against the scornful attack of Gibbon. Porson naturally incurred great odium on account of the side which he took in this controversy. One old lady who had him in her will for a legacy of £300, cut it down to £30 when she heard that he had written a book against Christianity. In 1792, he resigned his fellowship, as he found that he could not conscientiously take orders for the church. Some of his friends now raised a fund to preserve him from want, and about £100 a-year was secured. He was also appointed to the Regius professorship of Greek in the university of Cambridge-an office, indeed, only worth £40 a-year; yet so splendid was his learning, so admirable his taste, so vigorous and epigrammatic his style of criticism, that he might easily have-by the exercise of a moderate degree of continuous literary labour-succeeded in gaining a handsome income. But already 'two devils had him in their gripe '-procrastination and a raging thirst for drink-and they held him firm to the end of his melancholy career. The only thing he ever did in connection with his Greek professorship was to deliver a prælectio so excellent, that, it has been said, if he had passed from verbal to æsthetic criticisın, he would have surpassed all his countrymen in that too. In 1794 he edited the plays of Eschylus for the Foulis press, Glasgow; and between 1797 and 1801, four of Euripides, the Hecuba, the Orestes, the Phanissa and the Medea. He also collated the Harleian MS. of the Odyssey for the Grenville Homer. In 1806 he was ap

pointed librarian of the 'London Institution' with a salary of £200;. . He died of apoplexy, 25th September, 1808, in the 49th year of his age, and was buried with great pomp in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge.

His

critical acumen has never been matched in England. His tracts, reviews, letters, &c., were collected and edited, with a biographical notice, by Kidd, in six volumes... Rev. J. Selby Watson's Life of Richard Porson, M.A. (1861).”

See the

PORSONIANA.

I FIRST SAW Porson at the sale of Toup's library in 1781, and was introduced to him soon after. I was on the most intimate terms with him for the last twenty years of his life. In spite of all his faults and failings, it was impossible not to admire his integrity and his love of truth.

Person declared that the barned nothing while a schoolboy at Eton. Before I went there," he said, "I could nearly repeat by heart all the books which we used to read ia the school." The only thing in his Eton course which he recollected with pleasure was--rat-unting !. he used to talk with delight of the rat-hunts in the Long Hall.