Your just remarks on Theobald's "'a babbled of green fields" recalls
to me a note which I find appended to the passage in the margin of my
Shakspeare,
"'A babbled of green fields, _i.e._ singing snatches of the
23rd Psalm:
'In pastures green He feedeth me,' &c.
'And though I walk e'en at death's door,' &c."
This note I jotted down in my schoolboy days, and thirty years'
experience at the beds of the dying only convinces me of its correctness.
Again and again have I heard the same sweet strains hymned from the lips
of the dying, and soothing with hope the sinking spirit, ay, even of
great and grievous sinners. Indeed, I have come to stamp it as a sure
mark of impending death, and have said with the dame, "I knew there
was but one way, for 'a babbled of green fields;" though I trust with
different doctrine than her's, viz. that religion is the business of none
but the dying, and thence, that to talk of religion is a sure sign of
approaching death.
When Falstaff "babbled of green fields," he was labouring under no
"calenture." His heart was far away amid the early fresh pure scenes of
childhood, and he was babbling forth snatches of hymns and holy songs,
learned on his mother's knee, and now called up, in his hour of need,
to cheer, as best they might, his parting spirit. Strange is it that
Theobald, when he suggested so happy an emendation, missed half its
beauty and its real bearing.
Throughout the whole passage it is evident that Falstaff was ejaculating
scraps of long forgotten hymns and Scripture texts, which were utterly
incomprehensible to those about him. "'A babbled of green fields,"--"he
cried out of sack,"--"and of women,"--"incarnate,"--"whore of
Babylon,"--all suggest holy ejaculations, perverted by the ignorance of
the godless bystanders.
In all Shakspeare there is hardly to be found a more touching scene, or
one more true to nature; {315} it is most graphic and characteristic.
The loneliness of the dying sinner, with none to stand by him but the
godless companions of his riot and debauchery; the eagerness of the
despairing man to catch at anything of the semblance of hope that he
could recall from the lessons of his childhood, "He shall feed me in a
green pasture," &c.--then--ere he could reach those assuring words, "Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me," the
miserable consciousness that it is all too late, "So 'a cried out God,
God, God;"--then--the utter want of religious sympathy in the bystanders,
Nym, Quickly, Bardolph, Boy, in their misinterpretations, and perverse
commentaries on his ejaculations, just such as we might expect from
hearts gorged to the full with vice and sensuality;--then--the redeeming
touch of tenderness in the Dame, beaming through all her benighted
efforts to cheer, in her own way (awful to think on, the only way known
to her), the last hours of her dear old roysterer, "Now I, to comfort
him, bid him 'a should not think of God, I hoped there was no need to
trouble himself with any such thoughts yet;" and the undying fondness
with which she upholds his memory, and will not brook a word of ribaldry,
or what _she_ deems slander, against it, all evidencing that--
"The worst of _sin_ had left her woman still."
Surely a scene more characteristic of all the parties in it, is not to be
found in Shakspeare.