which he was rewarded by the title of baron in France. Among other honors poured upon him, he was elected a Knight of the Garter. At his election, there were an equal number of votes for our knight and Sir John Radcliffe; whereupon the Duke of Bedford gave the casting vote in favor of Falstaff, and sent him a letter abounding with expressions of praise. Monstralet states, in his " Chronicle," that Falstaff was degraded from the order on account of his dastardly conduct at the battle of Patay, where he and his followers, being struck with terror at the appearance of the mysterious Joan of Arc, took to their heels, and left the French army in possession of the field. This tale, unsupported by another testimony, is utterly false; for although it is a fact that Sir John was put to flight at Patay, the tale of his being degraded from the Order of the Garter, is proved untrue by the circumstance of his regular attendance at the chapters of the order long after the period at which his degradation is stated to have taken place. The crowning exploit of Sir John was his brave conduct at the battle of the Herrings. With a small band of Englishmen, he routed a numerous French army, commanded by "le jeune et beau Dunois" himself. The battle got its name from the circumstance of our knight making a kind of fortification with his wagons, which were for the most part full of herrings; for, besides the army being led by a Yarmouth man, the season was Lent, and these two circumstances combined, show the reason of his carrying so large a quantity of that small but excellent fish. The year following the affair at Patay found Sir John lieutenant of Caen; and he was sent in 1432 as embassador to the council of Basel, where he seems to have fulfilled his duty satisfactorily, for he was afterward sent to conclude a peace with France. A few years after

true solution of the character; here is what the French call the mot d'énigme. Conscious of powers and talents far surpassing those of the ordinary run of men, he finds himself outstripped in the race. He must have seen many a man whom he utterly despised rising over his head to honors and emoluments. The very persons upon whom, it would appear to Doctor Johnson, he was intruding, were many of them his early companionsmany more his juniors at court. He might have attended his old patron, the duke, at Coventry, upon St. Lambert's day, when Richard II. flung down the warder amidst the greatest men of England. If he jested in the tilt-yard with John of Gaunt, could he feel that any material obstacle prevented him from mixing with those who composed the court of John of Gaunt's son.

In fact, he is a dissipated man of rank, with a thousand times more wit than ever fell to the lot of all the men of rank in the world. But he has ill played his cards in life. He grumbles not at the advancement of men of his own order; but the bitter drop of his soul overflows when he remembers how he and that cheeseparing Shallow began the world, and reflects that this event, the good old knight retired from service, with glory and renown; he turned his steps toward his native place, and, building a castle at Caistor (a small village in Norfolk, three miles north of Yarmouth), there spent the remainder of his life. He died in 1459, and was buried at the priory of Broomholm. His resting-place while dead, and his habitation while living, have bowed before the stroke of time, and nothing now remains but a few mouldering, crumbling walls. In his retirement, Sir John was not oblivious of the advantages of learning. In that age, little encouragement was given to literature; but to that little, he contributed a part. The translation of Tully de Senectute was made by his order, and printed by the father of English printing. To Oxford, he was a bountiful benefactor; nor was he forgetful of the sister university of Cambridge. He was intent in his old age upon founding a college for seven priests, and the same number of poor men but unexpected difficulties arrested its progress, and death proved an irresistible obstacle to its completion. Such was the Falstaff of fact, a soldier of courage and conduct, and altogether, for his age, a worthy and respectable character.-M.

the starveling justice has land and beeves, while he, the wit and the gentleman, is penniless, and living from hand to mouth by the casual shifts of the day. He looks at the goodly dwelling and the riches of him whom he had once so thoroughly contemned, with an inward pang that he has scarcely a roof under which he can lay his head. The tragic Macbeth, in the agony of his last struggle, acknowledges with a deep despair, that the things that should accompany old age —as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends-he must not look to have. The comic Falstaff says nothing on the subject; but, by the choice of such associates as Bardolph, Pistol, and the rest of that following, he tacitly declares that he too has lost the advantages which should be attendant on years. No curses loud or deep have accompanied his festive career· -its conclusion is not the less sad on that account: neglect, forgotten friendships, services overlooked, shared pleasures unremembered, and fair occasions gone for ever by, haunt him, no doubt, as sharply as the consciousness of deserving universal hatred galls the soul of Macbeth.

And we may pursue the analogy farther without any undue straining. All other hope lost, the confident tyrant shuts himself up in what he deems an impregnable fortress, and relies for very safety upon his interpretation of the dark sayings of riddling witches. Divested of the picturesque and supernatural horror of the tragedy, Macbeth is here represented as driven to his last resource, and dependent for life only upon chances, the dubiousness of which he can hardly conceal from himself. The Boar's Head in Eastcheap is not the castle of Dunsinane, any more than the conversation of Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet is that of the Weird Sisters; but in the comedy, too, we have the man, powerful in his own way, driven to his last "frank," and looking to the chance of the hour for the living of the hour. Hope after hope has broken down, as

prophecy after prophecy has been discovered to be juggling and fallacious. He has trusted that his Birnam Wood would not come to Dunsinane, and yet it comes; -that no man not of woman born is to cross his path, and lo! the man is here. What then remains for wit or warrior when all is lost- - when the last stake is gone-when no chance of another can be dreamt of- when the gleaming visions that danced before their eyes are found to be nothing but mist and mirage? What remains for them but to die?-And so they do.

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With such feelings, what can Falstaff, after having gone through a life of adventure, care about the repute of courage or cowardice? To divert the prince, he engages in a wild enterprise -nothing more than what would be called a 'lark" now. When deer-stealing ranked as no higher offence than robbing orchards-not indeed so high as the taking a slice off a loaf by a wandering beggar, which some weeks ago has sent the vagrant who committed the "crime" to seven years' transportationsuch robberies as those at Gadshill, especially as all parties well knew that the money taken there was surely to be repaid, as we find it is in the end,* were of a comparatively venial nature.

* Henry IV. Part 1. Act III. Sc. 3.

"Fal. Now Hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad?
How is that answered?

That paying back; it is a double labor.

P. Hen. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.
Fal. Rob me the exchequer, the first thing thou dost;

And do it with unwashed hands too.

The quiet and business-like manner in which Bardolph enforces on the heirapparent his master's reasonable proposition of robbing the exchequer, is worthy of that plain and straightforward character. I have always considered it a greater hardship that Bardolph should be hanged "for pix of little price" by an old companion at Gadshill, than that Falstaff should have