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In one important respect his loss can hardly be over-estimated. By common consent he enjoyed a dictatorship in the English world of letters. There were greater thinkers and profounder scholars than he in our republic, but none who so thoroughly conciliated the command of real learning with the power to touch "the popular fibre." It is a great thing for a country when its first man in so difficult a department is thoroughly honest, and uninfluenced by the little spites and jealousies that actuate minor men. Educated Frenchmen are apt to contrast disparagingly the intellectual powers of Voltaire and Rousseau with those of Dr. Johnson and Dr. Arnold. We admit that the comparison is not altogether to our advantage. But when all has been said, we may at least point with satisfaction to the higher moral tone which was the secret of the Englishmen's ascendency. How much worthless writing, how many groundless assertions, would be spared us in the ninety and odd volumes of Voltaire, if his personal quarrels with priests, with Frederick of Prussia, and with Maupertuis, had been kept in the background! A literary squabble is among the most despicable spectacles in the world; but a man of genius who degrades his profession into one long literary quarrel, is certain to spread the contagion of low aims and a debased style over all society. It would be a curious speculation to trace the influences of Swift and Pope in Grub Street, when rancorous abuse was as fashionable as a flashy rhetoric or a foggy philosophical cant now are among the lower literary brotherhood. It is a great change for the better that the faults of modern literature should mostly be mere absurdities of style instead of a moral taint. And amongst those who have mainly contributed to this result, we are disposed to claim a high place for the true-hearted impulsive man who never but once so far forgot himself as to criticise a personal enemy, and who prefaced his collected works with a generous expression of regret that he had once done injustice to an opponent.

ART. V.-PORSON.

The Life of Richard Porson, Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, 1792-1808. By the Rev. John Selby Watson, M.A., M.R.S.L. London: Longman. 1861.

AN interest attaches to the name of Porson of a peculiar and, in one sense, historical nature. He was the last specimen of a class. We see in Porson the scholar pure and simple, unadulterated by any admixture of the schoolmaster, the conventional man of letters, or the hack bookseller's translator. We

think of him with the same kind of wonder as of the last wolf killed in Scotland, or the last highwayman hanged at Tyburn. He was one of that old race to whom Greek and Latin were the world. He asked for nothing but a little bread and a certain amount of sack, and then to be allowed to pass his existence in the contemplation of classical literature. Of money he was utterly careless; and by that we do not mean that he was improvident, but that his wants were really very few. To the pomps and vanities of the world he was unfeignedly indifferent. He never felt the ambition which agitated Parr, of driving his own coach-and-four. His clothes were so shabby that the very waiters at hotels refused him entrance. His chambers were garrets. And his chief drink, when he had to pay for it himself, was beer. Nor is there the slightest evidence on record to show that he repined at these circumstances. On the contrary, though he had less money than is now thought sufficient for a junior usher, he did not even spend that. From 1782 to 1792 he had nothing but his fellowship, which was only 100l. a year. From 1792 to 1806 he had only an annuity of the same amount, 40%. a year from his professorship, and such small sums as he obtained from the booksellers, which could not have raised his income to more than 2007. a year. And it was only during the last year and a half of his life that this amount was doubled by his appointment at the London Institution. Yet he left behind him nearly a thousand pounds in money, and two thousand pounds' worth of books. It is clear, therefore, that, as far as money is concerned, Porson was perfectly at his ease. He did not seek to enrich himself by his learning, or he might certainly have done so without difficulty. He would not barter his independence for the wealthy slavery of a schoolmaster. He did not even attempt to fill his pockets by the practice of journalism, a profession for which his nervous and sarcastic English style especially fitted him. He would not sully the purity of the scholar's gown by any such devices as these. He asked only that the world would let him live, and in return he would give the world some ideas about Euripides, and some information on the Greek iambic. It is this unconscious trueness to his vocation, this unity of purpose and of work throughout his life, which make Porson so interesting a study. This it is which surrounds him with a certain amount of real dignity as he lies drunk in the gutter, or cries over his second bottle of sherry, narrating how he lost his fellowship. There is a nobleness about the love of learning for its own sake which redeems a multitude of faults. And there is a singularity in the adoption of scholarship as a profession which adds interest to the most uneventful career. These two attractive qualities are

united in the life of Porson. And therefore, though his days were few and evil, his life to some extent monotonous, and his work only a fraction of what it should have been, it is more the fault of Mr. Watson than of his subject if the present work is not profoundly interesting.

We cannot think it has been made as interesting as it might have been. The arrangement is faulty, and the facts are only such as almost every body interested in such subjects is perfectly well acquainted with already. It may of course be that no new materials could be found to add to our stock of information. Yet we cannot help thinking that a diligent research among the traditions of London life might have yielded some return in the shape of anecdotes or traits of character, which the lovers of biography would have welcomed. For Porson is a man of whom, before all others, we require a picture. It is with him, as with Dr. Johnson, not so much what he wrote as what he did and what he said, that we really thirst to ascertain. Could no ancient woman have been discovered in the precincts of the Temple who remembered the Professor's laundress? Could no venerable debauchee have been dug up who remembered his demeanour at the Cider Cellars? Possibly it never occurred to Mr. Watson to undertake these investigations. A decorous College Don would naturally undervalue the extreme importance of these social reminiscences. And this is one feature in Mr. Watson's character which disqualifies him for being the biographer of Porson. But if his respectability has stood in his light in this matter, we might at least have anticipated that he would have compensated for it to some extent by his scholarship. But even on this point, though we speak on the subject with all due diffidence, he scarcely seems quite up to the mark; for instance, here is a specimen of Porson's early Greek iambics, written for the Craven Scholarship in 1781. We quote them entire, English and Greek, as they cannot fail of being interesting to very many of our readers:

"Stranger, whoe'er thou art that view'st this tomb,
Know that here lies, in the cold arms of death,

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,
And, with the virtues and the graces, tune

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,
Ισθ ̓ ὡς ὁδ' ενδον σωμ' Αλεξιδος νεου
(Ψυχρον παραγκαλισμα ταρταρου) στέγει
Μολπης γλυκυτατης αἱμυλωτερου φρενας
Ουδ' ήν άθαλπτος Κυπριδος τερπνῳ βελει,
Ουδ' αν παρωσε τον φιλανθρωπον τρόπον,
Αρθμον θ' ἑταιρων αλλ' εκειν' αλσος κατα
Εκουσαν εζήτησε Μουσαν• Χρηστότης τ'
Εγελα παραστάσ'· αἱν ἑκαστης ενθαδε
Νυκτος παρουσαιν, αἱ ῥεται τε και καλαι
Χαριτες συνωμίλησαν ειτα τον φίλον
Ποθουσ' εραστην δυσθροῳ μελωδία,
Ὃν αρτι θαλλοντ' ηρινῷ καιρῷ βίου
Εδρεψατ' Αιδης. ΕΙΘ' ΕΤ' ΕΝ ΖΩΟΙΣΙΝ ΗΝ.
Ευχη ματην αρ', ω Ξεν', ήδε το στομα
Πεφευγεν ου γαρ μηποτ' εισοψει νεον

Τεθνηχ' ὁ δη—ταχιστα πασχουσ' οἱ 'γαθοι.

On which Mr. Watson comments as follows:

“ 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."

It is astonishing that Mr. Watson should be unaware of the rule laid down by Porson himself at p. xiii. of the original " Preface," afterwards accepted by Elmsley, and now incorporated in all our best Greek Grammars (e.g. Jelf, vol. i. p. 11), to the effect that ξεῖνος, together with two or three other Ionic forms of the same kind, is allowable in the tragic iambic. Sophocles, for instance, has it three times in the dip. Col. xxxiii. 1014 and 1096. Again, as regards the pause, both the eighth and ninth lines contain a violation of it. But the point is, that the eighth line, which Mr. Watson has not mentioned, shows it much more forcibly than the ninth line, which he has. In the last line of all, too, there occurs a doubtful case which ought to have been mentioned. Again, at page 241 we have the following, the scholar alluded to is Gilbert Wakefield :

"Whatever expression he saw susceptible of a plausible alteration, he could not be content to leave unmolested. He could not allow what was good to be genuine or endurable, if he himself could excogitate something that he imagined better. We have an excellent example of this propensity in his letters to Fox. He is reading, with one of his children, the lines of Ovid's Tristia,

Parve, nec invideo, sine me, liber, ibis in urbem ;
Hei mihi! quò domino non licet ire tuo.
Vade, sed incultus, qualem decet exulis esse :

Infelix, habitum temporis hujus habe;

and thinks that he perceives something awkward and obscure in the construction' of the third verse. Surely, he says, we ought to read in cultu. Fox, in his reply, says, 'I showed your proposed alteration in the Tristia to a very good judge, who approved of it very much. I

confess, myself, that I like the old reading best, and think it more in Ovid's manner; but this perhaps is mere fancy.' The person to whom Fox showed the alteration must have been one of Wakefield's own character; a man ready to pull to pieces, and to change round for square, or square for round; but Fox's good sense inclined him to rest very well satisfied with what had satisfied others. Wakefield rejoins thus: 'In reading the passage, I was struck with an instantaneous repugnance of feeling to the connection of qualem with the participle incultus; and I am very much inclined to think (for confidence on these points of all others is most inexcusable and absurd) that no similar instance will easily be discovered.' Strange delusion! Whoever should seek for instances might find plenty of them; and it is surprising that Wakefield should not have recollected the common passage,

Facies non omnibus una,

Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum,

where the position of diversa with qualem is exactly the same as that of incultus with qualem."

But surely this whole criticism, both Wakefield's objection and Watson's answer, is mistaken. To understand liber after vade is in our opinion the right mode of construing the passage. The line, in fact, as far as the construction goes, might be written as follows:

Vade liber, qualem librum decet exulis esse;

qualem being governed by decet. So, too, in the illustration given, qualem is not dependent on diversa; for if qualem depended on diversa, the words would mean that the faces of sisters ought to be diverse, whereas they mean the precise contradictory of this.

As a writer Mr. Watson is very unequal. His opening reflections on the subject of biography are feeble to excess. One would think he was the first man to whom the conception of biography had occurred. But his narrative passages are well and rather effectively written; and the last few pages, descriptive of Porson's final illness and death, are a good specimen of vigorous and perspicuous English. We may now, however, dismiss Mr. Watson himself, and return to Porson, of whose life, manners, and services to literature we will give our readers such an epitome as may be collected from the present volume.

Porson's father was a weaver and parish-clerk at East Ruston in Norfolk. His mother was the daughter of a shoemaker at Bacton in the same county. Both father and mother had some attainments superior to those of the majority in their own rank of life. The one was an excellent arithmetician; the other had a taste for literature, was fond of reading Shakespeare, and was allowed the run of the vicar's library. Their son united in his own person the tastes of each parent; for he was naturally nearly

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