ortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene,
their actions to be amenable to poetic justice only. We can hardly
connect them with more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine
actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the stage
some months; and, as I learned afterwards, had been in the habit of
resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day of his decease. In
these serious walks probably he was divesting himself of many scenic
and some real vanities--weaning himself from the frivolities of the
lesser and the greater theatre--doing gentle penance for a life of no
very reprehensible fooleries,--taking off by degrees the buffoon mask
which he might feel he had worn too long--and rehearsing for a more
solemn cast of part. Dying he "put on the weeds of Dominic."[2]

If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not easily forget the
pleasant creature, who in those days enacted the part of the Clown
to Dodd's Sir Andrew.--Richard, or rather Dicky Suett--for so in
his life-time he delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the
appellation--lieth buried on the north side of the cemetery of Holy
Paul, to whose service his nonage and tender years were 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 whic