and of revenging it as a deadly affront. M'Nally felt conscious of having gone rather too far, and, having communicated the matter to Parsons, asked him what apology he ought to make them, if they insisted on his making one. Pshaw!" said Parsons," tell them that they came uninvited guests, and you had nothing but pot-luck to give them."

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Whilst Curran was keeping his terms in the Temple, he attended, as he told us, for the sake of mere curiosity, a debating society carried on by a few persons who had more ingenuity than money, and once or twice he took part in their debates. The society was held at Coach-makers' Hall, and was open to the public, the admission being sixpence. Curran replied to three or four orators; but, not knowing how to designate them by their names, he was driven to the necessity of particularizing them by some distinguishing characteristic of their dress. For instance, he alluded to them thus :-" I by no means concur, Sir, in the observations of the gentleman whose coat is out at elbows. He has been ably and

satisfactorily refuted by the speaker who followed him; and, in my opinion, he has derived but faint assistance from the gentleman with the hole in his black breeches."

IN

MACKINTOSH AND BURKE.

In my remininiscences of "The King of Clubs," I forgot to state that, with the exception of Bobus Smith, Mackintosh was the most efficient in conversation. He was a subtle dialectician, but unsteady to his principles. He seemed to postpone the great aim of metaphysical investigation-the acquisition of truth, to the display of knowledge, and intellectual gladiatorship.

I recollect how we amused ourselves with a domestic incident that befel Mackintosh about the year 1802. He travelled the Norfolk circuit at that time, having found no business on the Home. He had then been delivering his Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations in Lincoln's-Inn Hall. They were well attended by the profession, and by persons of the highest political eminence Mr. Canning and Lord

Liverpool were constantly there. It was a grand display of eloquence, somewhat, indeed, too measured, and monotonous, for Mackintosh was rhetor plusquam oratore. His style was disciplined in the school of Robertson and Gilbert Stuart, who, by too cold a correctness, and too religious an adherence to the laws of propriety, had converted English into an almost foreign language. It was unidiomatic English, and, the want of idiom (for idiom constitutes the muscular strength of our tongue), emasculated their compositions. The lectures, however, manifested most unlimited reading, and overflowed with every kind of learning. They embraced an immeasurable field. They almost began with the creation; and the cardinal principles of natural logic, and an inquiry into the history of man's intellectual powers, borrowed, perhaps, from Cudworth, occupied at least six lectures. Mackintosh delighted his class, also, by the embellishments which he threw over these abstruse and uninviting inquiries. He ascribed the doctrine of the association of ideas to Hobbes, as its discoverer; forgetting that Hobbes had it directly

from Aristotle. Coleridge, after his lecture was finished, set him right, and Mackintosh had the candour to acknowledge his error to the class. His hearers were amused with delightful quotations from the Roman classics, which were flowers scattered over the severe subject of jurisprudence, that made it at once fascinating and impressive. In this, he addicted himself to the plan of Grotius, who embellished every page of his De Jure, with citations from the Greek and Latin writers, poets, tragedians, and philosophers; and he professed, in this respect, to have imitated that eminent writer, upon whom, in his introductory lecture,* there is the finest panegyric that was ever spoken, or committed to paper.

But yet there was something that was felt to be wanting. It was discourse, but not logic. He did not seem to stand upon a sound and secure basis of ratiocination. Had his doctrines been submitted to the perusal of the class, instead of being confined to the slight and transient impres

* See Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations, as an Introduction to a Course of Lectures, &c. &c. &c. By James Mackintosh, Esq. Cadell, 1801.