father holding a lucrative post in the War Office, and being owner
of extensive West Indian possessions. In 1798, Scott (afterwards Sir
Walter) met young Lewis in Edinburgh, and so humble were then his own
aspirations, and so brilliant the reputation of _The Monk_, that he
declared, thirty years afterwards, he never felt so elated as when
Lewis asked him to dine with him at his hotel. Lewis schooled the
great poet on his incorrect rhyme, and proved himself, as Scott says,
"a martinet in the accuracy of rhymes and numbers." Sir Walter has
recorded that Lewis was fonder of great people than he ought to have
been, either as a man of talent or a man of fashion. "He had always,"
he says, "dukes or duchesses in his mouth, and was pathetically fond of
any one who had a title; you would have sworn he had been a _parvenu_
of yesterday; yet he had lived all his life in good society." And Scott
regarded Lewis with no small affection.
Of this weakness, Lord Byron relates an amusing instance: "Lewis,
at Oatlands, was observed one morning to have his eyes red and his
air sentimental; being asked why, he replied, that when people said
anything kind to him, it affected him deeply, 'and just now, the
Duchess (of York) has said something so kind to me, that--' here tears
began to flow. 'Never mind, Lewis,' said Colonel Armstrong to him,
'never mind--don't cry--_she could not mean it_!'"
Lewis was of extremely diminutive stature. "I remember a picture of
him," says Scott, "by Saunders, being handed round at Dalkeith House.
The artist had ingeniously flung a dark folding mantle around his
form, under which was half hid a dagger, a dark-lantern, or some such
cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the features were preserved
and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke
of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice affirm that it was very
like, said aloud, 'Like Mat. Lewis! why, that picture's like _a man_!'
He looked, and lo! Mat. Lewis was at his elbow. This boyishness went
through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled child--but a child
of high imagination, and he wasted himself on ghost-stories and German
romances. He had the finest ear for the rhythm of verse I ever met
with--finer than Byron's."
The death of Lewis's father made the poet a man of independent fortune.
He succeeded to considerable plantations in the West Indies, besides a
large sum of money; and in order to ascertain personally the condition
of the slaves on his estate, he sailed for the West Indies in 1815. Of
this voyage he wrote a narrative, which was published many years after,
under the title of the _Journal of a West India Proprietor_. The manner
in which the negroes received him on his arrival amongst them, he thus
describes:--"As soon as the carriage entered my gates, the uproar and
confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance; the works were
instantly all abandoned, everything that had life came flocking to the
house from all quarters, and not only the men, and the women, and the
children, but 'by a bland assimilation,' the hogs, and the dogs, and
the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by
instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be
afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was
sincere may be doubted, but certainly it was the loudest that I ever
witnessed. They all talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and in the
violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each other and rolled
about on the ground. Twenty voices at once inquired after uncles and
aunts, and grandfathers and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been
buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most
of them knew only by tradition. One woman held up her little naked
black child to me, grinning from ear to ear: 'Look, massa! look here!
him nice lily neger for massa!' Another complained--'So long since come
see we, massa; good massa come at last.' As for the old people, they
were all in one and the same story; now they had lived once to see
massa, they were ready for dying to-morrow--'them no care.'
"The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their strange and sudden
bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women wrapped up
in large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-coloured
handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the
middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I
occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches
in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole
scene; yet there was something in it truly affecting."
In his Journal, Lewis tells us the following odd shark story:--"While
lying in Black River Harbour, Jamaica, two sharks were frequently seen
playing about the ship. At length, the female was killed, and the
desolation of the male was excessive. What he did without her remains
a secret, but what he did with her was clear enough; for scarce was
the breath out of his Eurydice's body, when he stuck his teeth in her,
and began to eat her up with all possible expedition. Even the sailors
felt their sensibility excited by so peculiar a mark of posthumous
attachment; and to enable him to perform this melancholy duty more
easily, they offered to be his carvers, lowered their boat, and
proceeded to chop his better half in pieces with their hatchets; while
the widower opened his jaws as wide as possible, and gulped down pounds
upon pounds of the dear departed, as fast as they were thrown to him,
with the greatest delight, and all the avidity imaginable. I make no
doubt that all the time he was eating, he was thoroughly persuaded that
every morsel that went into his stomach would make its way to his heart
directly! 'She was perfectly consistent,' he said to himself; 'she
was excellent through life, and really she's extremely good now she's
dead!' And then,
"'Unable to conceal his pain,
He sigh'd and swallow'd, and sigh'd and swallow'd,
And sigh'd and swallow'd again.'
