t touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was
delivered from the burthen of that death; and, when Death came
himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by
Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that he received the
last stroke, neither varying his accustomed tranquillity, nor tune,
with the simple exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in his
epitaph--_O La! O La! Bobby!_

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) commonly played Sir
Toby in those days; but there is a solidity of wit in the jests of
that half-Falstaff which he did not quite fill out. He was as much too
showy as Moody (who sometimes took the part) was dry and sottish. In
sock or buskin there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack
Palmer. He was a _gentleman_ with a slight infusion of _the footman_.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory) who was his shadow in every thing
while he lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards--was
a _gentleman_ with a little stronger infusion of the _latter
ingredient_; that was all. It is amazing how a little of the more or
less makes a difference in these things. When you saw Bobby in the
Duke's Servant,[3] you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was only
a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought
you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied
the handsome fellow in his topknot, and had bought him a commission.
Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.

Jack had two voices,--both plausible, hypocritical, and insinuating;
but his secondary or supplemental voice still more decisively
histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the spectator; and
the dramatis personas were supposed to know nothing at all about it.
The _lies_ of young Wilding, and the _sentiments_ in Joseph Surface,
were thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret
correspondence with the company before the curtain (which is the
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some
kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve
or of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so
indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather
interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe
in such characters as Surface--the villain of artificial comedy--even
while you read or see them. If you did, they would shock and not
divert you. When Ben, in Lo