The Sun.
London, England, 1852-06-14 00:00:00

ti:y seemed merged like that of Rip Van
Winkle in " sorasbodv else," imports a ludicrousl fits.
c;nation to the etory, that continues unahatce until'
its termination. Jack Runnymede, the "man or
seats thanks," impersonates the folly of that home-
bred enthusiasm which is too frequently engenderre d
by loyalty and stupidity in the brains of your pig-
headed politician. It contains a wholesome lesson, a
lesson not; less wholesome then that inculcated by the
memoir of Bernaby Palms, the sy
csphant of syco
paants, who " felt' his way " so adroitly that he lost
a bag of gold for a rotten egg, and tumbled down
stairs in tile dark on the nigiat of his marriage.
Chriatopher Snub, considered by his neigh-,
-
bours 33 infaut,ety " born to be hanged,
introduces us in the course of his name-
sited sufferings, to the maritime scenes rendered
was enabled to delineate afresh from his own
familiar by the pen of Smollett, and which Jerrold
personal
recollections. As the closing chapter in these annals
of calamity came the cuticula old story of Creso
Quettrino, the " loan who
died rich," making the
reader acquainted with . that "stone of infamy" at
Padua which more readily relieved the " squatter',
from his creditors than the court of bankruptcy, and
which consequently, while it immeasurably surpassed
the blarney atone in sophistry, reduced the philoso-
pher's stone to a mere pebble by comparison.
Rescued from the anonymous in
one quarter by
the republication of his contributions to Blackwood,
Douglas Jerrold in 1843 began to extend his influ-
ence as a public writer, but more especiellY
as a sarceatic humourist, by his connexion with
" Punch," the " Charivari" of London. Through its
peges he commanded at once a numerous audience,
which his wit contributed scarcely less than the pic-
torial fun of Leech to increase very rapidly and
very
considerably. Punch's Letters to his Son, replete
with pungent sarcasm and
sparkling with facetious-
ness,th revealed in a new light as an ob-
servant and uncompromising satirist, which were yet
further developed by Punch's Complete Letter
Writer. Besides these sly
a and laugam
ter-oving
serials, he wrote also, in the same periodical, his
charming Story of a • Feather in which nodding
with teen and shaken by laughter, the plume of an
those powers
through the dusty mazes of life in London, saturated
ostrich recounts, of oourse With its quiii.ene, its
autobiography. Simple as the story is in itis,
character, it comprises within its compass a"
,
imaginable phases rof society
-rom Shadrach Jacobs
the Jew dealer-in-stores, to
Mr- Inglewood the cler-
gymaa; from Jack Lipscomb the sailor, to Alla
Mr. Lintley the apothecary ; from
seer. Flamingo the
Court feather merchant, to Mr. Julius Curiwell thet
g-
valet of my Lord Huntin oPPer—nay, from the
squalid Jesseto the beautiful Countess Blushrose.
Among the more eccentric passages of the fiction, its
readers can scarcely by possibility fOrget the anent
dote about the pineapples at the desert of Flamingo!,
or-the quaintly told " story of a scarlet-heeled shoe,'
any more than they can lose a remembrance of that
incomparable sequence of equivoques in which the prim-
cilia at personage engaged is Mrs.
—"Ptooth, the horrible
old bawd, almost as dreadful a creation as the Mother
Mandrake of
several
Farquhar. Subordinate though
of the other characters are, they are occasionallyrea
Pencilled with a few touches of • 11 admirable
cleverness such as Mrs. Crumpet the lody ginghouse-
keeper, and Clickly Abram the highwayman; or as
grotesque little Monsieur Spanneu and honest Luke
Knuckle; or, neje, as Treply the surly turnkey of
New gate and the good, simple minded Misses Pea-
chick, a sort of Sisters Cheeryble, bearing a family
resemblance likewise to the Misses
Speelow, the little
birdlike aunts of the first love of David Copperfield.
Best beautiful" of all,g however, amen_
the more
loveable characters in the narrative is poor dear
Patty Butler the feather dresser--whoae very
name to us was endeared, as
it were, by
the recollections of childhood, aseociated, as it
nilln a
illustrations..
yellow
is, with that little nursery tale which almost equalled
'riitathi r
gaudilyose,stitched
coloured
i
Ur our mind the charms of "The White Chicken," the
storyove aonf d " Patty
e
adorned w
The purity, the sweetne-s, and the long-suffering equa-
nimity of Patty Butler invest at times
with a
bewitching interest the motley chapters of the narra-
tive--a narrative in which the grotesque and the
solemn are occasionally blended in a species of extra-
vagance, as at the awful but ridiculous deathabed of
Cramp the Cardmaker. More successful than the series
of papers just particularized, more successful indeed
than any other among the many Popular contribu-
tions to " Ptinch," perhaps in some
.respects
the happiest effort of his very peculiar powers
as a satirical humorist, Mrs. Candle's Curtain Lec-
tures appears to give the seal to our author's reputa-
tion. It was, in the popular term, " a bit," and a hit
too most decided and unquestionable. And no
wonder, for the sufferings of Job Caudle, in that
horrid but expressive phrase which is our abomination,
came home in married life, it is to be feared, in too
many instances, to "our business and bosoms."