"I doubt whether the annals of Hymen can produce a similar instance of
post-obitual affection. Nor do I recollect any fact at all resembling
it, except, perhaps, a circumstance which is recorded respecting
Cambletes, king of Lydia, a monarch equally remarkable for his voracity
and uxoriousness, and who ate up his queen without being conscious of
it."
Lewis, in reading _Don Quixote_, was greatly pleased with this instance
of the hero's politeness. The Princess Micomicona having fallen into a
most egregious blunder, he never so much as hints a suspicion of her
not having acted precisely as she had stated, but only begs to know her
reason for taking a step so extraordinary. "But pray, madam," says he,
"why did your ladyship land at Ossima, seeing that it is not a seaport
town?"
One of Lewis's great hits was the ballad of _Crazy Jane_, which was
found in the handwriting of the author among his papers. The ballad
was wedded to music by several composers; but the original and most
popular melody was by Miss Abrams, who sung it herself at fashionable
parties. After the usual complimentary tributes from barrel-organs, and
wandering damsels of every degree of vocal ability, it crowned not only
the author's brow with laurels, but also that of many a youthful beauty
in the shape of a _Crazy Jane hat_.
_The Castle Spectre_ was Lewis's greatest dramatic success. Its
terrors were not confined to Drury Lane Theatre, but, as the following
anecdote shows, on one occasion they even extended considerably beyond
it. Mrs. Powell, who played Evelina, having become, from the number
of representations, heartily tired and wearied with the character,
one evening, on returning from the theatre, walked listlessly into a
drawing room, and throwing herself into a seat, exclaimed, "Oh! this
ghost! this ghost! Heavens! how this ghost torments me!"
"Ma'am!" uttered a tremulous voice from the other side of the table.
Mrs. Powell looked up hastily. "Sir!" she reiterated in nearly the same
tone, as she encountered the pale countenance of a very sober-looking
gentleman opposite.
"What? What was it you said madam?"
"Really, sir," replied the astonished actress, "I have not the pleasure
of--Why, good heavens, what have they been about in the room?"
"Madam," continued the gentleman, "the room is mine, and I will thank
you to explain--"
"Yours!" screamed Mrs. Powell; "surely, sir, this is Number 1?"
"No, indeed, madam," he replied; "this is Number 2; and really, your
language is so very extraordinary, that--"
Mrs. Powell, amidst her confusion, could scarcely refrain from
laughter. "Ten thousand pardons!" she said, "the coachman must have
mistaken the house. I am Mrs. Powell, of Drury Lane, and have just come
from performing the _Castle Spectre_. Fatigue and absence of mind have
made me an unconscious intruder. I lodge next door, and I hope you will
excuse the unintentional alarm I have occasioned you."
It is almost needless to add, that the gentleman was much relieved
by this rational explanation, and participated in the mirth of his
nocturnal visitor, as he politely escorted her to the street door.
"Good night," said the still laughing actress; "and I hope, sir, in
future, I shall pay more attention to _Number One_!"
[Illustration: Professor Porson.]
Porson's Eccentricities.
The humour of Professor Porson lay in parodies, imitations, and hoaxes,
ready wit and repartee; in his oddities of dress and demeanour; and
his disregard for certain decencies of society is very deplorable,
though at the same time mirthful in its very extravagances. Porson
left Cambridge to become the scholar about town; to quench his thirst
for Florentine MSS. in the tankards of the "Cider Cellar;" and to
exchange the respectability and stateliness of the Trinity common
room for the savage liberty of Temple chambers. He had for some time
become notorious at Cambridge. His passion for smoking, which was then
going out among the younger generation, his large and indiscriminate
potations, and his occasional use of the poker with a very refractory
controversialist, had caused his company to be shunned by all except
the few to whom his wit and scholarship were irresistible. When the
evening began to grow late, the Fellows of Trinity used to walk out of
the common room, and leave Porson to himself, who was sometimes found
smoking by the servants next morning, without having apparently moved
from the spot where he had been left over-night.
