abroad: I heard say, your lordship was sick: I hope, your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health.

Ch. Just. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

Fal. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales. Ch. Just. I talk not of his majesty :-You would not come when I sent for you.

Fal. And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

Ch. Just. Well, heaven mend him! I pray, let me speak with you.

Fal. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

Ch. Just. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. Fal. It hath its original from much grief; from study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.

Ch. Just. I think, you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.

Fal. 14 Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an't please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

Ch. Just. To punish you by the heels, would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician.

14 In the quarto edition this speech stands thus:

Old. Very well, my lord, very well.'

This is a strong corroboration of the tradition that Falstaff was first called Oldcastle. See the First Part of King Henry IV. p. 126, note 6.

Fal. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself.

Ch. Just. I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me. Fal. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come. Ch. Just. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

Fal. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in less.

Ch. Just. Your means are very slender, and waste is great.

your

Fal. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.

Ch. Just. You have misled the youthful prince. Fal. The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.

Ch. Just. Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound; your day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gad's-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'erposting that action.

Fal. My lord?

Ch. Just. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.

Fal. To wake a wolf, is as bad as to smell a fox. Ch. Just. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

Fal. A wassel 15 candle, my lord; all tallow: if

15 A wassel candle is a large candle lighted up at a feast. There is a poor quibble upon the word wax, which signifies increase as well as the matter of the honeycomb. We have the same quibble in Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. Sc. 2:

That was the way to make his godhead wax.'.

I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

Ch. Just. There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity.

Fal. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

Ch. Just. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.

Fal. Not so, my lord; your ill angel 16 is light;

but, I hope, he that looks upon me, will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell 17: Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times 18, that true valour is turned bear-herd: Pregnancy 19 is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider not the capacities of us that are young: you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

Ch. Just. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all

16 As light as a clipt angel' is a comparison frequent in the old comedies. So in Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611:— The law speaks profit, does it not?—

Faith, some bad angels haunt us now and then.'

17 I cannot tell, Johnson explains, "I cannot be taken in a reckoning, I cannot pass current.' Mr. Gifford objects to this explanation, and says that it merely means I cannot tell what to think of it.' The phrase, with that signification, was certainly common (says Mr. Boswell); but as it will also bear the sense which Dr. Johnson assigned to it, his interpretation appears to me to suit the context better. Let the reader judge.

18 Coster-monger times are petty peddling times; when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money,

19 Pregnancy is readiness. So in Hamlet:

'How pregnant his replies are.'

the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single 20? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fye, fye, fye, Sir John!

Fal. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,-I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding: and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o'the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it; and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes, and sackcloth; but in new silk and old sack.

Ch. Just. Well, heaven send the prince a better companion!

Fal. Heaven send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

Ch. Just. Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I hear, you are going with lord John of Lancaster, against the archbishop, and the earl of Northumberland.

Fal. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day! for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and

20 Single is simple, silly. How much has been written about this phrase, and to how little purpose! Single-witted and singlesoul'd were common epithets with our ancestors, to designate simple persons. Vide note on Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 4.

I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it: Well, I cannot last ever 21: But it was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say, I am an old man, you should give I would to God, my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

me rest.

Ch. Just. Well, be honest, be honest; And God bless your expedition!

Fal. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound, to furnish me forth?

Ch. Just. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses 22. Fare you well: Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

[Exeunt Chief Justice and Attendant. Fal. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle 23. -A man can no more separate age and covetousness, than he can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the

21 The rest of this speech, which is not in the folio, is restored from the quarto copy.

22 A quibble is here intended between crosses, contraryings, and the sort of money so called. In As You Like It we have it again :

'If I should bear you, I should bear no cross.'

23 This alludes to a common but cruel diversion of boys, called filliping the toad. They lay a board, two or three feet long, at right angles, over a transverse piece, two or three inches thick; then placing the toad at one end of the board, the other end is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the poor toad forty or fifty feet perpendicular from the earth; and the fall generally kills it. A three-man beetle is a heavy beetle, with three handles, used in driving piles, &c.