but for a long time could find no advocate hardy enough to undertake his cause!-and when young Curran at last made offer of his services, he was blamed and pitied by all his prudent friends for his romantic and Quixotic rashness.

teristic impetuosity, the presiding Judge hav-influence with the priest to obtain a reinission ing called to the Sheriff to be ready to take His Lordship went accordingly to the cabin into custody any one who should disturb the of the aged pastor, who came bareheaded to decorum of the Court, the sensitive counsellor the door with his missal in his hand; and af at once applying the notice to himself, is re- ter hearing the application, respectfully an ported to have broken out into the following swered, that the sentence having been imposed incredible apostrophe-" -" Do, Mr. Sheriff," re-by the Bishop, could only be relaxed by the plied Mr. Curran, "go and get ready my dun- same authority-and that he had no right or geon! Prepare a bed of straw for me; and power to interfere with it. The noble mediupon that bed I shall to-night repose with more ator, on this struck the old man! and drove tranquillity than I should enjoy were I sitting him with repeated blows from his presence. upon that bench, with a consciousness that I The priest then brought his action of damages disgraced it!"—Even his reply to Lord Clare, when interrupted by him in an argument before the Privy Council, seems to us much more petulant than severe. His Lordship, it seems, had admonished him that he was wandering from the question; and Mr. C. after some general observations, replied, "I am aware, my lords, that truth is to be sought only by slow and painful progress: I know also that error is in its nature flippant and compendious; it hops with airy and fastidious levity over proofs and arguments, and perches upon assertion, which it calls conclusion."-To Lord Clare, however, Mr. C. had every possible temptation to be intractable and impertinent. But even to his best friends, when placed on the seat of judgment, he could not always forbear a similar petulance. Lord Avonmore was always most kind and indulgent to himbut he too was sometimes in the habit, it seems, of checking his wanderings, and sometimes of too impatiently anticipating his conclusions. Upon one of these occasions, and in the middle of a solemn argument, we are called on to admire the following piece of vulgar and farcical stupidity, as a specimen of Mr. C's most judicious pleasantry:—

"Perhaps, my lord, I am straying; but you must impute it to the extreme agitation of my mind. I have just witnessed so dreadful a circumstance, that my imagination has not yet recovered from the shock. His lordship was now all attention.-On my way to court, my lord, as I passed by one of the markets, I observed a butcher proceeding to slaughter a calf. Just as his hand was raised, a lovely little child approached him unperceived, and, terrible to relate-I still see the life-blood gushing out-the poor child's bosom was under his hand, when he plunged his knife into-into'- -Into the bosom of the child!' cried out the judge, with much emotion into the neck of the calf, my lord; but your lordship sometimes anticipates!'

These facts speak volumes as to the utter perversion of moral feeling that is produced by unjust laws, and the habits to which they give rise. No nation is so brave or so generous as the Irish, and yet an Irish nobleman could be guilty of the brutality of striking an aged Ecclesiastic without derogating from his dignity or honour.-No body of men could be more intrepid and gallant than the leaders of the Irish bar; and yet it was thought too daring and presumptuous for any of them to assist the sufferer in obtaining redress for an outrage like this. In England, those things are inconceivable: But the readers of Irish history are aware, that where the question was between Peer and Peasant-and still more when it was between Protestant and Catholic

that

the barristers had cause for apprehension. It was but about forty years before, that upon a Catholic bringing an action for the recovery of his confiscated estates, the Irish House of all barristers, solicitors, attorneys, and proctors Commons publicly voted a resolution, who should be concerned for him, should be considered as public enemies!" This was in 1735. In 1780, however, Mr. C. found the service not quite so dangerous; and by great eloquence and exertion extorted a reluctant verdict, and thirty guineas of damages, from a Protestant Jury. The sequel of the affair was not less characteristic. In the first place, it involved the advocate in a duel with a wit ness whom he had rather outrageously abused

