OF THE LEGAL, LITERARY, AND POLITICAL LIFE OF THE LATE THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, ONCE MASTER OF THE ROLLS IN IRELAND: COMPRISING COPIOUS ANECDOTES OF HIS WIT AND HUMOUR; AND A SELECTION OF HIS POETRY. INTERSPERSED WITH OCCASIONAL BIOGRAPHY OF HIS DISTINGUISHED COTEMPORARIES IN THE BY WILLIAM O'REGAN, ESQ. BARRISTER. Erant in eo plurimæ literæ, nec eæ vulgares, sed interiores quædam, et LONDON: PRINTED FOR JAMES HARPER, 46, FLEET-STREET; AND RICHARD MILLIKEN, GRAFTON-STREET, DUBLIN. 1817. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PREFACE. To give the perfect portrait of a person so distinguished for eloquence, wit, humour, literature, and taste; of one so pre-eminently gifted by nature, with the rarest and richest powers of mind, would require in the painter somewhat similar endowments. Livy said, that to draw the character of Cicero, the biographer must be another Cicero, They best can paint it who have felt it most." But as posterity would lose whatever was precious in the history of Mr. Curran's mind (for of it chiefly do I mean to treat,) if none could be found but of similar genius; if none other were to attempt it, the task must in this age be doomed to remain neglected through despair, or be imperfectly executed: and thus, from the apprehension of inadequacy, his fame would become extinct, or fade away in |