your parentage, birth, age, native place, and anything else you please." Curran, not a bit disconcerted, commenced, in a ludicrously grave fashion, "My name is John Philpot Curran." (These magic words at once fixed the doctor's attention. He was till then ignorant of the name of his patient.) My parents were poor, but, I believe, honest people, of the province of Munster, where also I was born, at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty. My father, being employed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman of small fortune in that neighbourhood, procured my admission into one of the Protestant free schools, where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. I was next enabled to enter Trinity College in the humble sphere of a sizar," and so he went on, investing the true narrative with the most ludicrous character, till leaving a hiatus of several years, he arrived at the cause of his visit. Abernethy never interrupted him till he had got as good an insight into his case as the patient could help him to. By judicious hints and queries, he was soon in possession of the great man's ailments. He did all that his great skill could suggest for his relief, and continued his earnest friend and good healthaiding genius till his death.

It was during his residence in London that, being asked by an English acquaintance why a certain Irish friend of his always kept his mouth open while strolling through the city, he answered, “It is with the laudible intention of catching the English accent."

CURRAN AND HIS BROTHER.

A scapegrace brother of John Philpot Curran was an attorney, resembling the great barrister in countenance, but taller and better looking. Whatever wit he possessed he clothed in slang; he kept dissolute company, and, after giving his brother much annoyance, he was finally excluded from his house. Still the counsellor relieved his embarrassments, but at last seeing they were never likely to end, he stayed his hand.

Driven to desperation, the brother adopted an ingenious plan to extract further aid from his incensed relative. He got permission from the authorities to set up a wooden box against a piece of dead wall opposite his brother's house, in Ely Place, and over it he got painted the inscription, "Curran, cobbler; shoes soled or heeled. When the stall is shut, inquire over the way."

The unfortunate counsellor, on returning from court one day, beheld his persecutor in appropriate costume, sitting in the stall, and holding forth to sundry chairmen grouped round. As his brother came up, he nodded carelessly to him, greeted him with, "How do you do, Jack?" and then pretended to be absorbed in his business.

The man in the big house could not, of course, abide such a neighbour. He sent for him and relieved him, after exacting a very solemn promise that he would never set up again as a cobbler in his neighbourhood.

CURRAN AND GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER.

Curran dined from home, for the last time, on the 9th of October, 1817, at 14, Chapel Street, Grosvenor Place, with Mr. Richard Jones, the comedian, the object of the dinner being to introduce George Colman the younger; and the party, besides the host and hostess, consisted of Mr. Harris and Sir William Chatterton. Colman that evening was unusually brilliant, anticipating, by apt quotation and pointed remark, almost everything that Curran would have said. One comment of Curran's, however, made a deep impression on all present. Speaking of Lord Byron's "Fare thee well, and if for ever," Curran observed that "his Lordship first wept over his wife, and then wipes his eyes with the newspaper." He left the dinner-table early, and on going upstairs to coffee, either affected not to know, or did not remember, George Colman's celebrity as a wit, and inquired of Mr. Jones who that Mr. Colman was? Mr. Harris joined them at this moment, and apologised for his friend Colman engrossing so much of the conversation himself, adding that he was the spoiled child of society, and that even the Prince Regent listened with attention when George Colman talked. "Ay," said Curran, with a melancholy smile, we must both sleep in the same bed.” The next morning Curran was seized with apoplexy; he died on the 14th of October, at No. 7, Amelia Place, Brompton, then a small pleasant row of houses facing a nursery garden, now the site of Pelham Crescent.

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CHARLES PHILLIPS'S SKETCH OF CURRAN.

Mr. Charles Phillips, in his admirable Life of Curran, gives the following characteristic account of a visit to his friend. "I caught the first glimpse of the little man through the vista of his garden. There he was; on a third time after

wards I saw him in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tipstaff; his hands in his sides, his under lip protruded, his face almost parallel with the horizon, and the important step, and the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, then reproachfully to his dining-room. It was an invariable peculiarity--one second after four o'clock, and he would not wait for the viceroy. The moment he perceived me he took me by the hand, said he would not have any one introduce me, and with a manner which I often thought was charmed, at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarised me at the Priory. I had often seen Curran, often heard 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. He was a little convivial deity, he soared in every region, and was at home in all; he touched everything, and seemed as if he had created it; he mastered the human heart, and with the same ease that he did his violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered; and the wonderful creature who made you do all at will never let it appear that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is 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 himself. Curran had no conversational rule whatever, he spoke from impulse, and he had the art so to draw you into a participation that, though you felt an inferiority, it was quite a contented one. Indeed nothing could excel the urbanity of his demeanour. At the time I speak he was turned sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extreme of youth and age were met in him; he had the experience of the one and the simplicity of the other."

