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complaints, and to consider his situation liberty than justifiable caution, uninin its true light-as a confinement with fluenced by liberality, would have fewer restrictions upon his personal established.

JOE

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS.

From the Literary Gazette, Oct. 25, 1817.

MR. CURRAN.

equally disheartening prospects, and near

OHN PHILPOT CURRAN was born near the village of Newmarket, ly all found themselves at last let out in the County of Cork in Ireland, about upon the general eye near the same point the middle of the last century, of a fami- of eminence. CURRAN was now cheerly certainly far from opulent, but ap- ed, and made an advance; he hired an parently of those respectable habits and attic, and, to complete his distinctions and acquirements which, not unfrequent in his difficulties, took a wife. The part the obscurity of Irish life, yet argue of his history connected with this lady competence. With the usual and spirit- is the least favourable to his fame. The ed feeling of the people, CURRAN's pa- respect and fondness which subsist rents gave him the education of a gen- through many a year of mutual uncertleman; he acquired a knowledge of tainty and struggle, are sometimes forthe Classics so sufficient as to have last midably tried by prosperity. The me ed him through life, and with little sub- mory of CURRAN's domestic life may sequent leisure for their study, he was have been among the most painful rerich and happy in quotation down to his trospections of a mind of his deep sensiclosing display at the bar. He made his bility. That wife survives him: there way through the Dublin University by is the strongest reason to believe that she the exertion of his early knowledge, ob- was maligned, and the purity and untained a Scholarship, a distinction ob- complaining retirement in which she has tainable only by a small number of the passed the long period since their sepamore accomplished students of two and ration, form an almost convincing conthree years' standing; and on taking his trast to the troubled and disappointed degree of A. B., gave way to the usual wanderings of her celebrated husband. captivation of a Fellowship, and was But if men of great genius often perish near yoking his fiery spirit to the wheel. disheartened by neglect, and reluctant to He was repelled by the unsuitableness take the baser means of prosperity, forof the preparatory studies to his tastes, tune comes, like the day, to all. If the and soon relinquished an object which, naked and noble irritability of the supe perfectly meritorious and honourable in rior mind makes it feel the visitations of its appropriate hands, would have been the night more mortal, it administers to unfitted for a mind originally nerved for its quicker and more living sensation of the brilliant prizes of public conflict. the rising sunshine. Some accident on From this plan of lonely study he seems circuit revealed the man who was yet to to have been flung back with the re-ac- start up into the loftiest stature of Irish tion of strong, original propensities, sud- talent. CURRAN was soon in the House denly released from strong restraint. He of Commons, and remarkable among the became a writer of poetry and political finest circle of men that Ireland had ever essays in the miry journals of a time re- thrown round her doubtful cause. His markable for nothing but blundering practice at the bar now increased rapidfaction; he went farther, and commenc- ly, and he brought into the house the ed society by forming a club of festive provocations and rivalries which stirred and pauper fellow students. It would him at the bar. The man whom he stung be curious to follow the various obscuri most indefatigably and deeply was a ties through which those convivialists powerful antagonist, FITZGIBBON, afterwound their future way up to the world. wards Lord Chancellor. This contest Each had a different exfodiation, all was a perpetual display of great legal

