In concluding this section of my gossiping record, I will add that the supposition of Shakespeare having intended to represent Sir John Oldcastle under the title of Sir John Falstaff, is _merely_ a supposition. It has never been satisfactorily made out. Far otherwise is the case with that gallant Welsh man-at-arms, _Fluellin_. The original of this character was a David Gam of Brecknock, who having killed a cousin with an unpronounceable name, in the High Street of Brecknock, avoided the possibly unpleasant consequences by joining the Lancastrian party. _Gam_ was merely a nickname, having reference to an obliquity of vision in the doughty and disputative David. The real name was Llewellyn; and if Shakespeare disguised the appellation, it was from notions of delicacy, probably, as the descendants of the hero were well known and respected at the English court in Shakespeare’s time. Jones, in his “History of Brecknockshire,” identifies the personage in question in this way: “I have called Fluellin a burlesque character, because his pribbles and prabbles, which were generally out-heroded, sound ludicrously to an English as well as a Welsh ear; yet, after all, Llewellyn is a brave soldier and an honest fellow. He is admitted into a considerable degree of intimacy with the King, and stands high in his good opinion, which is a strong presumptive proof, notwithstanding Shakespeare, the better to conceal his object, describes the death of Sir David Gam, that he intended David Llewellyn by his portrait of the testy Welshman, for there was no other person of that country in the English army, who could have been supposed to be upon such terms of familiarity with the King.” It is singular that the descendants of the Welsh knight subsequently dropped the proud old name with more l’s in it than syllables, and adopted the monosyllabic _soubriquet_. Squinting David, who fought so well at Agincourt, would have knocked down any man who would have dared to address him personally as “Gam,” that is, “game,” or “cock-eyed.” His posterity proved less susceptible; and Mr. Jones says of them, in a burst of melancholy over fallen greatness: “At different periods between the years 1550 and 1700, I have seen the descendants of the hero of Agincourt (who lived like a wolf and died like a lion) in the possession of every acre of ground in the county of Brecon; at the commencement of the eighteenth century, I find one of them common bellman of the town of Brecknock, and before the conclusion, two others, supported by the inhabitants of the parish where they reside; and even the name of Gam is, in the legitimate line, extinct.” Mr. Jones might have comforted himself by remembering that as the Gams went out, the Kembles came in, and that the illustrious Sarah dignified by her birth the garret of that “Shoulder of Mutton” public-house, which stood in the street where chivalrous but squinting Davy had slain his cousin with the unpronounceable name.