Curran is described as "the wildest, wittiest, dreamiest study of old Trinity," who, in the event of being called before the Fellows for wearing a dirty shirt, could only plead as an excuse that he had but one. Poverty followed his steps for some years after this; instead of briefs to argue before the judge, he was arousing this idle crowd in the path with his wit and eloquence.

Curran, on one occasion, when pleading a cause, made frequent use of the word nothing. The judge jokingly asked for

a definition. "Nothing," replied Curran, "in my opinion defines it better than a footless boot without a leg, or a bodiless shirt without neck or sleeves."

When interrupted, at midnight, in his defence of Bond by the volunteers clashing their arms, as if threatening defiance at his invectives, Curran sternly rebuked them by exclaiming, "You may assassinate, but shall not intimidate me."

There is, perhaps, no figure to be found so striking as that of Curran when declaiming against the spies brought up, after the rebellion of 1798, from prisons :-"Those catacombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried a man lies till the heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up an informer."

When he defended the prisoners after the rebellion of 1798, he was reminded by Lord Carleton that he would lose his gown, whereupon Curran replied with scorn, "Well, my lord, his majesty may take the silk, but he must leave the stuff behind."

Curran," said a judge to him, whose wig being a little awry, caused some laughter in court, "do you see anything ridiculous in this wig?" "Nothing but the head, my lord," was the reply. One day, at dinner, he sat opposite to Toler, who was called "the hanging judge." Curran," said Toler, "is that hung-beef before you?" "Do you try it, my lord, and then it's sure to be."

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Lundy Foot, the celebrated tobacconist, asked Curran for a Latin motto for his coach. "I have just hit on it," said Curran; "it is only two words, and it will explain your profession, your elevation, and contempt for the people's ridicule; and it has the advantage of being in two languages, Latin and English, just as the reader chooses. Put up 'Quid rides' upon your carriage."

Curran's hatred for the Union is shown in the answer he gave to a lord who got his title for his support of the government measure. Meeting Curran near the Parliament House, on College-green, his lordship said to him, "What do they mean to do with this useless building? For my part, I hate` the very sight of it.” "I do not wonder at it, my lord," said Curran; "I never yet heard of a murderer who was not afraid of a ghost."

Curran seems to have had no very profound respect for the character and talents of Lord Norbury. Curran went down to Carlow on a special retainer, it was in a case of ejectment. A new court-house had been recently erected, and it was found extremely inconvenient from the echo, which reverberated the mingled voices of judge, counsel, crier, to such a degree as to produce constant confusion and great interruption of business. Lord Norbury had been, if possible, more noisy that morning than ever. Whilst he was arguing a point with the counsel, and talking very loudly, an ass brayed from the street adjoining the court-house, to the constant interruption of the Chief Justice. "What noise is that?" exclaimed his lordship. "Oh, my lord," retorted Curran, "it is merely the echo of the court."

"THE DEVIL'S DARNING-NEEDLE.”

A Mr. Sneyd, a tall, thin man, nick-named by George IV. "the devil's darning needle," was much about Lord Thurlow during his last years, and had a sort of roving commission from him to pick up any stray genius he could lay hold of, and bring him to the old nobleman's table. Coming in the stage-coach one day to Brighton Mr. Sneyd scraped an acquaintance with a fellow-traveller, who turned out to be the celebrated Mr. Curran, and he eagerly invited his new friend to dine with Lord Thurlow, who had heard much of Curran. When the cloth was removed he led the conversation to the state of the Irish bar, which Curran, who was at that time red-hot against the Union, abused in the lump with great vehemence.

"Timidity, my lord, and venality," said he, "are the bane of the Irish courts, and pervade them from the lowest to the highest."

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66 Indeed," said Thurlow ; pray what is the character of Lord ?" (naming a particular friend of his own then on the Irish bench).

"Oh," replied Curran, "never was man less fitted for his position; if he has any honesty in him, which is very problematical, he is infinitely too great a poltroon to let it appear." "Humph!" quoth the chancellor; "a bad account of him, indeed, Mr. Curran. And pray what do you think, then, of Lord -?" (naming another old crony also in the same rank). "As to him," said the barrister, "he is ten thousand times worse than the other. The venality of that man is such that