Curran practised declamation daily before a glass, reciting
passages from Shakespeare and the best English orators. He
frequented the debating societies which then abounded in London.
He failed at first, and was ridiculed as "Orator Mum." But
at last he surmounted every difficulty. It was said of him
by a contemporary: "He turned his shrill and stumbling brogue
into a flexible, sustained, and finely modulated voice; his
action become free and forcible; he acquired perfect readiness
in thinking on his legs; he put down every opponent by the
mingled force of his argument and wit; and was at last crowned
with the universal applause of the society and invited by
the president to an entertainment in their behalf." I am not
sure that I have seen, on any good authority, that he was
in the habit of writing translations from Latin or Greek,
but he studied them with great ardor and undoubtedly adopted,
among the methods of perfecting his English style, the custom
of students of his day of translation from these languages.
Jeffrey joined the Speculative Society, in Edinburgh, in
his youth.
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