in gambling and taverns, was openly unfaithful to her; and, when she complained, threatened to remove her children from her.  Nor, indeed, is he the only husband who has done the like, and has passed for ‘nobody’s enemy but his own:’  a jovial good-natured fellow.  The world contains scores of such amiable people; and, indeed, it is because justice has not been done them that we have edited this autobiography.  Had it been that of a mere hero of romance—­one of those heroic youths who figure in the novels of Scott and James—­ there would have been no call to introduce the reader to a personage already so often and so charmingly depicted.  Mr. Barry Lyndon is not, we repeat, a hero of the common pattern; but let the reader look round, and ask himself, Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honest men? more fools than men of talent?  And is it not just that the lives of this class should be described by the student of human nature as well as the actions of those fairy-tale princes, those perfect impossible heroes, whom our writers love to describe?  There is something naive and simple in that time-honoured style of novel-writing by which Prince Prettyman, at the end of his adventures, is put in possession of every worldly prosperity, as he has been endowed with every mental and bodily excellence previously.  The novelist thinks that he can do no more for his darling hero than make him a lord.  Is it not a poor standard that, of the summum bonum?  The greatest good in life is not to be a lord; perhaps not even to be happy.  Poverty, illness, a humpback, may be rewards and conditions of good, as well as that bodily prosperity which all of us unconsciously set up for worship.  But this is a subject for an essay, not a note; and it is best to allow Mr. Lyndon to resume the candid and ingenious narrative of his virtues and defects.]

Her infernal temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade’s name) and my wife’s moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant:  hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit, and to commence as an amateur those games at which I was once unrivalled in Europe.  But whether a man’s temper changes with prosperity, or his skill leaves him when, deprived of a confederate, and pursuing the game no longer professionally, he joins in it, like the rest of the world, for pastime, I know not; but certain it is, that in the seasons of 1774-75 I lost much money at ‘White’s’ and the ‘Cocoa-Tree,’ and was compelled to meet my losses by borrowing largely upon my wife’s annuities, insuring her Ladyship’s life, and so forth.  The terms at which I raised these necessary sums and the outlays requisite for my improvements were, of course, very onerous, and clipped the property considerably; and it was some of these papers which my Lady Lyndon (who was of a narrow, timid, and stingy turn) occasionally refused to sign:  until I persuaded her, as I have before shown.