TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
CHARLES KENDAL BUSHE,
CHIEF JUSTICE OF IRELAND,
This trifle, the pastime of a winters evening, is presentedto a person of whom I have long held the highest opinion among the circle of my friends and the crowd of my contemporaries, and for whom my regards have been disinterested and undeviating.
The work is too trivial to be of any weight, and I offer it only as a Souvenir, which may amuse one who can be constant to friendship at all periods, and knows how to appreciate a gift, not by its value, but by the feelings of the heart which sends it.
Jonah Barrington , K. C.
INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The compilation by me of a medley of this description may appear rather singular. Indeed, I myself think it so, and had got nearly half-way through it before I could reasonably account for the thing;more especially as it was by no means commenced for mercenary purposes. The fact is, I had long since engaged my mind and time on a work of real public interest; and so far as that work was circulated, my literary ambition was more than gratified by the approbation it received. But it has so happened, that my publishers, one after another, have been wanting in the qualification of stability; and hence, my Historic Memoirs of Ireland have been lying fast asleep, in their own sheets, on the shelves of three successive booksellers or their assignees; and so ingeniously were they scattered about, that I found it impossible for some years to collect them. This was rather provoking, as there were circumstances connected with the work, which (be its merits what they may) would, in my opinion, have ensured it an extensive circulation. However, I have at length finished the Memoirs in question, which I verily believe are now about to be published in reality, and will probably excite sundry differences of opinion and shades of praise or condemnation (both of the book and the author) among His Majestys liege subjects.
. See the Prospectus, published with the present work.
For the purpose of completing that work, I had lately re-assumed my habit of writing; and being tired of so serious and responsible a concern as Memoirs of Ireland and the Union, I began to consider what species of employment might lightly wear away the long and tedious winter evenings of a demi-invalid; and recollecting that I could neither live for ever nor was sure of being the last man, I conceived the idea of looking over and burning a horse-load or two of letters, papers, and fragments of all descriptions, which I had been carrying about in old trunks (not choosing to leave them at any bodys mercy), and to which I had been perpetually adding.
The execution of this inflammatory project I immediately set about with vast assiduity and corresponding success; and doubtless, with very great advantage to the literary reputation of an immense number of my former correspondents as well as my own. After having made considerable progress, I found that some of the fragments amused myself, and I therefore began to consider whether they might not also amuse other people. I was advised to make selections from my store, particularly as I had, for near half a century, keptnot a diarybut a sort of rambling chronicle, wherein I made notes of matters which, from time to time, struck my fancy. Some of these memoranda were illegible; others just sufficient to set my memory working; some were sad, and some were cheerful; some very old, others recent. In fine, I began to select: but I soon found that any thing like a regular series was out of the question; so I took a heap indiscriminately, picked out the subjects that amused me most, wrote a list of their several headings, which were very numerous; and, as his Majesty pricks for sheriffs, so did I for subjects, and thereby gathered as many as I conceived would make two or three volumes. My next process was to make up court-dresses for my Sketches and Fragments, such as might facilitate their introduction into respectable company, without observing strict chronological sequence, to which I am aware light readers have a rooted aversion.
This laudable occupation served to amuse me and to fill up the blanks of a winters evening; and being finished, the residue of the papers re-deposited, and the trunks locked again, I requested the publisher of my Historic Memoirs also to set my Personal Sketches afloat. This he undertook to do: and they are now sent out to the publicthe world, as it is called; and the reader (gentle reader is too hackneyed a term, and far too confident an anticipation of good temper) will of course draw from them whatever deductions he pleases, without asking my permission. All I have to say is, that the several matters contained herein are neither fictions nor essays, but relate to real matters of fact, and personages composed of flesh and blood. I have aimed at no display of either fancy or imagination; nor have I set down long dialogues or soliloquies which could not possibly be recorded except when heroes and heroines carried short-hand writers in their pockets, which must have been peculiarly inconvenient. In speaking of fanciful matters, I may as well except my own opinions on certain subjects here and there interspersed, which I freely leave to the mercy of any one who is disposed to esteem them visionary.
However, be it understood, that I by no means intend this disclaimer as an assault onbut on the contrary as a distinguished compliment towriters and works of pure imaginationof improbability and impossibility!inasmuch as such works prove an unlimited range of intellect and talent, on the part of the authors, for inventing matters of fact that never could have occurred, and conversations that never could have taken place; a talent which, when duly cultivated and practised for the use of friends and private families, seldom fails to bring an authors name into most extensive circulation; and if perchance he should get himself into any scrape by it, nothing is so likely as the exercise of the same talent of invention to get him out of it again.
. I have seen in a new novel a minute recital of a very affecting soliloquy pronounced with appropriate gesticulation by a fine young man while he was pacing about a large room in a castle; the thunder meanwhile roaring, and the rain pattering at the casements. In this castle there was at the time no other living person; and the soliloquy was so spoken as his dying words immediately before he shot himself. As there was nobody else in the castle during the catastrophe, his affecting words were never divulged till this novel made its appearanceleaving the ingenious reader to infer the many invisible spies and tell-tales that survey our most secret movements.
