252 STRAY- AW AYS 



preface does not offer adequate excuses, instructive 

 and interesting though it is in other respects. It is 

 hard to understand, or to condone, the omission from 

 an Irishman's Library of a complete copy of one, at 

 least, of the novels that, as has been truly said, 

 " first gave to Ireland a recognised position in 

 literature, and opened up a new vein in fiction." 



From the list of Miss Edgeworth's works, given at 

 the end of this volume of extracts from them, one 

 realises that her prentice hand was held tightly by 

 her father, and was early impelled to a dissertation 

 on Female Education. This was followed by the once 

 well-known series of stories for children, moral tales, 

 that, on one reader at least, had the unhappy effect 

 of enlisting all available sympathy on the side of the 

 villains of the piece. And then, astonishingly, came 

 that extraordinary tour de force, Castle Rackrent. The 

 more Thady Quirk's memoirs are studied, the more 

 remarkable as an achievement do they appear to 

 be. The book is in a class by itself in originality of 

 design, and — as far as any one save Thady Quirk 

 himself can judge — in successful realisation of point 

 of view. Castle Rackrent was published in the year 

 1800, and in treatment might have been written by 

 any realist of to-day. Its effortless composure, its 

 tranquil reliance on idiom and mental outlook, rather 

 than on mis-spelling and expletives, might have been a 

 lesson to its successors, had they had the intelligence 

 to perceive and the wisdom to accept the example it 

 offered. There is hardly a sentence that does not 

 betray a complete comprehension of character. The 

 main incidents, it is easy to believe, may, for all their 

 extravagance, have been drawn from life, the life of 

 that generation that riots through the pages of Sir 

 Jonah Barrington. What gives the book its unique 



