Richard Porson
(1759-1808)
Porson thought Gibbon's Decline and Fall beyond all comparison the greatest literary production of the eighteenth century, and was in the habit of repeating long passages from it. Yet I have heard him say that `there could not be a better exercise for a schoolboy than to turn a page of it into English.'
— Rogers, Table Talk, p. 270.
Porson was walking with a Trinitarian friend; they had been speaking of the Trinity. A buggy came by with three men in it: `There', says he, `is an illustration of the Trinity.' `No,' said his friend Porson, `you must show me one man in three buggies, if you can.'
—
E. H. Barker, Literary, Recollections and Contemporary Reminiscences (1852), ii. 2.
A MAN Of such habits as Porson was little fitted for the office of Librarian to the London Institution. He was very irregular in his attendance there; he never troubled himself about the purchase of books which ought to have been added to the library; and he would frequently come home dead-drunk long after midnight. I have good reason to believe that, had he lived, he would have been requested to give up the office—in other words, he would have been dismissed. I once read a letter which he received from the Directors of the Institution, and which contained, among other severe things, this cutting remark:
`We only know that you are our Librarian by seeing your name attached to-the receipts for your salary.' . . .
As Librarian to the Institution, he had £200 a year, apartments rent-free, and the use of a servant. Yet he was eternally railing at the Directors, calling them `mercantile and mean beyond merchandise and meanness'.
—
Rogers, Table Talk, p. 283.