place. There can be no worse picture made of the Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the letters printed by Pope. We see him vain, trifling, ungrateful to the memory of his patron, making a servile court where he had any interested views, and meanly abusive when they were disappointed; and, as he says (in his own phrase), flying in the face of mankind, in company with his adorer Pope. It is pleasant to consider, that had it not been for the good nature of these very mortals they contemn, these two superior beings were entitled, by their birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of link-boys. I am of opinion, however, that their friendship would have continued, though they had remained in the same kingdom. It had a very strong foundation-the love of flattery on one side, and the love of money on the other. Pope courted with the utmost assiduity all the old men from whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherly, Mr. Congreve, Lord Harcourt, &c., and I do not doubt projected to sweep the Dean's whole inheritance, if he could have persuaded him to throw up his deanery, and come to die in his house; and his general preach ing against money was meant to induce people to throw it away, that he might pick it up."

Vol. iv. pp. 142–147.

They place a nierit in extravagant passions; and encourage young people to hope for impossible events, to draw them out of the misery they choose to plunge themselves into; expecting legacies trom unknown relations, and generous benefactors to distressed virtue, as much out of nature as fairy treasures."-Vol. iv. pp. 259, 260.

The idea of the following image, we be lieve, is not quite new; but it is expressed in a very lively and striking manner.

"The world is past its infancy, and will no longer be contented with spoon-meat. A collective body like a single individual. When I reflect on the vast of men make a gradual progress in understanding. increase of useful as well as speculative knowledge, the last three hundred years has produced, and that the peasants of this age have more conveniences than the first emperors of Rome had any notion of, I imagine we may now be arrived at that period which answers to fifteen. I cannot think we are older; when I recollect the many palpable foes which are still (almost) universally persisted a the boxing of school-boys; and whenever we come Among these I place that of War-as senseless us to man's estate (perhaps a thousand years hence). I do not doubt it will appear as ridiculous as the pranks of unlucky lads. Several discoveries w!! then be made, and several truths made clear, of had of the circulation of the blood, or the optics of Sir Isaac Newton."-Vol. v. pp. 15, 16.

which we have now no more idea than the ancients

After observing, that in a preceding letter, her Ladyship declares, that "it is eleven years since she saw herself in a glass, being so little pleased with the figure she was then beginning to make in it," we shall close these extracts with the following more favourable account of her philosophy.

"The confounding of all ranks, and making a jest of order, has long been growing in England; and I perceive, by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress. The heroes and heroines of the age, are cobblers and kitchenwenches. Perhaps you will say I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian: as they write "I no more expect to arrive at the age of the merely to get money, they always fall into the no- Duchess of Marlborough, than to that of Methusa tions that are most acceptable to the present taste.lem; neither do I desire it. I have long thought It has long been the endeavour of our English writers, to represent people of quality as the vilest and silliest part of the nation, being (generally) very low-born themselves. I am not surprised at their propagating this doctrine; but I am much mistaken if this levelling principle does not, one day or other, break out in fatal consequences to the public, as it has already done in many private families."

Vol. iv. pp. 223, 224.

She is not quite so fortunate in her remarks on Dr. Johnson, though the conclusion of the extract is very judicious.

myself useless to the world. I have seen one generation pass away, and it is gone; for I think there are very few of those left that flourished in my youth. You will perhaps call these melancholy reflections; but they are not so. There is a quiet after the abandoning of pursuits, something like the rest that follows a laborious day. I tell you this for your comfort. It was formerly a terrifying view to me, that I should one day be an old woman. 1 now find that nature has provided pleasures for every state. Those only are unhappy who wi not be contented with what she gives, but strive to break through her laws, by affecting a perpetuity of youth, which appears to me as little desirable at present as the babies do to you, that were the delight of your infancy. I am at the end of my paper, which shortens the sermon."

Vol. iv. pp. 314, 315.

"The Rambler is certainly a strong misnomer: he always plods in the beaten road of his predecesBors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, Upon the death of Mr. Wortley in 1761, perhaps, be of service to the public, which is saying a great deal in their favour. There are numbers Lady Mary returned to England, and died of both sexes who never read any thing but such there in October 1762, in the 73d year of her productions; and cannot spare time, from doing age. From the large extracts which we have nothing, to go through a sixpenny pamphlet. Such been tempted to make from her correspond gentle readers may be improved by a moral hint, ence, our readers will easily be enabled to which, though repeated over and over, from gener-judge of the character and genius of this exation to generation, they never heard in their lives. I should be glad to know the name of this laborious traordinary woman. A little spoiled by flat author. H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife, in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted; and I am persuaded, several of

the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact.

