This is wonderfully proper for the occasion; it is affectionate, it is pathetic, yet it remembers his vanities, and, with a faint gleam of recollected mirth, even his plumpness and corpulency; but it is a pleasantry softned and rendered even vapid by tenderness, and it goes off in the sickly effort of a miserable pun.(47)—But to our immediate purpose,—why is not his Cowardice remembered too? what, no surprize that _Falstaff_ should lye by the side of the noble _Percy_ in the bed of honour! No reflection that flight, though unfettered by disease, could not avail; that fear could not find a subterfuge from death? Shall his corpulency and his vanities be recorded, and his more characteristic quality of Cowardice, even in the moment that it particularly demanded notice and reflection, be forgotten? If by sparing a better man be here meant a _better soldier_, there is no doubt but there were better Soldiers in the army, more active, more young, more principled, more knowing; but none, it seems, taken for all in all, more acceptable. The comparative _better_ used here leaves to _Falstaff_ the praise at least of _good_; and to be a good soldier, is to be a great way from Coward. But _Falstaff_’s goodness, in this sort, appears to have been not only enough to redeem him from disgrace, but to mark him with reputation; if I was to add with _eminence_ and _distinction_, the funeral honours which are intended his obsequies, and his being bid, till then, _to lye in blood by the noble Percy_, would fairly bear me out. Upon the whole of the passages yet before us, why may I not reasonably hope that the good natured reader (and I write to no other), not offended at the levity of this exercise, may join with me in thinking that the character of _Falstaff_, as to valour, may be fairly and honestly summed up in the very words which he himself uses to _Harry_; and which seem, as to this point, to be intended by _Shakespeare_ as a _Compendium_ of his character. “_What_,” says the Prince, “_a Coward, Sir John Paunch!_” _Falstaff_ replies, “_Indeed I am not __JOHN OF GAUNT__ your grandfather, but yet __NO COWARD__, Hal._” The robbery at _Gads-Hill_ comes now to be considered. But _here_, after such long argumentation, we may be allowed to breath a little.