"I remember to have seen Porson at Cambridge, in the hall of our college,
and in private parties, but not frequently; and I never can recollect him
except as drunk or brutal, and generally both: I mean in an evening, for
in the hall, he dined at the Dean's table, and I at the Vice-master's, so
that I was not near him; and he then and there appeared sober in his
demeanour, nor did I ever hear of excess or outrage on his part in
public,--commons, college, or chapel; but I have seen him in a private
party of under-graduates, many of them freshmen and strangers, take up a
poker to one of them, and heard him use language as blackguard as his
action. I have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his
intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the
disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most
bestial, as far as the few times that I saw him went which were only at
William Bankes's (the Nubian discoverer's) rooms. I saw him once go away
in a rage, because nobody knew the name of the 'Cobbler of Messina,'
insulting their ignorance with the most vulgar terms of reprobation. He
was tolerated in this state amongst the young men for his talents, as the
Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to recite, or
rather vomit pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot;
and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser exhibition
than this man's intoxication.
"I perceive, in the book you sent me, a long account of him, which is very
savage. I cannot judge, as I never saw him sober, except in _hall_ or
combination room; and then I was never near enough to hear, and hardly to
see him. Of his drunken deportment, I can be sure, because I saw it."