"Dunciad," whether he should extol or depreciate Handel, till some musician, whose opinion he asked, assured him that Handel was a great man. It may well be wished that some scholar had had the power to give him a similar impression of Bentley. CHAP. III. PORSON ENTERED AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. -BEGINS TO SHOW HIS ABILITIES IN CRITICISM. GAINS THE CRAVEN SCHOLARSHIP. HIS HABITS. HIS GREEK IAMBICS ON THE OCCASION. HE TAKES HIS DEGREE AND PORSON was too old when he went to Eton, as may have been inferred from Dr. Goodall's evidence before the House of Commons, to have any chance of going to Cambridge as a King's scholar. After having remained at Eton four years, he was entered at Trinity College in October 1778, when he was nearly eighteen years of age. Concerning his course of life as an undergraduate at Cambridge, little is told. He was at first, however, so much influenced by the genius loci that he applied himself to mathematics, but soon relinquished the study for others more agreeable to his inclination. His reading would appear to have been very miscellaneous. Whether the perusal of Chambers's Dictionary, of which Dr. Goodall spoke, and which is also mentioned by Beloe, took place before he went to Cambridge, or afterwards, is uncertain; but it would seem more probable that the achievement was performed at Cambridge. He was said by his old master, Mr. Summers, to have been well-conducted, and to have incurred no punishment, during the whole of his undergraduateship.* He impressed the scholars of the University with strong notions of his aptitude for attaining distinction in classical pursuits. Two emendations which he made about two years after he entered Cambridge, his earliest attempts of the kind on record, deserve to be noticed. In the first Idyl of Theocritus, ver. 66, we still read, Πᾶ πόκ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἦσθ ̓ ὅκα Δάφνις ἐτάκετο ; In Virgil, Æn. iii. 702, the common reading is Immanisque Gela, fluvii cognomine dicta, for which Porson proposed to read Immanisque Gela, fluvio cognomine dicta, which Kidd calls an admirable emendation, and which, though it may at first startle a young reader, is supported by Æn. vi. 38, gaudet cognomine terrâ. These criticisms of Porson were communicated to Kidd by Dr. Goodall. One fellow-collegian with whom he was very intimate was Walter Whiter, afterwards rector of Hardingham, and well known to classical scholars. He would go into Whiter's rooms, open whatever book Whiter would allow him to take, and, with any pen *Notes and Queries, 1st series, vol. iii. p. 28. that he could find on the table, write notes on the margin in the neatest of hands. Mr. Whiter's nephew possesses a copy of Athenæus that belonged to his uncle, in which are many annotations written by Porson with the greatest distinctness, though the paper is porous. He was elected scholar of his College in 1780, and gained the Craven University Scholarship, without difficulty, in December 1781. A translation of an epitaph into Greek iambics, which he performed at the examination for the Craven scholarship, is preserved. It is said to have been completed in less than an hour, with the help only of Morell's Thesaurus, according to Dr. Thomas Young, but, according to others, without any help from books at all. Who was the author of the English lines is not known. The Reverend William Collier, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, set the verses, and told Mr. Kidd that he took them from a magazine of the day. Kidd says that he searched most of the magazines for them, but to no purpose; and Porson himself expressed a suspicion that they were Mr. Collier's own. Stranger, whoe'er thou art that view'st this tomb, The young Alexis. Gentle was his soul As softest music; to the charms of love Not cold, nor to the social charities Of mild humanity. In yonder grove He woo'd the willing muse. Simplicity Stood by and smiled. Here every night they come, The note of woe, weeping their favourite Slain in his bloom, in the fair prime of life. "Would he had lived! Alas! in vain that wish Escapes thee. Never, stranger, shalt thou see The youth. He's dead. The virtuous soonest die." Ω ΞΕΙΝΕ, τουτον όστις εισορᾷς ταφον, Εγελα παραστᾶσ'· αἱν έκαστης ενθαδε Νυκτος παρουσαιν, αἱ ̓ρεται τε και καλαι Εδρεψατ' Αιδης. ΕΙΘ' ΕΤ' ΕΝ ΖΩΟΙΣΙΝ ΗΝ. Τεθνηχ ̓ ὁ δη—ταχιστα πασχουσ' οἱ ̓γαθοι. We give them without accents, just as they are printed by Mr. Kidd, but the last line, as Dr. Young has observed, should undoubtedly be written Τεθνηχ· ὃ δη ταχιστα πασχουσ' οἱ ̓γαθοι. In the first line he uses unjustifiably the Ionic form ξεῖνος. The ninth line shows that he had either not then discovered what he afterwards called the pause, or disregarded it. Young remarked that there are some inaccuracies in the use of the tenses, but there seems to be nothing in this respect that is indefensible. When the iambics were shown, several years afterwards, to Parr, he said, "You do not, Mr. Porson, consider these as faultless?" Porson answered, evasively, that for every single fault that Parr could point out, he himself would find seven. He took his degree in 1782 as third senior optime, the number of wranglers being eighteen. Soon after D |