"This renowned piece, brought from the deck of the Ernest gun-brig, with the sea-breeze in it, and all the rough, hearty manliness to be found on his Majesty's ships in those days, was first produced on Whit Monday, June 8, 1829, in the author's twenty-sixth year. The noisy holiday-makers of the Borough and of the London Road were the first critics of a piece destined to be played in every quarter of the world, and to bring fortune to graceless Mr. Elliston. Mr. T. P. Cooke, who had not played at the Surrey Theatre for ten years, made his reappearance as William, and was the Long Tom Coffin of the afterpiece."

We remember describing the eventful evening in the Harlequin journal, as follows:- "The audience were hot and noisy almost throughout the evening. Now and then, in a lull, the seeds of wit intrusted by the author to the Gardener (Mr. Buckstone), were loudly appreciated ; but the early scenes of Susan's heart-rending woe' could not appease the clamour. By-and-by came the clever dénouement when, just previously to the execution, the captain enters with a document proving William to have been discharged when he committed the offence. The attentive few applauded so loudly as to silence the noisy audience. They listened, and caught up the capitallymanaged incident. The effect was startling and electrical. The whole audience leaped with joy, and rushed into frantic enthusiasm. Such was the commencement of the career of a drama which, in theatrical phrase, has brought more money to manager and actor than any piece of its class; but to its author a sort of sic vos non vobis result."

But the piece was not greatly successful from the first night. Yet there were points to touch all the poor in the sorrow suffered by Susan, dunned by the hard landlord, Doggrass, and in the error against authority by William, who struck his commander to shield his wife from wrong; the respectable and the representatives of authority, in the frank forgiveness and noble alacrity to save the sailor on the part of the offended officer. On the three hundredth night of representation, the outer front of the theatre was illuminated.

"Actors and managers throughout the country reaped a golden harvest. Testimonials were got up for Elliston and for Cooke on the glory of its success, but Jerrold's share of the gain was slight-about £70, of the many thousands which it realized for the management." This is not strictly correct; the drama was, in theatrical phrase, played up in the early

nights, the manager refusing to play any other piece. A biographer in the Penny Cyclopædia states that Mr. Jerrold had already attained his twenty-first year; his son states his twenty-sixth year; and T. P. Cooke may be set down to have played the part four hundred times at different theatres in the year of its birth. Its entire number may have reached one thousand times. The success of Black-Eyed Susan was, undoubtedly, very great, if not unprecedented; and though it brought poor pecuniary profit to the author, it was of great service to him. Of Douglas Jerrold's popularity as a dramatist, neither author nor manager could rob him. He now set to work more resolutely than ever. Before the close of the year he had written the Flying Dutchman, John Overy, and a drama upon the adventures of Vidocq.

The Rent Day followed the Bride of Ludgate; the success of the former was founded upon Sir David Wilkie's two celebrated pictures. It belongs essentially to "the domestic drama." In 1836 Jerrold was tempted into the joint management of the Strand theatre with his brother-in-law, Mr. W. J. Hammond. They began with a tragic-drama, the Painter of Ghent, but as the aspect of the boxes and pit was much more tragic than could be wished, they, in a sailor's phrase, "let go the painter;" but Jerrold's success was not marked. The stage was then rapidly abandoned, and back went Jerrold to his study, never more to leave it.

Next, a chance perusal of the history of the "broadbrimmed hat," in Downes's Roscius Anglicanus, first suggested Nell Gwyn, all the characters in which comedy, with but two exceptions, and allowing the story that the first love of Nell was really an old lawyer, figured in the time of Charles II. For Orange Moll, so inimitably acted by Mrs. Keeley, the author pleads the authority of Pepys, who speaks of Sir W. Penn and himself having a long talk with Orange Moll, thought more euphonic than "Mal," or "Matilda." The incident of a king supping at a tavern with Nell, and finding himself without money to defray the bill, is variously related in the Chroniques Scandaleuses of his "merry selfish days."

No brilliant staff had literature been to Douglas Jerrold up to this time, 1830. It required still long, long days and nights of solitary thinking and working; of incessant reading and study-mornings given to Italian-and even few leisure hours to German, that Jean Paul might be read in his native language, to make way still against the adverse circumstances

of boyhood. But in 1831 came better fortune. In November he figured as a contributor of "Brevities" to the Monthly Magazine, of which these are specimens:

"Fortune is painted blind that she may not blush to behold the fools who belong to her.

"Some men get on in the world on the same principle that a sweep passes uninterruptedly through a crowd.

"People who affect a shortness of sight must think it the height of good fortune to be born blind.

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Lounging, unemployed people may be called of the tribe of Joshua, for with them the sun stands still.

"There is an ancient saying, 'Truth lies in a well!' May not the modern adage run, 'The most certain charity is at a pump!' "Some connoisseurs would give a hundred pounds for the painted head of a beggar that would threaten the living mendicant with the stocks.

"If you boast of a contempt for the world avoid getting into debt. It is giving to gnats the fangs of vipers.

"The heart of the great man, surrounded by poverty, and trammelled by dependence, is like an egg in a nest built among briers. It must either curdle into bitterness, or, if it take life and mount, struggle through thorns for the ascent.

