The Prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and
ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom;
but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an
incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper
of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read
history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of
history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian;
they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such
diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or
heroism, to sympathise in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty
even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that
love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily
leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We cannot
judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect
accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from
their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we
may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real
characters. The life of a great or of a little man written by himself,
the familiar letters, the diary of any individual published by his
friends or by his enemies, after his decease, are esteemed important
literary curiosities. We are surely justified, in this eager desire, to
collect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only
of the great and good, but even of the worthless and insignificant,
since it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery
in the privacy of domestic life that we can form a just estimate of the
real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice. That the great
are not as happy as they seem, that the external circumstances of
fortune and rank do not constitute felicity, is asserted by every
moralist: the historian can seldom, consistently with his dignity, pause
to illustrate this truth; it is therefore to the biographer we must have
recourse. After we have beheld splendid characters playing their parts
on the great theatre of the world, with all the advantages of stage
effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the
scenes, that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses.
Some may perhaps imagine that the value of biography depends upon the
judgment and taste of the biographer; but on the contrary it may be
maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the
extent of his intellectual powers and of his literary talents. A plain
unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative.
Where we see that a man has the power, we may naturally suspect that
he has the will to deceive us; and those who are used to literary
manufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a
period, or the pointing of an antithesis.
That the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learned
cannot be disputed; but we see and despise vulgar errors: we never
bow to the authority of him who has no great name to sanction his
absurdities. The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects of
his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but
if it be concealed by the appearance of candour, which men of great
abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes,
and sometimes our morals. If her Grace the Duchess of Newcastle, instead
of penning her lord’s elaborate eulogium, had undertaken to write the
life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an
idle, ungrateful libertine for a man of genius and virtue. The talents
of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. For these reasons the
public often judiciously countenance those who, without sagacity
to discriminate character, without elegance of style to relieve the
tediousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any
conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes,
and retail conversations, with all the minute prolixity of a gossip in a
country town.
The author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims
to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward,
whose partiality to THE FAMILY, in which he was bred and born, must be
obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family in
his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick,
Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent’s affairs will be as
interesting to all the world as they were to himself. Those who were
acquainted with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Ireland
some years ago, will want no evidence of the truth of honest Thady’s
narrative; to those who are totally unacquainted with Ireland, the
following Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible, or probably
they may appear perfectly incredible. For the information of the
IGNORANT English reader, a few notes have been subjoined by the editor,
and he had it once in contemplation to translate the language of Thady
into plain English; but Thady’s idiom is incapable of translation, and,
besides, the authenticity of his story would have been more exposed
to doubt if it were not told in his own characteristic manner. Several
years ago he related to the editor the history of the Rackrent family,
and it was with some difficulty that he was persuaded to have it
committed to writing; however, his feelings for ‘THE HONOUR OF THE
FAMILY,’ as he expressed himself, prevailed over his habitual laziness,
and he at length completed the narrative which is now laid before the
public.
The editor hopes his readers will observe that these are ‘tales of other
times;’ that the manners depicted in the following pages are not those
of the present age; the race of the Rackrents has long since been
extinct in Ireland; and the drunken Sir Patrick, the litigious
Sir Murtagh, the fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy, are
characters which could no more be met with at present in Ireland, than
Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in England. There is a time
when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies
and absurdities, after they have acquired new habits and a new
consciousness. Nations, as well as individuals, gradually lose
attachment to their identity, and the present generation is amused,
rather than offended, by the ridicule that is thrown upon its ancestors.
Probably we shall soon have it in our power, in a hundred instances, to
verify the truth of these observations.
When Ireland loses her identity by an union with Great Britain, she will
look back, with a smile of good-humoured complacency, on the Sir Kits
and Sir Condys of her former existence.
1800.