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arrangement as in the portrait, and the countenance has at once a more animated and a more thoughtful expression than in the painting. The nose is long and aquiline, the cheek-bones high, and the mouth and chin slightly receding. The face is decidedly that of a man of genius. But we cannot say that in either of the two likenesses the general expression is agreeable. Later in life, indeed, he seems to have become a sad spectacle. His face was described by an old acquaintance, who met him in 1807, as fiery and volcanic;" his nose, on which he had a perpetual "efflorescence," was covered with black patches; his clothes were so shabby, and his linen so dirty, that the waiter at a WestEnd hotel, where he was invited to dine, refused him admittance. But he seems for a long time to have been acceptable in general society, in spite of his late hours and fearful irregularities. Anecdotes are recorded of him which show that he had high animal spirits; and he is said once, for a wager, to have carried a young lady round the room in his teeth. His conversation, however, after a certain period of the evening, was not always fit for ladies. Rogers once took him to a party, where there were several women of fashion present, who were anxious to hear him talk. The Professor, who hated being made a lion, selected for his theme the songs of Vauxhall, and at last, we are told, "talked so oddly," that all the women retreated except the famous Lady Crewe, who was not to be frightened by any man. After this, says Rogers, "I brought him home as far as Piccadilly, where I am sorry to say I left him sick in the middle of the street." Sometimes he would regale a large party by reciting long passages of Homer in the original. But this probably was not done, as some writers imagine, for the purpose of creating wonder, but simply because the Professor would only give out what happened to be in his mind at the moment.

At those houses where he was on intimate terms, an understanding had been come to with him that he was always to go away at eleven. Porson accepted the arrangement in perfect good faith, and invariably required that it should be carried out to the letter; for "though he never attempted to exceed the hour limited, he would never stir before," and he warmly resented any attempt to make him. At one house only was his time extended to twelve: this was Bennet Langton's, who was perhaps, says Mr. Watson, corrupted by the example of Dr. Johnson. There were of course houses in which the Professor, so to speak, took the bit between his teeth, and did exactly as he pleased. Horne Tooke's was one of these, as the following story illustrates:

"Horne Tooke once asked Porson to dine with him in Richmond Buildings; and, as he knew that Porson had not been in bed for the

three preceding nights, he expected to get rid of him at an early hour. Porson, however, kept Tooke up the whole night; and in the morning the latter, in perfect despair, said, 'Mr. Porson, I am engaged to meet a friend at breakfast at a coffee-house in Leicester Square.' 'Oh,' replied Porson, 'I will go with you;' and he accordingly did so. Soon after they had reached the coffee-house, Tooke contrived to slip out, and, running home, ordered his servant not to let Mr. Porson in, even if he should attempt to batter down the door. A man,' observed Tooke, 'who could sit up four nights successively, could sit up forty.""

As soon as Porson had been "turned out of doors like a dog," which was his favourite expression when he received the slightest hint to move, even if it was one o'clock in the morning, he used generally to adjourn to the Cider Cellars, where he was completely king of his company. "Dick," said one of these companions, "can beat us all; he can drink all night and spout all day." From the Cider Cellars he got home as he could to Essex Court, where he had chambers over the late Mr. Baron Gurney, whose slumbers were a good deal disturbed by the habits of his learned neighbour. On one occasion he was awakened by a tremendous thump upon the floor over-head. Porson, it turned out, had come home drunk, and had tumbled down in his room and put out his candle; for Gurney soon after heard him fumbling at the staircase-lamp, and cursing the nature of things, which made him see two flames instead of one. When we consider that this was the mode of life he pursued from week's end to week's end, we shall rather wonder that he wrote so much than that he did not write more.

Porson's drinking excesses are fully confirmed by this volume. But the most remarkable feature in his love of liquor was, that he would drink any thing. Port-wine, indeed, was his favourite beverage. But in default of this he would take whatever he could lay his hands on. He has been known to swallow a bottle of spirits of wine, an embrocation, and, when nothing better was forthcoming, he would even drench himself with water. He would sometimes take part in a contest of drinking; and once, having threatened after dinner to "kick and cuff" his host, Horne Tooke, the latter proposed to settle the affair by drinking: the weapons to be quarts of brandy. When the second bottle was half finished, Porson fell under the table. The conqueror drank another glass to the speedy recovery of his antagonist, and having given instructions to his servants to take great care of the Professor, walked up-stairs to tea as if nothing had occurred. Tooke, however, feared Porson in conversation, because he would often remain silent for a long time, and then "pounce upon him with his terrible memory." In 1798 Parr writes to Dr. Burney, who had recommended that Porson's opinion should be taken on

some classical question, "Porson shall do it,-and he will do it. I know his terms when he bargains with me: two bottles instead of one, six pipes instead of two, burgundy instead of claret, liberty to sit till five in the morning instead of sneaking into bed at one ;-these are his terms." At breakfast he preferred porter, and frequently ate bread and cheese; a circumstance which shows him to have had a truly heroic constitution. What degenerate toper of the present day could drink a bottle of brandy overnight, and und stomach for such viands the next morning? He took his porter at breakfast as copiously as Johnson took his tea. At Eton he once kept Mrs. Goodall at the breakfast-table during the whole of Sunday morning; and when the Doctor returned from church, he found the sixth pot of porter being just carried into his house. What, after all, were Mrs. Thrale's complacencies to Johnson compared with the courtesy of this Christian woman to the Professor? In his eating Porson was very easily satisfied.

