The rapidity with which I have dashed off the foregoing paragraphs convinces me that I must have a vocation for what is called the higher walk of history. It is true that this, my first attempt of the kind, has been favoured by great facilities such as I might not always be so fortunate as to meet with; seeing that the whole of the above--quotations from Hollinshed included--has been copied out of a printed book now lying open before me (the name of which I see no necessity for divulging), with but few interpolations and excisions. Perhaps if I were to push on a little further in the same path, I might be able to surmount greater difficulties than have yet presented themselves. I say nothing. But time and the publishers say something to me,--namely, that I have no business to trouble myself with writing the History of England in these pages, at all events except so far as it concerns Sir John Falstaff. Therefore, I must reserve myself for a future occasion. However, as Sir John Falstaff took a most active part in the civil dissensions excited by the feud above alluded to, the Knight’s biographer must be permitted to dwell awhile upon the merits of that quarrel, ere resuming the thread of his personal narrative. The “merits” of the case, in one sense of the term,--namely, according to the logic of the young naval officer who was ordered to report upon the “manners” of a barbarous people, may be briefly summed up, in the words of that marine authority, as “none whatever.” It was simply a carboniferous contest between the forces of King Pot on the one side, and those of the revolted chieftain Kettle (aided and abetted by divers of his brother Smuts) on the other. Do not suppose me capable of wilfully depreciating great names and achievements below their legitimate value. Only, let us have justice. My especial business is with the reputation of Sir John Falstaff. If, in spite of my convincing arguments and unanswerable facts, certain wrong-headed moralists will adhere to the opinion that my hero was a mere thief, and as such to be reprehended, I, in defence of my own position, must insist--upon the showing of my adversaries--that King Henry the Fourth, Hotspur, Glendower, and Company, only differed from Sir John Falstaff as pilchards do from herrings, “the pilchard being the greater.” * Hold me my knight virtuous; accept me the moonlit field of Gadshill as glorious; and I will honour Bolingbroke, glorify Shrewsbury, and weep over Percy with the most orthodox among you. But I will have no two laws,--one for the rich, the other for the poor. If Sir John is to hang, he shall make a fat pair of gallows. All the Harries of the period--old Harries and young Harries--shall hang with him!