humour, with that kind of enthusiasm which the recollection of his academic pleasures never failed to excite. One anecdote respecting him is, that it was while at Eton that young Porson gave his celebrated answer to the question proposed for the subject of a Latin theme :— : "Cæsare occiso, an Brutus benefecit aut malefecit?" A game being proposed, he joined the scholars in their youthful sports, and was so engrossed by them, that he entirely forgot the theme. When the time, however, arrived for handing up his production, he snatched a pen, and hastily scrawling "Nec bene fecit, nec male fecit, sed interfecit," presented it to the master. Mr. Norris died while Porson was at Eton. The death of his benefactor was a severe blow, and Porson long lamented the loss of his first patron; though, by the liberality of other persons, the means were provided for carrying on his education. Porson was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the latter end of the year 1777. His reputation had travelled there before him, but he proved himself more than worthy of it; and in the larger sphere in which he now moved, he became as much an object of attention as he had been at Eton, or at the little Norfolk seminary. For him to win the university classical scholarship and one of the gold medals were matters of course. One of his papers (a copy of Iambics) in the examination for the scholarship was long preserved as an academical curiosity. He paid but little attention to mathematics, and only took a Senior Optime's degree. He was made a Fellow of Trinity at an unusually early period of his university career. He now contributed various critiques on classical subjects to several periodicals of the day, which attracted much notice, and spread his name beyond the university. He became still better known by his series of letters to Archdeacon Travis on the contested verse, 1 John v. 7. Porson is considered to have completely settled this celebrated and long-agitated question. Not long after he had taken his first degree, it was in the contemplation of the Syndics of the University Press, at Cambridge, to publish Æschylus, with some papers of Stanley. Porson offered to undertake the work, provided he were allowed to conduct it according to his own discretion, but his offer was rejected. He some time afterwards visited Germany: on his return, being much teazed by a loquacious personage to give some account of his travels, he replied,— "I went to Frankfort, and got drunk With that most learn'd professor, Brunck; I went to Wortz, and got more drunken The memoir-writer from whom I take this anecdote, says that Porson made this reply sarcastically: if so, the sarcasm must have been against himself; for, unhappily, his habits of excess were already such, that his rhymes were most likely literally true. In 1786 Nicholson, the Cambridge bookseller, being about to publish a new edition of Xenophon's Anabasis, prevailed upon Porson to furnish him with some notes, which he accordingly did. These occupy about nineteen closely-printed pages, and, although avowedly written in haste, attest the hand of a master. In 1790 a new edition of the very learned work entitled "Emendationes in Suidam et Hesychium, et alios Lexicographos Græcos," was published at the Clarendon press. To this Porson subjoined some critical notes, which were termed "Notæ breves ad Toupii Emendationes in Suidam," and "Notæ in Curas novissimas." These were never publicly acknowledged any further than by Porson's initials. In consequence of his conscientious scruples respecting taking holy orders, Porson was obliged to resign his Fellowship at the end of seven years. He had no private funds whatever, and the contributions of those who had at first maintained him at Cambridge of course had ceased long ago when he seemed to have secured an independence by obtaining his Trinity Fellowship. One of his biographers remarks, that he was a painful example of the inefficacy of great talents and immense erudition to procure independence, or even the means of existence, without patronage, or those sacrifices to which few men of genius or talents will stoop. In this unpleasant situation, without hope from the public, he yet attracted the attention of some private friends; and he was soon after, by the unanimous voice of the seven electors, appointed Professor of the Greek language in the university of Cambridge. Although the salary annexed to this important situation is but 407. per annum, its distinction was grateful to him. This new office not obliging him to reside permanently at the university, he settled in literary life in London. Here he is said to have passed much of his time in dissipation, amid the different convivial circles to which his wit and agreeable conversation made him welcome. In 1795 he married the sister of Mr. Perry, of "The Morning Chronicle;" to which he contributed several papers, under the signature of "S. England," continuing at the same time to write criticisms for the magazines. In 1797 his first edition of the "Hecuba" of Euripides appeared; but it was in the preface to his second edition of this play that he announced the new canons respecting the Iambic metre of the Greek tragedians, the discovery of which gained him so much celebrity in the learned world. One of these, that respecting the Cretic foot, is supposed to have been first observed by Porson about 1790. The writer of the memoir of him in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" says, that he heard it alluded to in conversation with Porson in 1791. The anecdote respecting the circumstances under which the Cretic was spoken of is curious, and is evidently told by one who had been Porson's intimate associate. Porson, it seems, was "somewhat characteristically" attempting to fill his glass out of an empty bottle. Some Greek was ventured on, and it was observed how much better it was to say than Πᾶν ἐκπέπωκας· οὐδ ̓ ἔνεστι κότταβος, Πᾶν ἐκπέπωκας· οὐ λέλειπται κότταβος. The last work which he published was a third edition of the "Hecuba." He continued to reside partly at Cambridge and partly at London, until his death in 1808. About a year before that event he had been elected principal librarian of the London Institution, Moorfields. Porson's powers of mind were such as are very rarely found among men even of the most cultivated intellect. His memory was gigantic-perhaps "elephantine" would be the more proper epithet-on account of the power which it had of apprehending and retaining the minutest as well as the most important subjects. 