"Fame is represented bearing a trumpet. Would not the picture be truer were she to hold a handful of dust?

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Fishermen, in order to handle eels securely, first cover them with dirt; in like manner does detraction strive to grasp excellence.

"The wounds of the dead are the furrows in which living heroes grow their laurels.

"If we judge from history, of what is the book of glory composed? Are not its leaves dead men's skin, and its letters stamped in human blood, its golden clasps the pillage of nations? It is illuminated with tears and broken hearts."

On the 13th of January, 1832, Punch in London, price one penny, was started, and in the first number may be most legibly traced the pen that afterwards indited in the great Punch of the present time, "The Two Letters," and the " Story of a Feather." The Punch in London hit hard, but lived only for a short time, and Douglas Jerrold's pen could but be traced in it two weeks.

Punch, still "a baby periodical," now passed from the hands of its originators, headed by Mr. Mark Lemon, into strong hands. Next, the White Milliner appeared, but its success was forgotten in the Babbles of the Day, the piece

which, according to Charles Kemble, had wit enough for three comedies, but its want of interest, plot, and action marred the work. It was written at Boulogne, where the author had taken a cottage in 1840, the very cottage in which Mrs. Jordan died. Here, in perfect quiet, with his children at school about him, Douglas Jerrold spent two very happy summers.

The Prisoner at War was produced at Drury-lane Theatre early in 1842; here is a glimpse of its wit: Captain Channel reproves his daughter for reading trashy novels. "When I

No

was young," he tells her, "girls used to read Pilgrim's Progress, Jeremy Taylor, and such books of innocence; now young ladies know the ways of Newgate as well as the turnkeys. These books gave girls hearty, healthy food; now, silly things, like larks in cages, they live upon hemp-seed." Punch has been described as 66 a joint speculation of authors, artists, and engravers," by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, in his nicely written life of his father. He tells us that a letter was despatched across the water to Douglas Jerrold, begging the Boulogne hermit to join the list of contributors. article reached, however, in time for No. 1; but in No. 2 appears Douglas Jerrold's first contribution to a periodical in which he was destined to write his most popular works. In his first paper, Punch's political creed was set forth. To correct the errors and extravagances of English life, has been described as the earlier object of our motley moralist; but it was soon found that domestic subjects, as they were termed, were the least popular; hence the success of the journal was discouragingly gradual, the executive means of the management were cramped, and Landells had to bear much of the up-hill work as his share. We are anxious to place these few facts before the reader to show the early difficulties of the enterprise, which were chiefly attributable to the mistake of relying only on "domestic subjects." A sheet of "Punch's Valentines," by Mark Lemon, gave a fillip to the treasury; but, as Mr. Blanchard Jerrold states, "the success of Punch was not great until it passed into the hands of Messrs. Bradbury and Evans;" but it was not for three or four years, or even longer, that Punch came to his legitimate bearings, and warranted the favourable opinions of its promoters.

About two months after Punch was born, the papers signed Q., written by Douglas Jerrold, were commenced, and as they proceeded, they became, in the phrase of that day, the

"backbone of Punch." "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures were a brilliant exception to the domestic papers; their wide popularity arising from attracting a large class of readers who rarely affect politics. Punch, however, had absorbed the greater part of Jerrold's time. Every week had he contributed short essays and pungent satires to its popular pages. He had also contributed to the Illuminated Magazine, started by Mr. Landells and Mr. Herbert_Ingram. About this time Douglas Jerrold met Mr. Alfred Bunn, in Jermyn Street. "What," said Mr. Bunn, "I suppose you're strolling about picking up characters." "Well, not exactly," was the reply, "though there's plenty lost me, I'm told."

Jerrold returned to the stage in April, 1845, with characters woven into a five-act comedy, which he called Time works Wonders, and was said to "blaze with epigrams like Vauxhall with lamps." Mr. Blanchard Jerrold well describes this piece in five pages: it is, undoubtedly, one of the best of the author's comedies; it ran about ninety nights. In this year he started his Shilling Magazine and his Weekly Newspaper, which he edited for the last four or five years of his life. It reached so enormous a circulation that its conduct involved a serious moral responsibility. "Whatever objection there may have been to the strongly expressed opinions, the invective, or the sarcasm of this paper under his management, it never aimed at popularity by false and dangerous doctrines upon the great principles of society and government. Its success, compared with its previous position, is one of the many proofs that the largest number of readers are not to be propitiated by what has been falsely considered as essential to popularity, to write down to an imaginary low intellectual standard."

"Jerrold is stated to have written regularly for Punch from its second number. In this constant round, for thirty years, of a very peculiar form of literary labour, where the strongest effects are produced by epigrammatic terseness, we trace a life of unremitting industry, combined with very rare natural gifts improved by diligent cultivation. The flippant satirist -and we have many such amongst the young race of periodical writers-who pours out his invectives without impartial observation or accurate knowledge, belongs only to the passing hour. Jerrold's satire has always a foundation of truth and earnest purpose, and therefore it lives. In his most ephemeral writings we may trace that wide acquaintance with the best