Thirty-six lectures were enough in all conscience to
show the genius of Mrs. Caudle Ir we might say,
in reference to "that sainted creature," that "angel
now in heaven," three dozen from the domestic cat
were surely adequate for the simple Pur-
poses of illustration. Within those thirty-six
solemn prelections from the bed-clotheu how much
has been recorded, from the first peccadillos of Caudle,
when he began "quarrelling. with the doormat" to
frighten his wife on his return from a carouse, to his
flagrant profligacy in regard mption of
to the consu
whisky and tobacco : from his timid intercession for
the servant girl to his full-blown flirtation with Miss
Prettyman. "'there was a time," exclaims Mrs.
Caudle in her third lecture "when you were as re-
gular at your fireside as the kettle." One sighs with
her for the lost time of their Arcadian honeymoon—in
Bloomsbury. It required
a geniu3 like that of Mrs.
Caudle to make as much as
she did of incidents like
the loan of the family umbrella, the smashing of a.
piece of crockery, the a
, PPearance of black beetles in
the front parlour, or tne suggestion,of an autumnal
trip to Margate. Her caPacit for the expansion of
of the trivial into the important remains unparalleled
by any one except Caleb She could
Lalderstone.
expatiate, for example, over
a new bonnet until it
became scarcely less momentous than the helmet of
Cassandra; and this with as much fluency of imagina-
tion as might have been revealed by the steward of
Ravenswood when panegyrising a pint of sour wine
in a broken pitcher until it
became invested with the
dignity of the choicest
vintage
.of ToquaY• ' iltual°-
rous as the Curtain Lecturesare for the most part,
one of them closes with ,eusn ,
a es of exquisite feeling,
true to nature, and therefore irresistible in ins
abrupt pathos. Allusion made, of
is here
course, to the unexpected A:
aiseovery. that "Brother
Tom" is the friend n
aaudle has rescued from
the sponging-house. pes,
—od essays have been
made by Jerrold since the plow of those redoubtable
papers, to produce another
series in `Punch" that
might achieve a companion
hitherto,
"
however, unsuccessfully. popularity—
tie B. '
ib s Baby" after
giving fair promise of degeueh .
t a " crying
nuisance" was abandoned g rg in o
a-
Prematurely as a found:
ling, while tt Miss Beninable's Tea
and Toast" expe-
rienced ano less summary ,-,e .
reeeotion. Not withstancla
log these occasional failures, ea
Nsglas Jerrold is never
" greater," generally BPeakin than in " Poach his
Yet, as with Mr. Briggs in Agogust, his foot is on
native heath, and his n-'me is
, - Macgregor. Yet, apart from "Patten," Jerrold has displayed
very remarkable powers both aa
a humorist and RS. a
satirist—his Chronicles of
Cioivr2,ook, revealing
under a more geniali "Pecet!,he sweetness of his quaint
but sometimes sardonic aottuaohy.
sides the stinging leaves, pee, The nettle, be-
• tauces blossoms laden
with honey and fragrance. it
wa_ .
these same
Chronicles that the world 0t47 in 0
act
count of the Hermit of Bellyful e oad some
of t
----the record l3
jovial saintship illustrating witeh the e of Dougles
Jerrold and the pencil of xentia pear d ,
s the
pleasant pages of the "Illuminated AT Al
P • v
tatageze. a o".c‘ After
me.
conducting that periodical for etue.
author
.• adventured uponmonths, our
anothert bliCation
called after himself, and publication
, .
entitled a " Shilling Magazine.v,
aolaretendingly
editing its miscellaneous contents h
' aobroughtßesides
its pages, accompaniedby
out in
et
etchings
of Leech, his story of St. Giles and ~..
in many respects incomparably to aat James.--
...3 inaStOrpiece. Pre-
viously he had, for the most part, eup_ ,
zou the ffi e e 0-
rescence as he nolv reaped t e harvest of his ~n,
i ina-
tion—like the agriculturist in the Georgia,
jugdici-
ously plucking the flawers inthe vernal season and the.
fruits in the autumnal—

against tease, by
h
" Primus vere rniamt atquo fultninno earpe're
It is more particularly from th© pages Pofmathi.".s
fiction that Jerrold may vindicate himself
froo
the
charge of baying pitted class
representing the rich as criminal and
virtuous. According to the impression 0-f ;13_Oifyo)or asy
is really the tendency of his writings ,1., 4 such
Jerrold as
through them is taught to regard Decea;"s4t Labour
y alternate
can discover
the disguise of ,Depravity7ever " 'PParel as
shining as with the reflex of the Trans
Indigence. Here page
uguration of
regard Jerrold
,
it is
he grievous
beauty under rags, and virtue in the rookeries. But
misapprehension. Like. Dickens,.
unlike Dickens, he cannot.
with
and colour
his Pictures perpetually w it a
tb e c
master
as
genial as the sunshine of God.
Master as
be is of all the "quips and. cranks" of the
satirist, he cannot nsist occasionally indulging him-
self in the luxury of girding at someh gilded iniquity
—sprinkling poison over the coufc fT,
°- --'iyes, while
strewing blossoms at the foot o Lazarus.
the distorted estimate of his philosophy, Hence
Of the in-
accuracy and injustice of that estimate we take " St.
Giles and St. James" to he sufficiently illustra-
ttire=-commending it to those who, according to tbe '
conjectures of our author himself would cry aloes l
aloes ! even when his pen might be dropping myrrh
and frankiu3cence. True, they would find Becky
represented as gentle and loveable, althou,
frh a poor
barmaid at the ~Lamb and Star,"
while
Crossbene would carry a black heart 88 well