III. SIR JOHN FALSTAFF AN AUTHOR.
FRAGMENTS OF HIS CORRESPONDENCE.—EPISODE OF THE FAIR DOROTHEA AND ANCIENT PISTOL.
LET us turn awhile from the sickening horrors of war, and the scarcely less revolting machinations of statecraft, faction, and personal rivalry, to contemplate Sir John Falstaff under the soothing influences of the arts and the affections.
With the valour and generalship of Hundwulf Falstaff, the necessities of Roger, the thirst of Hengist, the humour and, alas! the ill-luck of Uffa,—our hero inherited the literary tastes of his celebrated ancestor, Peter. A deficiency in that poet’s praiseworthy attribute of industry may have been one reason for his not having enriched the literature of his country by any legacy of first-class importance. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the principle of encouraging authors to composition by adequate pecuniary rewards—defectively understood even in the present day—was, at that time, not even recognised; and the bare idea of aimless labour to a logical intellect like that of Sir John Falstaff would be naturally revolting.
Nevertheless, high rank may be claimed for Sir John as a British author—not so much from his actual achievements in the field of letters, as from the fact of his having been one of the earliest pioneers in the cause. Viewed by this light, he is entitled to classification in the same category with Chaucer, Lydgate, and others. He lacks the learning and polish of the first-mentioned writer, and is deficient in the patient observation of the second; while both surpass him in fecundity. On the other hand, he is vastly superior to the Monk of Bury in richness of imagination and daring boldness of invention; while the charges of gross plagiarism and corruption of the English language by the adoption of foreign idiom, from which the fondest partiality has been unable to clear the memory of the author of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, have never been brought against Sir John Falstaff, that I am aware of.
The Falstaff papers—such fragments of the author’s composition as have been saved from the wreck of ages (of which a perfect Spanish Armada has gone down, under the heavy fire of Rear-Admiral Time, since Sir John Falstaff trod the deck of earthly existence)—are not voluminous. Cause has been already shown to suppose that they could never, in any case, have attained to any considerable bulk. But on this head we have no accurate means of deciding. It has already been seen that Sir John Falstaff had powerful enemies. It would be to the interest of such people to destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any relics of our knight’s greatness that might lead to the perpetuation of his glories and their own infamy. But I am getting upon dangerous ground again.
The favourite form of composition adopted by Sir John Falstaff was the epistolary; and he may be confidently set forth as the first English writer who brought that delightful branch of literature to anything like perfection. I would not have it supposed that Sir John was a mere idle gossip, like Horace Walpole, Cowper, and such latter-day dilettanti. He was essentially a practical man—literature was with him a means, not an end. His pen to him was like his sword—a weapon only to be used upon pressing occasion; but which, once assumed, was seldom laid aside till it had done good service. When he wrote, it was with the view to remedy some glaring want of the age he lived in. Being essentially the man of his age, he always knew, from the unerring test of his own necessities, what the age wanted, and wrote for it accordingly. There were no journals or magazines in those days. When our knight felt that any crying hardship or calamity inflicted upon suffering humanity—typified in the personality of Sir John Falstaff—might be removed by the exercise of a little eloquence, persuasion, or even casuistry, he had no alternative but to address his arguments, prayers, or remonstrances, to private individuals. And trust me, Sir John Falstaff was not the man to write letters for nothing.
The earliest specimen of Sir John Falstaff’s correspondence extant (and of any such, I can fearlessly assert, there exists not one in a single antiquarian collection in Europe which the diligent researches of myself and emissaries have failed to discover) is a little schoolboy letter written in a villanous, sprawling attempt at the Gothic character, scarcely legible, owing to the ravages of time and the defective education of a lad of fourteen, at a period when English had barely begun to be a written language. How boys learnt to write at all under a caligraphic régime which made it almost as difficult to pen a syllable as to design a cathedral, is to me a marvel, only explained by the unwelcome theory that our ancestors were much cleverer and more persevering fellows than ourselves. However, that young Jack Falstaff, soon after he found himself put in the way of making his fortune, as a reward for stealing poor Sir Simon Ballard’s venison (mythical foreshadow of its owner’s doom, whom we have seen so cruelly hung and roasted!), was able to build up his groined “m’s,” “v’s,” and “n’s,” to erect the transepts on his “t’s,” and ornament the façades of his capitals generally, so as to leave them intelligible at this distance of centuries, is to me a proof that that good, kind, blue-eyed Lady Alice Falstaff,—of whom I regret to have so long lost sight,—was., amongst her other social recommendations, an excellent schoolmistress. For Jack’s sake, I am inclined to regret that he did not stop at home to finish his education. But in that case, what would have become of this instructive biography—not to mention one or two amusing works on the same subject by a previous writer encouragingly alluded to in these pages? Here is the letter—at least, such fragments of it as can be interpreted into modern English with any degree of certainty:—
“My good sweet mother, I am very well; London is a rare place, nothing but houses. I have seen King Edward, he is an old man, ill-favoured, and ever groaning. He laughs pleasant though, and tweaked me by the ear, giving me a gold florence, saying it was to keep me from hurting his deer. I live in a fine rare house, but there are finer houses-here, and Sir Thomas not near so fine as the princes are. You never told me there was a Queen. She is the same name as you, and very fair. The princes call her Mistress Perrers—why, I know not, except it be for sport. I saw the Princess of Wales that we call the fair maid of Kent. She is not so fair as the queen. She passed by the queen tossing her head quite disdainful. I asked why that was, and the queen said she had unruly sons who set their wives against her—whereat the king laughed, and the princes. The queen is not so old as you, and Prince John looks nearly as old as my good father. The queen is a merry lady, kissed me, and said I should be Mercury in her next pageant. She gave me a gold florence too, but my good father had it of me, Thursday last, saying,