ed his most
attractive pleasure. But, when he was scarcely in the flush of youth, he
went to Europe, and studied art under Benjamin West. Throughout his life
he was ever producing canvases, and designing, and his interest in the art
activity of the country, which connects his name with the establishment of
the New York Academy of Design, together with his writing on the subject,
make him an important figure in that line of work.

On his return from Europe, as we have already noted, he was fired to write
plays through the success of Royall Tyler, and he began his long career as
dramatist, which threw him upon his own inventive resourcefulness, and so
closely identified him with the name of the German, Kotzebue, whose plays
he used to translate and adapt by the wholesale, as did also Charles
Smith.

The pictures of William Dunlap are very careful to indicate in realistic
fashion the fact that he had but one eye. When a boy, one of his playmates
at school threw a stone, which hit his right eye. But though he was thus
early made single-visioned, he saw more than his contemporaries; for he
was a man who mingled much in the social life of the time, and he had a
variety of friends, among them Charles Brockden Brown, the novelist, and
George Frederick Cooke, the tragedian. He was the biographer for both of
them, and these volumes are filled with anecdote, which throws light, not
only on the subjects, but upon the observational taste of the writer.
There are those who claim that he was unjust to Cooke, making him more of
a drunkard than he really was. And the effect the book had on some of its
readers may excellently well be seen by Lord Byron's exclamation, after
having finished it. As quoted by Miss Crawford, in her "Romance of the
American Theatre," he said: "Such a book! I believe, since 'Drunken
Barnaby's Journal,' nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room
and tap-room, drams and the drama. Brandy, whiskey-punch, and, latterly,
toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvelous; first, that a
man should live so long drunk, and next that he should have found a sober
biographer."

Dunlap's first play was called "The Modest Soldier; or, Love in New York"
(1787). We shall let him be his own chronicler:

As a medium of communication between the playwriter and the
manager, a man was pointed out, who had for a time been of some
consequence on the London boards, and now resided under another