Ha! an unexpected solution to the moral difficulty! one that may remove the last taint of suspicion from the lady’s reputation. May not our Mrs. Quickly have been celebrated as the hostess of the Boar’s Head in her spinsterhood? May she not have taken to herself a husband, changing her name, to the church and the law, but not to her customers, according to the practice of queens, opera singers, poetesses, and other celebrated women? The conclusion is at least charitable; and those who like, are at liberty to adopt it. For my own part, I cling to the belief that her husband, “the vintner” of the first part of _Henry the Fourth_, was a sponge and an impostor, one who probably made a trade of marrying unprotected landladies for their taps and cash-boxes, who most likely had half-a-dozen wives living, whom he had fleeced and ill-treated, of which fact Mistress Quickly, his latest victim, had full knowledge; but was, nevertheless, kind to her betrayer, in an upbraiding, petting, devoted, inconsistent, womanly fashion, to the very last. I may be doing gross injustice to the memory of a most harmless and respectable citizen; but I am supporting my theory of Mrs. Quickly’s character admirably. Argument, like progress, according to a modern imperial authority, cannot march without its martyrs and its victims. If the vintner, in his lifetime, were really a good man, he would have forgiven me. So that upon the whole, we may consider the matter settled. Sir John Falstaff, at the suggestion of Prince Henry, was entrusted with a charge of foot. It was all very fine to laugh at Sir John in time of security. When danger made its appearance, they were only too glad to rush to him for assistance. Prince Henry had staked his future reputation on the issue of the coming struggle, and chose his officers accordingly. Historians fix the date of the battle of Shrewsbury on the 21st of July, 1403. I am inclined to regard this as a proof that historians know nothing about it. At that period, the Prince Henry (who, it must be admitted, distinguished himself honourably in the action), could not have been more than fifteen years of age. Was this the sort of person, likely, not only to inspire the renowned and terrible Hotspur with jealousy of his fame and valour, but, moreover, to have previously obtained advantages, however temporary, over a man like Falstaff? I think not. Besides, the historians betray their habitual looseness in making Hotspur himself thirty-five years of age at the same period. This is simply preposterous. Would a weather-beaten warrior, whose spur had ne’er been cold since his thirteenth year, at a time of life approaching that, when, in the words of a chivalric bard, “grizzling hair the brain doth clear,” express thus passionately his eagerness for a personal encounter with an unfledged stripling:--