RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,

Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

23435.31

pt. 9, 1889.

March Bequest.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

AND PARLIAMENT STREET

31-201 28

PREFACE.

PREFIXED to the first edition of the Third Series of the Ingoldsby Legends was a memoir of the author. It was hastily put together, occupied about a hundred and eighty pages, and has long been out of print. This memoir forms the groundwork of the present volumes. It has been re-written, and enlarged by the addition of numerous letters and several unpublished poems, to which a selection from others contributed by Mr. BARHAM to various journals with which he was connected has been appended; and I have endeavoured generally to render it more complete by the introduction of details, and more copious extracts from the diaries, as well as by a more exact observance of chronological order. But, regarded as a biography, it must still appear very imperfect; there is still need to remind the reader, that it is only in a literary point of view-only as a writer whose wit and humour have attracted more than common notice-only, in short, as Thomas Ingoldsby, that Mr. BARHAM is brought before the public at all. Of the new materials employed in the present work, the

most interesting have been kindly furnished by Mr. THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. They consist of letters addressed to his grandmother, one of my father's best friends, at whose suggestion-I may almost say at whose desirethe original memoir was compiled. As will be seen, lapse of time has enabled me in most cases to dispense with the awkward veil afforded by the use of initials, and to admit anecdotes which could hardly with propriety have been presented before. If some of the stories here. retained have grown at all threadbare, it is to be observed that the first edition of the book appeared not less than four-and-twenty years ago, and that large portions of it have been from time to time transferred to the pages of subsequent publications, frequently without acknowledgment, by the literary collectors of unconsidered trifles.

With respect to the Poems placed at the end of the second volume, and which have not hitherto been acknowledged, they have been included by the wish of Mr. BENTLEY, to whose judgment in such matters I feel bound to defer. They are all of earlier date than the Legends, and will serve, at all events, to show the gradual development of the author's style.

DAWLISH: October.

R. H. D. BARHAM.