"He went once to the Bodleian to collate a manuscript, and, as the work would occupy him several days, Routh, the President of Magdalen, who was leaving home for the long vacation, said to him at his departure, 'Make my house your home, Mr. Porson, during my absence; for my servants will have orders to be quite at your command, and to procure you whatever you please.' When he returned, he asked for the account of what the Professor had had during his stay. The servant brought the bill, and the Doctor, glancing at it, observed a fowl entered in it every day. 'What!' said he, did you provide for Mr. Porson no better than this, but oblige him to dine every day on fowl?' 'No, sir,' replied the servant; but we asked the gentleman the first day what he would have for dinner, and, as he did not seem to know very well what to order, we suggested a fowl. When we went to him about dinner any day afterwards, he always said, "The same as yesterday;" and this was the only answer we could get from him.'"

But undoubtedly the most characteristic anecdote of him is contained in a letter from Mr. Hughes to Mr. Upcott, detailing an interview which the former enjoyed with Porson in 1807, when the Professor happened to be at Cambridge. Hughes was reading for his degree, and through the interest of his tutor, Mr. Hustler, he was procured the advantage of a little private "coaching" with Porson.

"After almost an hour's occupation in this manner, he said, 'Lay aside your pen, and listen to the history of a man of letters,—how he became a sordid miser from a thoughtless prodigal, a . . . . from a . . . ., and a misanthrope from a morbid excess of sensibility.' (I forget the intermediate step in the climax.) He then commenced a narrative of his own life, from his entrance at Eton School, through all the most remarkable periods, to the day of our conversation I was particularly amused with the account of his school-anecdotes, the tricks he used to

play upon his master and schoolfellows, and the little dramatic pieces which he wrote for private representation. From these he passed to his academical pursuits and studies, his election to the Greek professorship, and his ejection from his fellowship through the influence of Dr. Postlethwaite, who, though he had promised it to Porson, exerted it for a relation of his own. 'I was then,' said the Professor, almost destitute in the wide world, with less than 401. a year for my support, and without a profession; for I never could bring myself to subscribe Articles of Faith. I used often to lie awake the whole night, and wish

for a large pearl.'

He then gave me a history of his life in London, when he took chambers in the Temple, and read at times immoderately hard. He very much interested me by a curious interview which he had with a girl of the town, who came into his chambers by mistake, and who showed so much cleverness and ability in a long conversation with him, that he declared she might with proper cultivation have become another Aspasia. He also recited to me, word for word, the speech with which he accosted Dr. Postlethwaite, when he called at his chambers, and which he had long prepared against such an occurrence. At the end of this oration, the Doctor said not a word, but burst into tears and left the room. Porson also burst into tears when he finished the

recital of it to me.

In this manner five hours passed away; at the end of which the Professor, who had finished the second bottle of my friend's sherry, began to clip the king's English, to cry like a child at the close of his periods, and in other respects to show marks of extreme debility. At length he rose from his chair, staggered to the door, and made his way down-stairs without taking the slightest notice of his companion. I retired to my college; and next morning was informed by my friend that he had been out upon a search, the previous evening, for the Greek Professor, whom he discovered near the outskirts of the town, leaning upon the arm of a dirty bargeman, and amusing him by the most humorous and laughable anecdotes. I never even saw Porson after this day; but I shall never cease to regret that I did not commit his history to writing whilst it was fresh in my memory."

It is but right, however, to add that Porson could place a strong constraint upon himself when necessary. When he went down to stay with his sisters, in the year 1804, it is said that he only took two glasses of wine a day for eleven weeks.

Porson was a man of ready wit and repartee. When asked by a Scotch stranger at the Gray's-Inn Coffee-house if Bentley were not a Scotchman, he replied, "No, sir; Bentley was a Greek scholar." When a gentleman said to him at the close of a fierce dispute, "My opinion of you is most contemptible, sir," "I never," said Porson, "knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible." He said Bishop Pearson would have been a first-rate critic in Greek if he hadn't muddled his brains with divinity. Dr. Parr once asked him, in his pompous manner before a large com

pany, what he thought about the introduction of moral and physical evil into the world. "Why, doctor," said Porson, "I think we should have done very well without them."

A great point in Porson's favour is the frugality and honesty with which he passed through a life so beset with temptations as his own. He once, shortly after the loss of his fellowship, lived a month on a guinea, and at the same time used to walk backwards and forwards between London and Cambridge in a day. Though his income was so small, and his habits apparently so reckless, at his death he owed nobody a shilling. And when we contrast this behaviour with that of the men of letters who had far less reason to think themselves ill-treated than Porson had, we shall admit that it well deserves to be recorded. His opinion of himself was also unfeignedly humble. Any body, he said, could do what he had done, if they would only take as much trouble. He used to say often that he should be only remembered by his notes, and that he should be quite satisfied if it was said of him after three hundred years, that "one Porson lived towards the close of the eighteenth century who did a good deal for the text of Euripides.'

ART. VI.-MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.

Martin Chuzzlewit. By Charles Dickens. Library Edition. Illustrated with the Original Plates. London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.

THE issue of a new edition of Martin Chuzzlewit tempts us to devote a few pages to the consideration of what we venture to think the most brilliant and entertaining of all the works of Mr. Dickens. This new edition is in a very convenient form, and is clearly and handsomely printed; it contains, moreover, the illustrations published in the original issue, and therefore those happy young people to whom Martin Chuzzlewit is unknown may enjoy its perusal with every advantage. We do not pretend to have any observations to offer on so familiar a work that can have much novelty for the established admirers of Mr. Dickens. But as this work is, we think, his most characteristic work, it may be worth while to examine briefly the composition of its leading characters and scenes, in order that we may see how persons and events that have now become a part, not only of the literature, but of the ordinary conversation of Englishmen, were first worked out by the author.

There are especially three parts of Martin Chuzzlewit that