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[Aetat. 18-20 ] J O Y C E 91best,' and had a 'broadness of sympathy that the latter has yet to acquire.'During Taylor's address, it went on, 'Dreamy Jimmy and J. F. Byrne,standing on a window-sill, looked as if they could say things unutterable.'46This praise must have pleased Joyce, for Taylor was an orator whomhe respected. Among his activities outside the college, he appears to haveattended the meeting of the Law Students' Debating Society on October24, 1901, where Taylor made the superb defense of the study of the Irishlanguage which Joyce improved in Ulysses. *Probably in pursuit of rhetoric again, Joyce, in October 1899, attendedthe trial of Samuel Childs, who was defended against the charge of havingkilled his brother by Seymour Bushe, one of the most eloquent Irishbarristers, as well as by Tim Healy. Bushe spoke of Michelangelo's Mosesin words 49that Joyce refurbished in Ulysses: 'that stony effigy in frozenmusic, horned and terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbolof wisdom and prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or thehand of man has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soul-* The newspaper account of Taylor's speech was pallid:Now as regards the language [said Taylor], suppose a great message was to be givento the human race, in what language was it likely to be given? What was the greatestmessage ever given to man? Christian and non-Christian alike were agreed upon thatmatter. Was that message given in the language of Imperial Rome or the languageof intellectual Greece? No, it was given in the rustic dialect of the far-off land 'outof which no good could come.' Had that fact any meaning for them there and now?He could very well understand an intellectual Egyptian speaking to Moses 'Whybother about these people of yours in Egypt? I know possibly we have not treatedthem very well, but all that is over now, and you may be chosen to rule over Egypt,and every public position is open to your people. I have no patience with you talkingabout your history and literature. Why, I asked one of the learned professors of yourliterature the other day what it was like, and he told me it was made up of superstitionsand indecency (prolonged applause and laughter).'If Moses had listened to the counsels of that learned Professor he would neverhave come down from the mountain, his face glowing as a star, and bearing theTables of the Law (applause). 47Joyce changed the peroration to read in Ulysses (143 [181]):But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted thatview of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit beforethat arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out oftheir house of bondage nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would neverhave spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever havecome down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing inhis arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.He evidently had access to a pamphlet, 'The Language of the Outlaw,' published inDublin about 1904-5, which gave as Taylor's concluding words, 'And if Moses hadlistened to these arguments, what would have been the end? Would he ever have comedown from the Mount, with the light of God shining on his face and carrying in hishands the Tables of the law written in the language of the outlaw?' 48