OLD ACTORS-DICKY SUETT.

O for a "slip-shod muse," to celebrate in numbers, loose and shambling as himself, the merits and the person of Mr. Richard Suett, comedian !

Richard, or rather Dicky Suett-for so in his lifetime he was best pleased to be called, and time hath ratified the appellation-lieth buried on the north side of the cemetry of Holy Paul, to whose service his non-age and tender years were set apart and dedicated. There are who do yet remember him at that period-his pipe clear and harmonious. He would often speak of his chorister days, when he was "cherub Dicky."

What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he should exchange the holy for the profane state; whether he had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to that office), like Sir John, "with hallooing and singing of Anthems;" or whether he was adjudged to lack something, even in those early years, of the gravity indispensable to an occupation which professeth to "commerce with the skies, I could never rightly learn; but we find him, after the probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular condition, and become one of us.

I think he was not altogether of that timber, out of which cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad heart-kind and therefore glad -be any part of sanctity, then might the robe of Motley, with which he invested himself with so much humility after his deprivation, and which he wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the public, be accepted for a surplice-his white stole, and albe.

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon the boards of Old Drury, at which Theatre he commenced, as I have been told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in

which most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he was in any true sense himself imitable. He was the Robin Good- Fellow of the stage.He came in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by his note-Ha! Ha! Ha! sometimes deepening into Ho! Ho! Ho! with an irresistible accession, derived perhaps remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype ofOla? Thousands of hearts yet respond to the chuckling O la! of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The force of nature could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables richer than the cuckoo.

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, -a sigh have puffed him down-the weight of a frown had staggered hima wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin GoodFellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar;" reckless of a scratched face or a torn doublet.

Shakspeare foresaw him when he framed his fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose gait, a slippery tongue; this last the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words light as air, venting truth deep as the centre with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery hatch.

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of personal favourites with the town than any actors before or after. The difference, I take it, was this: Jack was more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good-natured no pretensions at all.Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter, in the Children in the Wood-how dearly beautiful it was!-but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him-not as from Jack, as from an antagonist, but because it could not touch him any more than a

Her proper description, age, station, and sex.

Her age, four-and-thirty, she fix'd to the door,

But somehow the wafer stuck over the four;

And Martha, if judged by some illtemper❜d men,

Would seem to have own'd to no more than thrice ten.

If Wildgoose, her spouse, should discover the flaw,

Please to say if the wedlock's avoided by law;

And if" on the whole," you would not deem it safer

To interline "four" at the top of the wafer.

Case four.-Captain Sykes won the heart of Miss Dighton While driving a dennet from Worthing to Brighton.

Her West-India fortune his hot bosom stirs,

His cap and mustachios are too much for hers.

They married: the Captain was counting his gain,

When sugar and rum grew a drug in Mark-lane.

While keeping the dictum Ecclesiæ in view,

(God never sends mouths without sending bread too)

You'll please to advise, if the Act has a clause

To marshal the bread, or to average the jaws.

But see, while my pen your Opinion implores,

Fresh couples, love-stricken, besiege the church doors.

The porch of St. Anne's ninety couple disgorges,

Thrice ninety stand fix'd on the steps of St. George's;

The fresh and the jaded promiscuously mingle,

Some seek to get married, some seek to get single:

While those, sage Civilian, you're fettering, please hit on these.

To

a scheme to emancipate

Teach mortals, who find, like the man who slew Turnus,

A marvellous facile descent to Avernus, Like him, back their Pluto-bound steps to recall,

And breathe the light æther of Bachelor's Hall:

Do this, through my medium, dear Doctor, and then

Ere Easter, my life on't, we both are made men;

My purse shall swell, laden by fee upon fee,

King's Proctor, in war-time, were nothing to me:

While you, happy man, down Pactolus's tide

Your silver-oar'd galley triumphant shall guide,

And whirl'd in no eddy, o'ertaken by no ill,

Reign Hymen's Arch-Chancellor, vice Lord Stowell.

New Monthly Magazine.

OLD ACTORS-DICKY SUETT. O for a 66 slip-shod muse," to celebrate in numbers, loose and shambling as himself, the merits and the person of Mr. Richard Suett, comedian!

Richard, or rather Dicky Suett-for so in his lifetime he was best pleased to be called, and time hath ratified the appellation-lieth buried on the north side of the cemetry of Holy Paul, to whose service his non-age and tender years were set apart and dedicated. There are who do yet remember him at that period-his pipe clear and harmonious. He would often speak of his chorister days, when he was" cherub Dicky."

