Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/543

Rh P O R S O N 523 The brilliant promise of the parish clerk s son naturally became known to the clergyman ; and when he was eleven years old the Rev. T. Hewitt, the curate of East Huston and two neighbouring villages, took charge of his educa tion, keeping him and one of his brothers at his house at Bacton during the week, and sending them home for the Sunday. Mr Hewitt taught him with his own boys, taking him through the ordinary Latin authors, Caesar, Terence, Ovid, and Virgil ; before this he had made such progress in mathematics as to be able to solve questions out of the Ladies Diary. In addition to this Mr Hewitt brought him under the notice of Mr Norris of Witton Park, who sent him to Cambridge and had him examined by Professor Lambert, the two tutors of Trinity, Postlethwaite and Collier, and the well-known mathematician Atwood, then assistant tutor ; the result was so favourable a report of his knowledge and abilities that Mr Norris determined to provide for his education so as to fit him for the university. This was in 1773. It was found impossible to get him into Charterhouse, and he was entered on the foundation of Eton in August 1774. Of his Eton life Person had not very pleasant recollec tions, but he was a popular boy among his schoolfellows ; and two dramas he wrote for performance in the Long Chamber are still remembered. His marvellous memory was of course noticed ; but at first he seems to have some what disappointed the expectations of his friends, as his composition was weak, and his ignorance of quantity kept him behind several of his inferiors. He went to Eton too late to have any chance of succeeding to a scholarship at King s College. In 1777 he suffered a great loss from the death of his patron Mr Norris ; but contributions from Etonians to aid in the funds for his maintenance at the university were readily supplied, and he found a successor to Mr Norris in Sir George Baker, the well-known phy sician, who was at that time president of the college of physicians. And chiefly through his means Person was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, as a pensioner on 28th March 1778, and commenced his residence there soon afterwards, matriculating in April of that year. It is said that what first biassed his mind towards critical researches was the gift of a copy of Toup s Longinus by Dr Davies, the headmaster of Eton, for a good exercise ; but it was Bentley and Dawes to whom he looked as his immediate masters. His critical career was begun systematically while an undergraduate ; and it was doubtless during the period of his residence at Cambridge that his marvellous stores of learning were laid up for future use. He became a scholar of Trinity College in 1780, won the Craven uni versity scholarship in 1781, and took his degree of B.A. in 1782, as third senior optime, obtaining soon afterwards the first chancellor s medal for classical studies. The same year he was elected Fellow of Trinity College, a very un usual thing for a junior bachelor of arts, as the junior bachelors were very rarely allowed to be candidates for fellowships, a regulation which lasted from 1667 when Isaac Newton was elected till 1818 when Connop Thirl- wall became a fellow. Person graduated M.A. in 1785. Having thus early secured his independence, he turned his thoughts to publication. The first occasion of his ap pearing in print was in a short notice of Schutz s sEschylus in Maty s Eevieiv, written in 1783. This review contains several other essays by his hand ; especially may be men tioned the reviews of Brunck s Aristophanes (an admirable specimen of clear and vigorous English, and containing a very able summary of the Greek comic poet s chief excel lences and defects), Weston s Hermesianax, and Hunting- ford s Apology for the Monostrophics. But it was to the tragedians, and especially to ^Eschylus, that his mind was then chiefly directed. He began a correspondence with David Ruhnken, the veteran scholar of Leyden, requesting to be favoured with any fragments of vEschylus that Ruhnken had come across in his collection of inedited lexicons and grammarians, and sending him, as a proof that he was not undertaking a task for which he was un equal, some specimens of his critical powers, and especially of his restoration of a very corrupt passage in the Sitpplices (673-677) by the help of a nearly equally corrupt passage of Plutarch s Eroticus. As the syndics of the Cambridge press were proposing to re-edit Stanley s JEschylus, the editorship was offered to Person ; but he declined to undertake it on the conditions laid down, namely, of re printing Stanley s corrupt text and incorporating all the variorum notes, however worthless. He was especially anxious that the Medicean MS. at Florence should be col lated for the new edition, and offered to undertake the collation at an expense not greater than it would have cost if done by a person on the spot ; but the syndics re fused the offer, the vice-chancellor (then Mr Torkington, master of Clare Hall) observing that Mr Person might collect his MSS. at home. In 1786, a new edition of Hutchinson s Anabasis of Xenophon being called for, Porson was requested by the publisher to supply a few notes, which he did in conjunc tion with the Rev. W. Whiter, editor of the Etymologicon universale. These give the first specimen of that neat and terse style of Latin notes in which he was afterwards to appear without a rival. They also show already his intimate acquaintance with his two favourite authors, Plato and Athenaeus, and a familiarity with Eustathius s commentary on Homer. The next year, 1787, the Notse, breves ad Toupii Emenda- tiones in Suidam were written, though they did not appear till 1790 in the new edition of Toup s book pub lished at Oxford. These first made Person s name known as a scholar of the first rank, and carried his fame beyond England. The letters he received from Heyne and Her mann, still preserved in the library of Trinity College, and written before his Euripides was published, afford a sufficient proof of this. In his notes he does not hesitate to point out the errors of Toup and others ; at the same time he speaks of Toup s book as &quot;opus illud aureum,&quot; and states that his writing the notes at all is due to the admiration he had for it. They contain some very brilliant emendations of various authors ; but the necessity of having Toup s own notes with them has prevented their ever being reprinted in a separate form. During this year, in the Gentleman s Magazine, he wrote the three letters on Hawkins s Life of Johnson which have been reprinted by Mr Kidd in his Tracts and Criticisms of Porson, and in the volume of Person s Correspondence. They are admirable specimens of the dry humour so characteristic of the writer, and afford also proofs of his intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare and the other English dramatists and poets. In the same periodical, in the course of the years 1788 and 1789, appeared the Letters to Archdeacon Travis, on the spurious verse 1 John v. 7 (collected in 1790 into a volume), which must be considered to have settled the question as to the spurious- ness of the verse for ever. Gibbon s verdict on the book, that it was &quot; the most acute and accurate piece of criticism since the days of Bentley,&quot; may be considered as some what partial, as it was in defence of him that Porson had entered the field against Travis. But in the very masterly sketch of Gibbon s work and style in the pre face Porson does not write in a merely flattering tone. It is to be wished that on such a subject the tone of levity had been modified. But Porson says in his preface that he could treat the subject in no other manner, if he treated it at all : &quot; To peruse such a mass of falsehood and