and, in the next place, it was thought suffi cient to justify a public notification to him, on But this is not quite fair.-There is no more the part of the noble defendant, that his ausuch nonsense in the book-nor any other dacity should be punished by excluding him Iricism so discreditable to the taste either of from all professional employment wherever its hero or its author. There are plenty of his influence could extend. The insolence traits, however, that make one blush for the of such a communication might well have degradation, and shudder at the government warranted a warlike reply: But Mr. C. ex of that magnificent country.-One of the most pressed his contempt in a gayer, and not less triking is supplied by an event in the early effectual manner. Pretending to misunderpart of Mr. C's professional history, and one stand the tenor of the message, he answered to which he is here said to have been indebted aloud, in the hearing of his friends, "My good for his first celebrity. A nobleman of great sir, you may tell his lordship, that it is in vain weight and influence in the country-we for him to be proposing terms of accommodagladly suppress his name, though it is given tion; for after what has happened, I protest I in the book-had a mistress, whose brother think, while I live, I never can hold a brief being a Catholic, had, for some offence, been sentenced to ecclesiastical penance-and the young woman solicited her keeper to use his

for him or one of his family." The threat, indeed, proved as impotent as it was pitiful; for the spirit and talent which the young

and we cannot deny our nationality the plea- In France, nowever, he was not much bet sure of his honest testimony. He writes thus ter off-and returned, complaining of a con to a friend soon after his arrival on our shore:- stitutional dejection, "for which he could find "I am greatly delighted with this country. You no remedy in water or in wine." He rejoices see no trace here of the devil working against the in the downfall of Bonaparte; and is of opinion wisdom and beneficence of God, and torturing and that the Revolution had thrown that country degrading his creatures. It may seem the romanca century back. In spring 1817, he began to ing of travelling; but I am satisfied of the fact, that sink rapidly; and had a slight paralytic attack the poorest man here has his children taught to read in one of his hands. He proposed to try and write, and that in every house is found a Bible, another visit to France; and still complained and in almost every house a clock: And the fruits of this are manifest in the intelligence and manners of the depression of his spirits: he had a of all ranks. In Scotland, what a work have the mountain of lead (he said) on his heart." four-and-twenty letters to show for themselves! Early in October, he had a very severe shock the natural enemies of vice, and folly, and slavery of apoplexy, and lingered till the 14th, when the great sowers, but the still greater weeders, of he expired in his 68th year. the human soil. Nowhere can you see here the cringing hypocrisy of dissembled detestation, so inseparable from oppression: and as little do you meet the hard, and dull, and right-lined angles of the southern visage; you find the notion exact and the phrase direct, with the natural tone of the Scot

tish muse.

The first night, at Ballintray, the landlord attended us at supper; he would do so, though we begged him not. We talked to him of the cultivation of potatoes. I said, I wondered at his taking them in place of his native food, oatmeal, so much more substantial. His answer struck me as very characteristic of the genius of Scotland-frugal, tender, and picturesque. Sir,' said he, we are not so much i' the wrong as you think; the tilth is easy, they are swift i' the cooking, they take little fuel; and then it is pleasant to see the gude wife wi' a' her bairns aboot the pot, and each wi' a potatoe in its hand.'"-Vol. ii. pp. 254-256.

There are various other interesting letters in these volumes, and in particular a long one to the Duke of Sussex, in favour of Catholic Emancipation; but we can no longer afford room for extracts, and must indeed hurry through our abstract of what remains to be noticed of his life. He canvassed the burgh of Newry unsuccessfully in 1812. His health failed very much in 1813; and the year after, he resigned his situation, and came over to London in his way to France. He seems at no time to have had much relish for English society. In one of his early letters, he complains of "the proud awkward sulk" of London company, and now he characterises it with still greater severity:

:

I question if it is much better in Paris. Here the parade is gross, and cold, and vulgar; there it is, no doubt, more flippant, and the attitude more graceful; but in either place is not Society equally a tyrant and a slave? The judgment despises it, and the heart renounces it. We seek it because we are idle; we are idle because we are silly; and the natural remedy is some social intercourse, of which a few drops would restore; but we swallow the whole vial, and are sicker of the remedy than we were of the disease."-Vol. ii. pp. 337, 338. And again, a little after,

