110 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



of that sermon, sir, are all over 

 Ohio." (Hogg's Instructor). 



CONVERSATION OF LITERARY MEN. 



The most extraordinary conver- 

 sations men whom I have known, 

 were Sheridan, Sydney Smith, Can- 

 ning, and Theodore Hook ; but 

 they were all dissimilar to each other, 

 as if the realm of wit and humour 

 were peopled by different races. 

 Sheridan charmed, Canning fasci- 

 nated, Sydney Smith entertained, 

 and Theodore Hook amazed you. 



SILENCE NOT ALWAYS THE INDICA- 

 TION OP WISDOM. 



Coleridge once dined in company 

 with a person who listened to him, 

 and said nothing for a long time ; 

 but he nodded his head, and Cole- 

 ridge thought him intelligent. At 

 length, towards the end of the din- 

 ner, some apple-dumplings were 

 placed on the table, and the listener 

 had no sooner seen them than he 

 burst forth " Them's the jockeys for 

 me ! " Coleridge adds, " I wish 

 Spurzheim could have examined 

 the fellow's head." 



JUDICIAL ANIMOSITY. 



Mr. Curran distinguished him- 

 self not more as a barrister than 

 as a member of Parliament; and 

 in the latter character, it -was his 

 misfortune to provoke the enmity 

 of a man whose thirst for revenge 

 was only satiated by the utter ruin 

 of his adversary. On the discussion 

 of a bill of a penal nature, Mr. 

 Curran inveighed in warm terms 

 against the. attorney-general, Mr. 

 Fitzgibbon, for sleeping on the 

 bench, when statutes of the most 

 cruel kind were enacting; and he 

 ironically lamented that the slum- 

 ber of guilt should so nearly re- 

 semble the repose of innocence. A 

 message from Mr. Fitzgibbon was 

 the consequence of this sally ; and 

 the parties, having met, were left 

 to fire when they chose. " I never,' 



said Mr. Curran, relating the cir- 

 umstances of the duel, " saw any 

 one whose determination seemed 

 more malignant than Fitzgibbon's : 

 after I had fired, he took aim at 

 me for at least half a minute ; and 

 on its proving ineffectual, I could 

 not help exclaiming to him, 'It was 

 not your fault, Mr. Attorney ; you 

 were deliberate enough.'" The 

 attorney-general declared his hon- 

 our satisfied ; and here at least for 

 the present, the dispute appeared 

 to terminate. Not here, however, 

 terminated Fitzgibbon's animosity. 

 Soon after, he became Lord-Chan- 

 cellor and a Peer in Ireland, and, 

 in the former capacity, found an 

 opportunity, by means of his judi- 

 cial authority, ungenerously to 

 crush the rising power of his late 

 antagonist. Mr. Curran, who was 

 at this time a leader, and one of the 

 senior practitioners at the chancery 

 bar, soon felt all the force of his 

 rival's vengeance. The chancellor 

 is said to have yielded a reluctant 

 attention to every motion he made; 

 he frequently stopped him in the 

 midst of a speech ; questioned his 

 knowledge of law; recommended to 

 him more attention to facts; in short, 

 he succeeded not only in crippling 

 all his professional efforts, but ac- 

 tually to leave him without a client. 

 Mr. Curran, indeed, appeared as 

 usual in the three other courts; but 

 he had been already stripped of his 

 most profitable practice ; and as his 

 expenses nearly kept pace with his 

 gains, he was almost left a beggar ; 

 for all hopes of the wealth and 

 honours of the long robe were now 

 denied him. The memory of this 

 persecution imbittered the last mo- 

 ments of Curran' s existence; and he 

 could never even allude to it with- 

 out evincing a just and excusable 

 indignation. In a letter which he 

 addressed to a friend twenty years 

 after, he says, "I make no com- 

 promise with power. I had the 

 merit of provoking and despising 



