Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

a nature as his had immense buoyancy in it. Nay, for the very dun young Douglas had an epigram,--as bright, but not as welcome, as a sovereign. A saying of those early days has found its way into a comedy,--but not the less belongs to his authentic biography. A threatening attorney shakes his fist at the villakin where at the window the wit is parleying with him. "I'll put a man in the house, Sir!" "Couldn't you," says Douglas, (and of course the right-minded reader is shocked,) "couldn't you make it a woman?" What a scandalous way to treat a man of business! Between Douglas and the lawyers, for many years, there was open war. He was a kind of Robin Hood to these representatives of the Crown,--adopting the plucky and defiant gaiety of the old outlaw, and shooting keen arrows at them with a bow that never grew weak.
The theatres were his regular sources of employment for many years, and he wrote dramas at a salary. Tradition and family connection must have led him chiefly to this walk; for though he had some of the most important qualities of a dramatist, very few of his dramas seem likely to live,--and even these are not equal to his works in other departments. The "Man made of Money" will outlast his best play. His most popular drama,--"Black-eyed Susan,"--though clever, pretty, and tender, is not, as a work of art, worthy of his genius; nor did he consider it so himself. In his dramas we find, I think, rather touches of character, than characters,--scenes, rather than plots,--disjecta membra of dramatic genius, rather than harmonious creations of it. He could not separate himself from his work sufficiently for the purposes of the higher stage. As Johnson says of "Cato," "We pronounce the name of Cato, but we think on Addison,"--so one may say of any character of Jerrold's, that it suggests and refers us to its author. All the gold has his head on it. To be sure, there is plenty of gold; and I wish somebody would put his scores of plays, big and little, into a kind of wine-press and give us the wine. There is always the wit of the man, whether the play be "Gertrude's Cherries," or "The Smoked Mixer," or "Fifteen Tears of a Drunkard's Life,"--or what not. That quality never failed him. He dresses up all his characters in that brilliant livery. But dialogue is not enough for the stage, and compared with the attraction of an intense action is nothing. Besides, Jerrold found the modern taste for spectacle forming thirty years ago. In his prefaces he complains bitterly of the preference of the public for the mechanical over the higher attractions of the art. And the satirical war he waged against actors and managers showed that he looked back with little pleasure to the days when his life was chiefly occupied with them and their affairs. It may be mentioned here, that he was very shabbily treated by several people who owed fame and fortune to his genius. I have heard a curious story about his connection with Davidge, manager of the Surrey,--the original, as I take it, of his Bajazet Gay. They say that he had used Douglas very ill,--that Douglas invoked this curse upon him,--"that he might live to keep his carriage, and yet not be able to ride in it,"--and that it was fulfilled, curiously, to the letter. The ancient gods, we know, took the comic poet under their protection and avenged him. Was this a case of the kind,--or but a flying false anecdote? I would not be certain;--but at least, when Davidge died one evening, and Douglas was informed of the hour, he remarked, "I did not think he would have died before the half-price came in!" Sordid fellows are not safe from genius even in the grave. It spoils their sepulchral monuments,--as the old heralds tore the armorial blazonry from plebeian tombs.
His first fame and success, however, were owing to the Drama; and though his non-dramatic labors were greater and still more successful, he never altogether left the stage. I repeat, that I value his plays, most, because they helped to discipline him for his after-work; and I thank the theatre chiefly for ripening in 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