I wonder, however, that he does not perceive Tom
Jones and Mr. Booth to be both sorry scoundrels.
All this sort of books have the same fault, which
I cannot easily vardon, being very mischieve t

tery, and not altogether "undebauched by the world," she seems to have possessed a masculine solidity of understanding, great liveliness of fancy, and such powers of ob servation and discrimination of character, as to give her opinions great authority on all the ordinary subjects of practical manners and conduct. After her marriage, she seems to

accordingly, her poetry, though abounding in lively conceptions, is already consigned to that oblivion in which mediocrity is destined, by an irrevocable sentence, to slumber till the end of the world. The Essays are extremely insignificant, and have no other merit, that we can discover, but that they are very few and very short.

have abandoned all idea of laborious or regu- the polite and witty sort of poetry which Lady ar study, and to have been raised to the sta- Mary has attempted, is much more of an art tion of a literary character merely by her than prose-writing. We are trained to the vivacity and her love of amusement and anec- latter, by the conversation of good society, dote. The great charm of her letters is cer- but the former seems always to require a good tainly the extreme ease and facility with deal of patient labour and application. This which every thing is expressed, the brevity her Ladyship appears to have disdained; and and rapidity of her representations, and the elegant simplicity of her diction. While they unite almost all the qualities of a good style, there is nothing of the professed author in them: nothing that seems to have been composed, or to have engaged the admiration of the writer. She appears to be quite unconscious either of merit or of exertion in what she is doing; and never stops to bring out a Of Lady Mary's friendship and subsequent thought, or to turn an expression, with the rupture with Pope, we have not thought it cunning of a practised rhetorician. The let- necessary to say any thing; both because we ters from Turkey will probably continue to be are of opinion that no new lights are thrown more universally read than any of those that upon it by this publication, and because we are now given for the first time to the public; have no desire to awaken forgotten scandals because the subject commands a wider and by so idle a controversy. Pope was undoubt more permanent interest, than the personali-edly a flatterer, and was undoubtedly suffities and unconnected remarks with which the ciently irritable and vindictive; but whether rest of the correspondence is filled. At the his rancour was stimulated, upon this occasame time, the love of scandal and of private sion, by any thing but caprice or jealousy, history is so great, that these letters will be and whether he was the inventor or the echo highly relished, as long as the names they of the imputations to which he has given nocontain are remembered;-and then they will become curious and interesting, as exhibiting a truer picture of the manners and fashions of the time, than is to be found in most other publications.

The Fifth Volume contains also her Ladyship's poems, and two or three trifling papers that are entitled her Essays. Poetry, at least

toriety, we do not pretend to determine. Lady Mary's character was certainly deficient in that cautious delicacy which is the best guardian of female reputation; and there seems to have been in her conduct something of that intrepidity which naturally gives rise to misconstruction, by setting at defiance the maxims of ordinary discretion.

.

(May, 1820.)

The Life of ine Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Irelana. By his Son, WILLIAM HENRY CURRAN, Barrister-at-law. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 970. London: 1819.

THIS is really a very good book; and not less instructive in its moral, and general scope, than curious and interesting in its details. It is a mixture of Biography and History—and avoids the besetting sins of both species of composition-neither exalting the hero of the biography into an idol, nor deforming the history of a most agitated period with any spirit of violence or exaggeration. It is written, on the contrary, as it appears to us, with singular impartiality and temper-and the style is not less remarkable than the sentiments: For though it is generally elegant and spirited, it is without any of those peculiarities which the age, the parentage, and the country of the author, would lead us to expect:-And we may say, indeed, of the whole work, looking both to the matter and the manner, that it has no defects from which it could be gathered that it was written either by a Young man-or an Irishman-or by the Son of the person whose history it professes to record-though it has attractions which probably could not have

existed under any other conditions. The dis tracting periods of Irish story are still almost too recent to be fairly delineated-and no Irishman, old enough to have taken a part in the transactions of 1780 or 1798, could wel be trusted as their historian-while no one but a native, and of the blood of some of the chief actors, could be sufficiently acquainted with their motives and characters, to communicate that life and interest to the details which shine out in so many passages of the volumes before us. The incidental light which they throw upon the national character and state of society in Ireland, and the continual illustrations they afford of their diversity from our own, is perhaps of more value than the particular facts from which it results; and stamp upon the work the same peculiar attraction which we formerly ascribed to Mr. Hardy's life of Lord Charlemont.

