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the idea of the Chevalier Burke for a narrator. It was at first
intended that he should be Scottish, and I was then filled with
fears that he might prove only the degraded shadow of my own Alan
Breck. Presently, however, it began to occur to me it would be
like my Master to curry favour with the Prince's Irishmen; and that
an Irish refugee would have a particular reason to find himself in
India with his countryman, the unfortunate Lally. Irish,
therefore, I decided he should be, and then, all of a sudden, I was
aware of a tall shadow across my path, the shadow of Barry Lyndon.
No man (in Lord Foppington's phrase) of a nice morality could go
very deep with my Master: in the original idea of this story
conceived in Scotland, this companion had been besides intended to
be worse than the bad elder son with whom (as it was then meant) he
was to visit Scotland; if I took an Irishman, and a very bad
Irishman, in the midst of the eighteenth century, how was I to
evade Barry Lyndon? The wretch besieged me, offering his services;
he gave me excellent references; he proved that he was highly
fitted for the work I had to do; he, or my own evil heart,
suggested it was easy to disguise his ancient livery wit a little
lace and a few frogs and buttons, so that Thackeray himself should
hardly recognise him. And then of a sudden there came to me
memories of a young Irishman, with whom I was once intimate, and
had spent long nights walking and talking with, upon a very
desolate coast in a bleak autumn: I recalled him as a youth of an
extraordinary moral simplicity--almost vacancy; plastic to any
influence, the creature of his admirations: and putting such a
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