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. 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.

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 precriptions, 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 your waste is great.

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 Gads-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'er-posting 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-candle, my lord; all tallow : if 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 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: Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bear-herd: Pregnancy 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 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 ? 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' th' 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.

[7] A rassel 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. JOHNS. [8] I cannot be taken in a reckoning; I cannot pass current. JON. [9] A coster-monger is a costard-monger, a dealer in appies called by that name, Because they are shaped like a costard, i. e. man's head. [1] Pregnancy is readiness. STEEVENS. [2] In ancient language, single often means small.

STEEVENS.

STEEVENS.

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 Northumber land.

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 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: 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 me rest. 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, Ch. Jest. 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.3 Fare you well: Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland. [Ex. C. Just. & Atten.

Fal. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle.*—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 other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses.-Boy

In our author's time, small beer was called single beer, and that of a stronger quality, double beer. MALONE.

[3] I believe a quibble was here intended. A cross is a coin so called because stamped with a cross. STEEVENS.

[4] A beetle wielded by three men. POPE. A diversion is common with boys in Warwickshire and the adjoining counties, on finding a toad, to lay a board about two or three feet long, at right angles, over a stick about two or three inches diameter. Then placing the toad at one end, the other is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the creature forty or fifty feet perpendicular from the earth, and its return in general kills it. This is called fillipping a toad. A threeman beetle is an instrument used for driving piles; it is made of a log of wood about eighteen or twenty inches diameter, and fourteen or fifteen inches thick, with one short and two long handles. A man at each of the long handles manages the fall of the beetle, and a third man, by the short handle assists in raising it to strike the blow. Such an implement was, without doubt, very suitable for fillipping so corpulent a being as Falstaff. STEEVENS.

Page. Sir?

Fal. What money is in my purse?

Page. Seven groats and two-pence.

Fal. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.-Go bear this letter to my lord of Lancaster; this to the prince; this to the earl of Westmoreland; and this to old mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair on my chin: About it; you know where to find me. [Exit Page.] A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one, or the other, plays the rogue with my great toe. It is no matter, if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable: A good wit will make use of any thing; I will turn diseases to commodity. [Exit

SCENE III.

York. A Room in the Archbishop's Palace. Enter the Archbishop of York, the Lords HASTINGS, MOWBRAY and BARDOLPH.

Arch. Thus have you heard our cause, and known our

means;

And, my most noble friends, I pray you all,
Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes :-
And first, lord Marshal, what say you to it?

Mow. I well allow the occasion of our arms;
But gladly would be better satisfied,

How, in our means, we should advance ourselves
To look with forehead bold and big enough
Upon the power and puissance of the king.

Hast. Our present musters grow upon the file
To five and twenty thousand men of choice;
And our supplies live largely in the hope
Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
With an incensed fire of injuries.

Bard. The question then, lord Hastings, standeth thus ;
-Whether our present five and twenty thousand
May hold up head without Northumberland.

Hast. With him, we may.

Bard. Ay, marry, there's the point;

But if without him we be thought too feeble,
My judgment is, we should not step too far

Till we had his assistance by the hand.

For, in a theme so bloody-fac'd as this,
Conjecture, expectation, and surmise.
Of aids uncertain, should not be admitted.

Arch. 'Tis very true, lord Bardolph; for, indeed,
It was young Hotspur's case at Shrewsbury.

Bard. It was, my lord; who lin'd himself with hope, Eating the air on promise of supply,

Flattering himself with project of a power

Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts :
And so, with great imagination,

Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,
And, winking, leap'd into destruction.

Hast. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt,
To lay down likelihoods, and forms of hope.
Bard. Yes, in this present quality of war ;-
Indeed the instant action, (a cause on foot,)
Lives so in hope, as in an early spring

We see th' appearing buds; which, to prove fruit,
Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair,

That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection : .
Which if we find outweighs ability,

What do we then, but draw anew the model
In fewer offices; or, at least, desist

To build at all? Much more, in this great work,
(Which is, almost, to pluck a kingdom down,
And set another up,) should we survey
The plot of situation, and the model;
Consent upon a sure foundation ;

Question surveyors; know our own estate,
How able such a work to undergo,
To weigh against his opposite; or else,
We fortify in paper, and in figures,

Using the names of men, instead of men :

Like one, that draws the model of a house

Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,
Gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost
A naked subject to the weeping clouds,

And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.

Hast. Grant, that our hopes (yet likely of fair birth,} Should be still-born, and that we now possess'd

[5]e. which turned out to be much smaller. MUSGRAVE