353 CURRAN. A brother barrister of his, remarkable for having a per petuity in dirty shirts, was drily asked in the, presence of Mr. Curran, " Pray, my dear Bob, how do you get so many dirty shirts?" Mr. Curran replied for bim, "I can easily account for it; bis laundress lives at Holyhead, and there are nine packets always due." This gentleman wishing to travel to Cork during the rebellion, but apprehensive he should be known by the rebels, was advised to proceed incog. which he said was easily effected, for by disguising himself in a clean shirt, no one would know him Of the same gentleman, who was a sordid miser, it was told Mr. Curran, that he had set out from Cork to Dublin, with one shirt, and one guinea. "Yes," said Mr. Curran, " and I will answer for it, he will change neither of them till he returns." Mr. Curran, travelling on the Munster circuit with his brother barristers, the judges, as usual, laying aside the formalities of their high office, dine with the bar at their mess, and participate in all the wit and conviviality of the social board. On one of those occasions, after the rebellion of 1798, Lord Norbury, of erecutive eminence, sat near Mt. Curran, who asked leave to help bis lordship to some pickled neat's tongue. The judge politely declined it, saying, he did not like pickled tongue; but, if it had been hung, he would try it. "My lord," replied Mr.C."if your lordship will only try it, 'twill be hung to a certainty." At Trinity College, Dublin, an aspirated dispute arose between one of the fellows, Doctor Magee, who was an eloquent preacher, and a Mr. Swift, who had two sons students at that university; and the contest broke out into a war of pampblets, in which the disputauts libelled each other; and mutual prosecutions in the king's bench followed. Mr. Swift stood the first trial, and was fined and imprisoned; aud then proceeded against uhe doctor. Mr. Curran, who was his counsel, in reprobating the con- duct of a clergyman for writing a malicious and scan- dalous libel against his client, expressed an earnest wish that the reverend gentleman, who in his pulpit was the VOL. 1.
