l endeavour to
demonstrate, lies in the right place, and is firm and sound,
notwithstanding a few indications to the contrary.--As for you, _Mrs._
MONTAGUE, I am grieved to find that _you_ have been involved in a popular
error; so much you must allow me to say;--for the rest, I bow to your
genius and your virtues: You have given to the world a very elegant
composition; and I am told your manners and your mind are yet more pure,
more elegant than your book. _Falstaff_ was too gross, too infirm, for
your inspection; but if you durst have looked nearer, you would not have
found Cowardice in the number of his infirmities.--We will try if we cannot
redeem him from this universal censure.--Let the venal corporation of
authors duck _to the golden fool_, let them shape their sordid quills to
the mercenary ends of unmerited praise, or of baser detraction;--_old
Jack_, though deserted by princes, though censured by an ungrateful world,
and persecuted from age to age by Critic and Commentator, and though never
rich enough to hire one literary prostitute, shall find a Voluntary
defender; and that too at a time when the whole body of the _Nabobry_
demands and requires defence; whilst their ill-gotten and almost untold
gold feels loose in their unassured grasp, and whilst they are ready to
shake off portions of the enormous heap, that they may the more securely
clasp the remainder.--But not to digress without end,--to the candid, to the
chearful, to the elegant reader we appeal; our exercise is much too light
for the sour eye of strict severity; it professes amusement only, but we
hope of a kind more rational than the History of Miss _Betsy_, eked out
with the Story of Miss _Lucy_, and the Tale of Mr. _Twankum_: And so, in a
leisure hour, and with the good natured reader, it may be hoped, to
friend, we return, with an air as busy and important as if we were engaged
in the grave office of measuring the _Pyramids_, or settling the antiquity
of _Stonehenge_, to converse with this jovial, this fat, this roguish,
this frail, but, I think, _not cowardly_ companion.

Though the robbery at _Gads-Hill_, and the supposed Cowardice of
_Falstaff_ on that occasion, are next to be considered, yet I must
previously declare, that I think the discussion of this matter to be _now_
unessential to the reestablishment of _Falstaff_'s reputation as a man of
Courage. For suppose we should grant, in form, that _Falstaff_ was
surprized with fear in this singl