But no! The penholder of Jones is too much for the grasp of my attenuated fingers. I cannot manage it. I may not attempt to particularise the various fibbings, sloggings, grassings, and chancery suits to which the conflicting champions subjected one another. I will confine myself to a statement in plain language,--that the gallant Percy, having more than once drawn claret from the heroic Plantagenet, and the latter mountain of courage having given birth to a ridiculous mouse under the left ogle of his opponent, both champions having repeatedly kissed the old woman *, and risen from that filial process in a piping condition, the future winner of the Agincourt belt had it all his own way, until the terror of the Scottish borders was eventually gone into and finished. * Mother Earth. Vide “Tintinabulus.” London edition, 1857. After all, there is nothing like plain, straightforward, intelligible, unadorned English! Then, says Shakspeare, the Prince of Wales, having wiped his ensanguined sword, and, let us assume, briefly congratulated himself on being well out of a serious difficulty, delivered a funereal oration over the body of his late adversary, which proved his Royal Highness to be gifted with the most eminent qualifications for a popular lecturer. This burst of eloquence being terminated to his own satisfaction, he looked round with the pardonable vanity of a public speaker, to see if anybody had been listening to him. He was disappointed to discover no one but Sir John Falstaff, apparently dead, on the ground. However, being in the oratorical vein, his Royal Highness was not to be deterred from speaking, by so contemptible a reason as the absence of a living auditory. He accordingly let off the following speech, addressed to what he considered a dead gentleman. A foolish proceeding, if you will, but princes are privileged:-- “What! old acquaintance! could not all this flesh Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell! I could have better spar’d a better man. O! I should have a heavy miss of thee, If I were much in love with vanity. Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day, Though many dearer, in this bloody fray. Embowell’d will I see thee by and by; Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie.” Having delivered himself of this laboured composition, the Prince of Wales went away to tell his father what a clever thing he had done. And then Sir John Falstaff--got up! He had had ample breathing time, and felt, upon the whole, much better. He had sufficiently recovered his faculties to overhear and understand the concluding phrases of the Prince’s soliloquy. “Embowelled!” said Jack, rising slowly (the expression is Shakspeare’s);