(Richard), the greatest of the verbal critics and classical scholars of modern times, born on the 25th of Porson. December 1759, was the son of Mr. Huggin Porson, parish clerk of East Ruston, near North Walsham, in Norfolk.
His father taught him, in his childhood, to practise all the common rules of arithmetic by memory only; and, before he was nine years old, he had learned to extract the cube root in this manner. At the same time, for teaching him to read and write, he employed the method which has since been generally introduced in the schools of mutual instruction, making him draw the letters with chalk or on sand; and the neatness and accuracy of his hand-writing, for which he was distinguished through life, may be considered as bearing ample testimony to his father's ingenuity and success.
At the age of nine he was sent to a village school, kept by a Mr. Summers; but his father still made him repeat by heart in the evening the whole of the lessons of the day; and there seems to be sufficient evidence for considering this practice of exercising the memory continually, in very early life, as the best, if not the only method of cultivating, if not of producing great talent. For though a strong memory by no means constitutes talent, yet its possession is almost a necessary condition for the successful exertion of talent in general; and, indeed, it is very possible that the other faculties of the mind may be strengthened by the early cultivation of this one. It is remarkable that Wallis, who was as deservedly celebrated in his day as Porson, for his unerring sagacity, had also a singular facility of retaining numbers and calculations in his memory, but without having taken any particular pains to acquire the habit. Mr. Hewitt, the vicar of the parish of East Ruston, hearing of young Porson's uncommon capacity, undertook to instruct both him and his brother Thomas in classical literature; and when he was about fifteen, Mr. Norris, a wealthy and respectable gentleman of the neighbourhood, having ascertained the truth of the reports that he heard of him, resolved to be at the expense of sending him to Eton. Without this assistance it would have been impossible for Porson to have acquired great excellence in any intellectual pursuit; for his father's situation in life was not such as to exempt his son even from the subordinate occupations of the country. He went out gleaning, in the autumn, with a Horace in his pocket; and he had learned by experience to appreciate the mechanical labours of Penelope, before he was much acquainted with the wisdom and wanderings of Ulysses.
At Eton, his talents procured him the friendship and admiration of the seniors amongst his schoolfellows, and, upon the unfortunate death of his first patron, Mr. Norris, he found a number of liberal contributors, who stepped forward to supply the deficiency; but by far the most active of them was Sir George Baker, then President of the Royal College of Physicians, a man as much distinguished by his own classical taste and acquirements, as by his laudable disposition to cherish learning in others. He received the boy into his house for a vacation, and undertook, at the request of a relation of Mr. Norris, the disagreeable task of receiving, in small sums, as much as was sufficient to purchase an income of L80 a-year, for a few years, in the short annuities, which served, with great economy, to enable him to remain at Eton. This favour appears to have been too great to be properly acknowledged, or perhaps even duly appreciated, by its object, who only after many years paid Sir George the tardy compliment of a dedication, not, however, of an edition, but of a handsome copy of a single play of Euripides. In his own opinion, Porson learned little at Eton besides the quantity of syllables, being able to repeat by heart before he went there the principal part of the authors that he had to read; that is, almost the whole of Horace and Virgil, the *Iliad*, and many parts of Cicero, Livy, and the *Odyssey*. A story is accordingly told of his book having been changed by one of his schoolfellows in joke, when he was going up to a lesson in Horace, and of his having read and translated what was required of him, without at all betraying the change to his master. At the same time, the emulation of a public school must have been a great advantage to him, as affording him a motive for exertion in his exercises, whether they were to be called his own, or to be written for other boys. It was a copy of Toup's Longinus, presented to him as a reward for a good exercise, that first gave him a decided inclination for the pursuit of critical researches; but he always considered Bentley and Dawes as his great masters in criticism.
