so hardy as to quarrel with the executioner, even while under correction: I find myself no way disposed to make fine speeches, while I am making wry faces. In a word, let me drink when the fit is on, to make me insensible; and drink when it is over, for joy that I feel pain no longer.

The character of old Falstaff, even with all his faults, gives me more consolation than the most studied efforts of wisdom: I here behold an agreeable old fellow, forgetting age, and showing me the way to be young at sixty-five. Sure I am well able to he as merry, though not so comical as he-Is it not in my power to have, though not so much wit, at least as much vivacity?-Age, care, wisdom, reflection, be gone-I give you to the winds. Let's have t'other bottle: here's to the memory of Shakspear, Falstaff, and all the merry men of Eastcheap.

Such were the reflections that naturally arose while I sat at the Boar's head tavern, still kept at Eastcheap. Here by a pleasant fire, in the very room where old Sir John Falstaff cracked his jokes, in the very chair which was sometimes honoured by prince Henry, and sometimes polluted by his immoral merry companions, I sat and ruminated on the follies of youth; wished to be young again; but was resolved to make the best of life while it lasted, and now and then compared past and present times together. I considered myself as the only living representative of the old knight, and transported my imagination back to the times when the prince and he gave life to the revel, and made even debauchery not disgusting. The room also conspired to throw my reflections back into antiquity: the oak floor, the Gothic windows, and the ponderous chimneypiece, had long withstood the tooth of time; the watchman had gone twelve; my companions had all stolen off; and none now remained with me but the landlord,

landlord. From him I could have wished to know the history of a tavern, that had such a long succession of customers: I could not help thinking that an account of this kind would be a pleasing contrast of the manners of different ages; but my landlord could give me no information. He continued to doze and sot, and tell a tedious story, as most other landlords usually do; and, though he said nothing, yet was never silent: one good joke followed another good joke; and the best joke of all was generally begun towards the end of a bottle. I found at last. however, his wine and his conversation operate by degrees: he insensibly began to alter his appearance. His cravat seemed quilled into a ruff, and his breeches swelled out into a fardingale. I now fancied him changing sexes; and as my eyes began to close in slumber, I imagined my fat landlord actually converted into as fat a landlady. However, sleep made but few changes in my situation: the tavern, the apartment, and the table, continued as before; nothing suffered mutation, but my host, who was fairly altered into a gentlewoman, whom I knew to be dame Quickly, mistress of this tavern in the days of Sir John; and the liquor we were drinking, which seemed converted into sack and sugar.

66

My dear Mrs. Quickly," cried I (for I knew her perfectly well at first sight) "I am heartily glad "to see you. How have you left Falstaff, Pis"tol, and the rest of our friends below stairs? "Brave and hearty, I hope?" In good sooth, replied she, he did deserve to live for ever; but he maketh foul work on't where he hath flitted. Queen Proserpine and he have quarrelled for his attempting a rape upon her divinity; and were it not that she still had bowels of compassion, it more than seems probable he might have been now sprawling in Tartarus.

66

I now found that spirits still preserve the frailties of the flesh; and that, according to the laws of criticism and dreaming, ghosts have been known to be guilty of even more than platonic affection: wherefore, as I found her too much moved on such a topic to proceed, I was resolved to change the subject and desiring she would pledge me in a bumper, observed with a sigh, that our sack was nothing now to what it ways in former days: "Ah, Mrs. Quickly, "those were merry times when you drew sack for prince Henry: men were twice as strong, and "twice as wise, and much braver, and ten thou"sand times more charitable than now. Those "were the times! The battle of Agincourt was a victory indeed! Ever since that we have only "been degenerating and I have lived to see "the day when drinking is no longer fashionable. "When men wear clean shirts, and women show "their necks and arms, all are degenerated, Mrs. "Quickly; and we shall probably, in another cen"tury, be frittered away into beaus or monkeys. "Had you been on earth to see what I have seen, "it would congeal all the blood in your body (your "soul, I mean.) Why, our very nobility now "have the intolerable arrogance, in spite of what is "every day remonstrated from the press; our very nobility, I say, have the assurance to frequent as"semblies, and presume to be as merry as the vulgar. See, my very friends have scarcely manhood "enough to sit to it till eleven; and I only am left "to make a night on't. Pr'ythee do me the favour "to console me a little for their absence by the story "of your own adventure, or the history of the ta"vern where we are now sitting: I fancy the nar"rative may have something singular."

66

Observe this apartment, interrupted my companion; of neat device and excellent workmanship