Kind friends,—It is somewhat unfortunate that the record of the happiest portion of my friend’s life should prove the saddest part of my duty as his editor, and for this reason, that it brings me to that spot where my acquaintance with you must close, and sounds the hour when I must say, good-bye.
They, who have never felt the mysterious link that binds the solitary scribe in his lonely study, to the circle of his readers, can form no adequate estimate of what his feelings are when that chain is about to be broken; they know not how often, in the fictitious garb of his narrative, he has clothed the inmost workings of his heart; they know not how frequently he has spoken aloud his secret thoughts, revealing, as though to a dearest friend, the springs of his action, the causes of his sorrow, the sources of his hope; they cannot believe by what a sympathy he is bound to those who bow their heads above his pages; they do not think how the ideal creations of his brain are like mutual friends between him and the world, through whom he is known and felt and thought of, and by whom he reaps in his own heart the rich harvest of flattery and kindness that are rarely refused to any effort to please, however poor, however humble. They know not this, nor can they feel the hopes, the fears, that stir within him, to earn some passing word of praise; nor think they, when won, what brightness around his humble hearth it may be shedding. These are the rewards for nights of toil and days of thought; these are the recompenses which pay the haggard cheek, the sunken eye, the racked and tired head. These are the stakes for which one plays his health, his leisure, and his life, yet not regrets the game.
Nearly three years have now elapsed since I first made my bow before you. How many events have crowded into that brief space! How many things of vast moment have occurred! Only think that in the last few months you’ve frightened the French; terrified M. Thiers; worried the Chinese; and are, at this very moment, putting the Yankees into a “most uncommon fix;” not to mention the minor occupations of ousting the Whigs; reinstating the Tories, and making O’Connell Lord Mayor,—and yet, with all these and a thousand other minor cares, you have not forgotten your poor friend, the Irish Dragoon. Now this was really kind of you, and in my heart I thank you for it.
Do not, I entreat you, construe my gratitude into any sense of future favors,—no such thing; for whatever may be my success with you hereafter, I am truly deeply grateful for the past. Circumstances, into which I need not enter, have made me for some years past a resident in a foreign country, and as my lot has thrown me into a land where the reputation of writing a book is pretty much on a par with that of picking a pocket, it may readily be conceived with what warm thankfulness I have caught at any little testimonies of your approval which chance may have thrown in my way.
Like the reduced gentlewoman who, compelled by poverty to cry fresh eggs through the streets, added after every call, “I hope nobody hears me;” so I, finding it convenient, for a not very dissimilar reason, to write books, keep my authorship as quietly to myself as need be, and comfort me with the assurance that nobody knows me.
A word now to my critics. Never had any man more reason to be satisfied with that class than myself. As if you knew and cared for the temperament of the man you were reviewing; as if you were aware of the fact that it was at any moment in your power, by a single article of severe censure, to have extinguished in him forever all effort, all ambition for success,—you have mercifully extended to him the mildest treatment, and meted out even your disparagement, with a careful measure.
While I have studied your advice with attention, and read your criticisms with care, I confess I have trembled more than once before your more palpable praise; for I thought you might be hoaxing me.
Now and then, to be sure, I have been accused of impressing real individuals, and compelling them to serve in my book; that this reproach was unjust, they who know me can best vouch for, while I myself can honestly aver, that I never took a portrait without the consent of the sitter.
Others again have fallen foul of me, for treating of things, places, and people with which I had no opportunity of becoming personally acquainted. Thus one of my critics has showed that I could not have been a Trinity College man; and another has denied my military matriculation. Now, although both my Latin and my learning are on the peace establishment, and if examined in the movements for cavalry, it is perfectly possible I should be cautioned, yet as I have both a degree and a commission I might have been spared this reproach.
“Of coorse,” says Father Malachi Brennan, who leans over my shoulder while I write,—“of coorse you ought to know all about these things as well as the Duke of Wellington or Marshal Soult himself. UNDE DERYVATUR MILES. Ain’t you in the Derry militia?” I hope the Latin and the translation will satisfy every objection.