discrepancies and tops all difficulties. The very speech in which Poins reassures the Prince, when the double robbery is mooted between them, and which has always been taken to bear on Falstaff's cowardice, is here read as proof of his courage. "But I doubt they will be too hard upon us," says the Prince, with a deliberate and wholesome caution. Poins answers, "Well, for two of them I know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back, and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper; how thirty, at least, he fought with; what words, what blows, what extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lies the jest." There were four against the Prince and Poins; of these Bardolph and Peto are the cowards, Gadshill is dropped out of notice, so that it is Falstaff who will not fight longer than he sees reason. In which case, how does not fighting longer than there is reason for good blows show Falstaff as a coward? "On the contrary, what stronger evidence can we require, that the courage of Falstaff had, to this hour, through serious trials, stood wholly unim peached, than that Poins, the ill-disposed Poins, who ventures, for his own purposes, to steal, as it were, one of the four from the notice and memory of the Prince, and who shows himself, from worse motives, as skilful in diminish ing as Falstaff appears afterwards in increasing of numbers, than that this very Poins would not venture to put down Falstaff in the list of cowards; though the occasion so strongly required that he should be degraded. What Poins dares do, however, in this sort, he does. As to the third,' for so he describes Falstaff (as if the name of this veteran would have excited too strongly the ideas of courage and resistance) ' if he fights longer than he sees reason, I will forswear arms.' This is the old trick of cautious and artful malice; the turn of expression, or the tone of voice, does all; for, as to the words themselves, simply considered, they might be now truly spoken of almost any man who ever lived, except the iron-headed hero of Sweden." Morgann gets over the whole scene in like manner. When they are all walking on the "road by Gadshill,” and this man of the same name, Gadshill, their scout, or "setter," comes in to tell them of the money of the King's, coming down the hill and going to the the king's exchequer, guarded by the "eight or ten men," who were only four after all; and Falstaff exclaims, "Zounds! will they not rob us?" his apologist finds nothing more in this than in what the prince had said not long before: "I doubt they will be too hard for us." And when the Prince cries, "in his usual style of mirth," "What! a coward, Sir John Paunch ?" "To this," says Morgann, "one would naturally expect from Falstaff some light answer; but we are are surprised with a very serious one. I am not indeed John of Gaunt your grandfather, but yet no coward, Hal!'" "Well, we leave that to the proof," said the Prince. And the proof was not long in coming. For though the thieves bound the true men without much trouble or ado, the Prince and Poins had even less in robbing the thieves. As Hal says, "got with much ease," when he and his comrade gather up the booty, and prepare merrily to take horse and away to London to await the fat knight at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap. But Morgann insists on it that Falstaff's flight is nothing to the purpose; for that he did not run at all, until deserted by his companions, nor until he had exchanged blows with his assailants; and that at the worst "it is not singularly ridiculous that an old, inactive man, of no boast, as far as appears, or extraordinary pretensions to valor, should endeavor to save himself by flight from the assault of two bold and vigorous assailants." Just so he saved himself, later, from Douglas by the counterfeit of death. As for the famous bragging scene after, when of the original four poor travellers he makes a hundred, with some two or three and fifty for his own share, and multiplies the Prince and Poins," two rogues in buckram suits," as they were, "into four, seven, nine, eleven, with three misbegotten knaves in Kendal-green at the end of all, who came at his back and let drive at him before he knew where he was, - why, all this was only mirth and pleasantry and the habit of humorous lying; but in nowise the boasting of a coward who thinks only how he can best enwrap his cowardice in the seeming of courage. But even skilful Maurice Morgann has trouble farther on, and this is the way in which he gets out of it. But first of all we must give the speeches as set down in the play. “P. Hen. Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again; and when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this. "Poins. Mark, Jack. "P. Hen. We two saw you four set on four; you 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 word outfaced 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 truth, what device, what darting-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 me. Why, hear me, 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 upon 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. Sh! no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me." All this seems self-evident enough as to what Shakespeare meant, but Morgann gets out of the net with wonderful dexterity; he throws the whole burden on the fat knight's lies, not his courage; on his boasted power of "swearing truth out of England,” not on his running away, roaring, after the feint of a blow or two; and then he adds this remarkable bit of reasoning, surely as odd an instance of non sequiter as one could meet with ! "The real truth seems to be, that had Falstaff, loose and unprincipled as he was, been born a coward and bred a soldier, he must, naturally, have been a great braggadocio, a true Miles Gloriosus; but in such a case he should have been exhibited active and young; for