ns of _Master Gower_ to dinner and to supper, a
regular table: And one may infer farther from the Prince's question, on
his return from Wales, to _Bardolph_, "_Is your master_ here _in London_,"
that he had likewise a house in the country. Slight proofs it must be
confessed, yet the inferences are so probable, so buoyant, in their own
nature, that they may well rest on them. That he did not lodge at the
Tavern is clear from the circumstances of the arrest. These various
occasions of expence,--servants, taverns, houses, and whores,--necessarily
imply that _Falstaff_ must have had some funds which are not brought
immediately under our notice. That these funds were not however adequate
to his style of living is plain: Perhaps his train may be considered only
as incumbrances, which the pride of family and the habit of former
opulence might have brought upon his present poverty: I do not mean
absolute poverty, but call it so as relative to his expence. To have "_but
seven groats and two-pence in his purse_" and a page to bear it, is truly
ridiculous; and it is for that reason we become so familiar with its
contents, "_He can find_," he says, "_no remedy for this consumption of
the purse, borrowing does but linger and linger it out; but the disease is
incurable_." It might well be deemed so in his course of dissipation: But
I shall presently suggest one source at least of his supply much more
constant and honourable than that of borrowing. But the condition of
_Falstaff_ as to opulence or poverty is not very material to my purpose:
It is enough if his birth was distinguished, and his youth noted for
gallantry and accomplishments. To the first I have spoken, and as for the
latter we shall not be at a loss when we remember that "_he was in his
youth a page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk_"; a situation at that
time sought for by young men of the best families and first fortune. The
house of every great noble was at that period a kind of Military school;
and it is probable that _Falstaff_ was singularly adroit at his exercises:
"_He broke Schoggan's head_," (some boisterous fencer I suppose) "_when he
was but a crack thus high_." _Shallow_ remembers him _as notedly skilful
at backsword_; and he was at that period, according to his own humourous
account, "_scarcely an eagle's talon in the waist, and could have crept
thro' an alderman's thumb ring_." Even at the age at which he is exhibited
to us, we find him _foundering_, as he c