Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/361

CURRAN. 350 devote more time to both, nor was ever man more eminently qualified to render convivial society delightful. The same inexhaustible fund of genius, wit, and humour, which adorned and animated his forensic and senatorial eloquence, contributed in a more playful application, to enliven the society wherein he moved. His mind early stored with all the riches of classic and scientific learning, and afterwards improved by his intercourse with the productions of modern taste and literature, was an inexhaustible treasury of all that was splendid in each. His perception was intuitive, his memory boundless, and his fancy, ever on eagle wing, traversed the remotest regions of intellectual space:-now hovering aloft and sporting in the tempest;- anon descending to glide over the sun-gilt vales of taste, wit, and pleasantry. A complete master in all the powers of rhetoric, he could touch at pleasure, and with exquisite skill, every chord of the soul like the strings of a harp, and elicit every tone to his purpose. He was tragedy, and comedy, and farce, by turns; and the same company were alternately in tears from his pathos, electrified by his wit, or convulsed with laughter at his inimitable humour. His villa, which he called the Priory, situate about four miles from the metropolis, at the foot of a mountain, and commanding a view of the bay, and a picturesque country, was a little temple devoted to hospitality. His style of living was simple; his table plain, but plentiful; bis wines the best and most abundant; nothing appeared starched by affectation, or frozen by ceremony. His friends were always welcome at five. The sunshine of good-humour gilded every thing about bim, and every man who brought mind to the banquet, was sure to enjoy "the feast of reason and the flow of soul." It may seem a paradox, but it is not the less true, that many a guest has risen hungry from his dinner-table when it has been stored with variety and abundance; for if the host was once in a facetious fit, the flashes of his pleasantry excited such incessant peals of laughter, that the delighted guest forgot his appetite, and feasted only his mind. But, although