and all thy folk, if you will preserve your lives!' Thorwald saw the danger, and determined to go on board the ship and act on the defensive. A fight ensued; the natives shot their arrows, and retreated; but Thorwald was mortally wounded, and was buried there with two crosses over his grave. His followers returned to Greenland.

Many expeditions followed, and attempts were made during three centuries to establish Scandinavian colonies in America; but it appears that the natives were too numerous and troublesome, and that the Scandinavians never succeeded in permanently establishing themselves in the country. In Greenland, however, they met with better success; and a constant trade was carried on between that country and Norway up to about the year 1400, when the intercourse between these countries ceased. The colonies were left to themselves, owing to the longcontinued wars; and at last the route to Greenland was forgotten. At this time, there were in the southern district twelve large parishes, and one hundred and ninety villages, a bishop's see, and two

convents.

In the meantime, quarrels arose between the natives of Greenland (Esquimaux) and the Scandinavians, which apparently ended in the destruction of the latter; for when, after many futile attempts to discover the lost land,' as Greenland was then called, it was at length rediscovered in 1586, by Sir Martin Frobisher, no Scandinavians were met with. Davis visited Greenland in 1585; and in the year 1721, Hans Egede was sent out from Denmark as a missionary, and a trade with the Esquimaux was attempted to be established. After many trials and difficulties, Egede succeeded in introducing Christianity amongst them.

A trade was also commenced, which has been carried on as royal monopoly ever since, and which at present yields no inconsiderable revenue to the kingdom of Denmark. Colonies and stations have been established, at short distances apart, from Cape Farewell up to latitude 73 degrees north, where the trade in oil and skins is briskly carried on. The whole of the coast and fiords have been examined, and all the principal ruins of the Scandinavians have been found, but no living trace of the lost race has ever been met with. The causes which led to their complete destruction have never yet been discovered; but it is supposed that, after civil broils had weakened them, they fell victims to the revenge of the natives, whom they had long been in the habit of ill treating.

The Greenlanders have some oral traditions connected with certain localities where the Scandinavians resided, relating to their petty wars and mutual slaughters; as well as others of a curious nature, elucidating the former manners and customs of the Esquimaux. These have lately been collected by Dr Rink, governor of South Greenland; and we propose giving our readers a translation of some of them. A few of the legends, as well as some scenes of modern life and manners in Greenland, have been illustrated by wood-cuts executed by the Esquimaux themselves, under Dr Rink's direction, which afford considerable proof of their intelligence.

MELIBEUS HAS A FISH-DINNER AT GREENWICH.

'MELIBEUS,' observed I, in early August, 'the appointed season has long begun, and you have never yet tasted whitebait.'

"That is very true,' returned he. 'I have indeed partaken of the fish in question upon the sea-coast and elsewhere once, in particular, at Lynmouth in North Devon, I remained a fortnight longer than I had intended in consequence of the arrival of a shoal of that delicacy-but, as you justly remark, I have never "tasted whitebait" in the highest sense of that expression. I have never had it at either of those suburban dining-rooms of London-Greenwich or

Blackwall. How truly wonderful is it that a metropolis which is supplied with every luxurious edible from air, and earth, and ocean, and that from the most distant parts of the Universe, should alone enjoy the advantage of being within a few miles of the one esculent which cannot endure travel. Devonshire cream in air-tight cans comes up to the Strand every morning, improved-positively more clotted, sirby the journey; but whitebait, like a jeu de mot, must, to be properly appreciated, be taken at once.' 'As is whitebait, Melibus, so is an expedition of pleasure. How much more enjoyable is it when extemporaneous, than if arranged and "looked forward to" for weeks before that wet day upon which it comes off at last. The elements are propitious, the river is near; let us go down to Greenwich by the steamer immediately. No question need be asked but one: Have we got enough money in our pockets?'

'I had intended to have settled a bill at Dent's here for a watch and chain for Mrs M.,' said Melibœus, 'so that I am to-day a capitalist. I will let it run a little longer. The great London tradesmen are said to prefer credit-an excellent thing in watchmakers, and indeed in anybody. What a pleasant summer thoroughfare is this Hungerford Market; there is always a charming breeze coming through it laden with the smell of fruit and flower' 'And fish.'

