Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/545

Rh P O R P O R 525 Dr Elmsley has styled &quot; a book of which too much ill cannot easily be said,&quot; issued an edition of the Hecuba, in which Person s theories were openly attacked. Person at first took no notice of either, but went on quietly with his Euripides, publishing the Orestes in 1798, the Phcenissie in 1799, and the Medea in 1801, the last printed at the Cambridge press, and with the editor s name on the title-page. But there are many allusions to his antagonists in the notes on such points as the final v, the use of accents, &c. ; and on v. 675 of the Medea he holds up Hermann by name to scorn in caustic and taunting language. And it is more than probable that to Hermann s attack we owe the most perfect of his works, the supplement to the preface to the Hecuba, prefixed to the second edition published at Cambridge in 1802. Person s dislike of composition made him indolent, but he came forward now in his own defence, and probably of all the pieces of minute criticism that have appeared on those subjects the first place must be given to this. The beauty of the style, the steps by which the reader is carried on from one point to another, and the richness of illustration make it one of the most entertaining of diatribes. The metrical laws promulgated are laid down clearly, illustrated with an ample number of examples, and those that militate against them brought together and corrected, so that what had been beyond the reach of the ablest scholars of preceding times is made clear to the merest tyro. It is here that the laws of the iambic metre are fully explained, and the theory of the pause stated and proved, which had been only alluded to in the first edition. A third edition of the Hecuba appeared in 1808, and he left corrected copies of the other plays, of which new editions appeared soon after his death ; but these four plays were all that was accomplished of the projected edition of the poet. Porson lived six years after the second edition of the Hecuba was published, but his natural indolence and procrastination led him to put off carry ing on the work till death put a stop to this and all other literary projects. He found time, however, to execute his collation of the Harleian MS. of the Odyssey, published in the Grenville Homer in 1801, and to present to the Society of Antiquaries his wonderful conjectural restoration of the Rosetta stone. In 1806, when the London Institution was founded (then in the Old Jewry, since removed to Finsbury Circus), he was appointed principal librarian with a salary of &quot;200 a year and a suite of rooms ; and thus his latter years were made easy as far as money was concerned. Among Ids most intimate friends was Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle; and this friendship was cemented by his marriage with Perry s sister, Mrs Lunan, in Novem ber 1796. The marriage was a happy one for the short time it lasted, as Porson became more attentive to times and seasons, and would have been weaned from his habits of drinking ; but she sank in a decline a few months after her marriage (12th April 1797), and he returned to his chambers in the Temple and his old habits. Perry s friend ship was of great value to him in many ways ; but it induced him to spend too much of his time in writing for the Morning Chronicle ; indeed he was even accused of &quot;giving up to Perry what was meant for mankind,&quot; and the existence of some of the papers he wrote there can be only deplored. For some months before his death he had appeared to be failing : his great memory was not what it had been, and he had some symptoms of intermittent fever ; but on 19th September 1808 he was seized in the street with a fit of apoplexy, and after partially recovering sank on the 25th of that month at the comparatively early age of forty-nine. He was buried in Trinity College, close to the statue of Newton, at the opposite end of the chapel to where rest the remains of Bentley. His library was divided into two parts, one of which was sold by auction ; the other, containing the transcript of the Gale Photius, his books with MS. notes, and some letters from foreign scholars, was bought by Trinity College for 1000 guineas. His note-books were found to contain, in the words of Bishop Blomfield, &quot;a rich treasure of criticism in every branch of classical literature every thing carefully and correctly written and sometimes rewritten quite fit to meet the public eye, without any diminution or addi tion.&quot; They have been carefully rearranged of late years, and illustrate among other things his extraordinary penmanship and power of minute and accurate writing. Much still remains un published, though much has been given to the world. Monk, his successor as Greek professor, and Blomfield (both afterwards bishops) edited the Adversaria, consisting of the notes on Athenreus and the Greek poets, and his prelection on Euripides ; Dobree, afterwards Greek professor, the notes on Aristophanes and the lexicon of Photius. Besides these, from other sources, Professor Gaisford edited his notes on Pausanias and Suidas, and Mr Kidd collected his scattered reviews. And, when Bishop Burgess attacked his literary character on the score of his Letters to Travis, Professor Turton (afterwards Bishop of Ely) came forward with a vindication. In claiming for Porson the very high place he has always occu pied among Greek scholars, it is with those who went before him that he must be compared, if we would judge fairly of the advances he made in the knowledge of the language. In learning he was superior to Valckenaer, in accuracy to Bentley. It must be remem bered that in his day the science of comparative philology had scarcely any existence ; even the comparative value of MSS. was scarcely considered in editing an ancient author. With many editors MSS. were treated as of pretty much the same value, whether they were really from the hand of a trustworthy scribe, or what Bentley calls &quot;scrub manuscripts&quot; or &quot;scoundrel copies.