Stories and Tales of the Irish

I am agreeably called upon by my bookseller to prepare for a Second Edition of "Willy Reilly." This is at all times a pleasing call upon an author; and it is so especially to me, inasmuch as the first Edition was sold at the fashionable, but unreasonable, price of a guinea and a half—a price which, in this age of cheap literature, is almost fatal to the sale of any three-volume novel, no matter what may be its merits. With respect to "Willy Reilly," it may be necessary to say that I never wrote any work of the same extent in so short a time, or with so much haste. Its popularity, however, has been equal to that of any other of my productions; and the reception which it has experienced from the ablest public and professional critics of the day has far surpassed my expectations. I accordingly take this opportunity of thanking them most sincerely for the favorable verdict which they have generously passed upon it, as I do for their kindness to my humble efforts for the last twenty-eight years. Nothing, indeed, can be a greater encouragement to a literary man, to a novel writer, in fact, than the reflection that he has an honest and generous tribunal to encounter. If he be a quack or an impostor, they will at once detect him; but if he exhibit human nature and truthful character in his pages, it matters not whether he goes to his bookseller's in a coach, or plods there humbly, and on foot; they will forget everything but the value and merit of what he places before them. On this account it is that I reverence and respect them; and indeed I ought to do so, for I owe them the gratitude of a pretty long literary life.