many of the traits I was bent on depicting, and for others I am afraid I had only to take a peep into myself. If it is an error, then, to believe that in these Confessions I have ever recorded any incidents in my own life, there is no mistake in supposing that in sketching Harry Lorrequer I was in a great measure depicting myself, and becoming, allegori-cally, an autobiographist. Here is a confession which, if thirty odd years had not rolled over, I might be indisposed to make; but time has enabled me to look back on my work, and even on myself, with a certain degree of impartiality, and to feel, as regards both, as the great Paley said a man feels after he has finished his dinner, “That he might have done better.” It is perfectly unnecessary that I should say when and where I wrote these sketches; no thought of future authorship of any kind occurred to me, far less did I dream of abandoning my profession as a physician for the precarious livelihood of the pen. Indeed their success, such as it was, only became known to me after I had left Ireland and gone to live abroad, and it was there--at Brussels--my publishers wrote to me to request a continuance of my Confessions, with the assurance that they had found favour in the world and flattering notice from the press. Though I have been what the sarcastic French moralist called “blessed with a bad memory” all my life, I can still recall the delight--I cannot call it less--with which I heard my attempt at authorship had been successful. I did not awake, indeed, “to find myself famous,” but I well remember the thrill of triumphant joy with which I read the letter that said “Go on,” and the entrancing ecstasy I felt at the bare possibility of becoming known one day as a writer. I have had, since then, some moments in which a partial success has made me very happy and very grateful, but I do not believe that all these put together, or indeed any possible favour the world might mete to me, would impart a tithe of the enjoyment I felt on hearing that ‘Harry Lorrequer’ had been liked by the public, and that they asked for more of him. If this sort of thing amuses them, thought I, I can go on for ever; and believing this to be true, I launched forth with all that prodigal waste of material which, if it forms one of the reasons of success, is, strictly speaking, one among the many demerits of this story. That I neither husbanded my resources nor imagined that they could ever fail me were not my only mistakes; and I am tempted to show how little I understood of the responsibilities of authorship by repeating what I have told elsewhere,--an incident of the last number of ‘Harry Lorrequer.’ The MS. which contained the conclusion of the story had been sent through the Foreign Office bag from Brussels, and possibly had been mistaken for a despatch. At all events, like King Theodore’s letter it had been thrown on one side and forgotten. In this strait my publishers