Porson's imitations of Horace, which appeared in the _Morning
Chronicle_, have really no merit at all, nor have any of the hundred
and one epigrams which he is said to have written in one night upon the
drunkenness of Mr. Pitt. But two other papers, one called _The Swinish
Multitude_, and the other _The Saltbox_, display certainly both wit and
humour. One is a satire upon the famous expression of Burke, in his
_Letters on a Regicide Peace_; the other, a parody of the Oxford style
of examination in Logic and Metaphysics.
Of the hundred and one epigrams, the story goes--that when Pitt and
Dundas appeared before the House, Pitt tried to speak, but showing
himself unable, was kindly pulled down into his seat by those about
him; Dundas who was equally unfitted for eloquence, had sense enough to
sit silent. Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_, witnessed the scene, and
on his return from the House, gave a description of it to Porson, who,
being vastly amused, called for pen and ink, and musing over his pipe
and tankard, produced the one hundred and one pieces of verse before
the day dawned. The point of most of them lies in puns. The first
epigram is:
"That _Ça Ira_ in England will prevail,
All sober men deny with heart and hand;
To talk of _going_ sure's a pretty tale,
When e'en our rulers can't as much as stand."
The following are better:--
"Your gentle brains with full libations drench,
You've then Pitt's title to the Treasury Bench.
Your foe in war to overrate
A maxim is of ancient date;
Then sure 'twas right, in time of trouble,
That our good rulers should see double.
The mob are beasts! exclaims the King of Daggers;
What creature's he that's troubled with the staggers?"
"When Billy found he scarce could stand,
'Help! help!' he cried, and stretched his hand
To faithful Harry calling,
Quoth Hal, 'My friend, I'm sorry for't;
'Tis not my practice to support
A minister that's falling.'"
"'Who's up?' inquired Burke of a friend at the door;
'Oh! no one,' says Paddy, 'though Pitt's on the floor.'"
Porson was not imposed upon for a moment by the Ireland forgeries
of Shakspeare, and when asked to set his name to a declaration of
belief in their genuineness, replied, with a smile, that he was "slow
to subscribe articles of faith." Scholars, however, owe a debt of
gratitude to Ireland, of which, perhaps, they are seldom conscious;
for it was the alleged discovery of Shakspearian plays that drew from
Porson one of the cleverest specimens of his peculiar powers that
remain to us. We mean the translation of "Three Children sliding on
the Ice," which he sent to the _Morning Chronicle_, as a fragment of
Sophocles, recently discovered by a friend of his at the bottom of an
old trunk.
Porson had high animal spirits; and he is said once, for a wager,
to have carried a young lady round the room in his teeth. His
conversation, however, after a certain period of the evening, was not
always fit for ladies. Rogers once took him to a party, where several
women of fashion were present, who were anxious to hear him talk. The
Professor, who hated being made a lion, selected for his theme the
soup of Vauxhall, and at last, we are told, talked so oddly, that all
the women retreated except the famous Lady Crewe, who was not to be
frightened by any man. "After this," says Rogers, "I brought him home
as far as Piccadilly, where I am sorry to say I left him sick in the
middle of the street."
At those houses where Porson was on intimate terms, it was understood
that he was always to go away at eleven. Porson accepted the
arrangement in perfect good faith, and invariably required that it
should be carried out to the letter; for, "though he never attempted
to exceed the hour limited, he would never stir before," and he warmly
resented any attempt to make him. At one house only was his time
extended to twelve; this was Bennet Langton's. There were, of course,
houses in which the Professor, so to speak, took the bit between his
teeth, and did exactly as he pleased. Horne Tooke's was one of these,
as the following story illustrates. Tooke once asked Porson to dine
with him in Richmond Buildings; and, as he knew that the Professor
_had not been in bed for the three preceding nights_, he expected to
get rid of him at an early hour. He, however, kept Tooke up the whole
night; and, in the morning, the latter, in perfect despair, said, "Mr.
