Porsoniana:
“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.’ His intimate friend, Dr. Raine, was one of those who signed that letter; and Raine, speaking of it to me, said, ‘Person well deserved it.’ As Librarian to the Institution, he had 200l. 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 merchandize and meanness.’
During the two last years of his life I could perceive that he was not a little shaken; and it is really wonderful, when we consider his drinking, and his total disregard of hours, that he lived so long as he did. He told me that he had had an affection of the lungs from his boyhood.”
A.E. Housman, Speech at University College 03/29/1911:
“This great College, of this ancient University, has seen some strange sights. It has seen Wordsworth drunk and Porson sober. And here am I, a better poet than Porson, and a better scholar than Wordsworth, [somewhere] betwixt and between.”