"Yes,' continued Melibus calmly, 'just a suspicion of fish sufficient to give to the spot a local colouring. How finely those scarlet cray-fish contrast with the white skate. Look at yon spotted mullet, the butterfly of the sea, as somebody calls it.'

Who calls it? I don't believe anybody ever called it so except yourself. I always suspect a gentleman who quotes with such excessive vagueness.'

'Very true,' returned Melibaus. The safest vehicle for an assertion of doubtful value to travel in I have always found to be, "It was a saying of my late lamented father's;' respect for the supposed departed always elicits a murmur of applause. Albeit, my good father is alive and well, and never made an aphorism, a general reflection, or even an original metaphor in the course of his existence. To return to the red mullet, however; that fish has a rival for colour in the Lake District. The crimson char is even still more beautiful.'

'Ay, and of how exquisite a taste, Melibus! Come, you must confess that even London cannot afford what you can get in profusion at the little white inn at Buttermere. Char, like whitebait, must be eaten upon the banks of its native streams.'

'If you please to walk into our back-parlour,' said the voice of a mermaiden, in front of whose shop we were holding our conversation, you will see both char and whitebait all alive-o!'

Her tones were silvery as the scales of the salmon she presided over, her hair was as crimped as the skate; we could not choose but accept her courteous invitation. There were certainly two enormous troughs with live fish in them, and Melibus was, of course, more loud than ever in his eulogies upon the great metropolis; but the place was so gloomy that they might have been mud-fish for aught I could see; nay, they might have been cuttle-fish swimming in ink of their own making.

The whitebait, observed the mermaid, in apology, were averse to very clear water (in which case I am sure their antipathies had been most amply consulted); and it was even averred that they would be destroyed if the Thames were purified a statement which set Melibus moralising upon our way to the steamer.

'It has often been urged,' said he, 'in arguments upon the necessity of evil, that were there no such thing, all the sublimer virtues would perish: if there were no wars, there would be no Garibaldi; if there were no wounds, there would be no Florence Nightingale. Similarly, if the metropolitan sewers

to'

were withdrawn from this river, and nobody permitted to throw himself off Waterloo Bridge, we should get no whitebait-an exquisite dainty, but which, like the most delicate scents of the laboratory, owes its being, or at least its peculiar excellence, "Yes, my friend, it was indeed a very narrow escape,' gasped I, when we had taken our seats upon the steam-boat and began to recover ourselves a little. You should never step upon one of those planks in a hurry, and particularly at the very moment when the man is dragging it away. If I had not caught hold of your shirt-collar (and how lucky that it was not a paper one!), you would, in a very few hours from this, have been improving the whitebait. I should never have partaken of it in future without thinking of my Melibous! When I squeezed the lemon, I should call to mind his generosity, and how he had promised, upon the very last occasion that we were together, to pay for the hock at dinner'

I don't remember that,' interrupted Melibæus. 'I dare say not,' said I; 'the shock to your nervous system has, doubtless, been considerable. You did promise, however ask anybody else—just after we left the fish-shop.'

'It was all the fault of that fat fellow yonder,' observed Melibœus moodily. He knew that he was safe, and therefore came on board at his leisure, whereas I, who was behind him It positively puts me in a perspiration to think of it. Why did we tempt the dangers of the deep, and in such selfish company?'

'Nay,' returned I, 'I have often seen the same thing done in the street. It is wonderful how calm and collected one can be when we have got a friend between us and the sea of Hansoms, and we our selves are in comparative safety. We, whose heel no wheel is grazing, upon whose toe no horse's hoof is impinging, are philosophical enough, and wonder how Jones can so far forget his position in life as to want to run. Now, in Bullock Smithy there is no such "barking" of shins.'

'No,' said Melibus grimly; it is there less bark than bite. Our broad-wheeled wagons would roll you out as flat as a pancake. But what an enormous cargo of passengers we are taking in! I hope there are not many more such piers to touch at upon the way down. What myriads of persons, even of the humblest class, must have money and leisure to throng the pleasure-boat like this!'

'It is Saint Monday,' said I. With many of the trades of London, the first working-day of the week is always a holiday.'

'With a half-holiday on Saturday, and a whole one on Sunday, those trades therefore are not overworked. I wish,' quoth Melibus sighing, 'that our poor village-folks who are in the same line of business at Bullock Smithy, were equally fortunate.'

