A burly black-bearded fellow of some five-and-twenty, far gone in his cups, was challenging a roomfull of people to make verses, quote Latin, fight, wrestle, or drink against him, declaring that he was the great poet cudgeller, or wrestling scholar, Henry Skogan. He brandished a scrap of greasy parchment, on which, he said, were written verses which Master Chaucer or Dan Virgil himself need not be ashamed of, as would be owned when he read them at the court gate in the morning to the Earl of Cambridge, in honour of whose twenty-seventh birthday they were composed. He volunteered to read them to the company, and dared any one to find them bad. A stolid Thames waterman, with no soul for poetry, bade him hold his noise unless he wanted a cleft skull. They had had his trash a dozen times already. “Aha! what’s this?” said the gladiator poet. “One tired of life? A worm ‘neath Ajax’s foot. Writhe hence or be crushed.” To make the scene brief, a cudgelling match ensued. The waterman was vanquished, and the poet resumed his swaggering antics with renewed extravagance. Jack Falstaff walked home, musing as follows:-- “At the Court Gate to-morrow. The Court will all come out in procession to the tilt-yard. All the lads will be there. That fellow for all his swagger and bulk knows no more about cudgel-play than a pig. Three chances that poor waterman gave him, which, if he had been trained by Wat Smith, as I have, would have shortened the battle eight minutes. Pray Heaven he be not too drunk to keep his word in the morning!” In the morning Jack presented himself at the Court Gate to wait for the coming out of his master, but earlier than his time of service required. There, as he expected, were a good sprinkling of his companions of the previous day assembled in the crowd to see the procession to the sports in honour of Prince Edmund’s birthday. There too, to his delight, was the poet Skogan, parchment in hand, gesticulating and bullying as he had appeared on the previous evening--merely a little cleaner and apparently sober. After listening to his rhapsodies for a few minutes, Jack approached his companions. They received him distantly. Even his staunch adherent and believer Shallow--who being an arrant coward dared not stand aloof from the majority--was constrained in his manner. “I forgive you, gentlemen,” said Jack; “you have had some reason to doubt my courage. I think I have an opportunity of proving it. This noisy fellow offends me; you shall see me thrash him.” “What--Skogan--the cudgeller--Jack?” gasped Shallow, in delighted astonishment. “Pray you, some of you ask him to read his verses. I will find fault with them.” “Said I not--said I not?” said Shallow, in ecstasies. One Master Thomas Doit, a law student, of Staffordshire, stepped forward, and in respectful tones begged the poet to favour him with a hearing of his verses. The poet required no second bidding. Tucking his cudgel under his arm, he cleared his voice and began--