it is plain that age and corpulency are an excuse for cowardice which ought not to be afforded him. Herein, appears the admirable address of Shakespeare, who can show us Falstaff in the various lights, not only of what he is, but of what he would have been under one single variation of character, - the want of natural courage; whilst, with an art not enough understood, he most effectually preserves the real character of Falstaff, even in the moment he seems to depart from it, by making his lies too extravagant for practised imposition; by grounding them more upon humor than deceit; and turning them into a fair and honest proof of general courage, by approximating them to the concealment only of a single exception; and hence it is that we see him draw so deeply and so con fidently upon his former credit for - There are many expressions scattered about both parts of this play which would help Morgann's theory, and prove Sir John's repute by no means that of a coward, but rather the reverse. When Hostess Quickly has him arrested, or, rather, when she orders Snare to the task, that officer's frightened reply is, "It may chance cost some of us our lives, for he will stab." To which the Hostess bears sorrowful testimony of how "in good faith a' cares not what mischief he doth if his weapon be out; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child." Doll Tearsheet asks him: "When wilt thou leave fighting o' days and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven?" Shallow remembers him as "Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, - a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk," adding, "I saw him break Skogan's head at the court-gate, when he was a crack not thus high." The Lord Chief Justice speaks of his "day's service at Shrewsbury," as having "gilded his night's exploit at Gadshill." And there are other less important phrases, all of which tend to show that the old, fat, boastful knight-"Jack Falstaff with my familiars, John with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all Europe," as he says of himself-was not reputed an absolute coward, whatever might be his sins and follies to which no denial could be given. Perhaps the quiet self-surrender of Sir John Colleville, on hearing who was his assailant, is the most expressive of all the illustrations that can be given. "I think you are Sir John Falstaff," says Colleville of the Dale, "and in that thought yield me." Prince John of Lancaster, however, seems to think somewhat differently from this present theory of Falstaff's courage, and his speech as the old knight comes up is not very flattering: "Now, Falstaff, where have you been all this while? "I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus. I never knew yet but rebuke and check was the reward of valor. Do you think me a swallow, an arrow, a bullet? have I, in my poor old motions, the expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with the very exfoundered nine score and odd posts; tremest inch of possibility; I have and here, travel-tainted as I am, have, in my pure and immaculate valor taken Sir John Colleville-of-the-Dale, a most furious knight and valiant enemy. But what of that? he saw me, and yielded; that I may justly say, with the hooknosed fellow of Rome,I came, saw, and overcame. "P. John. It was more of his courtesy that your deserving." Afterwards Falstaff himself confesses how little valor had had to do with his conquest. Prince John says, "A famous rebel art thou, Colleville." "Fal. And a famous true subject took him. "Cole. I am, my lord, but as my betters are themselves, but thou, like a kind fel- gann disposes of very summarily. He Lancaster's rebukes, however, Moris a cold-blooded boy, as Falstaff calls by nature; bred up, moreover, in the him, "a politician, as it should seem school of Bolingbroke, his father, and age and ability, perhaps, but with too tutored to betray; with sufficient courtion, and too little of enthusiasm, ever much of the knave in his composiThat such a youth as this should, even to be a great and superior character. take any plausible occasion to injure a from the propensities of character alone, frank, unguarded man of wit and pleasure will not appear unnatural.” With more in the same strain, all tending to the whitewashing of Sir John, and to the blackening of the young prince. That, too, was a fivebarred gate which the worthy Welshman's hobby took quite cleverly, though the leap was a stiff one. Morgann sums up the old knight's character thus: "A man at once young and old, enterprising and fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless and wicked, weak in principle, and resolute by constitution, cowardly in appearance and brave in reality; a knave without malice, a liar without deceit; and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier without either dignity, decency, or honor; this is a character, which, though it may be decompounded, could not, I believe, have been formed, nor the ingredients of it duly mingled, upon any receipt whatever; it required the hand of Shakespeare himself to give to every particular part a relish of the whole, and of the whole, to every particular part." Another odd little volume, mentioned by Charles Lamb, but not to be had on every bookshelf, is a set of what the writer calls 66 'Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his friends; now first made public by a gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine manuscripts which have been in the possession of the Quickly family near four hundred years." This little volume was printed in 1796, and is dedicated to "Master Samuel Irelaunde, right curteis and erudite Syre." The frontispiece is a grotesque portrait of Falstaff dancing to Master Brook's fiddling, with the motto, from the letters, "I must dance, caper in the Sin like a Sun of Molass; only my ascension will be heavier in regard; I must rise without a crane, Master