Windsor Park, where he exposes himself in a tom-fool disguise, and gets pinched by all the charity boys and girls in the parish, believing them to be avenging fairies. He is bound to admit that his wit has been “made a Jack a Lent of.” A Cambrian parson, even, dares to laugh at him; and he is “not able to answer the Welsh flannel.” It is a sad business. I repeat that I have no heart to dwell upon these painful details. Shakspeare has not scrupled to particularise them, and the curious are referred to his able but pitiless pages. My good friend GEORGE CRUIKSHANK also--an amiable man in the social relations of life, but who when there is a stern truth to be recorded pictorially, has no more feeling than the sun peering through a photographic lens--has added his testimony to the principal features of the case. Let _my_ feelings be spared--for I sympathise with poor Sir Jack, and, with all his faults, love him. [Illustration: 277] [Illustration: 281] [Illustration: 285] [Illustration: 289] [Illustration: 293] [Illustration: 297] There is this excuse to be urged for Sir John Falstaff’s submitting to all kinds of temporary inconvenience and degradation at the hands of the contemptible citizens of Windsor. His mind was occupied with more exalted subjects. He still contemplated the possibility of his restoration to Court favour. He was sixty-three, it is true, and prematurely broken in constitution. But a courtier and statesman must be very old and shaken indeed to renounce his hopes of power and advancement. Sir John watched his opportunity, and was willing to abide his time. You will be willing to abide your time, reader, at the age of a hundred (Heaven send you may live to it!) and never suspect for a moment that your “time” will be out in the early part of next autumn. * For the events here referred to, see the Merry Wives of Windsor. Sir John’s opportunity (as he imagined) at length arrived. King Henry the Fifth prepared for his memorable invasion of France, by demanding, from the French king, the hand of the Princess Katherine, and a concession of territory sufficiently unreasonable to ensure the refusal desired by the English crown. The Dauphin Louis answered the application by his memorable present of a cask of tennis balls, which he assured King Henry “were fitter playthings for him, according to his former course of life, than the provinces demanded.” * The British cabinet was nonplussed, there being nobody in office capable of replying to a joke. This was Sir John Falstaffs opportunity. Sir John, who had, of course, his agents posted about the Court, heard of the dilemma. He despatched the following private note to His Majesty, having securely arranged for its certain delivery into the royal hands:-- A TIMELY WORD TO THE KING FROM ONE PERCHANCE THOUGHT DEAD ** “King Hal: thou hast forgotten me, but not I thee. Thou wilt not relieve me from my difficulty. Lo! I relieve thee of thine.