Porson, I am engaged to meet a friend at breakfast at a coffee-house in
Leicester Square." "Oh," replied Porson, "I will go with you;" and he
accordingly did so. Soon after they had reached the coffee-house, Tooke
contrived to slip out, and running home, ordered his servant not to let
Mr. Porson in even if he should attempt to batter down the door. "A
man," observed Tooke, "who could sit up four nights successively, could
sit up forty."
As soon as Porson had been "turned out of doors like a dog," which was
his favourite expression when he received the slightest hint to move,
even if it was one o'clock in the morning, he used generally to adjourn
to the Cider Cellar, where he was completely king of his company.
"Dick," said one of these companions, "can beat us all; he can drink
all night, and spout all day." From the Cider Cellar he got home as he
could to Essex Court, where he had chambers over the late Mr. Baron
Gurney, whose slumbers were a good deal disturbed by the habits of
his learned neighbour. On one occasion he was awakened by a tremendous
thump upon the floor overhead. Porson, it turned out, had come home
drunk, and had tumbled down in his room, and put out his candle; for
Gurney soon after heard him fumbling at the staircase lamp, and cursing
the nature of things, which made him see two flames instead of one.
The most remarkable feature in Porson's love of liquor was, that he
could drink anything. Port wine, indeed, was his favourite beverage.
But, in default of this, he would take whatever he could lay his
hands on. He was known to swallow a bottle of spirits of wine, an
embrocation, and when nothing better was forthcoming, he would even
drench himself with water. He would sometimes take part in a contest of
drinking; and once, having threatened after dinner to "kick and cuff"
his host, Horne Tooke, the latter proposed to settle the affair by
drinking, the weapons to be quarts of brandy. When the second bottle
was half finished, Porson fell under the table. The conqueror drank
another glass to the speedy recovery of his antagonist, and having
given instructions to his servants to take great care of the Professor,
walked upstairs to tea, as if nothing had occurred. Tooke, however,
feared Porson in conversation, because he would often remain silent
for a long time, and then "pounce upon him with his terrible memory."
In 1798, Parr writes to Dr. Burney, who had recommended that Porson's
opinion should be taken on some classical question, "Porson shall do
it, and he will do it. I know his terms when he bargains with me: two
bottles instead of one, six pipes instead of two, Burgundy instead of
claret, liberty to sit till five in the morning instead of sneaking
into bed at one; these are his terms."
Porson was very odd in his eating. At breakfast, he frequently ate
bread and cheese: and he then took his porter as copiously as Johnson
took his tea. At Eton, he once kept Mrs. Goodall at the breakfast-table
during the whole of Sunday morning; and when Dr. Goodall returned
from church, he found the sixth pot of porter being just carried into
his house. In his eating, Porson was very easily satisfied. "He went
once," says Mr. Watson, "to the Bodleian to collate a manuscript, and,
as the work would occupy him several days, Routh, the president of
Magdalen, who was leaving home for the long vacation, said to him at
his departure, 'Make my house your home, Mr. Porson, during my absence,
for my servants have orders to be quite at your command, and to procure
you whatever you please.' When he returned, he asked for the account
of what the Professor had had during his stay. The servant brought the
bill, and the Doctor, glancing at it, observed a fowl entered in it
every day. 'What,' said he, 'did you provide for Mr. Porson no better
than this, but oblige him to dine every day on fowl?' 'No, sir,'
replied the servant; 'but we asked the gentleman the first day what he
would have for dinner, and as he did not seem to know very well what to
order, we suggested a fowl. When we went to him about dinner any day
afterwards, he always said, "The same as yesterday:" and this was the
only answer we could get from him.'"
Sometimes, in a fit of abstraction, he would go without a dinner. One
day, when Rogers asked him to stay and dine, he replied, "Thank you,
no; I dined yesterday."
Porson used to relate, with much glee, his school anecdotes, the
tricks he used to play upon his master and schoolfellows, and the
little dramatic pieces which he wrote for private representation.
