his tipstaff; his hands on his sides; his under lip protruded; his face almost parallel with the horizon; and the important step, and the eternal attitude, only varied by the pause, during which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dining-room; it was an invariable peculiarity-one second after four o'clock, and he would not wait for the Viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he would not have any one introduce me; and with a manner which I often thought was charmed, at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarized me at the Priory. I had often seen Curran, often heard him, often read him; but no man ever knew anything about him who did not see him at his own table, with the few whom he selected. He was a little convivial deity; he soared in every region, and was at home in all; he touched upon everything, and seemed as if he had created it: he mastered the human heart with the same ease as he did his violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered; and the wonderful creature who made you do all at will, never let it appear that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said of Swift, that his rule was to allow a minute's pause after he had concluded, and then, if no person took up the conversation, to recommence it himself. Curran had no conversational rule whatever; he spoke from impulse, and he had the art so to draw you into a participation, that, though you felt an inferiority, it was quite a contented one. Indeed, nothing could exceed the A LORD CHANCELLOR'S FOOL. 89 urbanity of his demeanour. At the time I speak of, he was turned sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age were met in him; he had the experience of the one, and the simplicity of the other." 66 We quote this from Mr. Phillips's "Recollections of Curran and some of his Contemporaries," which Lord Brougham has very justly described as one of the most extraordinary pieces of biography ever produced. Nothing can be more lively and picturesque than its representation of the famous original. The reader of it can hardly be said not to have personally known Curran and Curran's contemporaries. It has been justly said of this admirable work, that it is Boswell minus Bozzy." ""* A LORD CHANCELLOR'S FOOL. WILLIAM MOUNTFORT, the actor and dramatic author, was also a great mimic, and was retained by Lord Chancellor Jefferies in his household, in a capacity corresponding with the olden "fool." At an entertainment of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, in 1685, Jefferies called for Mountfort to divert the company, as his lordship was pleased to call it. "He being an excellent mimic," says Sir John Reresby, "my lord made him plead before him in a feigned cause, in which he aped all the great lawyers of the age, in their tone of voice, in their action and gesture * Historical Sketches of Statesmen of the time of George III. By Henry Lord Brougham, of body, to the very great ridicule, not only of the lawyers, but of the law itself; which to me, (says the narrator,) did not seem altogether prudent in a man of his lofty station in the law : diverting it certainly was; but prudent in the Lord High Chancellor I shall never think it." After the fall of Jefferies, Mountfort re turned to the stage. In our day, this freak of low humour has been practised with the approbation of audiences of a certain calibre: we allude to the "Judge and Jury" farce, which till a few years since was enacted at a night tavern near Covent-garden Theatre. SIR CHARLES WETHERELL. SIR CHARLES WETHERELL was a tall man, with a considerable stoop, and a swing in his gait—his face was intelligent and rather remarkable; the forehead expansive, the eyes not large, but expressive of humour; the nose straight and rather short, or appearing so from the unusual length of the upper lip and chin; his voice was good but not musical, and his manner was sometimes calm and impressive; but, for the greatest part, his efforts, even upon the most important occasions, were attended by a whimsicality, which was the most distinguished feature of his manner as an advocate. His oratory was a most curious combination of really serious and sound argument with out-of-theway irrelevancy, or what seemed irrelevant, until he, by some odd application, which no one under heaven but himself could have thought of, contrived to connect it with his argument. His violent excitement about SIR CHARLES WETHERELL. 91 matters of dry equity was of itself sufficient to give a character of extreme singularity to his pleading in the Court of Chancery; but when we add to this his unusual gesticulation—his frequent use of uncommon and antiquated words—his bits of Latin so oddly and familiarly introduced, and his circumlocution, where the use of an ordinary phrase would express his meaning, we find they all combine to make his character for eccentricity as a chancery barrister. When he went forth into the street, he was even more strange than in court. He wore clothes that seemed to have been suddenly "grabbed" from some shop-window in Monmouth-street, without any consideration as to the fit. He scorned the appendages of suspenders, and only sometimes wore a waistcoat long enough to meet the other garment, which, for lack of the appendages aforesaid, were wont to sink below the ordinary level. His inside coat was old, his outside one of great antiquity, and commonly flew behind him in the breeze, while he strode along, muttering to himself, with his hands lodged deep in the recesses of his breeches pockets; his cravat seemed as if it had not been folded, but rolled up, and tied on in the dark, by hands not of the cleanest; he wore huge shoes, tied with great black tapes, or what would have been black, except that, like his hat, the vicissitudes of time had turned them to a hue of brown. In this costume, he moved along, cheery and pleasant, nodding to many, talking to some, and recognised by others, who said, "There goes honest Charley Wetherell." Many stories are told of the strange way in which he lived in chambers, when it was not his custom to come to court: they say he had a bit of looking-glass fixed into the wall, which answered all the purposes of his toilet; and sometimes, when a person would come in after he had commenced shaving, he would quite forget to complete it, and perhaps be found in the evening with a crust of lather upon his face, which had remained from the morning without his being conscious of it. CURRAN'S LUCKY BRIEF. WHEN Curran lived upon Hog Hill, he used to say that his wife and children were the chief furniture of his apartments; and as to his rent, it stood pretty much the same chance of liquidation as the National Debt. Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister's lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of gradation, except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. One morning, Curran walked out to avoid the usual altercation upon this subject; and with a mind in no very enviable temperament, he fell into the gloom, to which, from his infancy, he had been occasionally subject. He had a family for whom he had no dinner; and a landlady for whom he had no rent. He had gone abroad in despondence; he returned home in desperation! When he opened the door of his study, the first object which presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty guineas wrapped up beside it. and the name of Robert Lyons |