The worst effect of "the scholar's melancholy," is when it leads a man,
from a distrust of himself, to seek for low company, or to forget it by
matching below himself. Porson, from not liking the restraints, or not
possessing the exterior recommendations of good society, addicted
himself to the lowest indulgences, spent his days and nights in
cider-cellars and pot-houses, cared not with whom or where he was, so
that he had somebody to talk to and something to drink, "from humble
porter to imperial tokay," (_a liquid_, according to his own pun,)
and fell a martyr, in all likelihood, to what in the first instance was
pure _mauvaise honte_. Nothing could overcome this propensity to
low society and sotting, but the having something to do, which required
his whole attention and faculties; and then he shut himself up for weeks
together in his chambers, or at the university, to collate old
manuscripts, or edite a Greek tragedy, or expose a grave pedant, without
seeing a single boon companion, or touching a glass of wine. I saw him
once at the London Institution with a large patch of coarse brown paper
on his nose, the skirts of his rusty black coat hung with cob-webs, and
talking in a tone of suavity approaching to condescension to one of the
managers. It is a pity that men should so lose themselves from a certain
awkwardness and rusticity at the outset. But did not Sheridan make the
same melancholy ending, and run the same fatal career, though in a
higher and more brilliant circle? He did; and though not from exactly
the same cause, (for no one could accuse Sheridan's purple nose and
flashing eye of a bashfulness--"modest as morning when she coldly eyes
the youthful Phoebus!") yet it was perhaps from one nearly allied to it,
namely, the want of that noble independence and confidence in its own
resources which should distinguish genius, and the dangerous ambition to
get sponsors and vouchers for it in persons of rank and fashion. The
affectation of the society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the
love of that of cobblers and tapsters. It is that cobblers and tapsters
may admire, that we wish to be seen in the company of _their_
betters.
_New Monthly Magazine_
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