In 1777 he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, and at first he began to apply more particularly to the mathematics, which had been the favourite study of his boyhood, and in which, as he himself remarked, his proficiency first brought him into a certain degree of public notice. He was, however, soon diverted from this pursuit, although he attained a place amongst the senior optimes of his year. But he was in fact more calculated for classical than for mathematical excellence. His memory would have been in a great measure thrown away, if he had been employed in abstract calculations; and his inventive powers do not appear to have been at all of the same class with his retentive faculties; although certainly in the mechanical pursuit of the fashionable methods of modern analysis, which are intended, like steam engines, to overcome all difficulties by the inanimate force of mere patience and perseverance, he was capable of filling as distinguished a place as any living algebraist. The classical prize medal, and the university scholarship, he obtained without difficulty, as matters of course. The exercise, which he exhibited upon the examination for the scholarship, is the well known translation of an epitaph into Greek iambics; which, although not free from some inaccuracies in the use of the tenses, is still a very remarkable production, when it is considered as having been completed in less than an hour, with the help of Morrell's *Thesaurus* only, and never afterwards corrected.
He obtained a fellowship of Trinity College in 1781, and took his degree of Master of Arts in 1785; but not thinking it right to subscribe the Articles of the Church of England, he could not enter into orders, and he was therefore unavoidably deprived of his fellowship in 1791, having no dependence left for his subsistence through life, but his own abilities and acquirements. His friends, however, did not abandon him on this urgent occasion, and in order to keep him out of actual want, a private subscription was set on foot, to which Mr. Cracherode was one of the principal contributors, and by which enough was raised to purchase him an annuity of about L100 a-year for life. A small addition was made to his income, about two years afterwards, by his election to the Greek Professorship at Cambridge, with a salary of only L40 a-year. The situation, however, gave him the option of at least doubling his whole receipts, by the delivery of an annual course of lectures in the university; and it was supposed that he would have made this exertion, if he had not been discouraged by the difficulty of obtaining rooms in his college, where it would have been his wish to reside.
Porson married, in 1795, Mrs. Lunan, a sister of the late Mr. Perry, well known as the editor of the *Morning Chronicle*, but he had the misfortune to lose his wife two years afterwards. Mr. Perry continued to be his greatest friend through life, and was so far his best benefactor, as he knew how to oblige him essentially, without the appearance of doing him a favour. Porson had sometimes chambers in the Temple, and sometimes he lodged at the *Morning Chronicle* office; frequently also he was a visitor at Mr. Perry's house at Merton, where he had the misfortune to leave several of his books, at the time of a fire, which destroyed them all, and amongst them some letters of Rhunkenius, with whom he had begun a correspondence in 1783, and who had committed to him some valuable fragments of *Æschylus*. Porson, besides his manuscript copy of the lexicon of Photius, which had cost him ten months' labour. He used indeed to say that this fire had destroyed the fruits of twenty years of his life; but he had the resolution to complete a second copy of the Photius, which is now in the library of Trinity College. His fondness for the mechanical employment of his pen has been regretted by some of his biographers, as having tempted him to waste much of his most valuable time on a trifling amusement; but in fact, his mode of writing Greek was fully as much calculated for expedition as for beauty; and those who have not been in the habit of correcting mutilated passages of manuscripts, can form no estimate of the immense advantage that is obtained, by the complete sitting of every letter, which the mind involuntarily performs, whilst the hand is occupied in tracing it; so that, if the correction of Photius was really worth the labour of two years of Porson's life, it would have been scarcely possible to employ the greater part of those years more advantageously, than by copying him twice over. Mr. Weston, in speaking of "his matchless penmanship," has observed, not very intelligibly, that "here, indeed, he thought himself surpassed by" another person "not in the stroke, but the sweep, of his letters." What Porson really said on this subject was, that, with respect to "command of hand," that person had the advantage, but he preferred the model on which his own hand was formed. His writing was, in fact, more like that of a scholar, whilst the method explained in Mr. Hodgkin's Calligraphy exhibits more the appearance of the work of a writing master; holding, however, a middle place between the neatness of Porson, and the wonderful accuracy of the country schoolmaster who made the fac simile of the Oxford Pindar in the British Museum.
