All analogy must be imperfect in detail; and we have no desire to insist on the perfection of our analogy between the Golden Head of the East, and the little kingdom whose fallen honours are recorded in the volume before us. But, if Ireland is even now neither the nominis umbra which the Assyrian empire has been for so many ages, nor the Irish legislature the heir of the fierce and falcon-eyed council which sleeps in the sepulchres of Nineveh, there is something of a curious relationship in the adventurous industry which has so lately exhumed the monuments of Eastern grandeur, and the patriotic reminiscence which has retrieved the true glories of the sister country, the examples of her genius, from an oblivion alike resulting from the misfortunes of the Land and the lapse of Time.
Nor are we altogether inclined to admit the inferiority of the moral catastrophe of the Island to the physical fall of the Empire. If there be an inferiority, we should place it on the side of the Oriental throne. To us, all that belongs to mind assumes the higher rank; the soil trodden by the philosopher and the patriot, the birthplace of the poet and the orator, bears a prouder aspect, is entitled to a more reverent homage, and creates richer recollections in the coming periods of mankind, than all the pomp of unintellectual power. There would be to us a stronger claim in the fragments of an Athenian tomb, or in the thicket-covered wall of a temple in the Ægean, than in all the grandeurs of Babylon.
It is now fifty years since the parliament of Ireland fell; and, in that period, there has not been a more disturbed, helpless, and hopeless country than Ireland, on the face of the earth. Nor has this calamity been confined to the lower orders; every order has been similarly convulsed. The higher professions have languished and lost their lustre; the Church has been exposed to a struggle for life; the nobility have given up the useless resistance to difficulties increasing round them from hour to hour; the landed interest is supplicating the Court of Encumbered Estates to relieve it from its burthens; the farmers are hurrying, in huge streams of fugitives, from a land in which they can no longer live; and the tillers of the ground, the serfs of the spade, are left to the dangerous teaching of an angry priesthood, or to the death of mingled famine and pestilence. A cloud, which seems to stoop lower day by day, and through which no ray can pierce, at once chills and darkens Ireland.
The author of this important and interesting volume, in a brief preface, states his object as being that of giving personal sketches of the leading Irish characters of his time, exactly as they appeared on the scenes of professional and public life—most of them being his acquaintance, some his intimates. He concludes by gracefully expressing his "hope, that the reader will rejoice in a more intimate acquaintance with them; and that, in endeavouring to elevate the land of his birth, he may make some return for the kindness bestowed on him by that of his adoption."
Here two objects are announced; and, whether the first was the elevation of his country by the characters of its eminent men; or, whether the country was the background for the figures of the national history-piece, he has given us a work which brings the patriots and orators of Ireland with singular force before the eye.
His introduction to Curran was sufficiently characteristic. When at the Temple, he had written a poem on the honours of his country, in which the great orator of her Bar was named with due admiration. The popularity of the verses excited the attention of their object, and the young barrister received an invitation to dine with Curran, then Master of the Rolls, at the Priory, his villa, a few miles from Dublin. The appointed hour was five, and it was a matter of importance to be punctual; for beyond that hour dinner was to wait for no man. His first view of his host is graphically described. He found him in his avenue.
"There he was; as a thousand times afterwards I saw him, in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tipstaff; his hands in his sides, his face almost parallel with the horizon—his under lip protruded, and the impatient step and the eternal attitude, only varied by the pause in which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dining-room."
However, it appears that the ominous hour had not struck, and they dined.
"I had often seen Curran, often heard of him, often read him, but no man ever knew anything about him who did not see him at his own table, with the few whom he selected.... It was said of Swift, that his rule was, to allow a minute's pause after he had concluded, and then if no person took up the conversation to recommence. Curran had no conversational rule whatever: he spoke from impulse, and he had the art so to draw you into a conversation, that, though you felt an inferiority, it was a contented one. Indeed, nothing could exceed the urbanity of his demeanour."
If this description could be doubted, on the authority of the volume, it would be amply confirmed by the authority of his time. Curran was confessedly the wit of the day, and his witticisms were the more popular from their being, in general, harmless. No man could sting more keenly where he had a public culprit of his own class to sting, or a political adversary to combat; but no man was seldomer personal.