A threatening attorney shakes his fist at the villakin where at
the window the wit is parleying with him. "I'll put a man in the house,
Sir!" "Couldn't you," says Douglas, (and of course the right-minded reader
is shocked,) "couldn't you make it a woman?" What a scandalous way to treat
a man of business! Between Douglas and the lawyers, for many years, there
was open war. He was a kind of Robin Hood to these representatives of the
Crown,--adopting the plucky and defiant gaiety of the old outlaw, and
shooting keen arrows at them with a bow that never grew weak.
The theatres were his regular sources of employment for many years, and he
wrote dramas at a salary. Tradition and family connection must have led
him chiefly to this walk; for though he had some of the most important
qualities of a dramatist, very few of his dramas seem likely to live,--and
even these are not equal to his works in other departments. The "Man made
of Money" will outlast his best play. His most popular drama,--"Black-eyed
Susan,"--though clever, pretty, and tender, is not, as a work of art,
worthy of his genius; nor did he consider it so himself.
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