To qualify this extraordinary praise, we must add, that the limits of the private and the public story are not very well observed,

passages in these volumes, that the Insh standard of good conversation is radically dif ferent from the English; and that a tone of exhibition and effect is still tolerated in that country, which could not be long endured in good society in this. A great proportion of the colloquial anecdotes in this work, confirm us in this belief-and nothing more than the encomium bestowed on Mr. Curran's own conversation, as abounding in "those magical transitions from the most comic tums of thought to the deepest pathos, and for ever bringing a tear into the eye before the smile was off the lip." In this more frigid and fas tidious country, we really have no idea of ? man talking pathetically in good company,and still less of good company sitting and ery ing to him. Nay, it is not even very conso nant with our notions, that a gentleman shot! be "most comical."

nor the scale of the work very correctly regu-plaud. We suspect, indeed, from various lated as to either; so that we have alternately too much and too little of both:-that the style is rather wordy and diffuse, and the extracts and citations too copious; so that, on the whole, the book, like some others, would be improved by being reduced to little more than half its present size-a circumstance which makes it only the more necessary that we should endeavour to make a manageable abstract of it, for the use of less patient readers. Mr. Curran's parentage and early life are now of no great consequence. He was born, however, of respectable parents, and received a careful and regular education. He was a little wild at college; but left it with the character of an excellent scholar, and was universally popular among his associates, not less for his amiable temper than his inexhaustible vivacity. He wrote baddish verses at this time, and exercised himself in theological discourses: for his first destination was for the Church; and he afterwards took to the Law, very much to his mother's disappointment and mortification-who was never reconciled to the change and used, even in the meridian of his fame, to lament what a mighty preacher had been lost to the world,-and to exclaim, that, but for his versatility, she might have died the mother of a Bishop! It was better as it was. Unquestionably he might have been a very great preacher; but we doubt whether he would have been a good parish priest, or even an exemplary bishop.

As to the taste and character of Mr. Curran's oratory, we may have occasion to say a word or two hereafter.-At present, it is only necessary to remark, that besides the pubic exercitations now alluded to, he appears to have gone through the most persevering and laborious processes of private study, with a view to its improvement-not only accustom ing himself to debate imaginary cases alone, with the most anxious attention, but “reciting perpetually before a mirror," to acquire a graceful gesticulation! and studiously imita ting the tone and manner of the most cele brated speakers. The authors from whom he chiefly borrowed the matter of these solitary declamations were Junius and Lord Boling broke-and the poet he most passionately admired was Thomson. He also used to declaim occasionally from Milton-but, in his maturer age, came to think less highly of that great poet. One of his favourite exercises was the funeral oration of Antony over the body of Cæsar, as it is given by Shakespeare; the frequent recitation of which he used to recommend to his young friends at the Bar, to the latest period of his life.

Irish lawyers are obliged to keep their terms in London; and, for the poorer part of them, it seems to be but a dull and melancholy noviciate. Some of his early letters, with which we are here presented, give rather an amiable and interesting picture of young Curran's feelings in this situation-separated at once from all his youthful friends and admirers, and left without money or recommendation in the busy crowds of a colder and more venal people. During the three years he passed in the metropolis, he seems to have entered into no society, and never to have come in contact with a single distinguished He was called to the Bar in 1775, in his individual. He saw Garrick on the stage, and twenty-fifth year-having rather imprudently Lord Mansfield on the bench; and this ex-married two years before-and very soon at hausts his list of illustrious men in London. tained to independence and distinction. There His only associates seem to have been a few is a very clever little disquisition introduced of his countrymen, as poor and forlorn as him- here by the author, on the very different, and self. Yet the life they lived seems to have almost opposite taste in eloquence which has been virtuous and honourable. They con- prevailed at the Bar of England and Ireland tracted no debts, and committed no excesses. respectively;-the one being in general cold Curran himself rose early, and read dili- and correct, unimpassioned and technical; the gently till dinner; and, in the evening, he other discursive, rhetorical, and embellished usually went, as much for improvement as or encumbered, with flights of fancy and ap relaxation, to a sixpenny debating club. For peals to the passions. These peculiarities the a long time, however, he was too nervous and author imputes chiefly to the difference in the mid to act any other part than that of an au- national character and general temperament ditor, and did not find even the germ of that of the two races, and to the unsubdued and singular talent which was afterwards improved unrectified prevalence of all that is character to such a height, till it was struck out as it istic of their country in those classes out of were by an accidental collision in this obscure which the Juries of Ireland are usual y se arena. There is a long account of this in the lected. He ascribes them also, in part, to the book before us, as it is said to have been re- circumstance of almost all the barristers of Deatedly given by Mr. C. himself-but in a distinction having been introduced, very early style which we cannot conscientiously ap-in life, to the fierce and tumultuary arers of

the Irish House of Commons-the Government being naturally desirous of recruiting their ranks with as many efficient combatants as possible from persons residing in the metropolis-and Opposition looking, of course, to the same great seminary for the antagonists with whom these were to be confronted.