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strength, perhaps invigorated by great living, ardent, almost brilliant animation, natural arrogance, committed against en- He has left two daughters and three venomed genius; and the House often sons, and among them a large portion of paused to look upon a contest in which hereditary genius. His eldest son was no man could decide between the lordly his deputy in the Rolls; his second son and stern vigour that could neither attack is in the naval service; and his third has nor be overthrown, and the fierce ener- been lately called to the bar, with pecugy, that, always on the wing, pounced liar amiableness of private character, and down upon it with incessant persecution, much promise of professional distinction. surely marking the vital place, and, on the first motion of pursuit, wheeling up. emerged from the first struggles of an unFrom the period in which Curran wards into a region all its own. 1780, CURRAN eminently distinguished profession, his history makes a part of În friended man labouring up a jealous himself in the parliamentary labours the annals of his country; once upon which ensued in the Constitution. The the surface, his light was always before bar subsequently engrossed him. His the eye, it never sank, and was never chief employment lay in cases requiring outshone. peculiar oratorical exhibition. A con- himself beyond the reach of that tumulWith great powers to lift siderable number of his speeches have tuous and stormy agitation that most inbeen published, but in a decidedly inad- volve the movers of the public mind in a equate state. In 1806, after the total country such as Ireland then was, he cessation of those public questions to loved to cling to the heavings of the which he was bound as a party man,and wave; he at least never rose to that tranthe accession of his friends to the minis- quil elevation in which his early contry, he accepted the place of Master of temporaries had, one by one climbed ; the Rolls in Ireland, an appointment of and never left the struggle till the storm 5000l. a year. He retained it until had gone down, it is to be hoped for 1815, when his health required a cessa- ever. tion from its laborious attendance, and might have been his choice, and he was This was his destiny, but it he retired on a pension of half the salary. not without the reward which, to an He had for some time passed through ambitious mind, conscious of its eminent the watering places with the season, and powers, might be more than equivalent lately fixed himself at Brompton, where to the reluctant patronage of the Throne. he occasionally indulged in society, and To his habits, legal distinctions would was, to his last sparkle, the most interest- have beeu only a bounty upon his siing, singular, and delightful of all table lence. His limbs would have been fetcompanions. During the present year tered by the ermine. But he had the he had suffered two slight apoplectic compensation of boundless popular honstrokes. On the Thursday preceding our, much respect from the higher ranks his death, he had dined abroad with a of party, much admiration and much party; he was seized with apoplexy fear from the lower partisans. In Parearly next morning, and continued liament he was the assailant most dreadspeechless, though in possession of his ed; in the Law Courts he was the adsenses, till the early part of Tuesday the vocate whose assistance was deemed the 14th, when he sunk into lethargy, and most essential: in both he was an obtowards evening died with scarcely a ject of all the more powerful passions of struggle; in nearly his 70th year. CUR- man, but rivalry. He stood alone, and RAN's exterior was not prepossessing on shone alone. a first view. His figure was meagre and under-sized; and his physiognomy, still more the native turn of his feelings, though obviously that of an acute man, threw him into the ranks of Opposition; conveyed no impression either of dignity in England a doubtful cause and long or beauty. But he had an eye of deep separable from patriotism-in Ireland, black, intense and intellectual; and at that day, the natural direction of every when he was engaged and interested in man of vigorous feeling and heedless speaking, his co atenance changed into genius. Ireland had been, from causes

The connexions of his early life, and

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for the outpouring of all that civilization could give to its various and magnificent nature. The history of those years is yet to be written ;-whenever the temple is to be erected, the name of Curran must be among the loftiest on its portal.

many and deep, an unhappy country. rass; but he had dreaded to disturb its For centuries, utterly torpid, or only multitude of lordly pauperism, and hegving signs of life by the fresh gush of reditary plunder. It was now cleared blood from her old wounds, the influ- and enclosed for him, a noble expanse ence of England's well-intentioned policy was more than lost upon her; it was too limited to work a thorough reformation, but too strong not to irritate ;-it was the application of the actual cautery to a limb, while the whole body was a gangrene. But a man who loved the But the time of those displays which influence of this noblest of countries raised him to his highest distinction as an might hate the Government of Ireland; orator, was of a darker shade. His it was a rude Oligarchy. The whole country had risen like the giant of Scripinfluence of the State was in the hands ture, refreshed with wine; her vast, origof a few great families. Those were inal powers doubly excited by an elating the true farmers general of Ireland; and but dangerous draught of liberty. She the English Minister, pressed by the had just reached that state in which there business of an empire then beginning to is the strongest demand for the wisdom expand over half the world, was forced of the Legislator. The old system had to take their contract on their own terms. been disbanded, but the whole compoThe Viceroy was their Viceroy, only the nents of its strength survived. The spifirst figure in that deplorable triumph rit of clanship was still up and girded which led all the hopes and virtues of with its rude attachments ;-the hatred the country in chains behind the chariot of English ascendancy had sheathed the wheels of a haughty faction. It was sword, but kept it still keen, and only against this usurpation that the Irish waited the word to leap from the scabminority rose up in naked but resolute bard;-the ancient Irish habits of daring patriotism. The struggle was not long, gratification among all ranks, the fallen they hewed their way through the he- estate of that multitude who had lived on reditary armour of their adversaries, with the pay of political intrigue, the reckless the vigour of men leagued in such a poverty of that overwhelming population cause, and advanced their standard till to which civil rights could not give bread, they saw it waving without one to an- all formed a mass of discordant but desswer it. In this homage to an admira- perate strength, which only required a ble time there is no giddy praise of pop- sign. The cross was at length lifted beular violence. The Revolution of 1780, fore them, and it was the lifting of a was to Ireland, what the Revolution of banner to which the whole darkened host a century before had been to the paramount country, a great and reviving effort of nature to throw off that phantom which sat upon her breast, and gave her the perception of life only by the struggles that must have closed in stagnation and death. The policy of the English Minister was too enlarged to offer resistance to an impulse awaked on English principles. For him a great service had been done; the building which he had wished to shake, was cast down in dust, and the soil left open for the visitation of all the influences of good government. The country had lain before his eye a vast commonage, incapable of cultivation, and breeding only the rank and revolutionist sets fire to a city, a great pernicious fertility of a neglected mo- work of the wise industry, and old, es

