A wit with a mission,--this was the position of Douglas in the last years of his life. Accordingly he was a little ashamed of the immense success of the "Caudle Lectures,"--the fame of which I remember being bruited about the Mediterranean in 1845,--and which, as social drolleries, set nations laughing. Douglas took their celebrity rather sulkily. He did not like to be talked of as a funny man. However, they just hit the reading English,--always domestic in their literary as in their other tastes,--and so helped to establish "Punch" and to diffuse Jerrold's name. He began now to be a Power in popular literature; and coming to be associated with the _liberal_ side of "Punch," especially, the Radicals throughout Britain hailed him as a chief. Hence, in due course, his newspaper and his magazine,--both of which might have been permanently successful establishments, had his genius for business borne any proportion to his genius for literature. This, however, was by no manner of means the case. His nature was altogether that of a literary man and artist. He could not speak in public. He could not manage money matters. He could only write and talk,--and these rather as a kind of _improvvisatore_, than as a steady, reading, bookish man, like a Mackintosh or a Macaulay. His politics partook of this character, and I always used to think that it was a queer destiny which made him a Radical teacher. The Radical literature of England is, with few exceptions, of a prosaic character. The most famous school of radicalism is utilitarian and systematic. Douglas was, emphatically, neither. He was impulsive, epigrammatic, sentimental. He dashed gaily against an institution, like a _picador_ at a bull. He never sat down, like the regular workers of his party, to calculate the expenses of monarchy or the extravagance of the civil list. He had no notion of any sort of "economy." I don't know that he had ever taken up political science seriously, or that he had any preference for one kind or form of government over another. I repeat,--his radicalism was that of a humorist. He despised big-wigs, and pomp of all sorts, and, above all, humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. And he did service to his cause. Not an abuse, whether from the corruption of something old, or the injustice of something new, but Douglas was out against it with his sling. He threw his thought into some epigram which stuck. Praising journalism once, he said, "When Luther wanted to crush the Devil, didn't he throw _ink_ at him?" Recommending Australia, he wrote, "Earth is so kindly there, that, tickle her with a hoe, and she laughs with a harvest." The last of these sayings is in his best manner, and would be hard to match anywhere for grace and neatness. Here was a man to serve his cause, for he embodied its truths in forms of beauty.