on some point of scholarship, to Perry of the Morning Chronicle, whose sister he married in 1795. Here, again, was a fourth chance of reformation. For Porson, though he had given a unique proof of his passion by staying out boozing the whole of the wedding-night, loved and respected his wife, and was plainly becoming more regular in his habits while her life was spared. But she died of consumption a year and a half after marriage, and Porson resumed his old courses with more dogged resolution than before.

It was in the year which followed his wife's death that he gave to the world that publication with which his name is now inseparably connected. In the early part of 1797 he published the Hecuba anonymously, though it was generally known in literary circles that Porson was the editor. This edition at once created a sensation in the world of scholarship, and plunged its author into controversies with all the chief scholars of the day; Wakefield, Elmsley, and Hermann being among his principal commentators. As, however, it is by the Supplement attached to the second edition of the Hecuba, which appeared in 1802, that Porson is best known to the present generation of students, we shall consider the two editions together, when we come to examine more particularly Porson's contributions to scholarship. During the five years succeeding the first edition of the Hecuba he completed what are now known at all schools and colleges as "Porson's Four Plays," namely, besides the Hecuba, the Orestes, the Phoenissæ, and the Medea. He was offered 3000l. for an edition of Aristophanes; but he valued his ease a great deal more than his pocket, and peremptorily declined the offer. The second edition of the Hecuba seems to have exhausted all the powers of work that he had left. After 1802 nothing more of any consequence fell from his pen. In 1806 he was appointed Librarian of the London Institution in Finsbury, with a salary of 200l. a year; and as he was now only in his forty-seventh year, it might have been concluded that his mind would take a fresh start, and that a golden autumn was before him. And so it might have been, had his excesses and consequent indolence arisen from the anxiety which is caused by want of money. But Porson, it is clear, hardly felt the want of money at all. His dissipation, as it didn't arise from poverty, couldn't therefore be cured by a competence; and he continued to live at the London Institution exactly as he had been used to live in Essex Court. He was carried home insensible two or three nights every week, and was totally incapable of discharging any duties the next day. If his own health had continued to stand this kind of life, the directors of the Institution would not, and it seems that it was only the professor's death which saved him from the ignominy of dismissal.

His death took place in the month of September 1808; and as the account of it is the best part of Mr. Watson's narrative, and at the same time the one least capable of condensation, we shall give a great deal of it in his own words:

"In the early part of 1808 his memory had begun to fail; and later in the year symptoms of intermittent fever appeared. In September he complained of being quite out of order, and feeling as if he had the ague. On the morning of Monday the 19th of that month, he left the Institution to call on his brother-in-law, Mr. Perry, in the Strand, and reached his house about half-past one, but, not finding him at home, proceeded along the Strand towards Charing Cross, and at the corner of Northumberland Street was seized with an apoplectic fit, which deprived him of speech and of the power of motion.

For our knowledge of what befel him on that occasion, we are indebted chiefly to Mr. Savage, the Under Librarian of the London Institution, who was then editing a periodical publication called The Librarian, in which he inserted an account of the commencement of Porson's illness. The work reached only two volumes, and is now scarce.

As none of those who gathered round Porson, when he fell senseless, knew who he was, and as nothing was found upon him to indicate his residence, he was conveyed to the workhouse in Castle Street, St. Martin's Lane, where medical assistance was immediately given, and he was partially restored to consciousness. But as he was still unable to speak, and was unknown there also, it was thought proper to insert an advertisement, describing his person, in the public papers, that his friends might be apprised of his condition. On the following morning, accordingly, a notice appeared in the British Press, in which he was described as a tall man, apparently about forty-five years of age, dressed in a blue coat and black breeches, and having in his pocket a gold watch, a trifling quantity of silver, and a memorandum-book, the leaves of which were filled chiefly with Greek lines written in pencil, and partly effaced, two or three lines of Latin, and an algebraical calculation; the Greek extracts being principally from ancient medical works.'

