No one was more aware of the truth
than Curran himself. In his latter and feeble days, he was riding in
Hyde Park one morning, bowed down over the saddle and bitterly
dejected in his air. Mathews happened to observe and saluted him.
Curran stopped his horse for a moment, squeezed Charles by the hand,
and said in that deep whisper which the comedian so exquisitely
mimics, 'Don't speak to me, my dear Mathews; you are the only Curran
now!'"
"Did you know Curran?" asked Byron of Lady Blessington
('Conversations', p. 176); "he was the most wonderful person I ever
saw. In him was combined an imagination the most brilliant and
profound, with a flexibility and wit that would have justified the
observation applied to----, that his heart was in his head."
Moore ('Journal, etc.', vol. i. p. 40) quotes a couplet by Mrs. Battier
upon Curran, which "commemorates in a small compass two of his most
striking peculiarities, namely, his very unprepossessing personal
appearance, and his great success, notwithstanding, in pursuits of
gallantry...:
"'For though his monkey face might fail to woo her,
Yet, ah! his monkey tricks would quite undo her.'"]
[Footnote 2: In the spurious letters of AEschines (Letter x.) is a
passage which explains the allusion.
"It is the custom of maidens, on the eve of their marriage, to wash in
the waters of the Scamander, and then to utter this almost sacred
formula,
'Take, O Scamander, my virginity'
([Greek: to epos touto hosper hieron ti epilegein, Lhabe mou
Scamandre taen parthenian).
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