Atlantic Monthly | Page 5

its heat the philosophic humorist.
That was the real character of the man. He tried many things, and he
produced much; but the root of him was that he was a humorous
thinker. He did not write first-rate plays, or first-rate novels, rich as he
was in the elements of playwright and novelist. He was not an artist But
he had a rare and original eye and soul,--and in a peculiar way he could
pour out himself. In short, to be an Essayist was the bent of his nature
and genius. English literature is rich in such men,--in men whose works
are cherished for the individuality they reveal. What the Song is in
poetry the Essay is in prose. The producer pours out himself in his own
way, and cannot be separated even in thought from that which he has
produced. Jerrold's characters in plays and novels are interesting to me
because they are Jerrold in masquerade.
But none of us are just what we should like to be. Fortune has her say
in the matter; and as Bacon observes, a man's fortune works on his
nature, and his nature on his fortune. Many a play Jerrold no doubt
wrote when he would rather have been writing something else,--and so
on, as life rolled by, and the day that was passing over him required to
be provided for. His fight for fame was long and hard; and his life was
interrupted, like that of other men, by sickness and pain. In the stoop in
his gait, in the lines in his face, you saw the man who had reached his
Ithaca by no mere yachting over summer seas. And hence, no doubt,
the utter absence in him of all that conventionalism which marks the
man of quiet experience and habitual conformity to the world. In the
streets, a stranger would have known Jerrold to be a remarkable man;
you would have gone away speculating on him. In talk, he was still
Jerrold;--not Douglas Jerrold, Esq., a successful gentleman, whose
heart and soul you were expected to know nothing about, and with
whom you were to eat your dinner peaceably, like any common man.
No. He was at all times Douglas the peculiar and unique,--with his
history in his face, and his genius on his tongue,--nay, and after a little,
with his heart on his sleeve. This made him piquant; and the same
character makes his writings piquant. Hence, too, he is often

_quaint_,--a word which describes what no other word does,--always
conveying a sense of originality, and of what, when we wish to be
condemnatory, we call egotism, but which, when it belongs to genius,
is delightful.
As he became better known, he wrote in higher quarters. "Men of
Character" appeared in "Blackwood,"--a curious collection of
philosophical stories;--for artist he was not; he was always a thinker.
He had a way of dressing up a bit of philosophical observation into a
story very happily. He had much feeling for symbol, and, like the old
architects, would fill all things, pretty or ugly, with meaning. When one
reads these stories, one does not feel as if it were the writer's vocation
to be a story-teller, but as if he were using the story as a philosophical
toy. And it was fortunate for him that he fell on an age of periodicals, a
class of works which just suited his genius. He and the modern
development of periodical literature grew up together, and grew
prosperous together. He was never completely known in England till
after the establishment of "Punch." An independent and original organ
just suited him, above all; for there he had the full play which he
required as a humorist, and as a self-formed man with a peculiar style
and experience. "Punch" was the "Argo" which conveyed him to the
Golden Fleece.
Up to the time of the appearance of this journal, Jerrold had scattered
himself very freely over periodical literature. He had conquered a
position. He had formed his mind. He had seen the world in many
phases, and besides his knowledge of London, had varied his
experience of that city by a lengthened residence in France. Still, he
had not yet caught _the nation_,--there being many degrees of celebrity
below that stage of it; and now, in middle life, his best and crowning
success was to begin.
I believe that Jerrold had long desiderated a "Punch"; but it is certain
that the present famous periodical of that name was started by his
son-in-law, Mr. Henry Mayhew. For a while it had no great success,
and the copyright was sold for a small sum to Messrs. Bradbury and
Evans. Success came, and such a success that "Punch" must always last
as part of the comic literature of England. That literature