'Nothing came amiss," says Mr. Weston, "to his memory. He would set a child right in his twopenny fable-book, repeat the whole moral tale of the Dean of Badajoz, a page of Athenæus on cups, or of Eustathius on Homer, even though he did every thing to impair his mental faculties." Porson was conscious of his own powers; and though frank and good-humoured even to a fault with the unlearned, he was unbending among those who assumed the title of scholars. It has been observed that he neither would give nor take praise; and when he was told that a person named had called him a giant in literature, he remarked that a man had no right to tell the height of that which he could not measure. Like his great Cambridge predecessor Bentley, he wrote English with remarkable purity and force. His observations on "Gibbon's History" may rank among the best specimens of caustic sarcasm in the language. Without at all undervaluing classical studies, without undervaluing the necessity of those studies being carried on accurately as well as extensively, without undervaluing the importance of Porson's contributions to our knowledge of the great classical writers, it is impossible not to join in the regret, that partly from necessity, partly from choice, Porson so far limited the exercise of his surpassing intellect; and that the possessor of an undeniably great genius should be almost exclusively known as the verbal critic of the great works which the genius of others has bequeathed to us. (Encyclopædia Britannica.) GEORGE STEEVENS. THE Consideration of the life of the learned annotator on the ancient drama, reminds me not to pass unnoticed the celebrated annotator on the writings of our own great dramatist, Shakspeare. George Steevens was born in 1736. He was educated first at Kingston-upon-Thames, and afterwards at Eton. On leaving Eton he succeeded to a scholarship at King's College. Steevens possessed a good private fortune, and the whole object of his life seems to have been to illustrate and edit Shakspeare. In 1766 he published twenty of Shakspeare's plays, in four volumes, 8vo. In 1773, with the assistance of Dr. Johnson, he published an illustrated edition of the poet's whole works, in ten volumes, 8vo, of which a second edition appeared in 1785, and a third, in fifteen volumes, in 1793. Mr. Steevens had studied the age of Shakspeare, and had employed his persevering industry in becoming acquainted with the writings, manners, and laws of that period, as well as the provincial peculiarities, whether of language or custom, which prevailed in different parts of the kingdom, but more particularly in those where Shakspeare passed the early years of his life. This store of knowledge he was continually increasing by the acquisition of the rare and obsolete publications of a former age, which he spared no expense to obtain. Steevens died in 1800. I come now to a group of statesmen, whom I ought perhaps to have introduced at an earlier part of the chapter. But Earl Grey is a statesman whose principal public actions have occurred so very recently, that it seemed desirable to defer any memoir of him until I had recapitulated those whose names are not so inseparably connected with the party disputes of the present time. There was not the same reason for deferring the notice of Lord Grenville; but his name and Lord Grey's are so generally mentioned together, that I have waited until immediately before the time of introducing the memoir of Earl Grey, before I have commenced that of LORD GRENVILLE. WILLIAM WYNDHAM GRENVILLE was born in 1753, and educated at Eton and Christchurch. In 1782 he became a member of the House of Commons, and he was soon afterwards made Paymaster of the Forces. He devoted himself to the support of Pitt, and steadily followed his fortunes through the disputes of the coalition, and the discussions and parliamentary struggles that arose on the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War. As early as 1789, Mr. Grenville received the distinction of being made Speaker of the House of Commons. In the same year he was made Home Secretary, and in 1790 he was made a peer. He soon after that time exchanged the Home Secretaryship for that of the Foreign Department. He was a vehement enemy of the various French Revolutionary Governments, and lent the whole force of his great abilities to urging this country to the most zealous prosecution of the war. In 1801 he left office together with Mr. Pitt, but he did not return to it with him in 1804. Lord Grenville was a warm supporter of the Catholic claims; he had also strongly promoted the union of this country and Ireland. Lord Grenville thought that the hope of Catholic Emancipation had been held out to Ireland as an inducement to consent to the Union; and accordingly, in 1804, he peremptorily refused to join the administration, unless on the terms of making a Catholic Relief Bill one of the government measures. Pitt abandoned the Catholic claims and took |