Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/319

 808 CURRAN accumulated without labour, and apparently without study, all treasures of classic learning. To the study of eloquence he anxiously devoted his mind, and stored his genius from all the great masters of the Greek and Roman schools. Having finished his college course, he proceeded to London, and entered himself of the Middle Temple. Here he ate his commons through the stated number of terms, to qualify him for the Irish bar, and it is generally believed, he sustained his expenses by the labour of his pen, as many of his eminent countrymen had done before him. On his return to Ireland in 1775, he was called to the Irish bar, where he performed a briefless quarantine of some years in the hall of the four courts; and in the spring and summer assizes, laid the foundation of his professional fortunes on the Munster circuit. Here too he had the courage and patience to persist in his almost briefless ordeal (like many of his predecessors and coteniporaries who afterwards attained the highest forensic honours) while his fees scarcely defrayed his travelling charges. It was on one of those excursions that he was introduced to Miss O'Dell, a young lady of respectable family, who shortly afterwards became his wife; but this match brought no increase to his finances, and he returned to the metro- polis with the additional charge of maintaining a wife, though the fruits of his last exertions were scarcely competent to bis personal support. He saw a young family increase, without means to sustain them; for splendid as were his talents, and encouraging the hope of future eminence, still he wanted the friends and con- nections indispensable to success; but vivacious spirits and an elastic mind bore him above the torrent he had to buffet, and enabled him to stem the billows of adversity. Passing rapidly over a series of melancholy reflections, arising from a conjugal alliance commenced under embar- rassments, (and terminated some years afterwards in a Jegal separation under the most afficting circumstances,) we now arrive at the first dawn of his auspicious fortuues.