Atlantic Monthly, - [best ebook reader under 100 txt] 📗

ion is nothing. Besides, Jerrold found the modern taste forspectacle forming thirty years ago. In his prefaces he complains bitterlyof the preference of the public for the mechanical over the higherattractions of the art. And the satirical war he waged against actorsand managers showed that he looked back with little pleasure to the dayswhen his life was chiefly occupied with them and their affairs. It may bementioned here, that he was very shabbily treated by several people whoowed fame and fortune to his genius. I have heard a curious story about hisconnection with Davidge, manager of the Surrey,--the original, as I takeit, of his Bajazet Gay. They say that he had used Douglas very ill,--thatDouglas invoked this curse upon him,--"that he might live to keep hiscarriage, and yet not be able to ride in it,"--and that it was fulfilled,curiously, to the letter. The ancient gods, we know, took the comic poetunder their protection and avenged him. Was this a case of the kind,--orbut a flying false an