Thou hast fire 26 and sword on thy side, and yet thou ran'st away; What instinct hast thou for it? Bard. My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations?

P. Hen. I do.

Bard. What think you they portend?
P. Hen. Hot livers and cold purses 27.
Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.
P. Hen. No, if rightly taken, halter.

Re-enter FALSTAFF.

Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet creature of bombast 28? How long is't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?

Fal. My own knee, when I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring 29: A plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder. There's villanous news abroad:

26 The fire in Bardolph's face.

27 i. e. drunkenness and poverty.

28 i. e. my sweet stuffed creature.' Bombast is cotton. Gerard calls the cotton plant the bombast tree. It is here used for the stuffing of clothes. See a note on Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. Sc. 2, p. 363. In an old phrase book, called Hormanni Vulgaria, is the following passage: The fleshe lyeth betwene the bone and skynne like a mattress of cotton.'

29 Aristophanes has the same thought:

· Διὰ δακτυλίω μὲν ἦν ἐμέ γ' ἄν διελκύσαις.

Plutus, v. 1037.

The custom of wearing a ring upon the thumb is very ancient. The rider of the brazen horse in Chaucer's Squiers Tale :—

upon his thombe he had a ring of gold.'

Grave personages, citizens, and aldermen wore a plain broad gold ring upon the thumb, which often had a motto engraved in the inside of it. An alderman's thumb-ring, and its motto, is mentioned in The Antipodes, by Brome. And in his Northern Lass A good man in the city, &c. wears nothing rich about him but the gout or a thumb-ring. Again, in Wit in a Constable, 1640- -no more wit than the rest of the bench; what lies in his thumb-ring.'

here was Sir John Bracy from your father; you must to the court in the morning. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon 30 the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook 31,-What, a plague, call you him?

Poins. O, Glendower.

Fal. Owen, Owen; the same; and his son-inlaw, Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o'horseback up a hill perpendicular.

P. Hen. He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol 32 kills a sparrow flying.

Fal. You have hit it.

P. Hen. So did he never the

sparrow.

Fal: Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him; he will not run.

30 A demon; who is described as one of the four kings who rule over all the demons in the world.

31 The Welsh hook was a kind of hedging bill made with a hook at the end, and a long handle like the partisan or halbert. The Welsh glaive' (which appears to be the same thing) Grose says 'is a kind of bill sometimes reckoned among the pole-axes.' Minshew thus describes it:- Armorum genus est ære in falcis modum incurvato, perticæ longissimæ præfixo.' And Florio, in voce Falcione, a bending forest bill or Welch hook.' So in the old play of Sir John Oldcastle ;- that no man presume to wear any weapons, especially Welch hooks and forest bills.' Its long handle is hinted at in Westward Hoe, 1607 :- It will be as good as a Welch hook for you, to keep out the other at stavesend.' In The Insatiate Countess, by Marston, they are called 'The ancient hooks of great Cadwallader,'

And Drayton says:

'Skeridvaur at last

Caught up his country hook.'

I am surprised that Mr. Nares has called it a sword.

32 Pistols were not in use in the age of Henry IV. They are said to have been much used by the Scotch in Shakspeare's time.

P. Hen. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running?

Fal. O'horseback, ye cuckoo! but, afoot, he will not budge a foot.

P. Hen. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.

Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps 33 more: Worcester is stolen away to-night; thy father's beard is turned white with the news; you may buy land now as cheap a stinking mackarel.

P. Hen. Why then, 'tis like, if there come a hot June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds.

Fal. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like, we shall have good trading that way.-But, tell me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard? thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at it?

P. Hen. Not a whit, i'faith; I lack some of thy instinct.

Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow, when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an answer.

P. Hen. Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.

Fal. Shall I? content:-This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.

33 Scotsmen, on account of their blue bonnets.

34 In the old anonymous play of King Henry V. the same strain of humour is discoverable:- Thou shalt be my lord chief justice, and shalt sit in this chair; and I'll be the young prince, and hit thee a box of the ear,' &c. A state is a chair with a canopy over it.

P. Hen. Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown, for a pitiful bald crown!

Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved.-Give me a cup of sack, to make mine eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses' 35 vein. .P. Hen. Well, here is my leg 56

Fal. And here is my speech:-Stand aside, nobility.

Host. This is excellent sport, i'faith.

Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.

Host. O, the father, how he holds his countenance !

Fal. For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful

queen,

For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes 37. Host. O rare! he doth it as like one of these harlotry players, as I ever see.

Fal. Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good ticklebrain.—Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accom

25 The banter is here upon the play called A Lamentable Tragedie mixed full of pleasant Mirthe, containing the Life of Cambises, King of Persia, by Thomas Preston [1570]. There is a marginal direction in this play, At this tale tolde, let the queen weep,' which is probably alluded to, though the measure in the parody is not the same with that of the original.

36 i.e. my obeisance.

37 Thus in Cambyses:

Queen. These words to hear makes stilling tears issue
from chrystall eyes.'

Ritson thinks that the following passage in Soliman and Perseda is glanced at:

How can mine eyes dart forth a pleasant look,

When they are stopp'd with floods of flowing tears?"

panied for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villanous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point;-Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher 38, and eat blackberries? a question not to be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? a question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also:-And yet there is a virtuous man, whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name.

P. Hen. What manner of man, an it like your majesty?

Fal. A good portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r-lady, inclining to threescore; And now I remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then,

38 A micher here signifies a truant. So in an old phrase book, Hormanni Vulgaria, 1509:- He is a mychar; vagus est non discolus.' To mich was to skulk, to hide; and hence the word sometimes also signified a skulking thief, and sometimes a miser. In Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594, we have:- How like a micher he stands, as if he had truanted from honesty.'