Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/372

 CURRAN. 861 estimate of the closet. He had no thought to study the cold and marble graces of scholarship. He was a being embarked in strong emergency, a man and not a statue. He was to address men, of whom he must make himself the master. With the living energy, he had the living and regardless variousness of attitude. Where he could not impel by exhortation, or overpower by menace, he did not disdain to fling himself at their feet, and conquer by grasp- ing the hem of their robe.. For this triumph he was all things to all men. His wild wit, and far-fetehed allusions, and play upon words, and extravagant metaphors, all repulsive to our cooler judgments, were, wisdom and sub- limity before the juries over whom he waved his wand. Before a higher audience be might have been a model of sustained dignity;-mingling with those men he was com- pelled to speak the language that reached their hearts. Curran in the presence of an Irish jury was first of the first. He skirmished round the field, trying every point of attack with unsuspected dexterity, still pressing on, till the decisive moment was come, when he developed his force, and poured down his whole array in a mass of matchleas strength, originality, and grandeur. It was in this originality that a large share of his fascination con- sisted. The course of other great public speakers may in general be predicted from their outset ; but in this man the mind, always fall, was always varying the direction of its exuberance; it was no regular stream, rolling down in a smooth and straight-forward volume;-it had the way- ward beauty of a mountain torrent, perpetually delighting the eye with some unexpected sweep through the wild and the picturesque, always rapid, always glancing back sun- shine, till it swelled into sudden strength, and thundered over like a cataract. For his noblest images there was no preparation, they seemed to come spontaneously, and they came mingled with the lightest products of his mind. It was the volcano flinging up in succession curls of vapour, and fiery rocks; all from the same exhaustless depths, and with the same unmeasured strength to which the light and