Curran's nature was playful. His taste was also dramatic, and he was fond of playing harmless tricks upon his friends. Of this taste Mr Phillips had a specimen, even on the day of his introduction:—
"When the last dish had departed, Curran totally confounded me with a proposal for which I was anything but prepared. 'Mr Phillips,' said he, 'as this is the first of, I hope, your very many visits to the Priory, I may as well at once initiate you into the peculiarities of the place. You may observe that, though the board is cleared, there are no preparations for a symposium; it all depends on you. My friends here generally prefer a walk after dinner. It is a sweet evening, but if you wish for wine, say so without ceremony.'
"Even now I can see Curran's star-like eyes twinkling at the disappointment no doubt visible in mine. I had heard, and heard truly, that he never was more delightful than with half-a-dozen friends after dinner over his bottle. The hope in which I had so long revelled was realised at last, and here came this infernal walk, and the 'sweet evening.' Oh, how I would have hailed a thunderstorm! But, to say the truth, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing, and the flowers were blooming and breathing so sweetly on that autumn eve, that, wondering not at the wish of my companions, I also voted for 'the walk.'
"We took the walk, no doubt, but it was only to the drawing-room; where, over a dessert freshly culled from his gardens, and over wines for which his board was celebrated, we passed those hours which seemed an era in my life."
All this is very well told, and very amusing in description, and was very innocent—when all was over. But it was exposed to the chance of being differently taken, and had but one advantage—that it could not be repeated on the individual.
Curran was born in 1760 at Newmarket, a village in the county of Cork. His parentage was humble, his father being only the seneschal of the manor. His mother seems to have been a woman of superior faculties, and her celebrated son always spoke of her with remarkable deference.
As it was a custom, among the oddities of Ireland, to teach Greek and Latin to boys who probably were to spend the rest of their lives at the spade, Curran had what in Ireland was called a classical education, but which his natural talent turned to better account than one in a million of those half-naked classicists. It enriched his metaphors in after life, and enabled him to talk of the raptures of antiquity. In the Irish University, he shared the fate of other celebrated men. Swift, Burke, and Goldsmith made no figure in their academic course. We certainly do not mention this failure to their praise, nor would they themselves have ever so mentioned it. We can easily conceive, that in their palmiest days they regretted their waste of time, or want of industry. Still, they may have found their palliative in the ungenial nature of the collegiate studies in their day. We should observe, that those studies have since been more advantageously adapted to the national necessity, and are of a much more general and popular description.
But in the last century, the whole bent of the collegiate education was mathematical: the only road to distinction was Euclid. The value of mathematics is unquestionable. As a science, it holds its head among the highest; but as a national education, it is among the most useless. The mind made for mathematical distinction is as rare as the mind made for poetic pre-eminence. One might as well make poetry a requisite, in a national education, as the mastery of mathematics. The plea that they invigorate the reason is contradicted by perpetual experience. Some of the feeblest, and even the most fanciful, and of course the silliest, managers of great principles, have been mathematicians of celebrity. Napoleon said of Laplace, the first mathematician of his day, to whom he gave a title and a seat in his Council of State, on the strength of his scientific renown, that "he could do nothing with him,—that as a public man he was useless—that his mind was full of his infinite littles." And this is the history of nearly all mathematical minds: beyond their diagrams, they are among the dullest, most circumscribed, and most incapable of mankind. The mind of a Newton is not to be ranged in this class of elaborate mediocrity: he was not the mole, whose merit consists in seeing his way in the dark by an organ which is blind in the broad light of nature; he was an eagle, and could dare the full effulgence of the sun. But this meagre and inapplicable acquirement was the chosen prize for the whole young mind of educated Ireland; her mathematical crutch was the only instrument of progress for all the salient spirits of a nation abounding in the most aspiring faculties of man, and the quiet drudge who burrowed his way through Cubics and Surds, or could keep himself awake over the reveries of the Meditationes Analyticæ, was the Coryphæus of the College; while men passed along unnoted, who were in future years to embody the national renown.
As Curran's determination was the Irish Bar, he of course made the customary visit to the English Inns of Court. Here, though his finances compelled him to live in solitude, he contrived to amuse himself by that study of which in life he was so great a master—the study of character. Some of his letters from London are curious indications of this early tendency of his mind. Curran was by nature a Tory. All men of genius are Tories, until they get angry with the world, or get corrupt, and sell themselves to Whiggism; or get disgusted, and think that both parties are equally worthless.
"Here," says Curran, "every coal-porter is a politician, and vends his maxims in public with all the importance of a man who thinks he is exerting himself for the public service. He claims the privilege of looking as wise as possible, and of talking as loud; of damning the Ministry, and abusing the King, with less reserve than he would his equal. Yet, little as those poor people understand the liberty they so warmly contend for, or of the measures they rail against, it reconciles me to their absurdity, by considering that they are happy, at so small an expense as being ridiculous."