But to proceed. _Lord Bardolph_ was a man of the world, and of sense and observation. He informs _Northumberland_, erroneously indeed, that _Percy_ had beaten the King at Shrewsbury. “_The King,_” according to him, “_was wounded; the Prince of Wales and the two Blunts slain, certain Nobles_, whom he names, _had escaped by flight, and the Brawn Sir John Falstaff was taken prisoner._” But how came _Falstaff_ into this list? Common fame had put him there. He is singularly obliged to Common fame.—But if he had not been a Soldier of repute, if he had not been brave as well as fat, if he had been _mere brawn_, it would have been more germane to the matter if this lord had put him down among the baggage or the provender. The fact seems to be that there is a real consequence about Sir _John Falstaff_ which is not brought forward: We see him only in his familiar hours; we enter the tavern with _Hal_ and _Poins_; we join in the laugh and _take a pride to gird at him_: But there may be a great deal of truth in what he himself writes to the Prince, that tho’ he be “_Jack Falstaff with his Familiars, he is __SIR JOHN__ with the rest of Europe._” It has been remarked, and very truly I believe, that no man is a hero in the eye of his valet-de-chambre; and _thus_ it is, we are witnesses only of _Falstaff_’s weakness and buffoonery; our acquaintance is with _Jack Falstaff_, _Plump Jack_, and _Sir John Paunch_; but if we would look for _Sir John Falstaff_, we must put on, as _Bunyan_ would have expressed it, the spectacles of observation. With respect, for instance, to his Military command at Shrewsbury, nothing appears on the surface but the Prince’s familiarly saying, in the tone usually assumed when speaking of _Falstaff_, “_I will procure this fat rogue a Charge of foot_”; and in another place, “_I will procure thee Jack a Charge of foot; meet me to-morrow in the Temple Hall._” Indeed we might venture to infer from this, that a Prince of so great ability, whose wildness was only external and assumed, would not have procured, in so nice and critical a conjuncture, a Charge of foot for a known Coward. But there was more it seems in the case: We now find from this report, to which _Lord Bardolph_ had given full credit, that the world had its eye upon _Falstaff_ as an officer of merit, whom it expected to find in the field, and whose fate in the battle was an object of Public concern: His life was, it seems, very material indeed; a thread of so much dependence, that _fiction_, weaving the fates of Princes, did not think it unworthy, how coarse soever, of being made a part of the tissue.