338 sublimity was little more than a graceful and gentle solem nity; their invective went no farther than polished sarcasm nor their vehemence than pretty vivaeity. Even the olden writers who dealt in larger views and stronger language CURRAN. -the Hookes, and Taylors, and Barrows, and Miltons although they possessed beyond all doubt, an original and commanding eloquence, had little of nature, or rapid movement of passions about them. Their diction, though powerful, is loaded and laborious, and their imagination, though rich and copious, is neither playful nor popular even the celebrated orators of England have deen deficient in some of their characteristics. The rhetoric of Fox was logic; the eloquence of Pitt consisted mainly in his talent for sarcasm, and for sounding amplification. Neither of them had much pathos and but little play of fancy. Yet the style of which we speak (Mr. Curran's) is new familiar to the English public. It was introduced by an Irishman, and may be clearly traced to the genius of BURKE. There was no sueh composition known in Eng- land before his day. Bolingbroke, whom he is sometimes said to have copied, had none of it; he is infinitely more careless ; he is infinitely less impassioned; he has no such variety of imagery-no such flights of poetry-no such touches of tenderness+no such, visions of philosophy. The style has been defiled since, indeed, by base imita- tions and disgusting parodies; and in its more imitable parts, has been naturalised and transfused into the recent literature of our country: but it was of Irish origin, and still attains to its highest honours only in its native soil. For this we appeal to the whole speaking and writing of that nation, to the speeches of Mr. Grattan, and even to the volume before us. With less of deep thought than the connected compositions of Burke, and less of point and polish than the magical effusions of Grattan, it still bears the impression of that inflamed fancy which charac terises the eloquence of both, and is distinctly assimilated to them by those traits of national resemblance." In attempting to select passages from the yolume alluded
