The struggle at starting was a hard one. His principal permanent source of income was a small weekly salary paid to him as dramatist to the establishment, by one Davidge, manager of the Coburg (now the Victoria) Theatre. This man appears to have treated Jerrold, whose dramas brought both money and reputation to his theatre, with an utter want of common consideration and common gratitude. He worked his poor author pitilessly; and it is, on that account, highly satisfactory to know that he overreached himself in the end, by quarrelling with his dramatist, at the very time when Jerrold had a theatrical fortune (so far as managers' interests were concerned) lying in his desk, in the shape of Black-Eyed Susan. With that renowned play (the most popular of all nautical dramas) in his hand, Douglas left the Coburg to seek employment at the Surrey Theatre--then under the management of Mr. Elliston. This last tradesman in plays--who subsequently showed himself to be a worthy contemporary of the other tradesman at the Coburg--bid rather higher for Jerrold's services, and estimated the sole monopoly of the fancy, invention, and humour of a man who had already proved himself to be a popular, money-bringing dramatist, at the magnificent rate of five pounds a week. The bargain was struck; and Jerrold's first play produced at the Surrey Theatre was Black-Eyed Susan. He had achieved many enviable dramatic successes before this time. He had written domestic dramas--such as Fifteen Years of a Drunkard's Life, and Ambrose Gwinett--the popularity of which is still well remembered by play-goers of the old generation. But the reception of Black-Eyed Susan eclipsed all previous successes of his or of any other dramatist's in that line. Mr. T. P. Cooke, who, as the French say, "created" the part of William, not only found half London flocking into the Borough to see him; but was actually called upon, after acting in the play, as a first piece, at the Surrey Theatre, to drive off in his sailor's dress, and act in it again on the same night, as the last piece, at Covent Garden Theatre. Its first "run" mounted to three hundred nights: it afterwards drew money into the empty treasury of Drury Lane: it remains, to this day, a "stock-piece" on which managers and actors know that they can depend; and, strangest phenomenon of all, it is impossible to see the play now, without feeling that its great and well-deserved dramatic success has been obtained with the least possible amount of assistance from the subtleties and refinements of dramatic art. The piece is indebted for its hold on the public sympathy solely to the simple force, the irresistible directness, of its appeal to some of the strongest affections in our nature. It has succeeded, and it will succeed, not because the dialogue is well, or, as to some passages of it, even naturally written; not because the story is neatly told, for it is (especially in the first act) full of faults in