Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/124

 picked up phrases of bombast, such as swarmed in the bad tragedies of the period; when the sack has reached his head it sets them all afloat, to raffle the company:

"Shall packhorses, And hollow-pamper'd jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty miles a day, Compare with Cæsars, and with Cannibals, And Trojan Greeks? nay, rather damn them with King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar."

Pistol's love for alliteration puts a c for an h in the third line, and turns the Carthaginian into a Carib.

Falstaff is cowardly from policy, and reasons himself into the belief that honor is a paltry motive for the risk of sustaining knocks. What was left over of this pusillanimity appears unadulterated in Pistol, who snatches up his sword, calls upon death to rock him asleep and abridge his doleful days; but he is a tame cheater, "you may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound." If a hen turns back her feathers he is off, to disappear from history with his mouth full of the Welshman's leek. There is Mistress Quickly who caters for Falstaff's vices, endures his swindling till almost all her goods have gone to the pawnbroker's, and then admires to be cajoled back into more lending, dismisses the suit which she brought with such strenuous and voluble feebleness, and hopes he will come to supper. She tells a story as any Yankee Cousin Sally would, dwelling upon insignificant accessories and recurring to them to give the memory a fresh start, till the narrative becomes nothing but mnemonics. "It was no longer ago than Wednesday last,—Neighbor Quickly, says he,—Mas