“_Unto the right worshipful my good friend Master Robert Shallow, be this delivered in haste._ “Right trusty and well-beloved. Master Shallow, I commend me to you by our ancient friendship; and please you to wete that being armed with the King’s press for the raising of soldiers in the counties, I shall require at your hands the pick of half-a-dozen good and sufficient men. Thus much for business. Being sore pressed for time, and our General, the Prince of Lancaster, crying out for me, I would fain depute the choosing of the men to one of my lieutenants or ancients,--had it not reached me that the justice with whom I have to deal is no other than mine old friend Master Shallow. Knowing this, I cannot but play traitor to my duty and forfeit a day of the King’s service, to ride over in my own person, that I may once more say I have taken Master Shallow by the hand. “I pray you detain me not, and betray me not--that I give up to friendship that time which is the King’s. But I have no fear, as we have stood by each other ere now. Disturb not your household to make us welcome, as we may not unsaddle, and I bring none with me but a simple following befitting my rank as the King’s poor officer. The main force of my army I leave here, in camp, hard by Stratford, and I must back in haste lest the knaves run riot, and embroil me with the townsfolk. “Pick me good men, I pray, for the rebels wax insolent. Have them of the better class of yeomen if it may be--men whose lives are worth fighting for the care of. Your starveling hinds and villains are rank naught for march or battle-field. “Written at Stratford-on-the-Avon, the 8th day of June, in the year of Grace 1410. “John Falstaff (Knight).” * * The biographer--or, as he perhaps ought to be styled in connection with this department of his labours, the editor, is again called on to defend the course he has adopted with reference to such ancient manuscripts as he has found necessary to transfer to his pages. Objections have been made--which the periodical form of publication adopted in this work affords an opportunity of meeting--to the plan of modernising the orthography, and in some cases the phraseology, of these compositions, whereby it is asserted their interest is materially weakened. There can be no defence so adequate to the emergency as the plea of an illustrious example. Sir John Fenn, the learned and ingenious editor of the _Paston letters_, vindicates a similar line of conduct with regard to his treatment of that inestimable collection, in the following language;--