with ascertaining that such was beyond dispute the practice of the tragic poets. But Hermann, who was just beginning to raise his head above the scholars of Germany by his treatise upon Greek metres, nettled that any one should have made the discovery except himself, endeavoured to appropriate some part of the glory by laying down the law upon which the practice was based.

"The reason why," said he, " such a position of the words, xaλkéo város oupavór, must displease the ear, is this. Since at the end of a verse, when the lungs of an actor are almost exhausted, a gentler flow of pronunciation is required, all harsher sounds offend the ear, and offend it the more the greater the difficulty of uttering them, such a collocation of the words as disjoins the latter portion of the verse by too lengthened a sound from the former, and thus hinders and retards the easy flow of the numbers, is carefully avoided."

Elmsley, who has always enjoyed the reputation of a sound and elegant scholar, greatly applauded this explanation, dwelling on the relief afforded to the "exhausted lungs of a corpulent performer" by having an iambus instead of a spondee to pronounce in the place in question. Upon this Mr. Watson observes with great gravity that performers generally are not corpulent, and that he cannot therefore accept the philosophical suggestion of Hermann. But if actors are not generally fat, singers are; and if Mr. Watson had remembered that the performers in a Greek play partook as much of the latter character as of the former, he would perhaps have reconsidered his judgment. That the practice in question gradually grew more common, as it was found to be more euphonious, till it at length became a fixed rule, is probably what really happened; and though it is very likely that the effect predicated of it by Hermann was experienced by the heavy fathers of the Athenian stage, yet we don't think it is necessary to suppose that "the pause" did not become law till some member of this meritorious class had been publicly choked with a spondee.

Certain discoveries in the structure of other Greek metres, and some minor improvements in the department of orthography and prosody, are also attributable to Porson. As a scholar, he seems to us to have differed from Bentley as the metaphysical whole is said to differ from the logical-the whole of intension from the whole of extension. Both gave a great stimulus to the study of Greek. But Bentley produced that effect by the wide range of his learning, and the notice into which he brought Greek literature in general; Porson, by the completeness with which he exhausted one chamber of that literature, and the additional attractions which he threw round the dramatic poetry of

Greece in the certainty which he imparted to its laws. We should, however, be more inclined to think that Porson could have rivalled Bentley, than that Bentley could have rivalled Porson. Porson's learning was considerable; his intellect belonged to the same vigorous order of minds; and he had, what Bentley had not, a judgment rarely at fault, and so great a love of certainty, that he seems never to have ventured on a conjecture till his judgment was entirely satisfied. The result is, that none of his dicta have been reversed, though tried by the most hostile criticism, and that he remains to this day among scholars what Hervey is to the science of medicine, or Newton to that of mathematics. Whether Porson really knew Greek as well as Bentley has been sometimes doubted, in consequence of his own admission that he seldom looked at a page of Thucydides in which he didn't find something that he couldn't construe. We don't attach much importance to the admission ourselves. But if it proves any thing, it only proves that Porson was second to Bentley in a universal familiarity with Greek literature. For Bentley was perhaps almost the only man, even if he were such, who could have been depended upon to construe at first sight a difficult Greek author to whom he had given no special study. But this inferiority was exactly that one which superior industry would have corrected, and which, when corrected, would have brought up Porson to very near the stature of Bentley. We are aware that this opinion is at variance with that of one very excellent judge, namely, De Quincey, who thinks that Bentley excelled all other English scholars in native power, as much as he excelled all other men in acquired scholarship. We shall have more to say on this point hereafter. But it must never be forgotten that Porson's habits of intemperance early began to impair his mental vigour, and that he had scarcely reached his intellectual prime when he left off working altogether. As a writer of Latin, Bentley was superior to Porson, though both were obnoxious to the charge of indulging in Anglicisms; but Bentley's Anglicisms, like Porson's, were purely verbal ones, and never extended to the thought. It is probable also, though this is a point on which we have no certain information, that they may have agreed in opinion upon the value of modern Greek and Latin verses, which Porson held in great contempt. This sentiment, however, was widely and essentially distinct from the views of the Sydney-Smith school of sneerers. Porson valued versification highly as an instrument of education. What he laughed at was the notion that Greek and Latin verses could have sufficient independent merit to justify their publication. We must remember that in Porson's time it was thought possible that poetry could still be written in these lan

guages. It was the custom of many real poets in those days to attach great importance to their Latin compositions. Gray thought his Latin poems superior to his English. Cowper published a great number of Latin verses. Vincent Bourne was called a better Latin poet than Tibullus; and the Muse Etonenses, among the names prefixed to which Porson would see many whom he knew to be greatly his inferiors, were given to the world as unquestionable specimens of poetry. All this no doubt irritated Porson, who was conscious of his own deficiency in that accomplishment which sheds a certain grace over the harder and more solid acquirements of scholarship, and is to deep learning what elegance of manner is to physical or mental power. But Porson knew from experience the peculiar advantages which verse-composition possesses for inculcating niceties of language; and he would have been the last man to condemn it as at present practised in our great public schools and universities.

Porson's appearance in the field as an editor of Euripides of course drew down upon him the usual series of assaults from his learned contemporaries. First and foremost among them was Gilbert Wakefield, the editor of Lucretius, a man of some taste and culture, but with little pretensions to scholarship by the side of Porson. He himself had written on Euripides; and when he found in Porson's preface no mention of his own labours, he immediately walked off and wrote Diatribe Extemporalis upon the subject. All the criticisms contained in it are, however, ludicrously trivial, though the language is disproportionately violent. Porson had happened to overlook the fact that Wakefield had once edited the word oorós as a dissyllable, and to say that he himself was the first who had done so. Upon which Wakefield hurls at his head the line of Homer

'Ατρείδη μὴ ψεῦδε· ἐπιστάμενος σάφα εἰπεῖν.

