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,[6] 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 top-knot, 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 personae 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 Love for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his father—­

Sir Sampson.  Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw thee.

Ben.  Ey, ey, been!  Been far enough, an that be all—­Well father, and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val?

Sir Sampson.  Dick! body o’ me, Dick has been dead these two years.  I writ you word when you were at Leghorn.

Ben.  Mess, that’s true; Marry, I had forgot.  Dick’s dead, as you say—­Well, and how?—­I have a many questions to ask you—­