This account was seen by Mr. Savage, who, knowing that Porson had not slept at home the preceding night, had no doubt that he was the person described in the advertisement. He therefore hastened to the workhouse in Castle Street, where he found Porson, still extremely feeble, but sufficiently recovered to be able to walk. After asking a few questions, Mr. Savage proposed to call a coach; but Porson would not allow Mr. Savage to leave him for a moment, saying that he would rather walk, and take one in the street. They therefore proceeded through the King's Mews to Charing Cross, and, getting into a vehicle, drove from thence towards the old Jewry.

On the way, he spoke of his sudden attack in the street, and congratulated himself on having fallen into the hands of honest people, who had left him his gold watch, and every thing else about him, in safety. He also adverted to the fire that had destroyed Covent Garden Theatre a few hours before, of which he had heard from those about him in the morning, and seemed much concerned at the account that

Mr. Savage gave him of the loss of lives and property with which the catastrophe had been attended. He conversed, indeed, during the whole of the journey, in his usual pleasant and instructive manner, giving no indication that his mental faculties had suffered any serious injury from his apoplectic seizure. On coming in sight of St. Paul's, he began to speak of Sir Christopher Wren, lamenting the treatment that he had received in the latter part of his life, and observing that 'even in our days we were too apt to neglect modest unassuming merit.'

About a quarter past nine they reached the house of the Institution, when, on getting out of the coach, his bodily debility was very observable; but he was able to walk, with some effort, to his room, where he took a slight breakfast, consisting of two cups of green tea, which he always preferred, and two small slices of toast. Soon afterwards he went down into the Library, and happened to be met by Dr. Adam Clarke, who published an account of the meeting, as well as of Porson's 'last illness and death.""

Mr. Watson then gives us several extracts from this account, from which it appears that, in spite of the very serious nature of his attack, no medical aid was at once called in; and that, while he was with Dr. Clarke in the library, he was able to talk coherently and pertinently on the subject of a Greek inscription. After Dr. Clarke's departure, and at about three o'clock in the day, he went out to the African Coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, where he sat down and "stared round him with a vacant and ghastly countenance." He drank half a glass of wine, and a little drop of brandy-and-water, when they were pressed upon him; but he wouldn't engage in conversation, and kept muttering to himself in a low voice, "The gentleman said it was a very ludicrous piece of business, and I think so too." After this, one account states that he was put into a hackneycoach, and sent home in charge of a waiter; another, that he walked out of the coffee-house to the front of the Royal Exchange, where his manner was so odd that he collected a large crowd round him, among whom was the porter of the London Institution, who took him back to the coffee-house, and, after getting him to drink two more glasses of wine, brought him home to the Institution in a state of insensibility. Whichever be the truth, much precious time was lost between his first seizure and the application of medical remedies; though he had been warned a few days before that the sensations of which he complained were symptoms of a much more serious illness than he imagined. But one of Porson's peculiarities was an intense disbelief in doctors; and he took no notice of the warning.

"He was put to bed,' says Mr. Norris, the surgeon, who was now called in; and I sent immediate notice of his situation to his brotherin-law, Mr. Perry, who soon arrived, and who continued to the last to pay him the kindest attention with the most affectionate solicitude.'

After specifying the medicines given, which afforded relief for a time, Mr. Norris proceeds to say, that 'Dr. Babington and Mr. Upton now saw him, when stupor again had returned, accompanied by general debility. Blisters and sinapisms were applied, which procured transient relief, and it was endeavoured to support his strength by wine and cordial medicines, of which, however, very little was swallowed. He continued, with a few slight and short appearances of amendment, to grow weaker until Sunday night, when he died; having gradually lost the power of speech and sight, so that some time before his death his eyes were perfectly insensible to the light of a candle.

