Why should we call Time old, when we constantly find him playing tricks
like a schoolboy? Here we have him at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, amusing himself by rolling Sir John Falstaff down a hill, which
men have agreed to call Life, like a snowball--Sir John getting rounder,
and bigger, and whiter, at every push.
And now we approach that period in our hero’s life, when his acts are
public history. Our task grows lighter, our responsibility heavier.
Hitherto we have had to treat merely of Achilles in girl’s petticoats,
Cæsar at school, Cromwell at the mash-tub, Bonaparte besieging snow
castles. Now we are in sight of our hero’s Troy, Rubicon, Marston Moor,
Toulon--whatever the reader pleases.
Sir John Falstaff will next appear in these pages as the ripe full-blown
Falstaff of Shakspeare, the fat knight _par excellence_, the hero of
Gadshill and of Shrewsbury; on the eve of the former of which great
engagements we are supposed to resume the thread of our narrative.
And here it may be as well that the historian and his reader should at
once understand each other as to the purport of this work.
It is impossible that a man should take the pains of research and
compilation necessary for a voluminous biography without the preliminary
inspiration of deep sympathy with, and exalted admiration for the
character of his subject. This is, at any rate, indispensable to the
satisfactory execution of his task. None but a man with a turn for
such achievements as usually result in solitary confinement could have
written the “Life of Robinson Crusoe.” The “Newgate Calendar” would not
be the work it is, had not the last and present centuries been prolific
in writers who, under a trifling depression of circumstances, might have
changed places with their heroes.
I do not mean to say, that had I lived in the fifteenth century I should
have been a Sir John Falstaff. Morally, in his position, I should have
cut as sorry a figure as, physically, in his garments. Boswells need
not be Johnsons. Sympathy and admiration, I repeat, are the necessary
qualifications. I sympathise with, and admire the heroic character as
developed in all ages; and I look upon Sir John Falstaff as the greatest
hero of his own epoch.
Earthly greatness, like everything else to which the same adjective
applies, is comparative--to be measured only by besetting difficulties.
The Italian captive, who blots down his autobiography on fragments of
old linen, with his forefinger nail nibbed into a pen, and dipped in an
exasperatingly gritty fluid of soot and water, is not to be tested by
the same severe rules of criticism as the literary patrician, writing in
his well filled library, to the mellifluous gurgle of his eastern
pipe, and with every advantage that Bath post, gold pens, Webster’s
dictionaries, and the most carefully annotated editions of Lindley
Murray can offer. As just would it be to compare the struggling unguided
crudities of a mere Shakspeare or Æschylus, with the more polished
productions of a modern dramatist, in the enjoyment of private means,
and a troisième on the Boulevard des Italiens, having a running contract
with the nearest theatrical printer for the earliest first-proof
sheets of his publications. Mr. Hobbs, the American locksmith, with his
multifarious means and appliances of picklocks, “tumblers,” and what
not, is entitled to our respect as a skilful mechanician; but placed in
comparison with Jack Sheppard and his rusty nail, what becomes of Hobbs
and his reputation?
It has been beautifully observed of Sir John Falstaff (by no less an
authority than himself), that having more flesh than most men, he should
be excused for displaying a greater amount of that frailty to which
flesh is heir. On the other hand, having fewer advantages than
most heroes, he may easily be proved to have displayed a more than
proportionate share of heroism.
I consider it too late in the day to attempt a new definition of the
word hero. The world has been agreed for ages upon the only acceptation
of which it is susceptible,--namely, a man who takes a more than common
advantage of his fellow-creatures in furtherance of his own interests,
or those of his nation, county, township, street, row of houses, family,
or self. Exclusive devotion to the latter interest marks the real hero.
But this is a demi-god pitch of excellence rarely attained. Even Sir
John Falstaff fell short of it.
Achilles was invulnerable (with a contemptible exception of which the
oversight is a disgrace to the shoe-making science of the period),
and had a supernatural mother to look after him. I think little of
his heroism. Cæsar, as we have seen, had the vast advantage of almost
unlimited credit. Cromwell had the majority of a nation at his back;--so
had Napoleon.
Sir John Falstaff won a hero’s laurels, and attained a hero’s ends,
(which may be briefly summed up as the privilege of doing pretty much as
you like at the expense of other people), by the almost unaided exercise
of his head and arm. Is he to be blamed for only having gained purses,
where Cæsar or Alexander pocketed kingdoms? As ridiculous would it be to
find fault with him for making no greater speed than four miles an hour
from the disputed field of Gadshill, because swift travelling carriages
had not been invented. Imagine Napoleon with fifty-eight years and
thirty stone of flesh at his back, and none but pedestrian means of exit
from Moscow before him! Who would ever have heard of Waterloo or St.
Helena?
It may be objected, that of the recognised heroes I have cited for
comparison, two at least (the last mentioned of the number) were
originally actuated by the desire to free an oppressed people. Here,
even, the parallel does not fail. Sir John Falstaff, too, had his
subjects and followers, whose condition required ameliorating. It is
true that these were limited in number, and that their most stringent
oppressions were the severe debtor and creditor laws of the period,
aggravated by a season of scarcity in the matter of wages. But, as I
have said before, every thing in this world is comparative.
A great deal of misconception as to my hero’s real character, may be
traced to a deplorable ignorance of the time in which he lived. Many
celebrated writers on the Falstaffian era (that is to say, people who
know nothing at all about it) have declared the age of chivalry, in
that great man’s time, to have been extinct. This has led modern
thinkers--who, according to the improved lights of their age, look
upon speculations on the Stock Exchange, joint-stock banks, Samaritan
institutions, cheap clothing warehouses, the adulteration of coffee,
pickles, &c. &c., as the only legitimate means of plundering your
neighbours--to apply harsh names to the more primitive mode of
transferring capital adopted by our hero. The fact is, _Sir John
Falstaff was a knight-errant_,--the only one of his time, perhaps--the
last ray of the setting sun of chivalry, if you will; but its most
gorgeous! To paraphrase the words of an eminent historian, “he was the
greatest, as well as the last, of those mighty vagabonds who formerly
overhauled the purses of the community, and rendered the people
incapable of paying the necessary expenses of their legal prosecution.”
He was, in short, the Earl of Warwick of knight-errantry.
Let us prove our theory by an extension of the parallel lines.
The knight-errant of antiquity rode out, armed at all points, to
win renown. Even in the most Arcadian times, the acquisition of that
commodity appears to have been contingent on the display of a certain
amount of spoil, in the shape of weapons, prisoners, ransoms, and so
forth. The public enemies against whom the knight-errant’s attention was
chiefly directed, were--