Upon the establishment of the London Institution, his friends obtained for him the very desirable appointment of principal librarian, with a salary of L200 a-year, and apartments in the house of the Institution, which was then in the Old Jewry; but although the arrangement was highly honourable to all parties, the librarianship was little more than a sinecure. Porson was, however, in the habit of attending in his place when the reading-room was open, and of communicating, very readily, all the literary information that was required, by those who consulted him respecting the object of their researches. Had the inhabitants of Finsbury Square and its neighbourhood been more disposed to classical studies, and had the librarian of the Institution survived, to witness its completion and prosperity, his sphere of utility would, without doubt, have been greatly extended.
But it must ever be lamented that Porson's habits of life had unfortunately been such as to lay a foundation for a multitude of diseases. He suffered much from asthma throughout the year 1808; his memory began to fail him a little; and in the autumn he had some symptoms of intermittent fever. On Monday the 19th of September he had an apoplectic attack in the street, and he was carried to a neighbouring poor house in a state of insensibility. The next day an advertisement appeared in one of the papers, relating the accident, and describing some manuscripts which were found in his pocket, consisting of Greek fragments and algebraical characters. His friends at the London Institution immediately went in quest of him; he was afterwards well enough to appear in the library, and to receive a visit there from Dr. Adam Clarke; but his speech was impaired, and his faculties evidently imperfect. He survived only through the week, and died in his forty-ninth year, on Sunday the 25th of September 1808, at midnight.
He was buried at Cambridge, in Trinity College Chapel, near the grave of Bentley, and the monument of Newton. He founded by will an annual prize, to be given to the best Greek translation from an English dramatic author; and several specimens of the successful pieces have been published from time to time in the Classical Journal. His books were sold by auction, and many of them found purchasers at high prices, especially such as were enriched with any of his manuscript notes in their margins; but more than two hundred of these, which appeared to be the most valuable, were withheld from the sale, and were afterwards purchased, together with the whole of his manuscript papers, by the Society of Trinity College, for the sum of a thousand guineas. He left a sister, married to Mr. Sidney Hawes, of Cottishall, Norfolk. His brother Thomas kept a boarding-school at Fakenham, and died, without issue, in 1792; his second brother, Henry, was a farmer in Essex, and died young, leaving three children. His father had lived to 74, his mother to 57.
The principal works of Porson are his Letters to Trajan, his four plays of Euripides with their prefaces, and the manuscript copy of Photius; the rest, though somewhat voluminous, are chiefly miscellaneous annotations upon detached passages of a multitude of ancient authors. We find nothing in the nature of theory, or of the discovery of general laws, except some canons, which he has laid down, chiefly as having been used by the Greek tragedians in the construction of their verses. These are chiefly contained in the preface to the Hecuba, together with its supplement.
1. The first is, that when a tragic iambic ends with a trisyllable, or a cretic, this word must be preceded either by a short syllable, or by a monosyllable. For example, an ancient tragedian would not have written the line Ἐκεῖνος ἐξ ἀπόρων ἐξέστησε διάφορος, though it might have been unexceptionable in a comedy. It seems to have been about the year 1790 that Porson first made this observation. He certainly did not attend to it in his own serious translation of the Epitaph on Alcæus; but it was mentioned, in 1791, by one of Porson's intimate friends, in a moment of conviviality, whilst he was somewhat characteristically attempting to fill his glass out of an empty bottle; and the author of this article observed in answer, that it would certainly sound better, on such an occasion as then occurred, to say, Ἐκεῖνος ἐξ ἀπόρων ἐξέστησε διάφορος, than of λαμπαδίται κόρης.