Dr. Clarke saw him once during his illness, on Friday the 23d, when he appeared more collected in mind than he had been since the Tuesday evening. I went into his room,' says he, and drawing close to his bedside, asked him how he did. He fixed his eyes on me at first with a wild and vacant stare, and seemed to labour to recollect me. At last he recognised me, but was too much exhausted to speak, though he appeared comparatively sensible.'

He expired on the night of the 25th of September 1808, exactly as the clock struck twelve, with a deep groan, but without any struggle, in the forty-ninth year of his age."

His body was opened, and the following extracts from the medical report will sufficiently explain the cause of death:

"Under the tunica arachnoides a clear fluid was seen to be generally diffused over the surface of the brain; and upon separating the pia mater, lymph, to the quantity of about an ounce, issued from between the convolutions of the brain...

The ventricles did not seem to contain more than one ounce of lymph; but upon removing the whole of the brain, at least an ounce and a half more lymph remained at the basis of the skull.

From a due consideration of these circumstances, and of the symp toms observed during the short period of his confinement, as well as what we know of his sedentary mode of living, we are of opinion that the effused lymph in and upon the brain, which we believe to have been the effect of recent inflammation, was the immediate cause of his death. It may also be observed that his health had been in a declining state during some months, so as to have been visible to his friends.

It is very clear that during the indisposition which he called ague and fever, a slow inflammatory action was going on within the head, the result of which was the effusion above noticed. The first effect of compression from this cause that was noticed, was on Monday the 19th of September, on which day he walked from the Old Jewry to the west end of the town, when he fell in the street."

We have already alluded to the amount of property which Porson left behind him. His books were sold for 20821. 7s. 3d.; the copyright of his plays for 2007.; his furniture and effects produced 2117. 148. 10d.; and he left in money, 888l. 178. 7d.; in all, 3356l. 15s. 8d. The whole of this property was handed over

to his relations, his funeral expenses having been defrayed out of the annuity fund, which was about 2000l. The bulk of this sum, as the contributors refused to take it back again, was allotted to the foundation of the Porson prize for Greek iambics, and the Porson scholarship; the former being a yearly sum of 201., and the latter of 651. It is probable, that if Porson himself could have decided the purpose to which this money should be devoted, the prize for Greek iambics would not have been a part of it.

What Porson actually effected for critical scholarship, though of inestimable value in quality, was so limited in quantity, and so technical in its nature, that a very short space will serve for the description of it here. He did for the text of four Greek plays as much perhaps as it is possible for human sagacity to accomplish; and he fixed the laws of the tragic senarius, hitherto uninvestigated, beyond dispute:

" - ordinem

Rectum evaganti frena licentiæ
Injecit."

And by so doing of course placed in our hands a new and valuable instrument for deciding between various readings. His chief discoveries were the conditions under which the use of the anapest (~) is permissible in an iambic line; the two cæsuras; and what he denominated "the pause" rather than a third kind of cæsura, because the absence of it was not invariably fatal to the rhythm. The two first being common to both the hexameter and the iambic, will be familiar to all our readers who care for such knowledge. The discovery of the third as peculiar to the iambic, to the Greek iambic, and to the Greek tragic iambic, is a more striking testimony to Porson's taste and research. He found out that whenever the last word of an iambic line is a trisyllable like μόρσιμον and οὐρανόν, which in prosody is called a "cretic," and the word just before it any thing but a monosyllable, the fifth foot of the verse is, with certain exceptions, which he carefully specified, always an iambus. The effect of transposing the words in a line which violates this rule, so as to bring them into agreement with it, must be appreciable even by those who are unaccustomed to the niceties of rhythm. Here, for instance, is one line which Porson altered from

to

̓́Ατλας ὁ χαλκέοισι νώτοις οὐρανόν

̓́Ατλας ὁ νώτοις χαλκέοισιν οὐρανόν,

where the altered line trips glibly off the tongue like running water relieved from an obstruction. Porson, with characteristic modesty, and dislike of recondite theories, satisfied himself