life strongly attached to that order of the community which he had first known and of which, notwithstanding his accidental elevation, he considered himself as a part, and as bound to their interests by every motive of sympathy and duty. This early inclination to the popular cafise could not fail to be encouraged by the condition of the times-by the successful efforts of America, which excited so much imitative enthusiasm in Ireland-and by those consequent movements of patriotic spirit which preceded the revolution of 1782. But, above all, there was in his daily view the degraded condition of his fellow-subjects; a spectacle which, without any farther incentive, might readily awaken, in a feeling breast, much suspicion of the wisdom and humanity of the government that could countenance such a system. Nor did his mind, when it ascended from his own personal impulses to the less questionable conclusions of England's great legal and constitutional authorities, discover anything that should make him pause in his estimate of the importance of the people's privileges. In contemplating the British constitution, to the fullest benefits of which he never ceased to vindicate his country's most undoubted claim, his first and his last conviction was, that no matter by what terms it might be described, it was essentially popular; that the original elemental principle which gave it life and vigour, and which alone could give it permanency, was the subject's freedom; that this, the most vital part, experience had shown to be most exposed to unconstitutional invasion; and that, as long as this practical tendency subsisted, it behoved every friend to the throne and the laws to demonstrate his attachment, not by a parade of simulated or fanatic loyalty, but by upholding, on every occasion, the dignity and the spirit of the subject. But, whatever was the cause, whether the original character of his mind, or the influence of early associations, or his education, or the passing scene, or, as seems most probable, all of them combined, he no sooner appeared than he declared himself the advocate of the people's rights, a title which he ever after supported with an ardour and constancy that leave no doubt of his sincerity. It was the intensity of his feeling, which obstacles soon matured into a passion, that gave such an uncommon interest to his oratory. Whatever may be the opinion of the expediency of such popular tenets, there is a natural magnificence about them, when presented through the medium of a fervid imagination, to which the most unsympathising are compelled to pay a momentary homage-to those who are persuaded of their truth, and who feel that they have been defrauded of their benefits, they come as oracles fraught with rapture and consolation. In all Mr. Curran's political speeches this sentiment of devoted attachment to liberty and to the country is conspicuous, animating and dignifying every topic that he advances. It cannot be too frequently repeated (and to attest it is a debt that Ireland owes his memory) that in his most vehement assertion of her rights, he was most conscientiously sincere. His love of Ireland was of no vulgar and fickle kind, originating in interest, vanity or ambition. Ireland was the choice of his youth, and was from first to last regarded by him, not so much with the feelings of a patriot as with the romantic idolatry of a lover. To her his heart was contracted for better and for worse; to her "what he had to give he gave," confederating all his most cherished projects with her wayward fortunes, and surrendering to her service all the resources of his genius, in the successive stages of her pride, her hopes, her struggles, and her despair. In him every man who knew him knew that these were not common-place pretences, which he put forth as mere instruments of rhetoric: the most sensitive of his audience were never under more subjection to his enthusiasm than he was himself; and it was in the evidence of this fact, more than in any art, that lay the extraordinary fascination of his manner. There was no elaborate ardour, no technical impetuosity; nothing to imply that while his lips were on fire his heart might be cold; but every look, tone, and gesture, carried with them the conviction, that if he were deluding them he was deluding himself. Much of this fervour may be collected from his printed speeches, but let the reader of them, in justice to their author, recollect that he is a reader, not an auditor; that though he may find the words, and even these imperfectly recorded, he finds not all those accompaniments, without which the language is but a cold monumental. image of the thoughts that once glowed with living energy. The words remain, but the eye before which judges and juries have so often shrunk the unaffected and finely varying tones of indignant remonstrance, or of tender expostulation-the solemn and pathetic pause that embodied in a moment's silence more passion and persuasion than any spoken eloquence could convey-for these, and for much more than these, the reader must necessarily look in vain; and without them his estimate of the orator's entire powers must be as conjectural, as if he should undertake to appreciate the merits of some departed ornament of the stage from a tame perusal of the scenes to which he alone had imparted all the warmth and dignity of life. Mr. Curran's speeches have met with some unfavourable criticism out of Ireland; and, though many of the objections may be founded, many have also been made without a sufficient advertence to the scenes which accompanied their