Rogers (
Table-Talk, etc
., p. 161) regretted "that so little of Curran's brilliant talk has been preserved." John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), after accepting the Mastership of the Rolls in Ireland (1806), spent much of his time in England. He retired from the Bench, where he never shone, in 1814.
In Byron's
Detached Thoughts
(1821) occurs the following passage:
"I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's manners in private life. They were odd, but they were natural. Curran used to take him off, bowing to the very ground, and 'thanking God that he had no peculiarities of gesture or appearance,' in a way irresistibly ludicrous. Rogers used to call him a 'Sentimental Harlequin;' but Rogers backbites everybody, and Curran, who used to quiz his great friend Godwin to his very face, would hardly respect a fair mark of mimicry in another. To be sure, Curran was admirable! to hear his description of the examination of an Irish witness was next to hearing his own speeches; the latter I never heard, but I have the former."
Elsewhere (