2. The second canon is, that an anaepast is only admissible in a tragic iambic, as constituting the first foot, except in some cases of proper names. This indeed had been cursorily hinted by Dawes. 3. The same critic had also remarked, that the Attic poets never lengthen a short vowel before a mute or aspirate, followed by a liquid, or a middle consonant followed by ρ; and Porson more amply confirmed the observation as very generally, though not universally correct. On the other hand, Dawes had cursorily observed that Homer, and the other ancient epic poets, generally lengthened the vowel in such cases, and Porson's great rival, Hermano, has more fully established this distinction, as affording a good criterion of antiquity. 4. There are also some original remarks of Porson on the caesura, in iambics, and trochees, and anaepasts. He showed that the scenic poets do not elide the final iota, and that the tragedians do not employ the preposition ἐπὶ before a vowel; and some other general laws, of greater importance than these, may probably be found in some of his publications, which it will now be necessary to enumerate in the order of time.
1. His first attempts, as an author, consisted of some anonymous articles in Dr. Maty's Review, beginning with a part of Shutz's Æschylus, June 1783, Tracts ii.; Brunck's Aristophanes, July 1783, Tracts iii.; Mus. Crit. ii. 113; written in a day. In Latin, by Schäfer, Class. Journ. v. 136. Weston's Hermesianax, April 1784, Tracts iv. Huntington's Apology for his Menostrophics, August 1784, Tracts v. Account of the Learned Pig, April 1785, Tracts vi. Note, with letters of Le Clerc and Bentley, April 1786, Tracts vii.
2. He added some Notes to an edition of Xenophon's Anabasis, published by Nicholson, at Cambridge, 4to and Svo, 1786. They are addressed Lectori si quis erit. 3. Three Panegyrical Epistles to Sir J. Hauchine, Gent. Mag. August, September, and October, 1787. Tracts ix.
4. Notes on Toupii Emendationes in Suidam. Oxford, 8vo. 1790. Written in 1787.
5. Letters on the Three Witnesses, Gent. Mag. Oct. and Dec. 1788. Feb. April, May, June, Aug. 1789. Feb. 1790. The last was reprinted in Tracts xix.; most of the others in the collection of Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis, in answer to his defence of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, London, 1790, 8vo. These letters are generally considered, by critics of all parties, as finally decisive of a question, which had often been agitated before, but never so learnedly argued, nor so satisfactorily discussed in all its bearings.
6. In the Monthly Review, Robertson's Essay on the Parian Chronicle, Jan. 1789. Tracts xiii.; satisfactorily answering the principal part of the objections alleged against the authenticity of that monument. Edwards' edition of the work attributed to Plutarch, on Education, July 1793, Tracts xxi. Payne Knight's Greek Alphabet, Jan. 1794, Tracts xxiii. Pybus's Sovereign, Dec. 1800; an article affording a good specimen of his talent for humour.
7. He is supposed to have written some Remarks on an Essay upon the Transfiguration, but never expressly acknowledged them. Tracts xv.
8. He added a few short Notes to the London edition of Heyne's Virgil, 8vo, 1793, for which he made an agreement with the bookseller to correct the press; but he complained that his corrections were disregarded; and in fact several hundred errors, of no great importance, were suffered to disfigure it.
9. He corrected the Greek text of Æschylus for the Glasgow editions, the folio of 1795, and the two volumes octavo, printed in 1794, but only published at London in 1806. The folio is said to have appeared surreptitiously. There are more than two hundred original corrections, and a further number of passages pointed out as corrupt.
10. In the Morning Chronicle he published, at different times, a variety of spirited articles of a temporary nature. One of the most amusing was the Nursery Song in Greek iambics, 13th of April 1796, called A Fragment of Sophocles, and signed "S. England," in ridicule of Ireland's pretended discoveries.
11. Imitations of Horace. Spirit of the Public Journals, 1797. Class. Jour. iv. 97.
12. The first four plays of Euripides appeared separately at different periods. The Hecuba, London, 1797, 8vo. Cambridge, 1802, with a Supplement and additional notes; which were also published separately, London, 1808. Orestes, London, 1798, 1811. Phoenissae, London, 1799, 1811. Medea, Cambridge, 1801; London, 1812. The four together, London, 1822.