'But, on the other hand, in what an atmosphere are these compelled to work when they do work. The article they are really most in search of to-day is mere fresh air, and before diving below the waters of business for five days, it is not surprising that they should wish to lay in as large a stock as possible.'

'Yes,' replied Melibaeus, the hankering of you towns-folk after country produce of all kinds is certainly remarkable. Behold, now that we have passed the grander warehouses, the abortive but touching attempts upon both river-banks to create something like a garden-the narrow slip of green baize-looking lawn, with the half-dozen flower-pots at its termination, which in the winter are immured in that little blister of a conservatory sticking to the side of the villa! Why, not one of these mansions has more than a few square feet of earth unappropriated by Commerce, and yet what a show they make of leaf and verdure! The crazy balconies are

all, at least, supplied with mignonette, tended, doubtless, by the assiduous hand of the wharfinger's daughter. The wharfs and warehouses above and about the Pool; the Pool itself, crowded with vessels, whose planks have been washed by every Sea, whose sails have felt every breeze, from the piercing gale of Spitzbergen to the whisper of the tropics; and the Docks, which have so mysteriously deprived the river of half its argosy, and keep it land-locked behind those mighty gates-all these never cease to fill me with admiration, and even with a sort of personal pride, although I myself never owned larger craft than the old fishing-punt in our pond at Bullock Smithy, and its companion the canoe.' My heart swells, as I look, with the thought of the commercial greatness of my nation, and I sympathise with the feelings of that man who would get up and return thanks for the Navy, although he, personally, was only connected with maritime pursuits, in so far as he held some canal shares. But this lower part of the river is also equally striking in its way. These tumble-down warehouses, bulging so clumsily over their lower floors, as though they were trying to look at themselves in the water, and so discover if they really were so picturesque as people say; the villas in the mud; the amphibious population that is always wandering along about high-water mark, not looking for the wonders of the shore,' I fear, so much as for things that will fetch their price at the marinestore shops.'

'Melibus,' said I, 'you talk it like a book, and it much distresses me to interrupt you; but you perceive how crowded we are already. Even now, we can see nothing of what you describe so graphically, without standing on the seats. The boat absolutely rolls to the water's edge, by reason of these gentlemen standing on the paddle-box for want of space. And now, look ahead to yonder pier. There are almost as many more about to invade us as we have now on board.'

I can swim,' returned my friend reflectively; 'but swimming amidst a vortex of importunate females would be impossible, even if to leave them would not be discourteous.'

'Do you think there is any danger, gents?' inquired a fellow-passenger, with a white hat stuck on the extreme verge of his left ear, and with a very fine marigold in his button-hole.

'I am quite sure,' replied Melibaus gravely, 'that if those additional persons come on board of us, it will only be to find a watery tomb.'

Our interrogator returned no direct reply to this information, but raising his voice to its very highest pitch, exclaimed to the man upon the engine-plank who directed the movements of the vessel: 'I sayyou-captin. We ain't agoin' to take no more in, we ain't. Do you heer?'

'Quite true'-'It's shameful!'-'It's overcrowding!'-It's agen the hact!'-'Don't!' broke forth from all sides, giving evidence of the terms that had been agitating other bosoms beside our own.

'Oh, you're afraid, are you?' returned the captain derisively. You think you'll be drownded, do you? And what a loss to society you'd be!'

'I don't the least care about being drownded,' replied the first speaker; 'but what I do objec to, is, to having the starch taken out of my shirt-collars.'

It is possible that the witticism may not have been original, but its application to the circumstances, and its delicate evasion of the charge of pusillanimity, were above all praise. Not only did it receive its just applause, but the whole ship's company-by which I mean not the man and the boy who navigated her, but the 500 persons or so who pressed her very cabin windows on a level with the tide-declared that they also did their washing at home, and would run no risks. We swept by the pier, therefore, without touching at it, but not without receiving a

broadside of invective from its disappointed freight, which was returned by a corresponding salute. Presently, the noble Hospital came into view, and we disembarked at Greenwich, a town scarcely more celebrated for that interesting pile than for brown bread and butter and whitebait.

'Now do come and have some whitebait, now do,' exclaimed a widow lady to Melibaus almost before he had placed his second foot on shore. "Ere's our 'ouse, sir; fust street on the right 'and; bilin' water and a cool gardin allus ready.'

