He knew not only their comic talents, but their powers of pathos; and often when he had just heard from them some pathetic complaint, he has repeated it to me while the impression was fresh.

In the chapter on Wit and Eloquence in Irish Bulls, there is a speech of a poor freeholder to a candidate, who asked for his vote; this speech was made to my father when he was canvassing the county of Longford.

It was repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I wrote it down instantly, without, I believe, the variation of a word.
'In the same chapter there is the complaint of a poor widow against her landlord, and the landlord's reply in his own defence.

This passage was quoted, I am told, by Campbell in one of his celebrated lectures on Eloquence.

It was supposed by him to have been a quotation from a fictitious narrative, but, on the contrary, it is an unembellished fact.