13. Collation of the Harleian manuscript of the Odyssey for the Grenville Homer, Oxford, 1800, 4to; with some short notes. Reprinted, Class. Jour. ix.
14. Of the Review of Wakefield's Lucretius, in the British Critic for May 1801, the principal part appears to be Porson's.
15. A Letter signed by J. N. Dawes, Monthly Mag. Dec. 1802, on some Greek constructions; admitting also an inaccuracy of his own with respect to a hiatus, pointed out by Mr. C. Falconer.
16. A Letter to Professor Dalzel, dated September, 1803; Mus. Crit. i. p. 326; in answer to some remarks published in the Professor's Collectanea Majora; with an Epigram respecting Hermann, in Greek and in English.
17. Herodotus, Edinburgh, 1806. Porson corrected the press for the first volume.
18. Supplement to some Indices, Tracts xxxvi.
19. It is well known that Porson bestowed considerable pains on the restoration of the text of the Rosetta Stone. His Supplements were added to the plates engraved by the Society of Antiquaries; and they also appear amongst his Tracts, xxxvii. In Dr. Clarke's Greek Marbles, Cambridge, 1809, 8vo, we find a translation of this inscription, communicated to the editor by Porson, and printed from "a corrected copy in his own beautiful handwriting." But we may here venture to apply Porson's favourite remark on the facility of transposition, and to read "a copy corrected in his own writing," that is, on the margin of Mr. Gough's translation, as published in Duane's Coins. For the whole is very negligently performed; and it is not a little remarkable that this translation, which was at least approved by Porson, is decidedly less accurate than the Latin translation of Heyne, as appears from the investigation of the enchorial inscription published in the sixth number of the Museum Criticum.
20. A variety of Porson's fugitive and miscellaneous pieces have reappeared at different times in the Classical Journal. Authors cited by the Scholiast on Plato, ii. 619, Tracts, xxxviii. The Epitaph, iii. 233; more correctly than in the Tracts, but still with a gross error in the punctuation of the last line, which stands, in a manuscript copy of his own, Τέλος ἐστιν ὅ ἂν ῥάγη τα παραπλεύρων ὁ γαβεῖλ. This reading, though not very elegant, is at least more defensible, than to make παραπλεύρων alone signify to die, and a phrase to end with ὁ γαβεῖλ. A Charade in Latin, vii. 248. Some Notes on Æschylus, vii. 456; viii. 15, 181; x. 114. A property of the lines employed in the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid, p. 401. Notes on Apollonius Rhodius, xviii. 370.
21. Adversaria. Cambridge, 1812, 8vo, consisting of Notes on the Greek Poets, selected from his manuscripts, and arranged by Professor Monk and Mr. C. J. Bloomfield. The first article is an interesting Lecture on Euripides, delivered upon his appointment to the Greek Professorship. It is followed by a few miscellaneous observations, and by a large collection of Notes on Athenaeus, on Euripides, on the Fragments of the Tragic and Comic Poets, on Stobæus, and on a variety of poets of miscellaneous descriptions. The volume was reprinted at Amsterdam, without any alteration, but the sale of the foreign edition has never been permitted in Great Britain.
22. Tracts and Miscellaneous Criticisms, collected and arranged by the Rev. T. Kidd, M.A., London, 1815, 8vo. Besides the articles already noticed as reprinted in this volume, there are a few Notes on Dacier's Miscellanea Critica, not before published, No. 51. There are also some supplementary pages of Simplicius and Cebes, reprinted by Porson, for the use of his friends, as restored by Schweighäuser. The want of this leaf of the manuscript of Simplicius had given rise to the mistaken assertion that Xenophon was proclaimed a public benefactor at the Olympic Games, on occasion of the return of the ten thousand. There are likewise some miscellaneous Notes on Athenæus, Menander, and Philemon, Aristides, Pausanias, and the lexicographers, and some Indices of authors quoted by the Scholiasts.
