bound them, and were masters of their wealth.Mark now, how plain a tale shall put you down.Then did we two set on you four: and, with a word out-faced you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here in the house:—and, Falstaff, you carried your guts away as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy, and still ran and roared, as ever I heard bull-calf. What a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast done; and then say, it was in fight? What trick, what device, what starting-hole, canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?

Poins. Come let's hear, Jack; What trick hast thou now?

Fal. By the Lord, I knew ye, as well as he that made ye. Why, hear ye, my masters: Was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest, I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince, Instinct is a great matter; I was a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself and thee, during my life; I, for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by the Lord,

lads, I am glad you have the money.- -Hostess,

clap to the doors; watch to-night, pray to-morrow. --Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be merry? shall we have a play extempore?

P. Hen. Content;-and the argument shall be, thy running away.

Fal. Ah! no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me.

Enter Hostess.

Host. My lord the prince,

P. Hen. How now, my lady the hostess? what say'st thou to me?

Host. Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the

court at door, would speak with comes from your father.

you: he says, he

P. Hen. Give him as much as will make him a royal man 24, and send him back again to my mother.

Fal. What manner of man is he?

Host. An old man.

Fal. What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight? Shall I give him his answer?

P. Hen. 'Pr'ythee, do, Jack.

Fal. 'Faith, and I'll send him packing.

[Exit.

P. Hen. Now, sirs; by'r lady, you fought fair;so did you, Peto;-so did you, Bardolph you are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince, no,-fye!

Bard. 'Faith, I ran when I saw others run.

P. Hen. Tell me now in earnest, How came Falstaff's sword so hacked?

Peto. Why, he hacked it with his dagger; and said, he would swear truth out of England, but he would make you believe it was done in fight; and persuaded us to do the like.

Bard. Yea, and to tickle our noses with speargrass, to make them bleed; and then to beslubber. our garments with it, and to swear it was the blood of true men. I did that I did not this seven year before, I blushed to hear his monstrous devices.

P. Hen. O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner 25, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore:

24 This is a kind of joke upon noble and royal, two coins, one of the value of 6s. 8d. the other 10s. 'Mr. John Blower, in a sermon before her majesty, first said :- My royal queen,' and a little after, My noble queen.' Upon which says the queen, What, am I ten groats worse than I was?'-Hearne's Discourse of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford.

25 i. e. taken in the fact. See Love's Labour's Lost, Act i, Sc. 1, J p. 277.

Thou hast fire 26 and sword on thy side, and yet thou ran'st away; What instinct hast thou for it? Bard. My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations?

P. Hen. I do.

Bard. What think you they portend?
P. Hen. Hot livers and cold purses 27.
Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.
P. Hen. No, if rightly taken, halter.

Re-enter FALSTAFF.

Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet creature of bombast 28? How long is't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?

Fal. My own knee, when I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring 29: A plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder. There's villanous news abroad:

26 The fire in Bardolph's face.

27 i. e. drunkenness and poverty.

28 i. e. my sweet stuffed creature.' Bombast is cotton. Gerard calls the cotton plant the bombast tree. It is here used for the stuffing of clothes. See a note on Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. Sc. 2, p. 363. In an old phrase book, called Hormanni Vulgaria, is the following passage: The fleshe lyeth betwene the bone and skynne like a mattress of cotton.'

29 Aristophanes has the same thought:

· Διὰ δακτυλίω μὲν ἦν ἐμέ γ' ἄν διελκύσαις.

Plutus, v. 1037.

The custom of wearing a ring upon the thumb is very ancient. The rider of the brazen horse in Chaucer's Squiers Tale :

upon his thombe he had a ring of gold.' Grave personages, citizens, and aldermen wore a plain broad gold ring upon the thumb, which often had a motto engraved in the inside of it. An alderman's thumb-ring, and its motto, is mentioned in The Antipodes, by Brome. And in his Northern Lass: A good man in the city, &c. wears nothing rich about him but the gout or a thumb-ring. Again, in Wit in a Constable, 1640- no more wit than the rest of the bench; what lies in his thumb-ring.'

here was Sir John Bracy from your father; 'you must to the court in the morning. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon 30 the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook 31,What, a plague, call you him?

Poins. O, Glendower.

Fal. Owen, Owen; the same; and his son-inlaw, Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o’horseback up a hill perpendicular.

P. Hen. He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol 32 kills a sparrow flying.

Fal. You have hit it.

P. Hen. So did he never the sparrow.

Fal. Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him; he will not run.

30 A demon; who is described as one of the four kings who rule over all the demons in the world.

31 The Welsh hook was a kind of hedging bill made with a hook at the end, and a long handle like the partisan or halbert. 'The Welsh glaive' (which appears to be the same thing) Grose says 'is a kind of bill sometimes reckoned among the pole-axes.' Minshew thus describes it:- Armorum genus est are in falcis modum incurvato, perticæ longissimæ præfixo.' And Florio, in voce Falcione, a bending forest bill or Welch hook,' So in the old play of Sir John Oldcastle ;—' that no man presume to wear any weapons, especially Welch hooks and forest bills.' Its long handle is hinted at in Westward Hoe, 1607 :- It will be as good as a Welch hook for you, to keep out the other at stavesend.' In The Insatiate Countess by Marston, they are called 'The ancient hooks of great Cadwallader.'

Caught up his country hook,'

I am surprised that Mr. Nares has called it a sword.

32 Pistols were not in use in the age of Henry IV. They are said to have been much used by the Scotch in Shakspeare's time.

P. Hen. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running?

Fal. O'horseback, ye cuckoo! but, afoot, he will not budge a foot.

P. Hen. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.

Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more: Worcester is stolen away to-night; thy father's beard is turned white with the news; you may buy land now as cheap a stinking mackarel.

P. Hen. Why then, 'tis like, if there come a hot June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds.

Fal. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like, we shall have good trading that way.-But, tell me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard? thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at it?

P. Hen. Not a whit, i'faith; I lack some of thy instinct.

Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow, when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an answer.

P. Hen. Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.

Fal. Shall I content:-This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.

33 Scotsmen, on account of their blue bonnets.

34 In the old anonymous play of King Henry V. the same strain of humour is discoverable:- Thou shalt be my lord chief justice, and shalt sit in this chair; and I'll be the young prince, and hit thee a box of the ear,' &c. A state is a chair with a canopy over it.