"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,--Master Dumb, our minister, was by then,--Neighbor Quickly, says he, receive those that are civil; for, saith he, you are in an ill-name;--now, he said so, I can tell whereupon."
It is plain that the Down-East style of narrative emigrated with Popham, and effected the settlement which he failed to do. A trivial mind is a haunt for petty details, where they are fondled and fed, so that they become too familiar, and keep tripping up the story-teller who vainly tries to strike a direct path, and for want of point arrives nowhere.
"Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor: thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound." But she, too, is won into a kind of fidelity by the charms of Sir John's manner; and, when he falls sick unto his death, she cannot forget some genial hours. "Ah, poor heart! he is so shaked of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him."