England is not a place for society. It is too cold, too vain,-without pride enough to be humble, drowned in dull fantastical formality, vulgarized by rank without talent, and talent foolishly recommending itself by weight rather than by fashiona perpetual war between the disappointed pretension of talent and the stupid overweening of affected patronage; means without enjoyment, pursuits without an object, and society without conversation or intercourse: Perhaps they manage this better in France-a few days, I think, will enable me to decide."-Vol. ii. pp. 345, 346.

There is a very able and eloquent chapter on the character of Mr. Curran's eloquenceencomiastic of course, but written with great temper, talent, and discrimination. Its charm and its defects, the learned author refers to emotion in which all his best performances the state of genuine passion and vehement were delivered; and speaks of its effects on his auditors of all descriptions, in terms which can leave no doubt of its substantial excellence. We cannot now enter into these rhetori cal disquisitions-though they are full of interest and instruction to the lovers of oratory. It is more within our province to notice, that he is here said to have spoken extempore at his first coming to the Bar; but when his rising reputation made him more chary of his fame, he tried for some time to write down, and commit to memory, the more important parts of his pleadings. The result, however, was not at all encouraging: and he soon laid aside his pen so entirely, as scarcely even to make any notes in preparation. He meditated his subjects, however, when strolling in his garden, or more frequently while idling over his violin; and often prepared, in this way, those splendid passages and groups of images with which he was afterwards to dazzle and enchant his admirers. The only notes he made were often of the metaphors he proposed to employ-and these of the utmost brevity. For the grand peroration, for example, in H. Rowan's case, his notes were as follows:-"Character of Mr. R.-Furnace - Rebellion-smotheredStalks-Redeeming Spirit." From such slight hints he spoke fearlessly—and without cause for fear. With the help of such a scanty chart, he plunged boldly into the unbuoyed channel of his cause; and trusted himself to the torrent of his own eloquence, with no better guidance than such landmarks as these. It almost invariably happened, however, that the experiment succeeded; "that his own expectations were far exceeded; and that, when his mind came to be more intensely heated by his subject, and by that inspiring confidence which a public audience seldom fails to infuse into all who are sufficiently gifted to receive it, a multitude of new ideas. adding vigour or ornament, were given off, and it also happened, that, in the same pro lific moments, and as their almost inevitable consequence, some crude and fantastic notions escaped; which, if they impeach their author's taste, at least leave him the merit of a

