Dedication.

I LAY THIS RECORD

OF A LIFE SHE SHARED AND SWEETENED,

WITH ALL DUTIFUL AFFECTION,

AT

MY MOTHER'S FEET.

PREFACE.

I HAVE fulfilled, to the best of my poor ability, a very difficult and a very solemn task. Mr. Carlyle has said that a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. My endeavour has been to set forth two rarities: I fear I have failed in the production of the well-written life; but it will be sufficient reward to me for the anxiety I have suffered in this performance of a filial duty, if I have proved that my father's life was a well-spent one.

It is possible that the world may declare that I have, in the following pages, set an unjustly high value upon my father's works; and that I have claimed for the memory of the man more reverence than it deserves.

The chief writings of Douglas Jerrold have been now for many years before the public; and the high favour which they have commanded is the safeguard of that place in contemporary literature, which the grateful affection of a son would have assigned them, under any circumstances.

When speaking of the man-of the husband

and parent-some authority is due to me. I who saw my father-the fine subject of this poor picture (which I set before the reader with a grave sense of short-comings in the execution thereof)— daily en robe de chambre; when the house-doors were closed upon the world-when the fear of critics was not-and when the natural, temperament had its free play-I who have most solid reason to be grateful for many sunny years passed under the wise and tender guidance of Douglas Jerrold at home, do venture to speak somewhat authoritatively to all who have slandered him, calling him cynic, and begetter of feuds and illblood between poor and rich.

I might have filled chapters answering trite slanders slanders in religious papers that doubted insolently his Christianity-slanders penned by penurious scribes, with a wondrously liberal disregard of truth-slanders carted in long articles numbered 1, 2, and 3, and sent to an American paper by a man who declared that he was a friend of the illustrious deceased, and had therefore a few mud pellets ready, at a goodly sum per pellet, to throw upon his grave. I have put all this dirty pillory-crowd aside. I have written, upon my father's own desk, the truth, so far as I know it, about him, at home and abroad. I have suppressed nothing for the indulgence of family vanity; and beg the public acceptance of this biography in the faith that it is an honest, if a weak work.