PREFACE.
These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from Ireland to Le Temps, during the summer months of 1886 and 1887.
A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as to their general purport and bearing.
A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to denounce the author as “an ally of the Times, in the congenial task of vilifying the Irish people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,” which charge was then summarily met as follows:—
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.
Sir,—
Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition, that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in Le Temps, about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however, he has actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still clings to his hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or unsympathetic with the Irish race, why then I can only urge upon his friends the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a brace of mad doctors, and an early berth in a lunatic asylum. I never heard in my life of a sadder case of raving delusion.
Yours obediently,
PHILIPPE DARYL.