Atlantic Monthly | Page 8

sorts, and, above all,
humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that
our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider
his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. And he did
service to his cause. Not an abuse, whether from the corruption of
something old, or the injustice of something new, but Douglas was out
against it with his sling. He threw his thought into some epigram which
stuck. Praising journalism once, he said, "When Luther wanted to crush
the Devil, didn't he throw ink at him?" Recommending Australia, he
wrote, "Earth is so kindly there, that, tickle her with a hoe, and she
laughs with a harvest." The last of these sayings is in his best manner,
and would be hard to match anywhere for grace and neatness. Here was
a man to serve big cause, for he embodied its truths in forms of beauty.
His use to his party could not be measured like that of commoner men,

because of the rarity and attractive nature of the gifts which he brought
to its service. They had a kind of incalculable value, like that of a fine
day, or of starlight.
He was now immersed in literary activity. He had all kinds of work on
hand. He brought out occasionally a five-act comedy, full as usual of
wit. He wrote in "Punch,"--started a newspaper,--started a
magazine,--published a romance,--all within a few years of each other.
The romance was "A Man made of Money," which bids fair, I think, to
be read longer than any of his works. It is one of those fictions in which,
as in "Zanoni," "Peter Schlemil," and others, the supernatural appears
as an element, and yet is made to conform itself in action to real and
every-day life, in such a way that the understanding is not shocked,
because it reassures itself by referring the supernatural to the regions of
allegory. Shall we call this a kind of bastard-allegory? Jericho, when he
first appears, is a common man of the common world. He is a
money-making, grasping man, yet with a bitter savour of satire about
him which raises him out of the common place. Presently it turns out,
that by putting his hand to his heart he can draw away
bank-notes,--only that it is his life he is drawing away. The conception
is fine and imaginative, and ought to rank with the best of those
philosophical stories so fashionable in the last century. Its working-out
in the every-day part is brilliant and pungent; and much ingenuity is
shown in connecting the tragic and mysterious element in Jericho's life
with the ordinary, vain, worldly existence of his wife and daughters. It
is startling to find ourselves in the regions of the impossible, just as we
are beginning to know the persons of the fable. But the mind reassures
itself. This Jericho, with his mysterious fate,--is not he, in this twilight
of fiction, shadowing to us the real destiny of real money-grubbers
whom we may see any day about our doors? Has not the money
become the very life of many such? And so feeling, the reader goes
pleasantly on,--just excited a little, and raised out of the ordinary
temperature in which fiction is read, by the mystic atmosphere through
which he sees things,--and ends, acknowledging that with much
pleasure he has also gathered a good moral. For his mere amusement
the best fireworks have been cracking round him on his journey. In
short, I esteem this Jerrold's best book,--the one which contains most of
his mind. Certain aspects of his mind, indeed, may be seen even to

better advantage in others of his works; his sentimental side, for
instance, in "Clovernook," where he has let his fancy run riot like
honeysuckle, and overgrow every thing; his wit in "Time works
Wonders," which blazes with epigrams like Vauxhall with lamps. But
"A Man made of Money" is the completest of his books as a creation,
and the most characteristic in point of style,--is based on a principle
which predominated in his mind,--is the most original in
imaginativeness, and the best sustained in point and neatness, of the
works he has left.
During the years of which I have just been speaking, Jerrold lived
chiefly in a villa at Putney, and afterwards at St. John's Wood,--the
mention of which fact leads me to enter on a description of him in his
private, social, and friendly relations. Now-a-days it is happily
expected of every man who writes of another to recognize his
humanity,--not to treat him as a machine for the production of this or
that--scientific, or literary, or other--material. Homo sum is the motto of
the biographer, and so of the humbler biographic sketcher. Jerrold is
just one