The evening light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1881-1883, 1882-04-18

NIsI PRIUs privileges Curan sadly missed il
his career in parliament. His great courage
his ready eloquence, his habit of brilliant ant
crushing retort led him-unprotected by any
rules, as of Court, from the common herd o
members-into endless controversies ant
through several duels.
In 1878 he urged with all his unflinching
courage and enthusiasm the formation of the
Irish Volunteers. Constantly he admonished
the government that it must change its Irish
policy or look for rebellion. In 1879 the re-
bellion came. When it relapsed, young En-
met having fallen into the remorseless grip of
the government, Curran, to whose daughter
Emmett was attached, was drawn into suSpl-
cion. He was. however, speedily relieved by
the Privy Council from the charge of compile
ity with the rebellion in its overt acts. From
the depression incident 10 the failure and its
calamities he found his sure refuge in the great
theater of his renown where were daily beheld
by the civilized world those national battles
waged with ever increasing ascerbities, enmi-
ties and fiery anathema in the great state trials
of Rowan, Finnerty, Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
Tone and many others, which commenced in
1884 and continued till 1905, and in which all
his mastery traits of courage and intrepidity,
his intense national sentiment, as well as his
great forensic powers were developed and
displayed.
Curran died in 1917, and it became the fash
ion in this country after his death to deprecate
and Jecry the great Irishman as having, by his
style of elocuton, impaired the national taste
of Americans. Curran indiscreetly served his
enemies by some completely in the publication
of a book, in the fashion of the English orators,
containing his speeches. He was at the head
of the Irish Bar as Erskne was at the head of
the English bar. and. the great rivals were,
through these printed books long and actively
kept in state of chronic comparison. Errors
of estimation were necessarily fallen into in
thus comparing these great popular leaders.
The question over the published speeches was
another question. They ceased to be present
ed in the controversy as orators, but as writer's
instead. Erskine's speeches were the labor
ious work of his pen, polished, profound and
elegant, faultless in argument, pure in STYLE
Curran, as thus presented, often entangled
his readers into a bed Of shadowy meta
phors and epithets Of purely vitupera:ive
vitality which, even in the most perfect
passages, perhaps an exordium or pero-
ration, had in the mere reading none
of the power, and gave no impression of the
grandeur of the spoken speech. Erskine was
4 profound scholar and jurist, and he was
more; he was writer of the highest attain.
mentS, of classic tastes-in style, of Cornthian
beauty and strength. Curran was none of
hese-he was an ORATOR. AS a lawyer he
excelled only in the accomplishment Of fatally
witnesses, in which he was
Beyond that there was only and
simply his oratory-no tact, nor legal learn
ng, and least of all, the unvoiced ailatus Of
he cautious thinker and writer. Ii was that
master power of eloquence, the glorious gift
If pouring into speech his thoughts, rapid and
glowing with feeling hot from the heart--not
n producing word images of these living
orces and their phenomena when they had
passed out of the realm of sound, of burning
speech, into the domain of cold art-that Cur
an was not matched by Erskine, nor by any
English orator. In that consisted the real
ssue, and precedence in pen speeches was
else.
Americans who recall Edward Everett have
| moderately exact mental likeness of Erskine.
But l know of no American orator who can
i'll the vacant circle in the frame of Curran's
Intellectual picture. There may be some one
Who may compare with him in his power Of
nvectve, some other in the trenChant keen
less of his wit, third in his moving pathos;
lardly one, however, in whom the sonorous
night of that timid treble of a voice could be
raced in the fullness of its sweeping flood;
urely none, impelled by the great forces that
moved his soul to its lofty and matchless as
erton OF power over men and circumstances
because the excitementS, the influences, the
consisting of the national and midi
'dual elements Of Irish character, and of the
rand events Of the period in which he lived
must ever be wanting.
A hundred years.-and Ireland We, lives