23. Notae in Aristophanem, quibus Plutum comœdiam adjecit P. P. Dobree. Cambridge, 1820, 8vo.
24. Gaisford Lectiones Platonicæ. Accedunt R. Porsoni Notæ ad Pausaniam. Oxford, 1820, 8vo.
25. Photii Lexicon. Cambridge, 1822, 8vo.
To attempt to form a just estimate of the merit of such a man as Porson, without servilely following the dictates of common fame, or blindly adopting the opinions of others, is a task of no small difficulty, even to one who had the advantage of his personal acquaintance for the last twenty years of his life. But it may safely be conceded to common fame and to partial friendship, that he was one of the greatest men, and the very greatest critic, of his own or of any other age. "Nothing came amiss," says Mr. Weston, "to his memory. He would set a child right in his twopenny fable book, repeat the whole of the moral tale of the Dean of..."
Badajoz, a page of Athenaeus on cups, or of Eustathius on Homer, even though he did every thing to impair his mental faculties." It cannot, however, be denied, that the talents, and even the industry, that he possessed, might have made him a much greater man, had they been employed in some other department of human intellect. He might probably have been as great a statesman or as great a general as he was a scholar, and in these capacities his acquirements would have affected the interests of a much greater multitude of his fellow-creatures, than can ever be benefited by the fruits of his erudition; and he might possibly have gained more popularity as an orator or a poet, than his refined investigations of grammar and prosody could ever procure him, although it is not by any means certain that his fancy and invention could have been rendered by any cultivation at all comparable to his memory and acuteness. But as far as regards the possession of a combination of the faculties which he did cultivate, he appears to have been decidedly the most successful of any man on record in the same department. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the subjects of his pursuits were in their nature incapable of raising a man to the first rank amongst the permanent benefactors of the human race; and, if we calmly consider the ultimate objects of prosody and metre, it will appear almost unfair to allow the discoverer of the prosodical rules, adopted by the ancient poets in their melodramas and choruses, to rank so very high amongst the luminaries of an age, and yet to look down, with so much contempt as we are accustomed to do, on the character of a modern *Dieu de la danse*, notwithstanding that he thought himself the third great man of his day, with Voltaire and the King of Prussia, for having given soul and sentiment to the measures and movements of the choric representations of the present times.
Amongst the talents of Porson, however, which were so far superior to the importance of the objects on which they were employed, we ought not, perhaps, to consider his remarkable strength of memory as the most to be envied, since many persons who have been possessed of singular and almost miraculous, not to say morbid, memories, have been but little distinguished by any other faculty. It appears to be possible that a memory may in itself be even too retentive for real practical utility, as if of too microscopic a nature; and it seems to be by a wise and benevolent, though by no means an obvious arrangement of a creative Providence, that a certain degree of oblivion becomes a most useful instrument in the advancement of human knowledge, enabling us readily to look back on the prominent features only of various objects and occurrences, and to class them and reason upon them, by the help of this involuntary kind of abstraction and generalization, with incomparably greater facility than we could do, if we retained the whole detail of what had been once but slightly impressed on our minds. It is thus, for example, in physic, that the experienced practitioner learns at length to despise the relation of individual symptoms, and particular cases, on which alone the empiric insists, and to feel the value of the Hippocratic system of "attending more to the prognostic than the diagnostic features of disease;" which, to a younger student, appears to be perfect imbecility. And it is perhaps for some similar reason that many persons, besides Barnes, "of happy memory," have had to wait long in darkness for "the day of judgment." But it must be repeated, that Porson's judgment and acuteness were really almost paramount to his memory; and with the addition of these faculties, his memory naturally rendered him capable of much that would have been impossible without it.
