knew he would not study it." At night Palmer spoke it with more accuracy than was often observable when better opportunities had been afforded him. Garrick also engaged Mrs. Palmer, who had never been upon the stage, and who, having through her marriage with an actor, forfeited the wealth she expected to inherit, was glad to accept the twenty shillings a week which, together with friendship never forfeited, Garrick proffered. Mrs. Palmer's appearances on the stage appear to have been few, and are not easily traced. The initial J. was dropped in 1769-70 from the announcements of Palmer's name in the playbills. The omission gave rise to Foote's joke, that Jack Palmer had lost an I. Palmer was disabled for some months in consequence of an accident when acting Dionysius in The Grecian Daughter, to the Euphrasia of Ann Street Barry. The spring in her dagger refused to work, and she inflicted on him in her simulated fury a serious wound. In 1772 Palmer relinquished his summer engagement at the Haymarket in order to succeed Thomas King at Liverpool, where he became a great favourite, and established himself as a tragedian. One circumstance alone militated against his popularity. He was said to ill-treat his wife. Alarmed at this report, he sent for that long-suffering lady, who came, and hiding, it is said, the bruises on her face inflicted by her husband, who was both false and cruel, walked about Liverpool with him and re-established him in public estimation. Not until 1776 did he reappear at the Haymarket, which, however, from that time remained his ordinary place of summer resort. The retirement of Smith gave Palmer control all but undisputed over the highest comedy. Tribute to his special gifts is involved in his selection for Joseph Surface on the first performance of The School for Scandal, 8 May 1777, a character in which he was by general consent unapproachable. Himself addicted to pleasure, for which he occasionally neglected his theatrical duties, he had a pharisaical way of appealing to the audience, which exactly suited the character, and invariably won him forgiveness. This it was, accompanied by his "nice conduct" of the pocket-handkerchief, that secured him the name of Plausible Jack, and established the fact that he was the only man who could induce the public to believe that his wife brought him offspring every two months. She brought him, in fact,