"Which two I behold like a _Spanish great Gallion_ and an _English man of War_: Master _Johnson_ (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; _Solid_, but _Slow_ in his performances. _Shake-spear_, with the _English man of War_, lesser in _bulk_, but lighter in _sailing_, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention." Although Fuller was not himself present at these symposia, yet his account of them bears the stamp of complete authenticity. Among the members of the circle which Shakespeare in his youth frequented, there must, of course, have been types of every kind, from the genius down to the grotesque; and there were some, no doubt, in whom the genius and the grotesque, the wit and the butt, must have quaintly intermingled. As every great household had at that time its _jester_, so every convivial circle had its clown or buffoon. The jester was the terror of the kitchen--for he would steal a pudding the moment the cook's back was turned--and the delight of the dinner-table, where he would mimic voices, crack jokes, play pranks, and dissipate the spleen of the noble company. The comic man of the tavern circle was both witty himself and the cause of wit in others. He was always the butt of the others' merriment, yet he always held his own in the contest, and ended by getting the best of his tormentors. To Shakespeare's circle Chettle must doubtless have belonged, that Chettle who in bygone days had published Greene's _Groats-worth of Wit_, and afterwards made amends to Shakespeare for Greene's coarse attack upon him. In Dekker's tract, _A Knights Conjuring_, dating from 1607, he figures among the poets in Elysium, where he is introduced in the following terms:--"In comes Chettle sweating and blowing, by reason of his fatnes; to welcome whom, because hee was of olde acquaintance, all rose vp, and fell presentlie on their knees, to drinck a health to all the louers of Hellicon." Elze has conjectured, possibly with justice, that in this puffing and sweating old tun of flesh, who is so whimsically greeted with mock reverence by the whole gay company, we have the very model from whom Shakespeare drew his demigod, the immortal Sir John Falstaff, beyond comparison the gayest, most concrete, and most entertaining figure in European comedy. In his close-woven and unflagging mirthfulness, in the inexhaustible wealth of drollery concentrated in his person, Falstaff surpasses all that antiquity and the Middle Ages have produced in the way of comic character, and all that the stage of later times can show.