From the Archives August 8th, 1865

These flaneurs, or foolish idle writers, such as I am, have one great advantage in our position. As, like the bee of the field, we alight here and there, and seek to extract something pleasing from everything gaudy or glittering that passes beneath our view, we have time to think of ourselves, and there is no ban in the rules of that light literature we dish up against abundance of egotism. With us it is not that grave, useful, ponderous gift of the intellect which confers on book writers the use of the dignified "we" so frequently repeated, it is that more aerial, pleasant, and natural "I" which brings a saucy scribbler and a pleased or possibly sneering reader at once into closer and more familiar acquaintance.

Vanity

We can sometimes, in such erratic letters as these, speak of ourselves, or rather, I should say, I can speak of myself. All men are vain – if you only knew it, good reader, twice as vain as women. I do not pretend to be an exception, and I at once acknowledge I am as vain as you like. Half the pleasure to me of writing these letters de multis rebus et quibusdam aliis is, that I can sometimes say a word of myself. There is a confession! and still probably you do not quite understand me. The last thing in the world I would wish you, good reader, to know is, who I am, what I am, what I do, where I came from, or where I go to. En revanche, as the French say. My desire is to let you know what I think, and to endeavour to impress upon you, in my rambling discursive way, certain opinions carefully studied and formed which may be useful to yourself and to a country which I am sure you and I love well.

This is the extent of my egotism, which I maintain to be of this rare character, that it is egotism without vanity. This rather lengthy explanation will save a world of misconception and misconstruction as my letters work on their varying way for many months, I hope, yet to come. I have been accused by friends at home of writing in a very radical spirit; I have been charged by friends abroad with too much backing up Pope and priests, which here is the very essence of Conservatism. The truth is, I have probably some patriotism, but very little politics, and if you are accused by two extremes, it is pretty certain that moderation lies between.

I should like to see human progress and reform in society at home and abroad, but I acknowledge that I have imbibed certain religious principles from father and mother, and found such confirmed and strengthened by my own reading, that I should not like to see this progress and this reform raised on pedestals of irreligion and unbelief, because though the statues might be elevated on such for a moment, as during the great French Revolution, yet they would, I know, very rapidly topple down. I have been accused of writing in too Irish a sense, in too Quaker a sense, as regards the poor and humble and their recreations; in too Catholic a sense as regards religions; in fact, altogether unlike what a fine gentleman and a well-born man (if I were either) or a good loyalist of the old school should write.

Pleading all cases Truly, this is very hard, and I feel myself quite in the position of the old man and his son and the ass, for I really do my best to please all. I try what I can do for the soldiers, and I try what I can do for the ladies, and it is hard to say I deal in low subjects when one of my last letters was all about kings and queens. I am going to-day to make one more effort to get the high aristocracy of Ireland over to my side by writing a letter on a grand old name and a distinguished family. Before we come to them just let me add a sentence meant in the first instance for editorial eyes. If you think my preface a piece of balderdash tell the printer to begin to decipher my execrable hand at the next page, and to lop off the previous ones of my labours and shorten his own.

Read the original at http://bit.ly/1IMizyU

Selected by Joe Joyce; email fromthearchives@irishtimes.com