"Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to vent anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men."

KING HENRY IV. Part 2.

The Writer's Dedication

TO MARY E. C. BROUGH.

MY DEAREST SISTER,

THE following pages represent (if nothing else) a considerable amount of labour-achieved, as you know, under the most trying circumstances which I am mainly indebted to your sisterly care and devotion for having been able to accomplish at all.

Accept their dedication, not for their intrinsic worth, but as the only kind of testimonial of love and gratitude just now available to

March 27, 1858.

Your affectionate Brother,

ROBERT B. BROUGH.

PREFACE.

THE nature and objects of the present work require little, if any, explanation. The whole range of imaginative literature affords no instance of a fictitious personage, ranking, almost inseparably, in the public faith with the characters of actual history, parallel to that of the inimitable Falstaff of Shakspeare. Other creations of the world's greatest dramatist may be as vraisemblable and as vividly drawn. But the peculiar association of Falstaff with events that are known to have occurred, and personages who are known to have lived,-added to the fact that his character has been developed to greater length and with more apparent fondness than the poet was wont to indulge in,—make it a matter of positive difficulty to disbelieve that Falstaff actually lived and influenced the age he is assumed to have belonged to,-as much as to doubt that Henry the Fifth conquered at Agincourt, that Hotspur was irascible, and Glendower conceited.

It was a natural thought, then, for a modern humorist,-using the pencil and etching point as his means of expression,-a man whose competence to appreciate and illustrate the arch-humorist, Shakspeare, will scarcely be disputed-to propose to himself a series of pictures embodying the most prominent events in the imaginary career of Shakspeare's most humorous character in which the illusion intended