In describing his narrow means, he used to say, "I was almost then
destitute in the wide world, with less than 40_l._ a year for my
support, and without a profession; for I could never bring myself to
subscribe Articles of Faith. I used often to lie awake for a whole
night, and wish for a large pearl." He seemed to delight in company of
low grade. At Cambridge, after sitting five hours, and drinking two
bottles of sherry, he began to clip the king's English, to cry like a
child at the close of his periods; and, in other respects, to show
marks of extreme debility. At length, he rose from his chair, staggered
to the door, and made his way downstairs without taking the slightest
notice of his companion. Subsequently he went out upon a search for the
Greek Professor, whom he discovered near the outskirts of Cambridge,
leaning upon the arm of a dirty bargeman, and amusing him by the most
humorous and laughable anecdotes.
However, Porson could place a strong restraint upon himself when
necessary. When he went to stay with his sisters, in the year 1804, it
is said that he only took two glasses of wine a day for eleven weeks.
Porson was a man of ready wit and repartee. When asked by a Scotch
stranger at the Gray's Inn Coffee-house if Bentley were not a
Scotchman, he replied, "No, sir, Bentley was a Greek scholar." He said
Bishop Pearson would have been a first-rate critic if he hadn't muddled
his brains with divinity. Dr. Parr once asked him, in his pompous
manner, before a large company, what he thought about the introduction
of moral and physical evil into the world. "Why, Doctor," said Porson,
"I think we should have done very well without them."
On his academic visits to the Continent, Porson wrote:--
"I went to Frankfort, and got drunk
With that most learn'd Professor Brunck:
I went to Worts, and got more drunken,
With that more learn'd Professor Runcken."
Porson said one night, when he was very drunk, to Dodd, who was
pressing him hard in argument, "Jemmy Dodd, I always despised you when
sober, and I'll be d----d if I'll argue with you now that I am drunk."
Porson, in a social party, offered to make a rhyme on anything, when
some one suggested one of the Latin gerunds, and he immediately
replied:--
"When Dido found Æneas would not come,
She mourned in silence, and was _Di-do-dum_."
A gentleman said to the great "Grecian," with whom he had been
disputing--"Dr. Porson, my opinion of you is most contemptible." "Sir,"
returned the Doctor, "I never knew an opinion of yours that was not
contemptible."
Gillies, the historian of Greece, and Porson used now and then to meet.
The consequence was certain to be a literary contest. Porson was much
the deeper scholar of the two. Gillies was one day speaking to him of
the Greek tragedies, and of Pindar's odes. "_We know nothing_," said
Gillies, emphatically, "of the Greek metres." Porson answered, "If,
Doctor, you will put your observation in the _singular_ number, I
believe it will be very accurate."
Porson being once at a dinner-party where the conversation turned upon
Captain Cook, and his celebrated voyages round the world, an ignorant
person, in order to contribute his mite towards the social intercourse,
asked him, "Pray, was Cook killed on his first voyage?" "I believe he
was," answered Porson, "though he did not mind it much, but immediately
entered on a second."
Porson said of a prospect shown to him, that it put him in mind of a
fellowship--a long, dreary walk, with a church at the end of it. He
used to say of Wakefield and Hermann, two critics, who had attacked
him, but whose scholarship he held in great contempt, that "whatever he
wrote in future should be written in such a manner that they should not
reach it with their paws, though they stood on their hind-legs to get
at it."
It has been well said that all opportunities of earning honourably
pudding and praise availed Porson nothing. "Two Mordecais sat at his
gate--thirst and procrastination."
Irony was Porson's chief weapon, though he could be sarcastic enough
when he chose; as when he said of Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, to whom a
rich man, who had only seen him once, had left a large legacy, "If he
had seen him twice he would have got nothing."
Nor was he more eulogistic of Bishop Porteus, whom he used to call
Bishop _Proteus_, from his having changed his opinions from liberal to
illiberal.
Porson made several visits to the British Museum to read and consider
the Rosetta stone, whence he got from the officials the _sobriquet_ of
Judge Blackstone.
It is sufficiently notorious that Porson was not remarkably attentive
to the decoration of his person: indeed, he was at times disagreeably
negligent. On one occasion he went to visit a learned friend,
afterwards a judge, where a gentleman who did not know Porson, was
waiting in anxious and impatient expectation of the barber. On Porson's
entering the library, where the gentleman was sitting, he started up
and hastily said to him, "Are you the barber?" "No, sir," replied
Porson; "but I am a cunning shaver, much at your service."