EARLY POETRY.

While in this breathing death reflection lives,
And o'er the wreck of happiness survives.
Alas! my friend, were Providence inclined
(In unrelenting wrath to human kind)
To take back every blessing that she gave,
From the wide ruin, she would memory save,
Else would severest ills be soon o'erpast,
Or kind oblivion bury them at last :

But Memory, with more than Egypt's art,
Embalming every grief that wounds the heart,
Sits at the altar she hath rais'd to Wo,

And feeds the source whence tears for ever flow.

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In the course of this poem, allusions are made to the writer's future career in public life; and those who have not yet learned to sneer at the mention of political integrity, will be gratified to observe how completely, in the present instance, the visions of the poet were realized by the subsequent conduct of the man.

But in his country's cause, if patriot zeal
Excite him, ardent for the public weal,

With generous warmth to stem corruption's rage,
And prop the fall of an abandon'd age,

Bold in the senate, he confronts the band

Of willing slaves that sell their native land;

And, when the mitred hireling would persuade

That chains for man by Heaven's high will were made,
Or hoary jurist, in perversion wise,

Would sap the laws, and on their ruin rise,

While the mute 'squire and star-enamour'd beau
Are base in all they can-an "ay" or "no!”
With equal scorn he views the venal train,
And sordid bribe that such a tribe can gain.

And a little further on:

But if oppression lord it o'er the land,
And force alone can lawless force withstand,

Fearless he follows where his country calls,
And lives with freedom, or with glory falls;
He gives that shackle he disdains to wear,

For endless fame, nor thinks the purchase dear.

This may not be very good poetry, but it evinces, what is more honorable to the writer, and what was in those days of more value to Ireland than good poetry, an indignant sense of her condition, and an impatience to redress it. It will hereafter appear how far he fulfilled the engagements of his youth.

From the above and similar productions, and from the indications of talent that his ordinary conversation afforded, great hopes were now entertained of him. According to all the accounts of those who knew him at this time, his colloquial powers were even then of a very high order. Having no hereditary fortune or powerful connections on which to depend, and having embraced an ambitious and hazardous profession, where, without the reputation of superior ability, there was little prospect of success, he appears to have habitually exerted himself upon every occasion to substantiate his claims, and justify his choice. The following judgment was passed upon him, at this period, by his future father-in-law, Dr. Richard Creagh, of Newmarket, a scholar and a man of cultivated taste, whose prediction, in the present instance, has been so completely verified. After mentioning, in one of his letters, the future ornament of the Irish bar, as a young man of this town, one Jack Curran," he proceeds, "take his character from me. He possesses a good understanding; is an excellent scholar; has some taste, and, for his years, I think, a tolerable judgment; has uncommon abilities; is a proficient in music; has received an university education; is now preparing for the bar, for

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* During the two years that preceded his admission to the bar, he wrote, besides the poem of "Friendship," "Lines upon visiting the Cave of Pope," and "Lines upon the poisoning a stream at Frenchay" (where he had been driven by foul winds, in one of his passages from England to Ireland), which he composed for the purpose of expressing his gratitude to a family of that place, who had given him a very hospitable reception.-C.

HIS EARLY FRIENDS.

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which profession he possesses extraordinary talents, and will disappoint all his friends if he does not distinguish himself there. As far as I can observe, he seems to be extremely cheerful and goodnatured, and is remarkable pleasant in conversation."*

In a letter of about the same date from one of Mr. Curran's earliest friends, Mr. Hudson, we find similar expectations prevail; alluding to the melancholy that ran through a letter he had just received from the other, he says-"Consider, now and then, Jack, what you are destined for; and never, even in your distresses, draw consolation from so mean a thought, as that your abilities day render your circumstances easy or affluent; but that you may one day have it in your power to do justice to the wronged, to wipe the tear from the widow or orphan, will afford the satisfaction that is worthy of a man."

may one

It would be injustice to suppress another passage. Having a little before chided his friend for neglecting to inform him of the state of his finances, Mr. Hudson goes on, "I think I shall be a man of no small fame to-morrow or next day, and though 'tis but

* Doctor Creagh was a physician, and a member of a very respectable family of that name in the county of Cork. Much of the earlier part of his life had been passed on the Continent, where he had mixed in the society of the most celebrated men of talent; but he used often to declare that, neither abroad nor at home, had he ever met so delightful a companion as "young Jack Curran ;" yet, the conversation of the latter was not, at this time, what it subsequently became. It was full of vivacity and of anecdotes, to which he could give an extraordinary degree of dramatic effect; but it had not, as at a later period, those incessant and magical transitions from the most comic trains of thought to the deepest pathos, which were for ever bringing a tear to the eye, before the smile was off the lip; nor that surprising control over all the mysteries of language, which he acquired by his subsequent habits of extemporaneous speaking. Dr. Creagh was a determined Whig, and had, no doubt, an influence in confirming the political inclinations of his sonin-law. It was also from Dr. Creagh, who had spent several years in France, and was an excellent French scholar, that Mr. Curran derived much of his early taste for the language and literature of that country.-C.

