He is brave, too, despite all his detractors! When the Prince and Poins, in disguise, set upon the gentle robbers, as they are sharing their booty, Falstaff is the only one who is described as giving “a blow or two,” before he imitates “the rest,” and runs away. When he attacked the travellers he was content to fight his man; there were four to four. And as to the imaginative description of the assault given by Falstaff, I believe it to have been uttered in joke and gayety of heart. I have implicit faith in the assertion, that he knew the disguised parties as well as their mothers did. See how readily he detects the Prince and Poins, when they are disguised as “drawers” at the inn in Eastcheap. If Falstaff was right in the latter case, when he told the Prince that he, Falstaff, was a gentleman, I think, too, he had as sufficient authority for saying to Hal, “Thou _knowest_ I am as valiant as Hercules.” I can not believe otherwise of a man whose taste was so little vitiated that he could at once detect when there was “lime” in his sack, and who no sooner hears that the state is in danger, than he suggests to the young Prince that he _must_ to court. His obesity may be suspected as not being the fruit of much temperance, but there is a Cardinal Archbishop in England who is the fattest man in the fifty-two counties, and why may we not conclude in both cases, that it is as Falstaff says, and that sighing and grief blow up a man like a bladder? Then, only consider the reproof which Falstaff addresses to the Prince, speaking in the character of King to that illustrious scapegrace. Wisdom more austere, or graver condemnation of excess, could hardly be uttered by the whole college of cardinals, at any time. The prince is a mere plagiarist from the knight, and when he accuses the latter of being given to licentious ways, with what respectful humility does the old man plead guilty to his years, but “saving your reverence,” not to the vices which are said to accompany them? Not that he is perfect, or would boast of being so. “He _has had_,” he says touchingly, “a true faith and a good conscience, but their date is out.” How ill is he requited by the Prince, in whose service he has lost these jewels, when his Highness remarks, before setting out to the field, “I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know his death will be a charge of fourscore.” And this is said of one who has forgotten what the inside of a church is like through keeping this Prince’s villanous company; till when, he had been “as virtuously given as a gentleman need be.” What he considers as the requisite practice of a gentleman, is explained by Falstaff in his low estate, and not in the spirit which moved him when he “lived well and in good compass.”