The latter portion of her speech referred to a custom which visitors to this locality are addicted to, of bringing their tea with them, and merely paying for sitting accommodation and the fish peculiar to the place. This lady evidently imagined that we were laden with a packet of Howqua's Mixture,' and perhaps with a quartern loaf or so besides.

'We've a lovely harbour, sir,' broke in a second female candidate for our patronage, and as dry a skittle-alley as'

'Don't you see as the gents is for a Ninn,' interrupted a sort of outdoor waiter, whose neckcloth might have had the starch taken out of it' with great advantage to its purity. Hours is the 'ouse for people of quality; we've the smallest whitebait, and the biggest baggitell-table as is in Greenwich.'

Resisting steadily these and similar invitations, we made our way to the celebrated Aboukir, and ordered dinner, taking care to secure a table with a good view of the river; and in the mean time we sought the Park, partly for the sake of the picturesque, and partly of an appetite.

66

'For its size,' quoth Melibus, I think there is nothing superior to this place, for girth of timber and 'contiguity of shade." For prospect, there is certainly no domain in England equal to it. What a magnificent scene is presented to us from the foot of this Observatory wall! The glittering river that winds so coyly towards the sea that here and there it seems to be actually parallel to itself; the huge high-masted sailing-ships, each with its one or two black Tugs to drag it forth; and the mighty blur of London yonder, with St Paul's and Westminster Abbey alone standing out distinct and clear. One never knows their vastness until distance dwarfs, as now, all other things about them. What noble buildings, too, are these immediately beneath us, and to what a noble purpose are they devoted! A home more fitting could scarcely have been built for these fine old fellows to end their days in; and how picturesquely do they themselves embellish it! A cocked-hat, in which a young man always looks a mountebank, rather becomes gray hairs.'

At this moment, a certain Ancient Mariner, whose glittering eye had more than once attempted to arrest us, bore down directly upon Melibus, and grappled him. He was one of those few pensioners still living who had fought with our Nelly-as he familiarly termed the hero of Trafalgar and he conceived that that circumstance gave him a right to grapple anybody. Beside his long sea-stories, to which we listened of course with all respect, he had with him a very formidable telescope, which he directed for us to various objects of interest. Melibous, however, is one of those individuals-by far more numerous than they are supposed to be who are quite incapable of using a telescope, or at least of beholding anything through that medium except the sky and a sort of halo of ground glass. The ingenious machine, too, always gives him acute neuralgia in the eye, through nervousness and futile straining after the Infinite. Under such circumstances, the spectacle of my friend sweeping the horizon under the auspices of this old Man of the Sea, whose feelings he would on no account have wounded by confessing the real state of the case, could not but be grateful to me. The glass being brought to

bear upon some edifice, and Melibus placed in the painful posture requisite for telescopic observation, the mariner would dilate upon its architectural beauties, the year of its erection, the name and birthday of the builder, and other statistical information, like a living guide-book bound in blue. Once only, Melibous joyfully exclaimed: I see it, I see it,' when the subject of eulogy was the masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren; but the old tar, with tears in his eyes and much affectionate blasphemy, exposed my poor friend's error-he had somehow changed his field of vision from St Paul's, London, to the Ship Inn, Greenwich, about a quarter of a mile from where we stood. After this misfortune, Melibœus shut both his eyes, and was careful not to touch the glass with his hands.

'I protest,' cried he, when he was at last released by ransom from his tormentor, 'that I never will be hypocrite enough to look through that sort of thing again. I should see a better view, and enjoy it incomparably more, if I looked through a kaleidoscope.'

Our attention was here attracted by a conspicuous piece of print on the Observatory wall- the British Yard;' and under it a smaller measurement, entitled 'Two Feet,' and doubtless justly so.

'But why two feet,' argued Melibus; 'why not one foot? We have no florin of long-measure.'

'Nay,' said I, like another Goneril, why any foot at all? What necessity is there for preserving any standard of length, so long as we have barley-corns

the John Barleycorn who forms the subject of so many patriotic songs at Bullock Smithy. We should be at no loss although all reels and rods, nay, though the Greenwich Observatory itself were burned to ashes.'

They have a mighty tank of water,' observed Melibus, 'to guard against that contingency. It supplies the town with the fluid to make tea with in their arbours, for do you not remember the excitement which prevailed some time ago here, when it was discovered that a young gentleman bathed in it every morning.'