+ Mr. Edward Hudson, for a long course of years the most eminent dentist in Ireland.-C. He built a beautiful mansion near Dublin, and asked Curran what order of architecture he should adopt. Gaily smiling at the dentist, the wit replied, "The Tusk-an, of course." In allusion to this, Hudson was commonly spoken of, familiarly, as The Grand Duke of Task-any;" and when his nephew entered the military service of a foreign country, Curran said that the young man's first engagement would naturally be the Battle of Pal-tusk.-M.

the fame of a dentist, yet if that of an honest man is added to it, I shall not be unhappy. Write speedily to me, and if you are in want, think I shall not be satisfied with my fortunes-believe me I shall never think I make a better use of my possessions than when such a friend as Jack can assist me in their uses." The amiable and respectable writer of the above still lives [1819], and if the union of the two characters, to which, in his youth, he aspired, could confer happiness, he has been completely happy.

Many other proofs might be added (were it necessary) to show that Mr. Curran was, even at this period, considered as much more than an ordinary man; that he had already obtained a very high degree of estimation in the opinions of every person of discernment who knew him. To be regarded as an object of admiration and of hope by the immediate circle of his friends, is, indeed, no more than happens to every young man of any intellectual pretensions; but to Mr. Curran's honour it should not be overlooked, that the friends who entertained such sentiments towards him were, all of them, those whose zeal and approbation he had won for himself by his own character and talents; nor was a mere general respect for the latter the only feeling that united them with him-they all appear to have been animated by the most anxious and affectionate attachment to his person. Their letters to him abound with expressions of more than usual endearment, with offers of pecuniary supplies, and many other unequivocal demonstrations of the extreme value in which they held him. At this period of life he used to pass considerable intervals of time at his native village, where he always entered, with the most goodnatured vivacity, into all the little parties and interests of the place. He, whose lofty and independent spirit was a few years after to bring upon him the charge of "lecturing the Privy Council," was in his social intercourse so little fastidious or assuming, that he could find abundant amusement among the harmless wits and politicians of an obscure little town. Nor were these mere * An expression of Lord Clare's. The whole scene is given hereafter.-C.

LETTER FROM LONDON.

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temporary feelings, adopted for convenience, and as evanescent as the occasions that excited them-all his impulses were intensely social, and, whether present or absent, his heart was still in the midst of the friends and companions that he loved. His letters from the Temple abound with proofs of these amiable propensities; in none of them is the Newmarket circle omitted; he dedicates a portion of every day to thinking of them, and of every letter to inquiries after their health and fortunes. This unpretending facility of manners, showing how little natural the alliance between superiority of intellect and austereness of demeanour, continued ever after prominent in his character; and from the event we may learn that such cheerful, conciliating, and sympathising habits are the surest road to lasting friendships. Of these, few persons ever enjoyed more the greater number have gone where he has followed-still a few, and among them some of his earliest friends, survive; and it is no less honourable to their constancy than to his memory, that the same men, who, more than forty years ago, were cheering his efforts, and admitting him to their affections, are, at this day, with unabated ardour, mourning his loss and cherishing his fame.

The despondency which Mr. Curran's generous correspondent has just been seen so anxious to alleviate was not merely casual. Notwithstanding the liveliness of his conversation, from which a stranger would have supposed that his spirits never knew depression, he was all his life subject to visitations of constitutional melancholy, which the most ordinary accidents excited and embittered; even at this early time it may be observed constantly breaking out in his communications to his friends. After having passed the long vacation of 1774 with his family in Ireland, he thus writes to one of them upon his return to London:

"Apjohn and I arrived in London about eight o'clock on Thursday. When I was set down, and threw myself into a box in the next coffee-house to me, I think I never felt so strangely in my life. The struggle it cost me to leave Ireland, and the pain