PORSON.

It is perhaps not easy to invest the memoirs of a verbal critic with the interest which attaches itself to the lives of men distinguished in other departments of literature and science: the classical scholar has little sympathy, in respect of his peculiar vocation, with the world around him, and the world for the most part repays his indifference with interest. Nevertheless, it is due to the great reputation of the subject of this memoir to relate the principal events of his life.

Richard Porson was born December 25, 1759. His father, Mr. Huggin Porson, was the parish-clerk of East Ruston, near North Walsham, in the county of Norfolk. Notwithstanding his poverty, Porson had the good fortune to obtain a first-rate education. Even in his childhood he was taught by a careful father more than is generally learned by the children of the rich; and after he had spent a short time at a village school, to which he was sent at the age of nine, his abilities attracted the notice of Mr. Hewitt, the vicar of his native place, who kindly undertook to teach the young prodigy the rudiments of Greek and Latin. In these elementary studies Porson passed his time till 1774, being also occasionally employed as a shepherd or a weaver. But his reputation had reached the ears of Mr. Norris, of Grosvenor Place, who in the summer of that year undertook the charge of maintaining him at Eton College. His name soon became favorably known beyond the circle of his admiring school-fellows. The interest which he excited was fortunate for him, for on the death of his kind patron Mr. Norris, he would have been unable to continue at Eton, had it not been for a subscription collected by Sir George Baker, then President of the Royal College of Physicians, from a number of gentlemen who had heard of Porson’s talents, and were desirous of giving him a fair opportunity to cultivate them to the uttermost. With this subscription, an annuity of 80l.for a few years was purchased for him; and thus he was enabled to finish his course at Eton, and to proceed thence to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Engraved by B. Holl.PORSON.From a Print engraved by W. Sharpe, after a Picture by Hoppner.Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

In the second term of his third year (1781), Porson obtained one of the Craven University Scholarships, which, being open to the free competition of the whole body of undergraduates, have always been regarded among our most honourable academical distinctions. He took the degree of B. A. in 1782; and, on the mathematical tripos,obtained the respectable place of third senior optime: but he gained the first of the medals annually given by the Chancellor of the University to the two commencing bachelors of arts, under certain restrictions, who pass the best examination in classical learning. In the following September he was elected Fellow of Trinity College. He proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1785; but being unwilling, from conscientious motives, to subscribe to the articles of the Established Church, he could not take orders, and, according to the rules of the College, vacated his Fellowship in 1791. He was thus for the second time dependant upon the liberality of his friends. Nor did they neglect him: a subscription was entered into by Mr. Cracherode and some others, from the proceeds of which a life annuity of 100l.was purchased for him.

In 1792 he was elected Regius Professor of Greek: but, as the salary of this office is only 40l.per annum, he was still a poor man; and not being able to procure a suitable lecture room, he was prevented from making the usual addition to his income, by delivering lectures on the Greek authors. In 1795 he married Mrs. Lunan, the sister of Mr. Perry, the well-known Editor of the Morning Chronicle. From this union, short as it proved, Porson derived important benefits. He laid aside, while it lasted, most of the unseemly and intemperate habits which he had contracted at College: but unfortunately his wife died of consumption in 1797, and he subsequently relapsed into his former course of life, and, as is too notorious, sacrificed friends, health and fortune, to his passion for drinking. After her death the kindness of his brother-in-law provided him with a home, gave him an opportunity of mixing in good society, and preserved him from many inconveniences, to which a man of Porson’s careless habits is always exposed.

About the time of his wife’s death, in 1797, Porson published an edition of the Hecuba of Euripides; which he intended to form the first portion of a complete edition of that poet, and which, with very modest pretensions, was at once acknowledged to be a piece of first-rate criticism by the scholars not only of England but of all Europe. However, in 1800, Gottfried Hermann of Leipzig, who has since become very eminent as a verbal critic, published an edition of the same play, as a professed attack on Porson’s; and there was something in the tone, as well as in the matter of his strictures, which more than counterbalanced the compliment at the commencement of the preface. When, therefore, Porson republished the ‘Hecuba,’ in 1802, he added to the preface a long Supplement, in which Hermann was treated rather superciliously; indeed it appears from a letter which Porson wrote to Professor Dalzel, of Edinburgh, on the third of September, 1803, that he entertained a most sincere contempt for his Germancensor. The Supplement, however, obtained the applause of the learned in all countries, and, in its kind, it has rarely been surpassed in learning and ingenuity. Porson subsequently published the ‘Orestes,’ ‘Phœnissæ,’ and ‘Medea,’ and the four plays, collected into one volume, have gone through numerous editions.

When the London Institution was established, in 1805, Porson was appointed Librarian, with a salary of 200l.per annum. The situation however gave him no opportunity of useful exertion. He selected indeed an excellent classical library, and was tolerably diligent in his attendance; but he acquired in this monotonous employment a habit of selfish intemperance, which impaired his faculties and ruined his health. From the beginning of 1808 he was afflicted with asthma; and neglecting the usual modes of treating this disease, he endeavoured to cure it by abstinence. Under this regimen he grew weaker and weaker, and on Monday, September 19, 1808, he was attacked with apoplexy in the street. Being unknown, he was carried to a neighbouring workhouse; but on the following day he was discovered and taken home by his friends, whose attention had been called to an advertisement describing his person, and some scraps of Greek writing and algebra, which were found in his pockets. He recovered so far as to receive a visit from his friend Dr. Adam Clarke, at the Institution; but the hand of death was upon him, and he never regained the full use of his faculties. He died on the night of the following Sunday, just as the clock struck twelve. His body was conveyed to Cambridge, and buried, with the highest academical honours, in Trinity College Chapel, near the statue of Newton, where a monument, with a bust by Chantrey, is erected to his memory.