&quot; Thus, if we are to find fault with Person s way of editing, it is that he does not make sufficient difference between the MSS. he uses, or point out the relative value of the early copies whether in MS. or print. Thus he collates very minutely Lascaris s edition of the Medea, mentioning even misprints in the text, rather from its rarity and costliness than from its intrinsic value. And his wonderful quickness at emendation has sometimes led him into error, which greater investigation into MSS. would have avoided ; thus, iu his note on Eur., Phcen., 1373, an error, perhaps a misprint (KS for /JLC), in the first edition of the scholiast on Sophocles has led him into an emendation of v. 339 of the Trachiniie which clearly will not stand. But his most brilliant emendations, such as some of those on Athenseus, on the Supplices of Jschylus, or, to take one single instance, that on Eur., Helen., 751 (ovd &quot;EXevos for ovStv ye ; see Maltby s Thesaurus, p. 299), are such as convince the reader of their absolute certainty ; and this power was possessed by Porson to a degree no one else has ever attained. No doubt his mathematical training had something to do with this ; frequently the process may be seen by which the truth has been reached. A few words are called for on his general character. No one ever more loved truth for its own sake ; few have sacrificed more rather than violate their consciences, and this at a time when a high standard in this respect was not common. In spite of his failings, few have had warmer friends ; no one more willingly communicated his knowledge and gave help to others ; scarcely a book appeared in his time or for some years after his death on the subjects to which he devoted his life without acknowledging assistance from him. And, if it be remembered that his life was a continued struggle against poverty and slight and ill-health, rather than complain that he did little, we should wonder how he accomplished so much. The chief sources for Person s life will be found in the memoirs in the Gentle man s Magazine for September and October 18C8, and other periodicals of the time (mostly reprinted in Barker s Porsoniana, London, 1852) ; Dr Young s memoir in former editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (reprinted ibid, and in his works) ; Weston s (utterly worthless) Short Account of the late Mr Richard Porson, London, 1808, reissued with a new preface and title-page in 1814 ; Dr Clarke s narrative of his last illness and death, London, 1808 (reprinted in the Classical Journal); Kidd s &quot; Imperfect outline of the life of R. P.,&quot; prefixed to his collection of the Tracts and Criticisms; Beloe s Sexagenarian (not trustworthy), vol. i., London, 1817 ; Barker s Parriana, vol. ii., London, 1829 ; Maltby s &quot; Por soniana,&quot; published by Dyce in the volume of Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, London, 1856 ; a life in the Cambridge Essays for 1807 by H. R. Luard ; and a lengthy life by J. S. Watson, London, 1861. The dates of Person s published works are as follows : Not in Xenophontis Anabasin, 1786; Appendix to Toup, 1790; Letters to Travis, 1790; JEscliylus, 1795, 1806; Euripides, 1797-1802 ; collation of the Harleian MS. of the Odyssey, 1801 ; Adversaria (Monk and Blomlield), 1812 ; Tracts and Criticisms (Kidd), 1815 ; Aristophanica (Dobroe), 1820 ; iVote in Paitsaniam (Gaisford), 1820 ; Photii Lexicon ( Dobree), 1822 ; Notfe in Suidam (Gaisford), 1834 ; Correspondence (Luard, edited for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society), 1867. Dr Turton s vindication appeared in 1827. (H. R. L.) PORTA, BACCIO BELLA. See BACCIO DELLA PORTA. PORT A, GIAMBATTISTA DELLA (c. 1543-1615), natural philosopher, was born of a noble and ancient family at Naples about th year 1543. In early youth he travelled extensively not only in Italy but also in France and Spain, and he had scarcely emerged from boyhood when he published Magise, naturalis, sive de miraculis rerum natur- alium lib. IV. (1558), the first draft of his Magia naturalis, in twenty books, published in 1569. At an early age he founded in Naples the Academia Secretorum Nature, other wise known as the Accademia dei Oziosi, of which the history has been briefly sketched elsewhere (see ACADEMY, vol. i. p. 70); and in 1610 he became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome. He died at Naples on 4th February 1615. The following is a chronological list of the principal writings of this prolific author : De miraculis rcruin naturalium, in four books (1558) ; De furtivis littcrarum notis, in five books (1563, and fre quently afterwards, entitling him to high rank among the early writers on cryptography) ; Magia naturalis (1569, and often re-