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 single1? 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

prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. JOHNSON.

9

2

Pregnancy-] Pregnancy is readiness.

your wit single?] or small.

antiquity?] To use the word antiquity for old age, is not peculiar to Shakspeare.

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 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. 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. Fare you well: Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

3

[Exeunt Chief Justice and Attendant. Fal. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle'.

you are too impatient to bear crosses.] A quibble seems here intended. Falstaff had just asked his lordship to lend him a thousand pound, and he tells him in return that he is not to be intrusted with money. A cross is a coin so called, because stamped with a cross.

fillip me with a three-man beetle.] A three-man beetle is an implement 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 filliping so corpulent a being as Falstaff.

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!

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?

5

prevent my curses.] To prevent means, in this place to -to commodity.] i. e. profit, self-interest.

anticipate.

6

Mowb. 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 the 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 The utmost man of expectation;

I think, we are a body strong enough,

Even as we are, to equal with the king.

Bard. What! is the king but five and twenty thou

sand?

Hast. To us, no more; nay, not so much, lord Bar

dolph.

For his divisions, as the times do brawl,

Are in three heads; one power against the French",

7 Consent upon a sure foundation ;] i. e. agree.

8

one power against the French,] During this rebellion of Northumberland and the archbishop, a French army of twelve thousand men landed at Milford Haven, in Wales, for the aid of Owen Glendower. STEEVENS.