splendid fault, which none but men c; genius | tincture of it to such writers as Milton, Bacon, can commit." (pp. 403, 404.) The best ex- or Taylor. There is fancy and figure enough planation of his success, and the best apology certainly in their compositions: But there is for his defects as a speaker, is to be found, we no intoxication of the fancy, and no rioting believe, in the following candid passage :— and revelling among figures-no ungoverned "The Juries among whom he was thrown, and and ungovernable impulse-no fond dalliance for whom he originally formed his style, were not with metaphors-no mad and headlong purfastidious critics; they were more usually men suit of brilliant images and passionate exabounding in rude unpolished sympathies, and who pressions-no lingering among tropes and were ready to surrender the treasure, of which melodies-no giddy bandying of antitheses they scarcely knew the value, to him that offered and allusions-no craving, in short, for perthem the most alluring toys. Whatever might have been his own better taste, as an advocate he soon petual glitter, and panting after effect, till discovered, that the surest way to persuade was to both speaker and hearer are lost in the conciliate by amusing them. With them he found splendid confusion, and the argument evapo that his imagination might revel unrestrained; that, rates in the heat which was meant to enforce when once the work of intoxication was begun, it. This is perhaps too strongly put; but every wayward fancy and wild expression was as there are large portions of Mr. C.'s Speeches acceptable and effectual as the most refined wit; and that the favour which they would have refused to which we think the substance of the deto the unattractive reasoner, or to the too distant scription will apply. Take, for instance, a and formal orator, they had not the firmness to passage, very much praised in the work bewithhold, when solicited with the gay persuasive fore us, in his argument in Judge Johnson's familiarity of a companion. These careless or li centious habits, encouraged by early applause and case, an argument, it will be remembered, victory, were never thrown aside; and we can ob- on a point of law, and addressed not to a Jury, serve, in almost all his productions, no matter how but to a Judge. august the audience, or how solemn the occasion, "I am not ignorant that this extraordinary conthat his mind is perpetually relapsing into its primi-struction has received the sanction of another Court, vive indulgences."-pp. 412, 413. nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote The learned author closes this very able upon the general heart of the Bar. I am aware that and eloquent dissertation with some remarks I may have the mortification of being told, in anupon what he says is now denominated the foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my other country, of that unhappy decision; and I Irish school of eloquence; and seems inclined head when I am told of it. But I cherish, too, the to deny that its profusion of imagery implies consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them, any deficiency, or even neglect of argument. that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would As we had some share, we believe, in impo- put above all the sweepings of their Hall (no great sing this denomination, we may be pardoned compliment, we should think), who was of a different opinion-who had derived his ideas of civil for feeling some little anxiety that it should liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of be rightly understood; and beg leave there- Rome-who had fed the youthful vigour of his fore to say, that we are as far as possible from studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their holding, that the greatest richness of imagery wisest philosophers and statesmen-and who had necessarily excludes close or accurate reason-refined that theory into the quick and exquisite ing; holding, on the contrary, that it is fre- sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples-by quently its most appropriate vehicle and na-dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon-or tural exponent -as in Lord Bacon, Lord the anticipated Christianity of Socrates--on the Chatham, and Jeremy Taylor. But the elo-gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas— quence we wished to characterise, is that on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move where the figures and ornaments of speech do interfere with its substantial object-where fancy is not ministrant but predominantwhere the imagination is not merely awakened, but intoxicated-and either overlays and obscures the sense, or frolics and gambols around it, to the disturbance of its march, and the weakening of its array for the contest:-And of this kind, we still humbly think, was the eloquence of Mr. Curran.

than to have pushed the sun from his course! I from his integrity would have been more difficult would add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it

was but for a moment-that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by involving the spectator without even soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest approaching the face of the luminary. And this recollections of my life-from the remembrance of those attic nights, and those refections of the gods, which we have spent with those admired, and re His biographer says, indeed, that it is a mis-spected, and beloved companions, who have gone take to call it Irish, because Swift and Goldsmith had none of it-and Milton and Bacon and Chatham had much; and moreover, that Burke and Grattan and Curran had each a distinctive style of eloquence, and ought not to be classed together. How old the style may be in Ireland, we cannot undertake to say-though we think there are traces of it in Ossian. We would observe too, that, though born in Ireland, neither Swift nor Goldsmith were trained in the Irish school, or worked for the Irish market; and we have already said, that it is totally to mistake our conception of the style in question, to ascribe any

before us; over whose ashes the most precious Avonmore could not refrain from bursting intc tears of Ireland have been shed. [Here Lord tears.] Yes, my good Lord, I see you do not forget them. I see their sacred forms passing in sad review before your memory. I see your pained ana softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, where the innocent enjoyment of social mirth became ex the horizon of the board became enlarged into the panded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and horizon of man-where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure and generous purpose-where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and redundant fountain of yours."-Vol. i. pp. 139--148.

