IRELAND, THEN AND NOW 



" Jonah," said an eminent authority to an ignorant 

 disciple, into whose hands the Recollections of Sir 

 Jonah Barrington had, for the first time, fallen, 

 " Jonah is an interesting old liar." Wliich was at 

 once stimulating and discouraging. The disciple, 

 however, discouraged not much, remembering that 

 the admixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure, 

 addressed itself^' — the third person singular and neuter 

 is here, in humility, substituted for the authoritative 

 plural^ — to the small and pleasing green volume, and 

 found the interest indisputable, while the lies, as is 

 but usual with well-handled lies, did not, so far as the 

 disciple (whose ignorance has been postulated) was 

 aware, emerge. The writer of the lucid and interest- 

 ing preface to the volume in question, says, " It is 

 Sir Jonah Barrington who gives us the first fairly 

 complete and authentic portrait of the rollicking 

 Irishman of later literary tradition. . . . We get the 

 tone, the colour of the men about whom he writes. 

 We gain, as we read him, queer glimpses of an 

 extraordinary society. We need not suppose that 

 Barrington exaggerated the bacchanalian recklessness 

 of the men who described themselves thus — 



" Beauing, belling, dancing, drinking, 

 Breaking windows, damning, sinking, 

 Ever raking, never thinking 



Live the Rakes of Mallow." 



We do not suppose it for an instant, even though 

 the writer " declines to pin his faith to the accuracy 



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