admirable use of the chances in his favour
which he had so well deserved, and for which
he had waited so long. At the Adelphi, at
Drury Lane, and at the Haymarket, drama
after drama flowed in quick succession from
his pen. The Devil's Ducat, the Bride of
Ludgate, the Rent Day, Nell Gwynne, the
Housekeeper—this last, the best of his plays
in point of construction—date, with many
other dramatic works, from the period of his
life now under review. The one slight
check to his career of prosperity occurred in
eighteen hundred and thirty-six, when he and
his brother-in-law took the Strand Theatre,
and when Jerrold acted a character in one of
his own plays. Neither the theatrical speculation
nor the theatrical appearance proved
to be successful; and he wisely abandoned,
from that time, all professional connection
with the stage, except in his old and ever-welcome
character of dramatist. In the
other branches of his art—to which he devoted
himself, at this turning-point of his
career, as faithfully as he devoted himself to
the theatrical branch—his progress was not
less remarkable. As journalist and essayist,
he rose steadily towards the distinguished
place which was his due among the writers
of his time. This middle term of his literary
exertions produced, among other noticeable
results, the series of social studies called
Men of Character, originally begun in Blackwood's
Magazine, and since republished
among his collected works.

He had now advanced, in a social as well
as in a literary point of view, beyond that
period in the lives of self-made men which
may be termed the adventurous period.
Whatever difficulties and anxieties henceforth
oppressed him were caused by the trials and
troubles which, more or less, beset the exceptional
lives of all men of letters. The
struggle for a hearing, the fight for a fair
field in which to show himself, had now been
bravely and creditably accomplished; and
all that remains to be related of the life of
Douglas Jerrold is best told in the history of
his works.

Taking his peculiar literary gifts into consideration,
the first great opportunity of his
life, as a periodical writer, was offered to him,
unquestionably, by the starting of Punch.
The brilliant impromptu faculty which gave
him a place apart, as thinker, writer, and
talker, among the remarkable men of his
time, was exactly the faculty which such a
journal as Punch was calculated to develop
to the utmost. The day on which Jerrold
was secured as a contributor would have
been a fortunate day for that periodical, if he
had written nothing in it but the far-famed
Caudle Lectures, and the delightful Story of
A Feather. But the service that he rendered
to Punch must by no means be associated
only with the more elaborate contributions
to its pages which are publicly connected
with his name. His wit often flashed out at
its brightest, his sarcasm often cut with its
keenest edge, in those well-timed paragraphs
and short articles which hit the passing event
of the day, and which, so far as their temporary
purpose with the public is concerned,
are all-important ingredients in the success
of such a periodical as Punch. A contributor
who can strike out new ideas from the original
resources of his own mind, is one man,
and a contributor who can be depended on
for the small work-a-day emergencies which
are felt one week and forgotten the next, is
generally another. Jerrold united these two
characters in himself; and the value of him
to Punch, on that account only, can never be
too highly estimated.

At this period of his life, the fertility of his
mental resources showed itself most
conspicuously. While he was working for Punch
he was also editing and largely contributing
to the Illuminated Magazine. In this publication
appeared, among a host of shorter
papers, the series called The Chronicles of
Clovernook, which he himself always considered
to be one of his happiest efforts, and
which does indeed contain, in detached
passages, some of the best things that ever fell
from his pen. On the cessation of The
Illuminated Magazine, he started The Shilling
Magazine, and contributed to it his well-known
novel, Saint Giles and Saint James.
These accumulated literary occupations and
responsibilities would have been enough for
most men; but Jerrold's inexhaustible
energy and variety carried him on through
more work still. Theatrical audiences now
found their old favourite addressing them
again, and occupying new ground as a writer
of five act and three act comedies. Bubbles
of the Day, Time Works Wonders, The
Catspaw, Retired from Business, Saint Cupid,
were all produced, with other plays, after the
period when he became a regular writer in
Punch. Judged from the literary point of
view these comedies were all original and
striking contributions to the library of the
stage. From the dramatic point of view,
however, it must not be concealed that they
were less satisfactory; and that some of them
were scarcely so successful with audiences
as their author's earlier and humbler efforts.
The one solid critical reason which it is possible
to assign for this, implies in itself a
compliment which could be paid to no other
dramatist of modern times. The perpetual
glitter of Jerrold's wit seems to have blinded
him to some of the more sober requirements
of the Dramatic art. When Charles Kemble
said, and said truly, that there was wit
enough for three comedies in Bubbles of the
Day, he implied that this brilliant overflow
left little or no room for the indispensable
resources of story and situation to display
themselves fairly on the stage. The comedies
themselves, examined with reference to their
success in representation, as well as to their
intrinsic merits, help to support this view.