A complete list of Porson’s works is given by Dr. Young in the ‘Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica.’ The general reader will perhaps form the best notion of his style from his celebrated ‘Letters to Archdeacon Travis,’ in which the genuineness of the long-controverted text, 1 John v. 7, is, we may venture to say, finally refuted. This work, from its subject, is chiefly interesting to the theologian and scholar: but its wit, terseness and strength of style, and force of argument, will well repay even the general reader for perusing it. Of his posthumous works the Photius requires particular notice. It was printed in 1822, from Porson’s transcript of the Galean MS. of an imperfect Lexicon, which is generally attributed to the celebrated Patriarch of Constantinople. He had transcribed and corrected this Lexicon with the intention of printing it some years before his death, but a fire having broken out in Mr. Perry’s house at Merton, and having consumed, among other papers, this transcript, he began the task again, and completed another copy in his ownhandwriting. A collection of his miscellaneous notes, under the title of ‘Adversaria,’ was published several years after the author’s death.

As Porson was the champion of English scholarship against the attacks of continental critics, and the head of a school of verbal criticism in this country, we must expect to find among his English contemporaries and successors a sort of reverence for him not altogether justified by his merits, and among the scholars of Germany, on the other hand, a corresponding feeling of dislike and desire to disparage him. Hermann wrote an article a few years since in the ‘Vienna Journal,’ on the characteristics of English scholarship, in which (vol. liv. p. 236,) the peculiar features of Porson’s criticism are said to be “great metrical accuracy in the kinds of verse with which he was acquainted; in others, sometimes an acquiescent acceptance of what he found, sometimes uncertain alterations: in his knowledge of the Greek language, great correctness; a sound judgment in the choice of readings, and considerate circumspection in conjecture, except where his own rules came in the way.” On the other hand, it is affirmed that “Porson’s notes are defective in acute and decisive proofs, and in that criticism which proceeds from a lively conception of the poetical: and that their contents are much more indicative of great industry and cool examination.” This is true enough as far as it goes; but had Hermann in his old age forgotten the rivalry which subsisted between Porson and himself in his earlier years, he would not have omitted to add that, with all these drawbacks, Porson was the greatest verbal critic of modern times.

It has been stated that Porson could not make himself generally agreeable; but it is well known that he had a strong turn for the humorous, and was almost always successful in his strokes of wit, so that it cannot be doubted that his society was courted even by the superficial; and we have heard from several of his surviving friends that, though his coarseness was sometimes offensive, he was often a welcome guest at the tea-table. He was also very happy in connecting classical allusions with ludicrous associations; and Professor Dobree, in his inaugural Prælection, speaks rapturously of the delight which Porson’s broad vernacular translations from Aristophanes afforded to his intimates at college. Some of hisjeux d’esprithave been printed in the Classical Journal; the poem called ‘The Devil’s Walk’ was till lately attributed to him: it is stated in the last edition of Coleridge’s works to be the joint production of that poet and of Southey.

It may be necessary to say a few words in conclusion on those two peculiarities for which perhaps Porson is most talked about at the present day: his extraordinary memory, and his fondness for the manual labour of writing. The former he attributed in great measureto the latter. He told a friend, that he recollected nothing which he had not transcribed three times, or read at least six times; adding the assurance, that any one who would take the same trouble would acquire the same powers. We should incline to ascribe the tenacity of his recollection, so far as it depended on cultivation, in great measure to the early training of his father, who taught him the rules of arithmetic without the use of book or pencil; and his proficiency was such, that at nine years of age he is said to have been able to extract cube roots in his head. His memory was as indiscriminate as it was retentive and capacious. Proper names of no importance, foolish ballads, and prosing tales he could recall as easily, and repeat as accurately, as the passages of ancient authors which he required for the illustration or correction of a line of Euripides: he loved to recite, and was equally ready to repeat, ‘Jack the Giant Killer,’ or half a book of Milton, to his wearied company. As to his penmanship, it has been objected to him that he wasted many hours in an employment which would have better suited a country writing-master than a man of such talents. But it must be recollected that a reader of Greek MSS. must also be a scribe himself; and a great deal of the facility with which Porson performed his collations is to be attributed to his practice as a calligrapher. And if, as he used to say, his memory was principally formed by repeated copying, he certainly did not throw away his time; for all that he did in the way of illustrating Greek authors was mainly owing to his memory. And the world has at least derived one benefit from the perfection of Porson’s handwriting, in the adoption by the English University presses of a set of uniform types, formed after his models, of which even Hermann has said that they far exceed all attempts made in modern times to improve the beauty of Greek writing.

[London Institution.]

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.WICLIF.From a Print by G. White, after a Picture in the Collection of the Duke of Dorset.Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

WICLIF.

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