'I do remember,' said I; and, talking of the Observatory, do you know that that simple pole yonder points out to the eye of Science-the Meridian?'

Melibus regarded it with an interest scarcely inferior to that he would have exhibited had it been the North Pole itself; but it might have been a clothes-prop, instead of a tree of knowledge, for all the fruit he found upon it.

He would have doubtless run down the famous Hill, which so many thousands of lads and lasses have descended hand in hand together, but that there is now a palisade built across half-way up it, in order to prevent that innocent recreation. We were warm enough, however, without running, and the river-breeze that came in at the windows of the Aboukir, and cooled us as we sat at fish, was most refreshing. The amber sherry and the iced still hock were rather refreshing also; and so were the denizens of the deep served up to us in so many Protean forms. For my part, indeed, I soon began to feel like one of those unlawful nets which suffer no sort of fish to escape their meshes, which spare neither sex nor age. As for Melibus, he protested that, what with the melted ice, and the water-suchet, and the eels, and the weedy salad he had consumed, he felt as though he had been drowned in a canal. We had so little appetite for the whitebait, when the dish of the day did at last make its appearance, that nothing but a strong sense of duty, and the exquisite brown bread and butter, carried us through it. Imagine, then, our indignation upon another enormous shoal of them making its appearance, when we knew that there was yet a duck to follow.

'Devilled, gentlemen,' observed the waiter in explanation, and he spoke a beautiful truth.

'Why, I wonder,' remarked Melibous reflectively, 'why should the Devil give his name to all the best dishes? I think it must be because they rather tend to produce excess. Let us have just a few dozen more of these to finish with; it would be quite a bathos to end with the duck. What a blessed island would that be, my friend, whose surrounding waters produced a constant supply of whitebait-whose balmy climate nourished lemons and cayenne--and whose kindly soil brought forth the brown-bread-and-butter tree! What patriotism would fill the breasts of its privileged people! What wisdom would direct the councils of its ministers, who, without the trouble of engaging an apartment at the Aboukir, might, after the toil of the session, come down to the shore of their native land, and pluck'

'Here is the bill, Melibus.'

'Tear it up,' returned he gravely, and let it be hurried down by the remorseless tide to Gravesend. This is not a time to look at bills, my friend; far less to settle them. How charming is the prospect! Behold yon mighty ship, splashing the foam up with her huge paddles almost in our very faces; she is going about her business in the great waters, and I am very glad that I am not going with her. Look, too, at those frail wager-boats just beneath us, contending against the tide and each other with such strenuous endeavour, each straining oarsman eager for our approbation-for it cannot surely be that they are making such exertions to please themselves. Do we not sit like gods together, and regard all things with an equal mind?'

'Melibus,' observed I, 'beware lest that thing happen to you which very nearly occurred at the Benevolent Costermongers: I think we have eaten and drunk enough. Even in the absurd and supposititious case of your having had too much, however, there is something here to sober you as completely as a bucket of Thames water. It is the Bill, my friend. Shall I read you the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, or shall I read you the items? Shall I tell you what they charge for their sherry? What think you of eight shillings a bottle for chablis, my friend-for chablis ?'

Then what, in the name of Proportion, do they charge for hock?'

Melibus trembled at my whispered response. How very lucky it was,' observed he, 'that I didn't pay Mr Dent's account. Here is the money, waiter; but my nerves are shattered, and I must at once have a cigar. Where is the smoking-room?'

Our season, you see, sir, only lasts for six months in the year,' said the waiter apologetically; so that double charges are not, after all'

A cigar, a cigar!' cried Melibœus impatiently. 'We have no smoking-room, sir, at the Aboukir? The shock was tremendous. I procured a light, and led Melibus into the open air; but even his elastic mind took a little time to recover itself.

'Let us sit down in some Arbour, and be quiet,' said he; 'do not let us move about.'

'Bilin' water and a cool gardin and harbour,' was the invitation addressed to us by a lovely maiden ere he had finished his proposition.

The arbour was composed, as I believe, of the wreck of a ship, and the tables and forms within it were exceeding rickety. The garden comprised seven sunflowers and a scarlet-runner-but the scarlet-runner's race was run: he was dead.

Why, this is a perfect Paradise,' observed Melibous to the nymph benignantly, and you are the Peri.' She brought tea, and had the assurance to offer us-us from the Aboukir-whitebait; the former we accepted, the latter we rejected with a shudder. She likewise brought us eight eggs.