The respect that is justly due to classical learning has frequently been exaggerated in this country, partly, perhaps, on account of the awe which is naturally entertained, by an ingenious mind, for its instructors in the earliest studies, by which it is advanced towards maturity. And classical learning having most wisely been placed by our ancestors foremost, in the order of a liberal education, which is most commonly adopted in Great Britain, a personal as well as a general respect has been involuntarily paid to the characters of the individuals concerned, and to the dignity of all those who are engaged in similar occupations; besides that, the means being, by a most frequent inattention of the human mind, confounded with the end for which they are sought, the words and syllables, and the phrases and measures of the Greek and Latin authors have often been the almost frivolous occupation of a valuable life, instead of that of a few of the years of boyhood, which it was intended to devote to them, and which could not have been so well engaged in any other way. It is, however, wholly unjust to stigmatize the study of the classics, and of languages in general, as being confined to words instead of things; for it is utterly impossible that words can be learned, without the acquisition of a considerable degree of knowledge of the things to which they relate, and of the historical facts which they have been employed to express, and without an involuntary modelling of the mind to the elegance and elevation of sentiment, which pervade the works of those authors who are habitually put into the hands of boys in the course of their elementary studies; an acquirement which is of still greater value to the orator and the statesman, than the command of language, and facility of expression, and beauty of imagery, and power of reasoning, which he derives from a perfect familiarity with the great masters of antiquity. But granting all the respect that can possibly be claimed for ancient literature, we cannot but lament that such a man as Porson should have lived and laboured for nearly half a century, and yet have left little or nothing to the world that was truly and originally his own.
After the full admission of the very high rank which is due to the comparative merits of Porson's talents and acquirements, it may be thought almost idle, if not injurious, to dwell on any trifling exceptions to their magnitude. But it is, in fact, of high importance to the progress of human knowledge, to be aware of the degree in which the first of mankind are liable to error. The admission of the few errors of Newton himself, is at least of as much importance to his followers in science, as the history of the progress of his real discoveries. And it is with reason that the detection of an error in such a man is considered as almost paramount to the establishment of a new fact. The English critics have been reproached, and not without some foundation, as paying too servile a deference to Porson's opinions; and it seems to have been very generally believed amongst them, that it was scarcely possible for him to commit an error or an oversight.
Although Porson was in many respects irregular, and often idle, or even intemperate, yet what he did perform as a critic, may be allowed to leave a large balance, at the end of his life, in favour of his general industry, when compared with that of most of his countrymen. It has indeed been asserted, and perhaps with truth, (Classical Journal, xxi.) that "with things Porson appears to have possessed but a very inconsiderate acquaintance; and not a trace is to be found amidst his writings, of that combination of universal encyclopaediacal knowledge with language learning which is so abundantly found in the Dissertation on Phalaris, and the countless pages of Scaliger, Salmasius, and Casaubon." Certainly, however, neither Salmasius nor Casaubon, with all their learning, much less Scaliger, with all his industry and parade, nor even Bentley himself, with all his talent and acuteness, was at all comparable to Porson in his own department, that is, as a sound, and accurate, and refined Greek critic.
But it must be confessed, that at Cambridge, even although Porson had resolved to make the classics his principal study, and although there had not yet been many in- stances of senior wranglers, who were also senior medalists, it was scarcely reputable for a man, with his undeniable abilities, to be only the twenty-first of his year in mathematics. Amongst the literary objects also, which afterwards engaged his attention, he might easily have found time for the study of some of the modern languages; and he might have derived essential benefit from it on many occasions of critical research. He had, indeed, read a good deal of French, but very little Italian. He had studied the Anglo-Saxon, but he knew nothing of the kindred dialects of the north of Europe, in which it is preserved almost entire; and he was wholly unacquainted with Oriental literature. He might have profited materially by some of these studies, in deriving from them a clearer conception of the distinctions of the tenses than he seems to have possessed, and he might have enlightened us in no small degree, with respect to the history of languages and of nations, by such etymological investigations as his comprehensive mind, thus employed, would have rendered him peculiarly capable of pursuing with success.
