ΤΟ THOMAS O'HAGAN, ESQ., BARRISTER AT LAW, IN EARNEST ADMIRATION OF HIS HEART, HIS INTELLECT, AND HIS PRINCIPLES, PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. THREE Editions of this little volume having been exhausted in less than a month, the publisher has called upon me to prepare a fourth; and with this object I have gone over it carefully, and expunged as many as I could detect of the original sins incident to early editions-errors of the press, of haste and of carelessness. Something of this kind was done for the third edition; but there was not leisure to do it carefully. It will now, I trust, be found tolerably free from errors of the class chargeable on an editor. I have also made some changes in the collection-useful and agreeable as I believe, but too slight to require specification. The success of these ballads seems to me to give happy promise of a vigorous and national literature in Ireland. Ballads have been among the first home-grown productions of all countries; and their popularity here, now, is no slight evidence that the national mind is still fresh and earnest, and has the impulses and propensities that belong to a young nation. |