countries have consequently given way to that universal love of long-speaking, which, we verily believe, never can be repressed by any thing but the absolute impossibility of indulg ing it :—while their prolixity has taken a different character, not so much from the temperament of the speakers, as from the difference of the audiences they have generally had to address. In Ireland, the greater part of their tediousness is bestowed on Juries-and their vein consequently has been more popular. With us in Scotland the advocate has to speak chiefly to the Judges-and naturally endeavours, therefore, to make that impression by subtlety, or compass of reasoning, which he would in vain attempt, either by pathos, poetry, or jocularity.-Professional speakers, in short, we are persuaded, will always speak as long as they can be listened to.-The quan tity of their eloquence, therefore, will depend on the time that can be afforded for its display and its quality, on the nature of the audience to which it is addressed.

We cannot say that either of these solutions is to us very satisfactory. There was heat enough certainly, and to spare, in the Irish Parliament; but the barristers who came there had generally kindled with their own fire, before repairing to that fountain. They had formed their manner, in short, and distinguished themselves by their ardour, before they were invited to display it in that assembly; and it would be quite as plausible to refer the intemperate warmth of the Parliamentary debates to the infusion of hot-headed gladiators from the Bar, as to ascribe the general over-zeal of the profession to the fever some of them might have caught in the Senate. In England, we believe, this effect has never been observed-and in Ireland it But though we cannot admit that the causes has outlived its supposed causes-the Bar of assigned by this author are the main or funthat country being still (we understand) as rhe-damental causes of the peculiarity of Irish torical and impassioned as ever, though its legislature has long ceased to have an existence. As to the effects of temperament and national character, we confess we are still more sceptical-at least when considered as the main causes of the phenomenon in question. Professional peculiarities, in short, we are persuaded, are to be referred much more to the circumstances of the profession, than to the national character of those who exercise it; and the more redundant eloquence of the Irish bar, is better explained, probably, by the smaller quantity of business in their courts, than by the greater vivacity of their fancy, or the warmth of their hearts. We in Scotland have also a forensic eloquence of our ownmore speculative, discursive, and ambitious than that of England-but less poetical and passionate than that of Ireland; and the peculiarity might be plausibly ascribed, here also, to the imputed character of the nation, as distinguished for logical acuteness and intrepid questioning of authority, rather than for richness of imagination, or promptitude of feeling.

We do not mean, however, altogether to deny the existence or the operation of these causes-but we think the effect is produced chiefly by others of a more vulgar description. The small number of Courts and Judges in England-compared to its great wealth, population, and business-has made brevity and despatch not only important but indispensable qualifications in an advocate in great practice, since it would be physically impossible either for him or for the Courts to get through their business without them. All mere ornamental speaking, therefore, is not only severely discountenanced, but absolutely debarred; and the most technical, direct, and authoritative views of the case alone can be listened to. But judicial time, to use the language of Bentham is not of the same high value, either in Ireland or in Scotland; and the pleaders of those

oratory, we are far from denying that there is much in it of a national character, and indicating something extraordinary either in the temper of the people, or in the state of society among them. There is, in particular, a much greater Irascibility; with its usual concomitants of coarseness and personality, and a much more Theatrical tone, or a taste for forced and exaggerated sentiments, than would be tolerated on this side of the Channel. Of the former attribute, the continual, and, we must say, most indecent altercations that are recorded in these volumes between the Bench and the Bar, are certainly the most flagrant and offensive examples. In some cases the Judges were perhaps the aggressors-but the violence and indecorum is almost wholly on the side of the Counsel; and the excess and intemperance of their replies generally goes far beyond any thing for which an apology can be found in the provocation that had been given. A very striking instance occurs in an early part of Mr. Curran's history, where he is said to have observed, upon an opinion delivered by Judge Robinson, "that he had never net with the law as laid down by his Lordship in any book in his library;" and, upon his Lordship rejoining, somewhat scornfully, "that he suspected his library was very small," the offended barrister, in allusion to the known fact of the Judge having recently published some anonymous pamphlets, thought fit to reply, that "his library might be small, but he thanked Heaven that, among his books, there were none of the wretched productions of the frantic pamphleteers of the day. I find it more instructive, my lord, to study good works than to compose bad ones! My books may be few, but the title-pages give me the writers' names-my shelf is not disgraced by any of such rank absurdity that their very authors are ashamed to own them.” (p. 122.) On another occasion, when he was proceeding in an argument with his charac