It has been candidly and very truly admitted by a rival critic in Germany, that Porson committed fewer errors than almost any other person; but it is right to be aware that he has now and then committed some errors, even where he would have been expected to be the most correct. There is, for example, a very strange oversight in one of the criticisms contained in his early review of Weston's Hermesianax, which implies a palpable blunder with respect to the gender of a participle, Ζαγηρος περιποιος Σολος περιποιος ἀνθρωπος εἰκόνων, "the cup of purple glass, which measured the fragrant wine;" and even in a subsequent correction of the same passage, published in his Adversaria, he has changed the gender of an adjective in a way that is at least very unusual, if not wholly without example, μυρτοῦς σίκερα.
A mere omission, in a criticism on another author, would scarcely be called an error in an ordinary person; but in such a critic as Porson, it is very remarkable that he should have neglected to notice, in his catalogue of the Errors of Le Clerc, omitted by Bentley, (Ade. p. 291,) the grossest of all Le Clerc's blunders, which is the quotation of the word Hypophauli or semibarbarous, from Pollux, with the translation Sartogines, or frying pans; whilst the real text of Pollux simply and plainly states that the Teganism or frie-cessations, in the Hippocamus Menander, is a semibarbarous word. These instances, which have occurred in a very cursory perusal of some of Porson's works, would certainly not deserve to be noticed in a general sketch of his character, any otherwise than as exceptions to his perfect infallibility.
It can scarcely be considered as an imperfection in the constitution of Porson's mind, that he wanted that amiable vanity, which is gratified by the approbation even of the most inconsiderable, and which delights to choose for its objects the most innocent and the most helpless of those who are casually present in society. It has been observed that he would neither give nor take praise; and when he was told that somebody had called him a giant in literature, he remarked that a man had no right to tell the height of that which he could not measure. In fact, having learned "to know how little can be known," it is not surprising that he found himself "without a second, and without a judge;" and that he was unwilling to affect a community of sentiment, and an interchange of approbation with those whose acquirements and opinions he felt that he had a right to despise. It might have been wiser, in some instances, to conceal this feeling; but, on the other hand, he had perhaps occasion for something of the habit of retreating into his conscious dignity, from his deficiency in those general powers of ephemeral conversation, which are so valuable in mixed societies; for, with all his learning and all his memory, he was by no means prominent as a talker. He had neither the inclination nor the qualifications to be a fascinating story-teller, or to become habitually a parasite at the tables of the affluent; but he was the delight of a limited circle of chosen friends, possessing talent enough to appreciate his merits, and to profit by the information that he afforded them.
There has not yet been a life of Porson that has collected all the particulars that would deserve to be recorded by a biographer, who undertook the task on an extensive scale; but of detached documents there is no deficiency. Mr. Kidd has pointed out almost every work in which his name has been mentioned. The most material articles relating to him will be enumerated here.
Morning Chronicle, 5th October 1808. A Short Account of the late Mr. Richard Porson, with some particulars relative to his extraordinary talents; by an admirer of great genius (the Rev. S. Weston.) Look for nothing beyond him. London, 1808, 8vo.
Re-published, with some additions, under the title of Porsoniana, or Scraps from Porson's Rich Feast, London, 1814, 8vo. Bloomfield's Sapphire Ode, Class. Journ. i. i. Some anonymous Athenæum, p. 81. Sale of his Library, p. 385. Athenæum, iv. 426, 521; v. 55. Class. Journ. ix. 386. Savage's Librarian, i. 274. Gentleman's Magazine, lxviii. Monthly Magazine. Dr. Adam Clarke's Narrative. Class. Journ. ii. 720. Correspondence of Wakefield and Fox, London, 1813, 8vo. Greek Epitaph, Class. Journ. xxiii. 179; making Porsonum equal to Newtonum. Aikin's General Biography, x. London, 1815, 4to. Kidd's Imperfect Outline, Tracts, 1815. Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, xxv. London, 1816.