tical emoluments for his maintenance, partly by the assistance of Mrs. Aldworth. Among his Middleton schoolfellows were his subsequent friends: Yelverton, afterwards Lord Avonmore, lord chief baron; Robert Day, afterwards judge; and Jeremy Keller. He was mischievous and idle at school, and both there and at home associated with the peasantry, and gained his great familiarity with their habits and control over their emotions, whether in cross-examination or in speaking. On 16 June 1769 he was entered a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin, taking the second place at the entrance examination. In right of his sizarship he was entitled to rooms and commons free, but his industry, though considerable, was irregular and ill-directed. He failed to secure a fellowship. He was an ardent classical scholar, and never allowed his knowledge to fall into disuse in after life. He also read a good deal of French, and was powerfully attracted by Rousseau's ‘Héloïse.’
Through the Aldworth family, with whom he spent a considerable part of his vacations, he saw something of Dublin society, and caught here his first ideas of oratory; but he was personally a sloven and a debauchee, and constantly guilty of breaches of college discipline. He was often penniless and often drunk; he was frequently left in the streets after an affray, senseless from loss of blood, and on one occasion publicly and audaciously satirised the censor of Trinity, Dr. Patrick Duigenan, in an oration which had been imposed on him by way of punishment. In after life he always entertained a profound contempt for Trinity College, which had tolerated his misconduct. Though a distant relative promised him a small living, he decided in his second year at college to go to the bar, and accordingly, early in 1773, he left Ireland, entered at the Middle Temple, and spent a couple of years in London. His life was at first dull, hard, and laborious, and he was impeded by a severe attack of fever. He rose at 4.30 a.m., read law and politics some ten hours a day until almost exhausted, and spent his evenings in the galleries of theatres, at coffee-houses, or in debating societies. His knowledge of law, which, though inconsiderable in amount, was not so scanty as was generally supposed, was acquired at this period. In after life he read little of anything, but his time now was given chiefly to history and English literature. His first speech in a debating society was a failure; nor did he discover his power until, at a society called the ‘Devils of Temple Bar,’ he was one night attacked so insolently that he was spurred into a successful and impetuous reply. He now laboured hard to overcome his defects of elocution, his shrill voice, his stutter, and his brogue. He declaimed from Junius before a glass, practised Antony's speech over Cæsar, read Bolingbroke, and argued imaginary cases in his own room. He attended the Robin Hood Debating Society on weekdays, and another on Sundays at the Brown Bear in the Strand, where his zeal for the Roman catholic claims and his strict black coat won him the name of the ‘little jesuit from St. Omer.’ He was often, from his appearance, mistaken for a Roman catholic. Already his friends expected great things of him, but his health, though soon restored, was delicate, and he was now, as always, constitutionally subject to fits of despondency. In the Temple he lived almost exclusively among the Irish. Once he met Goldsmith, and once in St. James's Park, being temporarily penniless, he made Macklin's acquaintance and obtained relief from him. His friend Phillips says that at this time he lived by his pen, and wrote, among other things, a song, ‘The Deserter's Lamentation,’ which became very popular, and was sung by Vaughan, Bartleman, and Mrs. Billington. His son denies that he wrote at all, and declares that he lived upon his parents or his richer friends. He had, however, a taste for versifying, which he continued to exercise all his life, but his compositions were tame and cold. Lines of his ‘On Friendship’ to his friend Weston, ‘On Pope's Cave,’ and ‘On the Poisoning of the Stream at Frenchay,’ and a satire called ‘The Platewarmer,’ are preserved. His vacations were spent at home at Newmarket, moving among the small gentry and the peasantry, whose language he spoke, and with whose sufferings he at all times sympathised. The ‘keening’ at a wake, he said, gave him some of his first inspirations of eloquence. He married in 1774 a daughter of Dr. Creagh, a physician of Newmarket, and an earnest whig, whose slender portion served to maintain her husband till he succeeded at the bar; but this union, a love match, was to him a source of perpetual bitterness. After some thought of trying his fortune in America, Curran was called to the Irish bar in Michaelmas term, 1775. The Irish bar was at this time looked up to by all classes as the nursery of public virtue and services, and the avenue to political success. Eloquence of a somewhat turgid kind was the chief recommendation of a barrister. The course of study pursued was far more literary and far less technical than that followed in England. Curran made at first but a poor figure. His first brief was on a chancery motion, when he was so overcome with nervousness, that when Lord Lif-
