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Rh constraint, it has no foregoing analogue except perhaps The Pinner of Wakefield. No play preceding or contemporary yields an easier conversational prose, not even the Merry Wives."

PORTER, HORACE (1837-), American diplomatist and soldier, was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on the 15th of April 1837; son of David Rittenhouse Porter (1788-1867), governor of Pennsylvania in 1839-1845, and grandson of Andrew Porter (1743-1813), an officer in the Continental Army during the War of Independence, and surveyor-general of Pennsylvania from 1809 until his death. Horace Porter studied for a year (1854) at the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard University, and then entered the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in 1860, third in his class. During the Civil War he was chief of ordnance at the capture of Fort Pulaski; then served in the Army of the Potomac until after Antietam; was transferred to the west, where he took part in the battles of Chickamauga (for gallantry in which he received a congressional medal of honour in June 1902) and Chattanooga; and in April 1864 became aide-de-camp to General Grant, in which position he served until March 1869. He earned the brevet of captain at Fort Pulaski, that of major at the battle of the Wilderness, and that of lieutenant-colonel at New Market Heights, and in March 1865 was breveted colonel and brigadier-general. From August 1867 to January 1868, while General Grant was secretary of war ad interim, Porter was an assistant secretary, and from March 1869 to January 1873, when Grant was president, Porter was his executive secretary. He resigned from the army in December 1873, when he became vice-president of the Pullman Palace Car Company and held other business positions. From March 1897 to May 1905 he was United States ambassador to France. At his personal expense he conducted (1899-1905) a successful search for the body of John Paul Jones, who had died in Paris in 1792. For this he received (May 9, 1906) a unanimous vote of thanks of both Houses of Congress, and the privileges of the floor for life. In 1907 he was a member of the American delegation to the Hague Peace Conference. General Porter became well-known as a public speaker, and delivered orations at the dedication of General Grant's tomb in New York, at the centennial of the founding of West Point, and at the re-interment of the body of John Paul Jones at Annapolis. His publications include West Point Life (1866) and Campaigning with Grant (1897).

PORTER, JANE (1776-1850), British novelist, daughter of an army surgeon, was born at Durham in 1776. Her life and reputation are closely linked with those of her sister, (1780-1832), novelist, and her brother,  (1775-1842), painter and traveller. After their father's death, in 1779, the mother removed from Durham, their birthplace, to Edinburgh, where the children's love of romance was stimulated by their association with Flora Macdonald and the young Walter Scott. Mrs Porter moved to London, so that her son might study art, and the sisters subsequently resided at Thames Ditton and at Esher with their mother until her death in 1831. Anna Maria Porter published Artless Tales in 1793-1795, the first of a long series of works of which the more noteworthy are Walsh Colville (1797), Octavia (1798), The Lake of Killarney (1804), A Sailor's Friendship and a Soldier's Love (1805), The Hungarian Brothers (1807), Don Sebastian (1809), Ballads, Romances and other Poems (1811), The Recluse of Norway (1814), The Knight of St John (1817), The Fast of St Magdalen (1818), The Village of Mariendorpt (1821), Roche Blanche (1822), Honor O'Hara (1826) and Barony (1830). Jane Porter—whose intellectual power, though slower in development and in expression, was greater than her sister's—had in the meantime gained immediate popularity by her first work, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803), which was translated into several languages and procured her election as canoness of the Teutonic order of St Joachim. In 1810, four years before the appearance of Waverley, she attempted national romance in her Scottish Chiefs. The story of Wallace had been a favourite one in her childhood, and she was probably well acquainted with the poem of Blind Harry (Henry the Minstrel). Although the book lacked historical accuracy, and the figure of Wallace is a sentimental conception of the least convincing kind, the picturesque power of narration displayed by Miss Porter has saved the story from the oblivion which has overtaken the works of most of Scott's predecessors in historical fiction. Her later works included The Pastor's Fireside (1815), Duke Christian of Lüneburg (1824), Coming Out (1828) and The Field of Forty Footsteps (1828). In conjunction with her sister she published in 1826 the Tales round a Winter Hearth. She also wrote some plays, and frequent contributions to current periodical literature. Sir Edward Seaward's Diary (1831) was asserted by Miss Porter to be founded on documents placed in her hands by the author's family, but is generally regarded as pure fiction. The claim of her eldest brother, Dr William Ogilvie Porter, to its authorship rests on a memorial inscription in Bristol Cathedral, written by Jane. On the 21st of September 1832 Anna Maria died, and for the next ten years Jane became "a wanderer" amongst her relations and friends.

Robert Ker Porter had in his own way been scarcely less successful than his sisters. After two years of study at the Royal Academy he had gained reputation as a painter of altar-pieces and battle-scenes of imposing magnitude. He went to Russia as historical painter to the emperor in 1804, travelled in Finland and Sweden, where he received knighthood from Gustavus IV. in 1806, and accompanied Sir John Moore to Spain in 1808. In 1811 he returned to Russia and married a Russian princess. He was knighted by the Prince Regent in 1813. In 1817 he travelled to Persia by way of St Petersburg and the Caucasus, returning through Bagdad and western Asia Minor. He examined the ruins of Persepolis, making many valuable drawings and copying cuneiform inscriptions. In 1826 he became British consul in Venezuela. His services there were recognized by a knight commander ship of the Order of Hanover. Accounts of his wanderings are to be found in his Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden (1808), Letters from Portugal and Spain (1809), Narrative of the late Campaign in Russia (1813), and Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia &c., during the years 1817-1820 (1821-1822). After leaving Venezuela (1841) he again visited St Petersburg, and died there suddenly on the 4th of May 1842. Jane Porter, who had joined him in Russia, then returned to England and took up her residence with her eldest brother at Bristol, where she died on the 24th of May 1850.

PORTER, MARY (d. 1765), English actress, was brought to the attention of Betterton by Mrs Barry, who had seen her play the Fairy Queen at Bartholomew Fair. In his company she made her first appearance in 1699, in tragedy, in which she was at her best, although she also played a long list of comedy parts. When her friends, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle and Mrs Oldfield, had retired from the stage, she was left its undisputed queen. She died on the 24th of February 1765.

PORTER, NOAH (1811-1892), American educationalist and philosophical writer, was born in Farmington, Connecticut, on the 14th of December 1811. He graduated at Yale College, 1831, and laboured as a Congregational minister in Connecticut and Massachusetts, 1836-1846. He was elected professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Yale in 1846, and from 1871 to 1886 he was president of the college. He edited several editions of Noah Webster's English dictionary, and wrote on education, &c. His best-known work is The Human Intellect, with an Introduction upon Psychology and the Human Soul (1868), comprehending a general history of philosophy, and following in part the "common-sense" philosophy of the Scottish school, while accepting the Kantian doctrine of intuition, and declaring the notion of design to be a priori. He died in New Haven on the 4th of March 1892.