Porson, acknowledging the error in his notes to the second edition, humorously says: Cum igitur dixi "in Euripide usque ad hunc diem semper editum est oïorós," erravi, sive tu mavis, humanissime lector, MENTITUS SUM.

Wakefield having shot his bolt, and made no impression, was presently followed up by Hermann. This critic could not away with Porson's canon about the anapest; and he adduced some excellent reasons to show why the tragedians should have employed them more liberally than Porson was willing to allow. The Professor's answer, however, was very simple, namely, that they had not done so. He had satisfied his own mind by induction that such was the case. And now, in the supplement to the preface, he came down upon Hermann with a weight of argument and authority which effectually silenced him:

"Should any scholar of the nineteenth century,' says Elmsley, 'venture to maintain the admissibility of an anapest, not included in a proper name, into any place of a Greek tragic senarius except the first foot, be would assuredly be ranked with those persons, if any such persons remain, who deny the motion of the earth, or the circulation of the blood."

Hermann, however, still cherished the idea of maintaining his ground, and "is said to have had in contemplation a defence of the anapest in the third place." This important fact is given on the authority of Dr. Kidd; but the design, if ever entertained by Hermann, seems to have been discreetly abandoned. Porson ever afterwards spoke of Wakefield and Hermann together, and used to say, that "whatever he wrote in future should be written in such a manner that they should not reach it with their paws, though they stood on their hind legs to get at it."

Elmsley was an antagonist, as far as he was an antagonist, of a very different character. He had scholarship enough to appreciate the value of Porson, in which he differed from Wakefield, and generosity enough to acknowledge it, in which he differed from Hermann. His famous critique of Porson's Hecuba is to be found in vol. xix. of the Edinburgh Review. It adopts in the main all Porson's principles, and may be said, as far as criticism could do so, to have established his reputation in England. Elmsley, however, was distrusted by Porson as a sort of literary purloiner, and was accused of using the emendations of other men, and passing them off as his own.

Porson, of course, had plenty of enemies. But we don't find so much of the odium scholasticum in these pages as we had anticipated. One little touch, however, is too good to be omitted. A scholar, called Bryant, happened to be at loggerheads with Porson. "And from this time forward," says an intimate friend of the Professor, "Bryant abused him violently behind his back, not only because they thought differently on the subject of Troy, but," &c. Porson, however, never indulged very much in strong language himself. Irony was his chief weapon of defence, though he could be sarcastic enough when he chose; as when he said of Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, to whom a rich man, who had only seen him once, had left a large legacy, "if he had seen him twice, he would have got nothing."

Porson's performances in English literature, though not considerable, seem to us at least to have more merit than De Quincey is willing to admit. His longest, and indeed his only, work, beyond articles in Reviews and squibs, is the Letters to Archdeacon Travis, on the subject of the disputed text in the first Epistle of St. John,-" There are three that bear record in heaven," &c. The question is, whether the seventh verse of

the fifth chapter of that Epistle, and the words "in earth" in the eighth verse, are genuine or interpolated. The balance of opinion had always been against their genuineness. But when Gibbon reproduced this opinion in his history, Archdeacon Travis wrote five letters to refute him. These letters fell into Porson's hands while he was engaged on those theological studies to which we have already adverted. He resolved to answer them; and, as the archdeacon had really a very weak case, the refutation was triumphant. A question which turned on the significance of marginal annotations, the comparative value of Mss., and the probability of interpolations, was quite in Porson's own way. The question, however, is devoid of theological interest, and the subject is perhaps too much within the domain of Porson's peculiar talents, for his treatment of it to be cited a proof of the general vigour of his mind. But that Porson could write capital English is shown both by his character of Gibbon's history contained in these letters, as well as by an essay on Aristophanes, which appeared in one of the Reviews. shall quote a short paragraph from each:

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"An impartial judge, I think, must allow that Mr. Gibbon's History is one of the ablest performances of its kind that has ever appeared. His industry is indefatigable; his accuracy scrupulous; his reading, which, indeed, is sometimes ostentatiously displayed, immense; his attention always awake; his memory retentive; his style emphatic and expressive; his periods harmonious. His reflections are often just and profound; he pleads eloquently for the rights of mankind, and the duty of toleration; nor does his humanity ever slumber except when women are ravished, or the Christians persecuted."

Of Aristophanes he writes:

"Of the indecency which abounds in Aristophanes, unjustifiable as it certainly is, it may, however, be observed, that different ages differ extremely in their ideas of this offence. Among the ancients plain speaking was the fashion; nor was the ceremonious delicacy introduced which has taught men to abuse each other with the utmost politeness, and express the most indecent ideas in the most modest language. The ancients had little of this. They were accustomed to call There is anoa spade a spade; to give every thing its proper name. ther sort of indecency which is infinitely more dangerous, which corrupts the heart without offending the ear. I believe there is no man of sound judgment who would not rather let his son read Aristophanes than Congreve or Vanbrugh. In all Aristophanes' indecency there is He never dresses nothing that can allure, but much that must deter. up the most detestable vices in an amiable light, but generally, by describing them in their native colours, makes the reader disgusted with them. His abuse of the most eminent citizens may be accounted for upon similar principles. Besides, in a republic, freedom of speech was