This is giving strong surety for his words; perhaps he thought the case required it: “_But how_,” says the Prince, “_shall we part with them in setting forth?_” _Poins_ is ready with his answer; he had matured the thought, and could solve every difficulty:—“_They could set out before, or after; their horses might be tied in the wood; they could change their visors; and he had already procured cases of __BUCKRAM__ to inmask their outward garments._” This was going far; it was doing business in good earnest. But if we look into the Play we shall be better able to account for this activity; we shall find that there was at least as much malice as jest in _Poins_’s intention. The rival situations of _Poins_ and _Falstaff_ had produced on both sides much jealousy and ill will, which occasionally appears, in _Shakespeare_’s manner, by side lights, without confounding the main action; and by the little we see of this _Poins_, he appears to be an unamiable, if not a very brutish and bad, character.—But to pass this;—the Prince next says, with a deliberate and wholesome caution, “_I doubt they will be too hard for us._” _Poins_’s reply is remarkable; “_Well, for __TWO__ of them, I know them to be as true bred Cowards as ever turned back; and for the __THIRD__, if he fights longer than he sees cause, I will forswear arms._” There is in this reply a great deal of management: There were _four_ persons in all, as _Poins_ well knew, and he had himself, but a little before, named them,—_Falstaff_, _Bardolph_, _Peto_, and _Gadshill_; but now he omits one of the number, which must be either _Falstaff_, as not subject to any imputation in point of Courage; and in that case _Peto_ will be the _third_;—or, as I rather think, in order to diminish the force of the Prince’s objection, he artfully drops _Gadshill_, who was then out of town, and might therefore be supposed to be less in the Prince’s notice; and upon this supposition _Falstaff_ will be the _third, who will not fight longer than he sees reason_. But on either supposition, what evidence is there of a pre-supposed Cowardice in _Falstaff_? On the contrary, what stronger evidence can we require that the Courage of _Falstaff_ had to this hour, through various trials, stood wholly unimpeached, than that _Poins_, the ill-disposed _Poins_, who ventures, for his own purposes, to steal, as it were, _one_ of the _four_ from the notice and memory of the Prince, and who shews himself, from worse motives, as skilfull in _diminishing_ as _Falstaff_ appears afterwards to be in _increasing_ of numbers, than that this very _Poins_ should not venture to put down _Falstaff_ in the list of Cowards; though the occasion so strongly required that he should be degraded. What _Poins_ dares do however in this sort, he _does_. “_As to the third_,” for so he describes _Falstaff_ (as if the name of this Veteran would have excited too strongly the ideas of Courage and