Master Shallow proceeded to call over the muster roll — not appearing to notice the deficiency..

"Ralph Mouldy - let me see. Where is Ralph Mouldy?"

"Here, if it please you."

Mr. Mouldy's voice and expression of countenance declared plainly that it didn't please him.

Mouldy was in all probability a dangerous poacher, so anxious was the worthy magistrate to recommend him for military service.

"What think you, Sir John? A good limbed fellow; young, strong, and of good friends."

The last recommendation decided Sir John at once. Mouldy would do. "Is thy name Mouldy?"

"Yea, if it please you."

""Tis the more time thou wert used."

Master Shallow was in ecstacies. The practical joke of sending a man to the wars against his will had already tickled the excellent justice's sense of humour. But to make a verbal jest on his calamity to his very face, and on his own name, was irresistible.

"Ha! ha ha! most excellent i' faith! Things that are mouldy lack use. Very singular, good. Well said, Sir John. Very well said."

"Prick him," said Sir John.

And down went a mark against Mouldy's name, making him as much the King's property as though he had been honestly bought by a sergeant's shilling. Mouldy grumbled like a malcontent as he was. He thought that he might

have been let alone.

"My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery. You need not to have pricked me: there are other men fitter

to go than I."

As if that were a reason for your not going! For shame, Mouldy !

Simon Shadow was the next called.

"Aye, marry, let me have him to sit under," said Sir John, "he's like to be a cold soldier."

Shadow was approved and pricked.

"Thomas Wart!"

"Where's he?"

"Here, sir!"

"Is thy name Wart." (Sir John Falstaff was the questioner.)

"Yes, Sir?"

"Thou art a very ragged Wart."

"Shall I prick him down, Sir John ?"

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"It were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his back, and the whole Prick him no more."

frame stands upon pins.

Renewed ecstacies of Mr. Justice Shallow. His worship had always considered a ragged man a most laughable object. But the matter had never been represented to him in such a truly ridiculous light as by his facetious guest. "Ha! ha ha! You can do it, Sir, you can do it. I commend you well. Francis Feeble."

"Here, Sir."

"What trade art thou, Feeble?" Sir John asked.

"A woman's tailor, Sir."

"Shall I prick him, Sir?"

"You may; but if he had been a man's tailor, he would have pricked you."

Feeble was approved and pricked. He was the only one who appeared to submit to the operation without wincing. Feeble proved the most valiant ninth part of a recruit on record. He appeared delighted with his prospects. The only drawback to his military ardour and satisfaction was a regret that Wart could not be permitted to accompany him. This makes it difficult to decide whether Wart was his bosom friend or his mortal enemy.

"I would Wart might have gone, Sir," quoth Feeble.

"I would thou wert a man's tailor," replied the Captain, "that thou might'st mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so many thousands. Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble."

Feeble was satisfied. So, no doubt, was Wart.

"Peter Bullcalf of the Green," was the next called.

"Trust me, a likely fellow," said the Knight: "prick me Bullcalf till he roar again."

"Oh! Sir, I am a diseased man." Bullcalf bellowed, proving that his lungs were at all events not yet affected.

"What disease hast thou?"

"A villainous cold, Sira cough, Sir-which I caught with ringing in the King's affairs on his coronation day, Sir."

"Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown; we will have away thy cold; and I will take such order that thy friends shall ring for thee."

It was fortunate that with this sally Sir John Falstaff desisted for the present, or he would in all probability have been the death of Master

Robert Shallow. That gentleman repeated the words, " And I will take such order that thy friends shall ring for thee," to himself, many times over, that he might be able to retail the jest to his admiring friends. He circulated it at first as one of the many brilliant things Sir John Falstaff had said on the occasion of his first visit to Shallow Hall. But in the course of time the worthy magistrate appropriated it to his own service, and never missed an opportunity of bringing it forward (with the point carefully omitted) as an original witticism from the inexhaustible repertoire of himself, Master Robert Shallow.

Bullcalf was pricked. The justices and their military friend withdrew to luncheon.

"Good Master Corporate Bardolph," said Bullcalf when the troops were left alone with that warlike personage, "stand my friend, and here is four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you."

Bullcalf urged his plea by further arguments. They were unnecessary. The first was more than sufficient.

"Go to stand aside," said Bardolph, pocketing the money.

Mouldy quitted the ranks and motioned his superior to grant him also a private conference.

"And good Master Corporal Captain, for my old dame's sake, stand my friend she has nobody to do anything about her, when I am gone and she is old and cannot help herself. You shall have forty, Sir."

Chink! Chink!

"Go to: stand aside."

