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cause we have no desire to awaken forgotten scandals by so idle a controversy. Pope was undoubtedly a flatterer, and was undoubtedly sufficiently irritable and vindictive; but whether his rancour was stimulated, upon this occasion, by any thing but caprice or jealousy, and whether he was the inventor or the echo of the imputations to which he has given notoriety, 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.

The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. 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 distracting 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 well 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, nor the scale of the work very correctly regulated 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.

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

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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 individual. He saw Garrick on the stage, and Lord Mansfield on the bench; and this exhausts his list of illustrious men in London. His only associates seem to have been a few of his countrymen, as poor and forlorn as himself. Yet the life they lived seems to have been virtuous and honourable. They contracted no debts, and committed no excesses.

Curran himself rose early, and read diligently till dinner; and, in the evening, he usually went, as much for improvement as relaxation, to a sixpenny debating club. For a long time, however, he was too nervous and timid to act any other part than that of an auditor, and did not find even the germ of that singular talent which was afterwards improved to such a height, till it was struck out as it were by an accidental collision in this obscure arena. There is a long account of this in the book before us, as it is said to have been repeatedly given by Mr. C. himself— but in a style which we cannot conscientiously applaud. We suspect, indeed, from various passages in these volumes, that the Irish standard of good conversation is radically different 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 turns 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 fastidious country, we really have no idea of a man talking pathe

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tically in good company, and still less of good company sitting and crying to him. Nay, it is not even very consonant with our notions, that a gentleman should be "most comical."

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 public 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 accustoming himself to debate imaginary cases alone, with the most anxious attention, but "reciting perpetually before a mirror," to acquire a graceful gesticulation! and studiously imitating the tone and manner of the most celebrated speakers. The authors from whom he chiefly borrowed the matter of these solitary declamations were Junius and Lord Bolingbroke -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.

He was called to the Bar in 1775, in his twentyfifth year having rather imprudently married two years before-and very soon attained to independence and distinction. There is a very clever little disquisition introduced here by the author, on the very different, and almost opposite taste in eloquence which has prevailed at the Bar of England and Ireland respectively; -the one being in general cold and correct, unimpassioned and technical; the other discursive, rhetorical, and embellished, or encumbered, with flights of fancy and appeals to the passions. These peculiarities the author imputes chiefly to the difference in the national character and general temperament of the two races, and to the unsubdued and unrectified prevalence of all that is characteristic of their country in those classes