'My good girl, exclaimed Melibus, with astonishment, are we to eat four eggs apiece?'

'Every lady and gent who teas here has at least

four,' returned the damsel; they often eats half-adozen. That is their dinner, you know. I dare say as you two have eaten as much for yourn.' The truth of this ingenuous statement was undeniable. We were glad, however, to take a cup of tea, albeit neither the goblet nor its contents had certainly ever come from China; and I threw a couple of eggs over the wall into the next garden-there were 'harbours' and tea-gardens attached to every house in the row-that the Peri's feelings might not be hurt by any apparent neglect of her viands. Then we called for the bill. The total liability we had incurred was eighteenpence, a sum, compared with our recent experience, ridiculously infinitesimal.

I almost wish,' said I, 'now that it is over, that we had taken our fish-dinner here instead of at the Aboukir,

'So do not I,' returned Melibus philosophically; we have been very happy, and it is said that no price is too high to pay for happiness. It is doubtless true that we could have spent our money more beneficially as regards the interests of the great human family, but scarcely with greater satisfaction to ourselves. Our little dinner at the Aboukir will be a pleasant resting-place for my memory to linger on when I am buried alive again at Bullock Smithy. At all events, I have enjoyed the thing incomparably more than I should have enjoyed paying the money to Mr Dent.'

guages,

PORSON.

A REVIEW of the life of a professor of Greek in one of our universities, who spent the greater number of his days in instructing undergraduates in the dead lanin critically examining classical compositions, and in collating ancient manuscripts, would seem a dull subject for the pages of a popular periodical Mr Watson, however, in the work before us,* has not presented to us simply the most learned Greek professor of which this or any other country can boast, but has depicted the ordinary everyday-life of one of the strangest and most original beings who ever familiar to everybody, but known, we believe, only furnished a biography. Professor Porson is by name as the originator of many witty sayings, and as the perpetrator of many acts of reprehensible character. Detached anecdotes relating to his learning and to his tippling exist in volumes of ana, but Mr Watson is the first to merit our thanks by presenting to the world a complete history of the great classical scholar.

Richard Porson was born near North Walsham, in Norfolk, on the 25th December 1759. His father was a weaver, and held office in his native village as parishclerk; his parents were both uneducated, although sufficiently literate to teach their son mental arithmetic, reading, and writing. At six years old, he was sent to school, but was of so delicate a constitution as to be obliged to return home after a few months, in consequence of being unable to stand the rough sports and practical jokes of his companions. At nine, he again went to school, and then first astonished all who came in contact with him by the wonderful quickness which he exhibited in the acquisition of knowledge. One of the principal traits in his chardetermination to do his best in everything he took acter through life immediately manifested itself-the in hand. Writing appears first to have engaged his attention, and in the short space of three months, from the worst he became the best penman in the school. Porson was through life remarkably proud of

The Life of Richard Porson, M.A. By the Rev. John Selby Watson, M.A. Longmans. 1861.

his handwriting, and never omitted an opportunity of displaying it: he was accustomed, says one of his companions, to take a small book out of his pocket after dinner, and hand it round the table as a specimen of his handwriting.' He wasted many hours of the most valuable part of his life in imitating with immense trouble the print of his choicest books, and earnestly begged Heber to allow him to letter the backs of his vellum-bound classics. Heber told him he should be far more obliged by his writing his valuable thoughts inside the books, than by any caligraphic display on the covers.

Having in three years at school learned as much arithmetic as his master possessed, and completely distanced the worthy pedagogue in other branches of knowledge, our hero fortunately came under the notice of the clergyman of his native town, who, astonished at his acuteness, took him into his house to educate with his own sons. Under the kind minister's roof the boy continued for another period of three years, at the termination of which, his wonderful abilities became so apparent, that his instructor had him examined by three of the most learned men he could select, and upon their certificate, commenced a subscription for the purpose of placing the youth at Eton.

To Eton, in his fifteenth year, the hard-working lad proceeded, and became, almost from his entrance, the idol of the school. Ever full of fun, and ever ready to assist his schoolmates in difficulty, we find him at one time writing a play for the diversion of the winter evenings; at another, knocking off with wondrous ease tasks which had proved too difficult for less astute minds; and at another, hunting rats in the long hall-his favourite amusement next to his books. It was while at Eton his love for ale and 'strong waters,' for which he afterwards became so celebrated, first manifested itself. We give the story in the words of a fellow-Etonian of his.

