Of the personal character of Master Robert Shallow, the worthy representative of this race and order in Sir John Falstaff’s time, some glimpse has possibly been obtained from an early chapter of this work. Sir John at the advanced period of life to which I have now brought him, remembered the justice “at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese paring; when he was naked he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: he was so forlorn” (I am quoting Sir John’s own words) “that his dimensions to any thick sight were invisible; he was the very genius of famine; he came ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the over-scutched huswives that he had heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or his good-nights. And now is this Vice’s dagger become a squire; and talks as familiarly of John of Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him; and I’ll be sworn he never saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head for crowding amongst the marshal’s men. I saw it, and told John of Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have trussed him and all his apparel into an eel skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court, and now he hath land and beeves!” Considering that, when Sir John Falstaff made these reflections upon the past and present of Master Robert Shallow, nearly fifty years had elapsed since the events alluded to, it will be admitted that our knight’s recollection of the passage in the Tilt-yard (with which my readers are familiar) and the substance of the witticism it evoked from him at the time, prove his memory to have been at least unimpaired. It is strange that Sir John should marvel at Master Shallow’s possession of land and beeves. It will be found through all ages that the Shallows have had an eye to the main-chance, which it is very rarely indeed you find a fool neglecting. A mole may have very small eyes, but he is not quite blind. He is dazzled by pure daylight, it is true, and may never see a flower. But he is an excellent judge of dirt, which is to him the great necessary of life, and he will never lose sight of the importance of keeping a sufficient heap of it about him. V. VISIT TO JUSTICE SHALLOW’S.