Establishment of the London Institution. - Porson chosen Librarian. — His failing Health. Ready to communicate Information in the Library, but negligent in his Attendance. - Becomes unfitted for all - His Weakness; he faints in the Strand. brought Home. His Meeting with Dr. Adam Clarke. — Dr. Clarke's Account of his Illness.- Conversation about a Stone from Eleusis. Porson's Sufferings from Paralysis. - His Difficulty in Speaking. - Continued Suffering. - Mr. Noris's Account of his Condition. - Dr. Babington and Mr. Upton visit him. - His Death.-His Body opened; Report of its State. — His Funeral at Trinity College, Cambridge. Inscription on the Coffin. - Tributes to his Memory. - The "Porson Prize" and "Porson Scholarship."- His Library. · Porson's Reading. — His favourite Authors, in Greek and in Latin. His Estimate of Modern Greek and Latin Poetry. His Reading in French. His liking for Swift, Junius, Milton. - Criticisms. - His Notions of Johnson's Treatment of Milton. - His Love of Shakspeare and Pope. Emendations of Shakspeare. Favourite Passages. - Extract from Barrow. - Thomas Gordon's Tracts. - Their possible Porson's moral and critical Honesty. - His Head and Heart. field's Character of him. How much Regard to be paid to it. - His willingness to communicate Information. His fondness for Beauty of Penmanship. - His Conduct towards his Relatives.- His Aversion to Writing. - Little Imagination or Power of Production. The better qualified for Criticism. His Judgment, Sagacity, and Caution. -His excellent Emendations.-Compared with Bentley's.-Examples. -Style of his Notes. -Bentley less trustworthy as a Corrector than Porson.-Feelings of each with regard to Authorship. - Porson's wayward and capricious. —Not easily provoked. — Porson and Mr. Isaac Disraeli. — A Letter describing what Porson was in the latter Porson's Family. - Oration on the Character of Charles II. - Porson's Charades.- Catechism for the Use of the Swinish Multitude. - The Salt-box. - Lines on Dr. Jowett. Porson in the Stage-coach. — Di, do, dum. — A mathematical Proposition.- - An Equation.- Additional Page 99, 1st column, 11th line from bottom, for "Sir John H. Aubyn," read "Sir John St. Aubyn." 2nd column, 9th line from bottom, for "C. S. Foss," read "E. S. Foss." 100, 2nd column, 3rd line from top, for "Lutmore," read "Luxmoor." HIS HE IS TELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE. -BIRTH OF PORSON. CHARACTER OF HIS THE charms of fiction are much less forcible than those of truth. Histories of imaginary personages, however strikingly represented, are much less interesting than those of eminent characters that really existed. The man who read Robinson Crusoe as a true tale found much fewer attractions in it when he was told that it was an invention. The desire to know how our fellow-creatures, especially the most distinguished of them, have lived, is the cause that biography gains so much attention. B Whoever relates the life, or any considerable portion of the life, of any remarkable person, has the satisfaction of expecting that his narrative, unless given in an absolutely repulsive style, will attract some share of regard. But the pleasure which the biographer thus derives from his occupation is often somewhat diminished by the consciousness that, to satisfy those who seek his pages, he must tell the whole truth concerning the person of whom he writes, and that much of the truth cannot always be told without reluctance. No human character is perfect; and those who speak of the best of men have frequently to notice in them errors and deficiencies which they cannot but lament. Yet, unless the biographer offers a mere apology for a life, or produces a simple. éloge after the fashion of the French, he must tell alike the evil and the good, and must adhere to the maxim, ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat; he must, while he asserts nothing that is false, admit everything that is true; he must set forth whatever tends justly and fully to characterise the subject of his narrative. The higher that subject rises in intellectual excellence, or in any particular department of it, the greater will sometimes be the failings or irregularities that the writer of his life will have to disclose. 66 Nature, apparently," said Styan Thirlby, as we are told by Mr. Nichols, in his "Literary Anecdotes," "intended a kind of parity among her sons; but sometimes she deviates a little from her general purpose, and sends into the world a man of powers superior to the rest, of quicker intuition and wider comprehension; this man has all other men for his enemies, and would not be suffered to live his natural time, but that his excellences are balanced by his failings. He that by intellectual exaltation thus towers above his contemporaries, is drunken, or lazy, or capricious; or, by some defect or other, is hindered from exerting his sovereignty of mind; he is thus kept upon the level, and thus preserved from the destruction which would be the natural consequence of universal hatred." Whether the mass of mankind would ever rise, to destroy a fellow-creature possessed of unrivalled intellectual powers, may be doubted; for it might be expected that such a being would act so as to secure the approbation and esteem of at least a majority of those around him; but it is certain that men distinguished by eminent mental abilities are often drawn down, whether by the influence of others, or by their own imprudence and misconduct, to a condition far below that of many others who are too much their inferiors in mind to be able even to estimate their merits. It is not necessary to recur to the lives of Edmund Smith, or Samuel Boyse, or Edgar Poe, for examples of such degradation; for almost every man, whether high or low, whether of little education or of much, has seen something of the kind among his own connexions or acquaintance. Those who contemplate the lives and fortunes of mankind, too often, as they increase their knowledge, increase their sorrow. If they discover great merits in eminent characters, they find them, perhaps, the more they search, obscured by such defects as they could at one time have scarcely imagined. They find gold, but gold mingled with clay. |