From the vivacity of his conversation, one would hardly have suspected the depth and seriousness of his character. In talking with ladies or with young persons, his mind was remarkable for its constant playfulness. A gleam of sunshine illumined his whole being. Yet those who knew him intimately were aware that he was subject all his life to constitutional melancholy. Like many other men celebrated for their wit, his gayety alternated with deep depression. The truth was that he sympathized too intensely with the scenes of real life, to be uniformly gay. In his country he saw so much to sadden him, that his feelings took a melancholy tone. The transition was often instantaneous from humor to pathos. His friends, who saw him in his lighter moods, were surprised at the sudden change of his countenance. "In grave conversation, his voice was remarkable for a certain plaintive sincerity of tone"—a sadness which fascinated the listener like mournful music.
In his eloquence appeared the same transitions of feeling and variety of talent. He could descend to the dryest details of law or evidence. Thomas Addis Emmet, who, though younger, practiced at the same bar, says that Curran possessed a logical head. From this he could rise to the highest flights of imagination, and it was here, and in appeals to the feelings, that he was most at home. Sometimes his wit ran away with him. His fancy was let off like a display of fireworks. It flew like a thousand rockets, darting, whizzing, buzzing, lighting up the sky with fantastic shapes.
By turns he could use the lightest or the heaviest weapon, as suited the object of his attack. Where ethereal wit or playful irony were likely to be thrown away upon some gross and insensible subject, he could point the keenest edge of ridicule, or the coarsest invective, or the most withering sarcasm.
When dissecting the character of a perjured witness, he seemed to delight in making him feel the knife. His victim, at such a time, appeared like an insect whom he had lanced with a needle, and was holding up to the laughter and scorn of the world. Thus, when treating the evidence of O'Brien, a hired informer, who had come on the stand to swear away the lives of men whom the government had determined to sacrifice, Curran apostrophized the patriotic individual, "Dearest, sweetest, Mr. James O'Brien," exposing the utter rottenness of his character in a tone of irony, until the man, who had a forehead of brass, was forced to slink back into the crowd, and to escape from the court.
So in his place in parliament, when exposing the corruption of the officers of government, he did not spare nor have pity. A swarm of blood-suckers had fastened on the state, who were growing fat from draining the life of their unhappy country. Curran proclaimed the immaculate virtue of "those saints on the pension list, that are like lilies of the field—they toil not, neither do they spin, but they are arrayed like Solomon in his glory." The extent to which this corruption had gone was incredible. "This polyglot of wealth," said Curran, "this museum of curiosities, the pension list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted." The road to advancement at that day in Ireland, to the peerage, to the judicial bench, was to betray the country. Curran branded those who thus came into power by one of the strongest figures in English eloquence. "Those foundlings of fortune, overwhelmed in the torrent of corruption at an early period, lay at the bottom like drowned bodies, while soundness or sanity remained in them; but at length becoming buoyant by putrefaction, they rose as they rotted, and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, where they were drifted along, the objects of terror, and contagion, and abomination."
At the bar he often indulged in sallies of wit, and thus conciliated the attention of the court. His delicate satire, his comical turns of thought, convulsed the court with laughter. Then suddenly he stopped, his lip quivered, his sentences grew slow and measured, and he poured forth strains of the deepest pathos, as he pictured the wrongs of his country, or lamented the companions of other days, the illustrious departed, "over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland had been shed." His voice excelled in the utterance of plaintive emotions, and the homage which had been paid to his eloquence by mirth, was now paid in the sound of suppressed weeping, which alone broke the death-like stillness of the room. In pleading for one on trial for his life, his voice subsided toward the close and sunk away in tones of solemnity and supplication. Thus would he say, "Sweet is the recollection of having done justice in that hour when the hand of death presses on the human heart! Sweet is the hope which it gives birth to! From you I demand that justice for my client, your innocent and unfortunate fellow-subject at the bar; and may you have it for a more lasting reward than the perishable crown we read of, which the ancients placed on the brow of him who saved in battle the life of a fellow-citizen!"
But the trait which appears most conspicuous in the public efforts of Curran, and which made him the idol of his countrymen, was his enthusiastic love of Ireland. Says his biographer, "Ireland was the choice of his youth, and was from first to last regarded by him, not so much with the feelings of a patriot, as with the romantic idolatry of a lover." In early life he had learned to love the Irish peasantry, and no lapse of time could chill his affection. No temptation of office could seduce him from the side of the poor and the oppressed. He knew their noble qualities, and his bosom burned at the wrongs which they suffered.
One of his first causes at the bar was pleading for a Catholic priest who had been brutally assaulted by a nobleman. Such was the fear of incurring the displeasure of a lord, that no one dared to undertake the prosecution, until Curran stepped forward, then a young lawyer. His effort was successful. Not long after, the priest was called away from the world. He sent for Curran to his bedside. Gold and silver he had none. But he gave him all in his power, the benediction of a dying man. He caused himself to be raised up in his bed, and stretching out his trembling hands to place them upon the head of the defender, invoked for him the blessing of the Almighty. Such scenes as this, while they excited the enthusiasm of the Catholic population throughout Ireland for the young advocate, who had dared to defend a priest of their proscribed religion, at the same time strengthened his determination to make common cause with his countrymen in their sufferings.
It is melancholy to reflect that efforts so great for the liberty and happiness of Ireland, were not crowned with complete success. But the patriotism and the courage were not less noble because overborne by superior power. It is the honor of Curran that he loved Ireland in her woe, and loved her to the last. Toward the close of life he said, "To our unhappy country, what I had, I gave. I might have often sold her. I could not redeem her. I gave her the best sympathies of my heart, sometimes in tears, sometimes in indignation, sometimes in hope, but often in despondence."