What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he should exchange the holy for the profane state; whether he had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to that office), like Sir John, "with hallooing and singing of Anthems;" or whether he was adjudged to lack something, even in those early years, of the gravity indispensable to an occupation which professeth to "commerce with the skies, I could never rightly learn; but we find him, after the probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular condition, and become one of us.

I think he was not altogether of that timber, out of which cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad heart-kind and therefore glad -be any part of sanctity, then might the robe of Motley, with which he invested himself with so much humility after his deprivation, and which he wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the public, be accepted for a surplice-his white stole, and albe.

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon the boards of Old Drury, at which Theatre he commenced, as I have been told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in

which most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he was in any true sense himself imitable. He was the Robin Good- Fellow of the stage.He came in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by his note-Ha! Ha! Ha! sometimes deepening into Ho! Ho! Ho! with an irresistible accession, derived perhaps remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype ofOla? Thousands of hearts yet respond to the chuckling O la! of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The " force of nature could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables richer than the cuckoo.

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, -a sigh have puffed him down-the weight of a frown had staggered hima wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin GoodFellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar ;" reckless of a scratched face or a torn doublet.

Shakspeare foresaw him when he framed his fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose gait, a slippery tongue; this last the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words light as air, venting truth deep as the centre with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery hatch.

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of personal favourites with the town than any actors before or after. The difference, I take it, was this: Jack was more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good-natured no pretensions at all.Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter, in the Children in the Wood-how dearly beautiful it was!-but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him-not as from Jack, as from an antagonist, but because it could not touch him any more than a

cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered from the burden 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! Ola! Bobby!-London Magazine.

JOE MILLER.

Many a would-be wit, who has Joe Miller constantly on his lips, might probably be induced to make a pilgrimage to his grave, if he knew that it was as near to him as the place called the Green Church-yard, or burying ground, in Portugal-street, Lincoln'sinn-fields, belonging to the parish of St. Clement Dane, and close by the once celebrated Lincoln's-inn-fields Theatre, where Garrick became so famous, and now as celebrated for being Spode's depôt for china, &c. Miller's epitaph, by Stephen Duck, is on a handsome stone, on the left-hand side as you enter the burial-ground, nearly under the windows of the workhouse. The inscription was originally on another stone, but time had taken such liberties with it, that in the year 1816 the churchwarden for the time being, greatly to his credit, caused the present one to be erected. He certainly has tacked himself to Joe Miller by his explanation at the bottom of the stone; and probably hopes, and in some degree deserves, to share a little of his immortality; though at present he is on this side the grave, and a highly respectable man.

And guard us longer from the stroke of death,

The stroke of death on him had later fell,
Whom all mankind esteem'd and lov'd so
well.
S. DUCK.

From respect to social worth, mirthful qualities, and histrionic excellence, commemorated by poetic talent in humble life, the above inscription, which time had nearly obliterated, has been preserved, and transferred to this stone, by order of Mr. Jarvis Buck, churchwarden,

A.D. 1816.

FANATICS.

Richard Brothers, the prophet, and Wright and Bryan, two fanatics, the former a carpenter at Leeds, the latter a journeyman copper-plate printer, in 1789 repaired to Avignon, in order to form a society of prophets: these men became the friends and coadjutors of Richard Brothers. One of them, however, had doubts, and he went to see Brothers, prepared with a knife; so that, if any doubts of his apostolic mission should arise, he might deliver such a message from the Lord as Eliud carried to King Eglon. The new king of the Hebrews had not so much as a single Jewish historian. Mr. Sharpe became one of his disciples, and beneath a well-engraved portrait placed the following words :- Fully believing this to be the man whom God hath appointed, I engrave his likeness. Ŵ. S."-Brothers wrote letters to the King, and to all the Members of both Houses of Parliament, announcing his intention of speedily setting out for Jerusalem.Some of his disciples actually shut up their shops, and many repaired to London to join him. Before his departure,

by a public miracle, and said he would throw down his stick in the Strand at noon-day, which, like the wand of Moses, would be converted into a serpent. In a like strain he threatened London with an earthquake.

NAUTICAL BREEDING. When the late Duke of York (brother to George III.) went on board Lord Howe's ship, as a midshipman, the different captains in the fleet attended, to pay him their respects, on the quarter-deck. He seemed not to know what it was to be subordinate, or to feel the necessity of moderation in the display of that superiority which would naturally result from his high rank. He received them with some