"Sir, a word with you," said Bardolph when his Captain reappeared with the two justices. "I have three pound to free Mouldy and Bullcalf.”

It should be observed that four ten shilling pieces added to forty shillings at that period, as now, made a total of four pounds sterling. Bardolph's education had been neglected — and let us hope that his miscalculation was merely the result of a total ignorance of the rules of compound addition.

A word to the wise is sufficient for them. Sir John Falstaff at once decided that Mouldy should stay at home until past service, and Bullcalf be left to grow till he should be fit for it. Sir John would have none of them. "Sir John, Sir John," urged Master Shallow. "Do not yourself wrong: they are your likeliest men, and I would have you served with the best." It is not improbable that Bullcalf was a poacher too.

Sir John Falstaff was indignant.

"Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thewes, the stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here's Wart. You see what a ragged appear

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ance it is. He shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer's hammer: come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer's bucket. And this same half-faced fellow Shadow, give me this man ―he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat-how swiftly will this Feeble, the woman's tailor, run off?"

Briefly, Feeble, Wart, and Shadow were enrolled among the king's soldiers serving under Sir John Falstaff. Bullcalf and Mouldy were allowed to go about their business.

It will be seen from the above that the ancient manner of choosing soldiers differed not materially from the modern one. The better class of men were rejected, and the ranks supplied from the dregs of the population. Any charge of venality against Sir John Falstaff and his lieutenant for suffering Mouldy and Bullcalf to buy off their services, I hope I can meet, by calling attention to the fact that there are even now certain favoured persons whole regiments in fact- ostensibly in her Majesty's service, who are invariably privileged to stop at home in times of danger. Or I can dispose of the matter more simply by stating that Sir John Falstaff merely gave permission to the two warriors elect, Mouldy and Bullcalf— to return to their homes on urgent private affairs.

It may be objected that Sir John Falstaff observed an unjustifiable tone of levity in transacting a business of such gravity as the forcible abduction of poor men from their homes to risk their lives in a quarrel, the issue of which could not personally interest them. But Sir John's jests on the names, wardrobes, and personal appearance of his recruits, were at all events harmless. I have heard of much more practical jokes being passed on the British soldier by the authorities engaging him in my time; such as promising him certain sums of money for his services, and deducting nearly the whole amount for the expenses of his outfit; sending him to fight under a broiling sun, weighted with half a horse load of useless accoutrements; supplying him with firelocks that burst in his hands; shipping him on board crazy old vessels that go to pieces in still water; and a thousand others.

VI.

ON THE MAGNANIMITY OF SIR JOHN FALSTAFF IN ABSTAINING FROM PARTICIPATION IN A DISGRACEFUL ACTION. EPISODE OF COLEVILE OF THE GRANGE.

IN estimating the characters of great men, it is recognised as a principle that we should give them almost the same credit for the mischief they abstain from doing as for the positive good they effect. Abstention from evil, under circumstances of great temptation to its performance, is unquestionably a virtue of the highest order. In proof of the high esteem habitually awarded by mankind to this rare although negative excellence, I will refer merely to the celebrated letting-alone case of the Roman Scipio, and the well-known parallel to it afforded by the conduct of Sir John Falstaff himself, who (at a later period of his career than the one at present under notice), having occasion, for professional reasons, to break open a gentleman's lodge, kill the gentleman's deer, and maltreat the gentleman's servants, was yet, in the very height and impetuosity of action, enabled to put a sufficient curb on his impulses to resist the temptation of kissing a keeper's daughter!

The little incident of self-denial just alluded to, though in every way deserving of the highest eulogy, has, as it seems to me, been dwelt on by the commentators with undue stress, rather implying a suspicion that it might have been an exceptional case in the character and conduct of our knight, and remarkable only on that account. So far from this being the truth, I could establish precedents for the occurrence by a thousand proofs of glaring offences which Sir John Falstaff did not commit, while otherwise occupied in the way of his business. I will content myself, however, with a single example, couched in an incident, which here falls naturally into its place, by which it will be seen that the hero of these pages could, on occasion, abstain from taking part in even the greatest acts of rascality of his time; moreover, when the greatest facilities, and even inducements, existed for his participating in such means of glory. The following passage from Hollinshed will facilitate comprehension of the incident.

"Raufe Nevill, Earl of Westmoreland, that was not far off, together with the Lord John of Lancaster, the King's son, being informed of this "rebellious attempt*, assembled together such powers as they might make,

i.e. That of Northumberland, Hastings, Mowbray and Archbishop Scroop-with a view to the suppression of which Falstaff and others were now marching into Yorkshire.