_Pr. Henry._ Thou liest; thou art not colted--thou art uncolted. _Falst._ I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good king’s son! _Pr. Henry._ Out, you rogue! shall I be your ostler? _Falst._ Go hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters. If I be ta’en, I’ll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison. When a jest is so forward, and afoot to,--I hate it. [_Enter_ GADSHILL.] _Gads._ Stand! _Falst._ So I do, against my will. But we must here close the quotation. The reader will readily imagine himself a spectator of the scene, where the thieves rob the true men, and where retaliation is made upon the thieves by “two of their own gang, in forcibly taking from them their rich booty;” and he will again enjoy the conceit of Falstaff with his cups of limed sack, telling “incomprehensible falsehoods,” in order to cover his own cowardice; his long rencounter with the two “rogues in buckram suits, growing up into eleven,” all of whom he peppered and payed till three misbegotten knaves in “Kendal green (“for it was so dark, Hal, thou couldst not see thy hand!”) came at his back and let drive at him!” Thus, on the stage, in the closet, on the road--as a local writer has well observed--Falstaff’s adventure at Gadshill is likely to be “not only an argument for a week, laughter for a month, but a good jest forever.” AUTHORITIES:--Radcliffe.--Caumont.--Culmien.--Hasted.--France Monumentale.--Matth. Paris.--Hist. Angl.--Hist. of Eng. Civil and Milit.--Pictorial Hist. of Engl.--Holinshed.--Fabyan.--Hist. and Antiq. of Rochest.--Hist. of the Castle and Cathed.--Lambard, 1576.--Kentish Tourist.--King.--Grose.--Denne.--Kilburne.--Local Pamphlets.--Dallaway.--Milit. Archit.--Discourses, Antiquities of Kent.--Hardynge.--Registrum Roffense, by Thorpe.--Eadmer.--Polyd. Virg.--Selecta Monumenta.--Camden.--Somner.--Battely.--Antiq. Itiner., etc. etc. [Illustration: TEWKESBURY ABBEY.] [Illustration: May iiii. MCCCCLXXI.] THE ABBEY OF TEWKESBURY, <g>Gloucestershire.</g> Ampla foro, et partis spoliis præclara, THEOCI Curia, Sabrinæ quà se committit Avona, Fulget; nobilium sacrisque recondit in antris Multorum Cineres, quondam inclyta corpora bello.--LELAND.