'When Colonel Disney was a Westminster boy, he was in the habit of meeting Porson at his master's house. When they were alone together in the evening, Porson asked Disney if he knew his way to the alecellar. Disney replied that he did, but that he was engaged in doing his Greek verses. "Never mind," said Porson; "I will look to them; take the largest jug you can find, and fill it with beer." This Disney did, and on his return found his Greek verses finished. This occurred more than once, and Disney was always, on such occasions, at the head of his class.'

The secret of Porson's great literary acquisitions, according to his own account, rested in his astonishing memory. In his case, there was no learning a lesson, in the popular acceptation of the term-the merely reading the longest and most difficult task imprinted it so firmly on his mind that it never became erased; hence, at school, we find him scanning pages of Horace in his class, with an Ovid held upside down in his hand, the proper book having been mislaid; and in after-life, if he had read a book one day, and any allusion was made to it the next, it was no uncommon thing for him to repeat whole pages of the work verbatim. He would not only, says his biographer, | repeat verse or prose from one edition of a book, but would, if necessary, revert to all the variorum readings and critical notes contained in various reprints, as if he had their pages lying before him. Roderick Random he could repeat from beginning to end, and he even offered to learn by heart a complete copy of the Morning Chronicle in a week. Basil Montague relates that Porson, in his presence, read over two or three pages from a book selected by Montague; then repeated what he had read from memory, and imme. diately afterwards, at a friend's request, repeated the pages backwards, missing only two words! Two other instances of this wonderful faculty deserve to be related before we pass on. Mr Cogan tells us that a friend one day consulted the scholar on the

meaning of a word in Thucydides; Porson, without looking at the book, immediately repeated the passage in which the word occurred. His friend asked how he knew it was that passage. 'Because,' said Porson, 'the word occurs only twice in Thucydidesonce on the right-hand page in the edition which you are using, and once on the left. I see your eyes are directed to the right-hand page.'

Rogers relates that taking him once to William Spencer's, he delighted a large party of the nobility by reciting an immense number of forgotten Vauxhall songs, drinking all the time. He got very tipsy at last, and, 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. His retentive memory was, however, far from being delightful to him on all occasions. My memory,' he said on one occasion, is a source of misery to me-I can never forget any thing which I don't wish to remember.'

When Porson had been four years at Eton, and had attained his eighteenth year, he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge. In four years, he became senior wrangler; shortly afterwards, Chancellor's Medallist; then a fellow of his college; and then commenced those labours in teaching and in criticism which formed nearly the sole mental occupation of his after-life. As a tutor, though beloved and revered by his pupils, he did not excel either in patience or meekness; his common custom, if a youth betrayed any unusual symptoms of dulness or inattention, was to seize hold of the poker, chase him round the room, and threaten to split open his head. One venturesome undergraduate being treated in this cavalier manner, pounced upon the tongs, and observed that two could play at that game;' Porson sneeringly said: 'If I were to split open your head, I believe I should find it empty.' And yours,' replied the undaunted pupil, I am sure I should find full of maggots.' The professor tumbled into his chair, roaring with laughter, and immediately repeated a whole chapter from Roderick Random, which was always a way with him of shewing his satisfaction. We are not going to inflict upon our readers any lengthened account of Porson's literary labours; they consisted almost entirely in the emendation of corrupt passages, which, from careless or intentional error, had crept into classical authors; this was his most charming employment, and in it he had to compare thousands of manuscripts, and adjust with immense labour the most tiresome and complicated discrepancies. In pursuing his inquiries upon the alleged spuriousness of a single verse in the New Testament, he consulted with great care ninety-five Greek and Latin manuscripts. Original composition he regarded with abhorrence; and with the exception of witty trifles, thrown out now and then, without any apparent effort, he could seldom be persuaded to put on paper the thoughts passing through his brain, even in the form of a letter to a friend, and by this means lost very many valuable acquaintances.

In reviewing the works of rival critics and commentators, Porson was continually in hot water with English and foreign authors; he entertained, however, no very profound view of the value of these disputes, and is asserted to have concisely summed up one celebrated literary battle with two German critics in the verse: