Curran and His Contemporaries (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CURRAN HIS CONTEMPORARIES. The title which I have prefixed to this volume strictly speaks what I intend it to be. No labored detail, no tedious narrative, no ambitious display of either fine writing or critical investigation, but the simple, and, in some measure, the self-drawn picture of a man who was a great ornament to the country in which it was his misfortune to be born. Before I proceed one step in my progress, the reader has a right to know what claim there is on his credulity, or what are the qualifications for the execution of such an undertaking. Early in life, I had been so accustomed to hear the name of Curran mentioned with admiration long before I could understand the reason, that I began to make his character an absolute article in my literary creed, and to hold it in a kind of tradi-' tional reverence. As the mind strengthened, an inquiry naturally arose into the causes of such enviable celebrity. The bon vivant referred me to his wit; the scholar to his eloquence; the patriot to his ardent and undeviating principle. The questions on which he had voted were connected with the best days of Ireland, and his vote was always on the side of his country; the causes which he had advocated were sometimes of the most personal, and sometimes of the most public interest, and in these his eloquence was without a parallel; while his innumerable pleasantries formed, as it were, the table currency of a people proverbially convivial. With such a complication of proofs, my judgment readily confirmed what my schoolboy faith had received: his speeches became, my manual, his name almost my adoration; and in a little poem, composed while at the Temple, I gave him the rank which I thought he merited among the ornaments of his" country. The subject of the poem gave it circul...