PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

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.

Concerning this Edition, I must say something.  I have already stated that it was written rapidly and in a hurry.  On reading it over for correction, I was struck in my cooler moments by many defects in it, which were, kindly overlooked, or, perhaps, not noticed at all.  To myself, however, who had been brooding over this work for a long time, they at once became obvious.  I have accordingly added an underplot of affection between Fergus Reilly—­mentioned as a distant relative of my hero—­and the Cooleen Bawn’s maid, Ellen Connor.  In doing so, I have not disturbed a single incident in the work; and the reader who may have perused the first Edition, if he should ever—­as is not unfrequently the case—­peruse this second one, will certainly wonder how the additions were made.  That, however, is the secret of the author, with which they have nothing to do but to enjoy the book, if they can enjoy it.