looked up, as to an omen of assured victory. The Rebellion was met with manly promptitude, and the country was set at peace. Curran was the leading counsel in the trials of the conspirators, and he defended those guilty and misgui ded men with a vigour and courage of talent, less like the emulation of an advocate, than the zeal of a friend. He had known many of them in the intercourses of private life, some of them had been his early professional associates. A good ran and a good subject might have felt for them all. The English lev eller is a traitor, the Irish rebel might have been a patriot. Ainong us, the

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tablished conveniency of man, a place of and said to have been his most masterly the temple and the palace, the treasures effusion of pathetic eloquence. Of this of living grandeur, and the monuments no remnant seems to have been preserved. of departed virtue. He burns, that he The period was fatal to their authenmay plunder among the ruins. The ticity. When Erskine pleaded, he stood Irish rebel threw his fire-brand into a, in the midst of a secure nation, and wilderness, and if the conflagration rose pleaded like a priest of the temple of too high, and consumed some of statelier justice, with his hand on the altar of the and more solid ornaments, it was sure to Constitution, and all England below turn into ashes the inveterate and tangled prepared to treasure every fantastic oracle undergrowth, that had defied his rude that came from his lips. Curran pleaded, industry. This was the effervescence of not on the floor of a shrine, but on a heated and untaught minds. The world scaffold, with no companions but the was to be older, before it learned the wretched and culpable men who were to curse and unhappy end of the reform that be plunged from it hour by hour, and no begins by blood. The French Revolu- hearers but the multitude, who crowded tion had not then given its moral. It anxious to that spot of hurried execution, was still to the eyes of the multitude, like and then rushed away glad to shake off the primal vision in the Apocalypse, a all remembrance of scenes which had glorious shape coming forth in unstained agitated and torn every heart among them. robes, conquering and to conquer for the It is this which puts his speeches beyond world's happiness; it had not yet, like the estimate of the closet. He had no that mighty emblem, darkened down thought of studying the cold and marble through all its shapes of terror, till it graces of scholarship. He was a being moved against the world, Death on the embarked in strong emergency, a man pale borse, followed by the unchained and not a statue. He was to address spirits of human evil, and smiting with plague and famine, and the sword.

men, of whom he must make himself the master. With the living energy, he Some criticism has been wasted on the had the living and regardless variousness presumed deficiencies of Curran's speech- of attitude. Where he could not impel es on those memorable trials. Throw by exhortation, or overpower by menace, ing off the public fact that those speeches he did not disdain to fling himself at were all uncorrected copies, Curran was their feet, and conquer by grasping the of all orators the most difficult to follow hem of their robe. For this triumph he by transcription. His elocution, rapid, was all things to all men. His wild wit, exuberant and figurative, in a signal and far-fetched allusions, and play upon degree, was often compressed into a words, and extravagant metaphors, all pungency which gave a sentence in a repulsive to our cooler judgments, were word. The word lost, the charm was wisdom and sublimity before the Juries undone. But his manner could not be over whom he waved his wand. Before transferred, and it was created for his a higher audience he might have been a style. His eye, hand, and form were in model of sustained dignity;-mingling perpetual speech. Nothing was abrupt with those men, he was compelled to to those who could see him, nothing was speak the language that reached their lost, except when some flash would burst hearts. Curran in the presence of an Out, of such sudden splendour as to leave Irish Jury was first of the first. He them suspended and dazzled too strongly skirmished round the field, tried every to follow the lustres that shot after it point of attack with unsuspected dexterity, with restless illumination. Of Curran's still pressing on, till the decisive moment speeches, all have been impaired by the was come, when he developed his force, difficulty of the period, or the immediate and poured down his whole array in a circumstances of their delivery. Some mass of matchless strength, grandeur, and have been totally lost. His speech on originality. It was in this originality the trial of the two principal conductors that a large share of his fascination conof the conspiracy, the Shears's, barristers sisted. The course of other great public and men of family, was made at midnight, speakers may in general be predicted