Brook." The whole letters are very funny, if undeniably coarser than Shakespeare himself. These letters are by Lamb's friend, James White, and on the fly-leaf of the copy at the British Museum (London) is the following note, written in pencil by the hand of Mr. Watts, the erudite keeper of the Printed Books, or chief librarian. "These letters are by James White, the friend of Charles Lamb. See Talfourd's collection of Lamb's Letters, Vol. I., page 12, of which I extract the following: 'All that now remains of Jem (James White) is the celebration of the supper which he gave to the young chimney-sweeper in the Elia of his friend, and a thin duodecimo volume, which he published in 1796, under the title of Letters of Sir John Falstaff, etc.'" Considering the affection between White and Lamb, and remembering Lamb's famous essay of the roast pig, it does not strike us as strange that the editor explains how it is that some of the letters of the series "found by Mrs. Quickly, landlady of the Boar Tavern in Eastcheap in a private drawer, at the left hand corner of a walnuttree escritoire, the property of Sir John Falstaff after the good knight's death," had been destroyed by the Dame's elderly maiden sister "who unfortunately for all the world and to my individual eternal sorrow and regret, of all the dishes in the culinary system, was fond of roast pig." She, it seems, "absolutely made use of several no doubt invaluable letters to shade the jutting protuberances of that animal from disproportionate excoriation in its circuitous approaches to the fire." There is nothing quite fitting for quotation in these letters. They are smart, clever, and have caught the tone and manner of the times in which they are assumed to have been written, with great cleverness; but they are coarse and broad, and as at the best they are only imitations they may pass. The last of the series is one from Captain Fluellen to Mrs. Quickly, speaking of Falstaff's death, and ends thus: "O' my credit, there is three pounds, Sir John did get advance of me py way of possets, which is no petter than dross. Put that, look 'e, is a matter of affapility between us, that I 'ould not discuss to an own prother. He is dead, and I am three crowns in his debt, and there's the finish. Got bless you, Mistress Quickly!" Mrs. Lynn Linton. AUNT ROSY'S CHEST. HIS world has produced but one THIS Aunt Rosy; none such were ever known before her, neither after her have any arisen like unto her. She was the idol of the nursery; and though there might be minor deities among dolls or dogs or books, we all united to worship at her shrine. She was nurse at the old place for more than thirty years, and two generations of babies had been cradled on her wide lap, tossed in her strong arms, and hushed to sleep under the eaves of her turban. So far as children were concerned, she had certainly found the lucky-stone. Cross babies became serene under her conciliatory cooing; staringly wakeful little eyes were seduced into sleep by her slumberous hushaby; stubborn stomach-aches were charmed away with her soft patting and peppermint-tea combined; cruel, hidden pins that pierced tender flesh her knowing fingers would find and draw out as with a magnet; and first and last, and black and white, seventeen babies have cut their teeth on the soft, tough forefinger of Aunt Rosy's left hand. As for the woes of older children, it paid well to be thwarted, for the exquisite comfort of throwing yourself on her broad, pacific bosom, and feeling her arms about you as she swayed to and fro and crooned to you; while her long ear ring dangled against your cheek all the time, and her big boxing-glove of a hand went pat, pat, pat, on the middle of your back, till you felt as if heaven, and love, and all things dear, had found their home within the folds of Aunt Rosy's blue jean gown and red and yellow bandanna. It is strange to see what varied traits distinguish the families on an estate; they might almost belong to different races, in their marked diversity. Phil's family, for instance, were sooty-black, patient, hard-working souls; while Sancho's people were little, wiry, grayish, apish-looking creatures, quick and cunning as monkeys, and with no more apparent conscience; and Aunt Kosy's relations were gigantic men and women, children of the Anakim, - with huge frames well padded with flesh, and religious through every ounce of their substance. Her parents, Aunt Patience and Unk Steve, were the models of piety for all on the old plantation, and for years their little cabin had been the scene of the weekly prayer-meeting. They had been young, and now they were old, and in youth and age they were still the same patient, God-fearing, childlike souls, bringing up children and grandchildren to follow in their steps; a huge, brawny, faithful race, ponderous and pious, exponents of muscular Christianity in the fullest sense, and a terror to evil-doers as much for their strength as their goodness. More than once it happened that when some one of the men in the kitchen had infringed Aunt Rosy's rights, or used his tongue too freely in her presence, she had quietly but remorselessly shouldered him like a bag of meal, and, marching out of the kitchen door, tossed him into the middle of the duck-pond. "Let 'em mind their manners," she would say loftily, "or Aunt Rosy 'll give 'em another chance to larn." Aunt Rosy always walked with her head high in the air, her elbows well squared, that is, if it is possible to square such a circle as her arms were, and with a sort of rolling gait that could afford to appear unsteady, because it was really so firm. Her great cushioned feet came down with elephantine weight and softness, silent as a cat's, but shaking the earth; and as she stepped she seemed always to sink an inch or two before she came to the solid, as if she had scrubbingbrushes strapped to her soles and the bristles bent under her weight. Hun |