delivery. It is found that there are passages and descriptions too strong, and even shocking for the closet. One of their principal merits was, that they were never intended for the closet: they were intended for occasions of emergency and despair; to excite passions of such force as to counteract the violence of those that already raged; to rescue the accused, and not to propitiate the critic. Yet even the critic, who condemns the taste that could paint the perjured informer, and other public delinquents, in such loathsome colours as the Irish advocate employed, should remember, that upon this subject his own rules will justify an important distinction. A writer who, in works of mere invention where he has the selection of his topics, takes a delight in dwelling upon revolting ideas, may be justly accused of being unhappy and perverted in his taste; but this is only where the introduction of such images is gratuitous, and not naturally arising from the horror of the situation. We should proscribe such nor of Campbell Juliet is not hissed situations altogether, were we fastidiously to reject the only colors in which they could be painted. We do not complain of Burns for the "father's grey hairs sticking to the heft," for the "life-blood oozing through the sod." off the stage for her anticipated loathings in the tomb of the Capulets so also it is but fair to judge of similar passages of Mr. Curran's oratory, and with this additional consideration, that instead of inventing, he was but describing existing facts and characters, in portraying which no language or illustration could surpass the nauseous. Before he had described the perjured witness as emerging from "those catacombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried a man lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up an informer," he had day after day seen those horrid apparitions stalk upon the public table, and he had himself been almost scared from his duty by the frightful glarings with which they would have converted the general exe cration into general dread, into the undissembled homage of defe rential horror. A more sustainable objection to his style is the exuberance and occasional extravagance of his imagery. It would be no defence of him to say that he could not avoid it; that in the ardour of extemporaneous creation, his mind frequently lost all authority over its associations. It was, indeed, the fact, that his imagination did often tyrannize over his other faculties, and that many wayward ideas were precipitated into existence by the still pressing throng that "I have been eighteen years at this bar, and never until this year (1794) have I seen such witnesses supporting charges of this kind with such abandoned profligacy. In one case where men were on their trial for their lives, I felt myself involuntarily shrinking under your lordship's protection from the miscreant who leaped upon the table and announced himself a witness. I was trusting in God, that these strange exhibitions would be confined to the remote parts of the country. I was astonished to see them parading through the capital; but I feel that the night of unenlightened wretchedness is fast approaching, when a man shall be judged before he is tried-when the advocate shall be libelled for performing his duty to his client, that right of human nature-when the victim shall be hunted down, not because he is criminal, but because he is obnoxious.”—Mr. Cur ran's Defence of Dr. Drennan, 1794. followed before his taste had time to suppress or adorn them. This defect was perhaps in some degree organic; perhaps discipline and caution might have corrected it; but unless he had altogether changed his modes of intellectual exercise, it could scarcely be expected that any care could have entirely removed it. The dangers of offending against good taste depend in a great measure upon the class of the mental powers that are employed. They who confine themselves to the exercise of those of reasoning, may continue from day to day to give extemporaneous utterance to every idea; and though they fail in their logic with every breath, may still avoid the smallest violation of good taste. But when the mind ascends to subjects of invention and imagination, there is not longer this security. Where is the poet, the most intuitively correct, who does not reject much which at first had pleased; whose mind has not been even incommoded by the intrusion of many fantastic combinations, which instead of venturing to express in language, he crushes at the moment of their birth? And it is only by exercising this right over the children of its fancy, by condemning the deformed to an early death, that of those who are permitted to survive, none are without beauty and proportion. The orator who in the same way aspires to create, and who, like Mr. Curran, defers the work till he is excited by the presence of a public audience, has to encounter all the dangers of the poet, without enjoying his privileges. The same fervour and impetuosity that lead to felicity, will often hur. y him into extravagance the latter, once produced, cannot be recalled-he has no leisure to soften, and mould, and reconcile; and hence conceptions, which in his cooler moments he would have suppressed, or have rendered worthy of himself, remain irrevocably accusers of his taste. But perhaps this subject will be most readily explained, by adverting to Mr. Curran's habits of preparation for public speaking. From the first experiment of his talents, in London, till he had attained some eminence at the bar, he never composed his speeches |