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from their outset, but in this man, the weight in a legislative assembly. In the mind always full, was always varying the few instances in which his feelings took direction of its exuberance; it was no re- a part, he excited the same admiration gular stream, rolling down in a smooth which had followed him through his proand straight-forward volume;-it had fessional efforts. But his lot had been the wayward beauty of a mountain cast in the courts of law, and his life was torrent, perpetually delighting the eye there. He came into the House of with some unexpected sweep through Commons wearied by the day, and rethe wild and the picturesque, always luctant to urge himself to exertions renrapid, always glancing back sunshine, till dered less imperious by the crowd of able it swelled into sudden strength, and men who fought the battle of Opposition. thundered over like a cataract. For his His general speeches in Parliament noblest images there was no preparation, were the sports of the moment, the irrethey seemed to come spontaneously, and sistible overflow of a humourous disdain they came mingled with the lightest pro- of his adversary. He left the heavy arms ducts of the mind. It was the volcano, to the habitual combatants, and amused flinging up in succession curls of vapour, himself with light and hovering hostility. and fiery rocks; all from the same ex- But his shaft was dreaded, and its haustless depths, and with the same un- subtlety was sure to insinuate its way, measured strength to which the light and where there was a mortal pang to be the massive were equal. The writer had wrung. With such gifts what might not the fortune to hear some of those speeches, such a man have been, early removed and repeats it, that to feel the full genius from the low prejudices, and petty fac of the man, he must have been heard. tions, and desperate objects that thickHis eloquence was not a studiously ened the atmosphere of public life in sheltered and feebly fed flame, but a Ireland, into the large prospects, and torch blazing only with the more breadth noble and healthful aspirations that and brilliancy, as it was the more broadly elated the spirit in this country, then and boldly waved; it was not a lamp, to rising to that summit eminence from live in his tomb. His printed speeches which the world at last lies beneath her. lie before us, full of the errors that might If it were permitted to enter into the convict him of an extravagant imagination recesses of such a mind, some painful and a perverted taste. But when those consciousness of his fate would proba are to be brought in impeachment against bly have been found, to account for that the great orator, it must be remembered, occasional irritation and spleen of heart, that they were spoken for a triumph, with which he shaded his public lite, which they gained; that we are now and disguised the homage which he must pausing over the rudeness and unwieldi- have felt for a country like England. It ness of the weapons of the dead, without must have been nothing inferior to this reference to the giant's hand that with bitter sense of utter expulsion, which them drove the field. Curran's careless- could have made such a being, gazing ness of fame has done this dishonour to upon her unclouded glory, lift his voice his memory. We have but the frag- only to tell her how he hated her beams. ments of his mind and are investigating He must have mentally measured his those glorious reliques, separate and strength with her mighty men; BURKE mutilated like the sculptures of the and PITT and Fox were then moving in Parthenon; while they ought to have been gazed on where the great master had placed them, where all their shades and foreshortenings were relief and vigour, image above image, rising in proportioned and consecrated beauty; as statues on the face of a temple.

His career in Parliament was less memorable. But the cause lay in no deficiency of those powers which give

their courses above the eyes of the world, great luminaries, passing over in different orbits, but all illustrating the same superb and general system. He had one moment not unlike theirs. But the Irish Revolution of 1780 was too brief for the labours or the celebrity of patriotism, and this powerful and eccentric mind, after rushing from its darkness just near enough to be mingled with, and