Now, we must candidly confess, that we

do not remember ever to have read any thing-being often caught sobbing over the patho much more absurd than this-and that the of Richardson, or laughing at the humour of puerility and folly of the classical intrusions Cervantes, with an unrestrained vehemence is even less offensive, than the heap of incon- which reminds us of that of Voltaire. He gruous metaphors by which the meaning is spoke very slow, both in public and private, obscured. Does the learned author really and was remarkably scrupulous in his choice mean to contend, that the metaphors here of words: He slept very little, and, like Johnadd either force or beauty to the sentiment? son, was always averse to retire at nightor that Bacon or Milton ever wrote any thing lingering long after he arose to depart-and, in like this upon such a topic? In his happier his own house, often following one of his guests moments, and more vehement adjurations, to his chamber, and renewing the conversation Mr. C. is often beyond all question a great for an hour. He was habitually abstinent and and commanding orator; and we have no temperate; and, from his youth up, in spite of doubt was, to those who had the happiness all his vivacity, the victim of a constitutional of hearing him, a much greater orator than melancholy. His wit is said to have been ready the mere readers of his speeches have any and brilliant, and altogether without gali. means of conceiving:-But we really cannot But the credit of this testimony is somewhat help repeating our protest against a style of weakened by a little selection of his bons composition which could betray its great mas- mots, with which we are furnished in a note. ter, and that very frequently, into such pas- The greater part, we own, appear to us to be sages as those we have just extracted. The rather vulgar and ordinary; as, when a man mischief is not to the master-whose genius of the name of Halfpenny was desired by the could efface all such stains, and whose splen- Judge to sit down, Mr. C. said, "I thank your did successes would sink his failures in obli- Lordship for having at last nailed that rap to vion-but to the pupils, and to the public, the counter;" or, when observing upon the whose taste that very genius is thus instru- singular pace of a Judge who was lame, he mental in corrupting. If young lawyers are said, "Don't you see that one leg goes before. taught to consider this as the style which like a tipstaff, to make room for the other?” should be aimed at and encouraged, to ren--or, when vindicating his countrymen from der Judges benevolent,-by comparing them the charge of being naturally vicious, he said, to "the sweet-souled Cimon," and the "gal-"He had never yet heard of an Irishman being lant Epaminondas;" or to talk about their born drunk." The following, however, i own "young and slender tapers," and "the clouds and the morning sun," with what precious stuff will the Courts and the country be infested! It is not difficult to imitate the defects of such a style-and of all defects they are the most nauseous in imitation. Even in the hands of men of genius, the risk is, that the longer such a style is cultivated, the more extravagant it will grow,-just as those who deal in other means of intoxication, are tempted to strengthen the mixture as they proceed. The learned and candid author before us, testifies this to have been the progress of Mr. C. himself—and it is still more strikingly illustrated by the history of his models and imitators. Mr. Burke had much less of this extravagance than Mr. GrattanMr. Grattan much less than Mr. Curran-and Mr. Curran much less than Mr. Phillips.-It is really of some importance that the climax should be closed, somewhere.

There is a concluding chapter, in which Mr. C.'s skill in cross-examination, and his conversational brilliancy, are commemorated; as well as the general simplicity and affability of his manners, and his personal habits and peculiarities. He was not a profound lawyer, nor much of a general scholar, though reasonably well acquainted with all the branches of polite literature, and an eager reader of novels

good-"I can't tell you, Curran," observed an Irish nobleman, who had voted for the Union, "how frightful our old House of Commons appears to me." "Ah! my Lord," replied the other, "it is only natural for Murderers to be afraid of Ghosts;"-and this is at least grotesque. "Being asked what an Irish gentleman, just arrived in England, could mean by perpetually putting out his tongue! Answer-I suppose he's trying to catch the English accent." In his last illness, his physician observing in the morning that he seemed to cough with more difficulty, he answered, "that is rather surprising, as I have been practising all night."

But these things are of little consequence. Mr. Curran was something much better than a sayer of smart sayings. He was a lover of his country-and its fearless, its devoted, and indefatigable servant. To his energy and talents she was perhaps indebted for some mitigation of her sufferings in the days of her extremity-and to these, at all events, the public has been indebted, in a great degree, for the knowledge they now have of her wrongs; and for the feeling which that knowledge has excited, of the necessity of granting them redress. It is in this character that he must have most wished to be remembered, and in which he has most deserved it.