Produced by Jonathan Ingram Tapio Riikonenand PG Distributed ProofreadersTALES AND NOVELS VOL IVCONTAININGCASTLE RACKRENT AN ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS AN ESSAY ON THE NOBLE SCIENCEOF SELFJUSTIFICATION ENNUI AND THE DUNBYMARIA EDGEWORTHIN TEN VOLUMES WITH ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL1857    A prudence undeceiving undeceived    That nor too little nor too much believed    That scornd unjust suspicions coward fear    And without weakness knew to be sincere                 _Lord Lytteltons Monody on his Wife_PREFACEThe prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured andridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom butif we consider it in a proper point of view this taste is anincontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temperof the present times Of the numbers who study or at least who readhistory how few derive any advantage from their labours The heroes ofhistory are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historianthey talk in such measured prose and act from such sublime or suchdiabolical motives that few have sufficient taste wickedness orheroism to sympathize in their fate Besides there is much uncertaintyeven in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories and thatlove of truth which in some minds is innate and immutable necessarilyleads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes We cannot judgeeither of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfectaccuracy from their actions or their appearance in public it is fromtheir careless conversations their halffinished sentences that we mayhope with the greatest probability of success to discover their realcharacters The life of a great or of a little man written by himselfthe familiar letters the diary of any individual published by hisfriends or by his enemies after his decease are esteemed importantliterary curiosities We are surely justified in this eager desire tocollect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives not onlyof the great and good but even of the worthless and insignificantsince it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery inthe privacy of domestic life that we can form a just estimate of thereal reward of virtue or the real punishment of vice That the greatare not as happy as they seem that the external circumstances offortune and rank do not constitute felicity is asserted by everymoralist the historian can seldom consistently with his dignity pauseto illustrate this truth it is therefore to the biographer we must haverecourse After we have beheld splendid characters playing their partson the great theatre of the world with all the advantages of stageeffect and decoration we anxiously beg to be admitted behind thescenes that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actressesSome may perhaps imagine that the value of biography depends upon thejudgment and taste of the biographer but on the contrary it may bemaintained that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the extentof his intellectual powers and of his literary talents A plainunvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrativeWhere we see that a man has the power we may naturally suspect that hehas the will to deceive us and those who are used to literarymanufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of aperiod or the pointing of an antithesisThat the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learnedcannot be disputed but we see and despise vulgar errors we never bowto the authority of him who has no great name to sanction hisabsurdities The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects ofhis hero in proportion as it is gross ceases to be dangerous but ifit be concealed by the appearance of candour which men of greatabilities best know how to assume it endangers our judgment sometimesand sometimes our morals If her grace the Duchess of Newcastle insteadof penning her lords elaborate eulogium had undertaken to write thelife of Savage we should not have been in any danger of mistaking anidle ungrateful libertine for a man of genius and virtue The talentsof a biographer are often fatal to his reader For these reasons thepublic often judiciously countenance those who without sagacity todiscriminate character without elegance of style to relieve thetediousness of narrative without enlargement of mind to draw anyconclusions from the facts they relate simply pour forth anecdotes andretail conversations with all the minute prolixity of a gossip in acountry townThe author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claimsto the public favour and attention he was an illiterate old stewardwhose partiality to _the family_ in which he was bred and born mustbe obvious to the reader He tells the history of the Rackrent familyin his vernacular idiom and in the full confidence that Sir PatrickSir Murtagh Sir Kit and Sir Condy Rackrents affairs will be asinteresting to all the world as they were to himself Those who wereacquainted with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Irelandsome years ago will want no evidence of the truth of honest Thadysnarrative to those who are totally unacquainted with Ireland thefollowing Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible or probablythey may appear perfectly incredible For the information of the_ignorant_ English reader a few notes have been subjoined by theeditor and he had it once in contemplation to translate the languageof Thady into plain English but Thadys idiom is incapable oftranslation and besides the authenticity of his story would havebeen more exposed to doubt if it were not told in his owncharacteristic manner Several years ago he related to the editor thehistory of the Rackrent family and it was with some difficulty that hewas persuaded to have it committed to writing however his feelingsfor _the honour of the family_ as he expressed himself prevailedover his habitual laziness and he at length completed the narrativewhich is now aid before the publicThe editor hopes his readers will observe that these are tales of othertimes that the