_Barry Lyndon_. I have
quoted the words which he put into the mouth of Ikey Solomon, declaring
that in the story which he has there told he has created nothing but
disgust for the wicked characters he has produced, and that he has "used
his humble endeavours to cause the public also to hate them." Here, in
_Barry Lyndon_, he has, probably unconsciously, acted in direct
opposition to his own principles: Barry Lyndon is as great a scoundrel
as the mind of man ever conceived. He is one who might have taken as his
motto Satan's words; "Evil, be thou my good." And yet his story is so
written that it is almost impossible not to entertain something of a
friendly feeling for him. He tells his own adventures as a card-sharper,
bully, and liar; as a heartless wretch, who had neither love nor
gratitude in his composition; who had no sense even of loyalty; who
regarded gambling as the highest occupation to which a man could devote
himself, and fraud as always justified by success; a man possessed by
all meannesses except cowardice. And the reader is so carried away by
his frankness and energy as almost to rejoice when he succeeds, and to
grieve with him when he is brought to the ground.

The man is perfectly satisfied as to the reasonableness,--I might almost
say, as to the rectitude,--of his own conduct throughout. He is one of a
decayed Irish family, that could boast of good blood. His father had
obtained possession of the remnants of the property by turning
Protestant, thus ousting the elder brother, who later on becomes his
nephew's confederate in gambling. The elder brother is true to the old
religion, and as the law stood in the last century, the younger brother,
by changing his religion, was able to turn him out. Barry, when a boy,
learns the slang and the gait of the debauched gentlemen of the day. He
is specially proud of being a gentleman by birth and manners. He had
been kidnapped, and made to serve as a common soldier, but boasts that
he was at once fit for the occasion when enabled to show as a court
gentleman. "I came to it at once," he says, "and as if I had never done
anything else all my life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French
_friseur_ to dress my hair of a morning. I knew the taste of chocolate
as by intuition almost, and could distinguish between the right Spanish
and the French before I had been a week in my new position. I had rings
on all my fingers and watches in both my fobs, canes, trinkets, and