Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is added Porsoniana:

“Tooke used to say that ‘Porson would drink ink rather than not drink at all.’ Indeed, he would drink any thing. He was sitting with a gentleman, after dinner, in the chambers of a mutual friend, a Templar, who was then ill and confined to bed. A servant came into the room, sent thither by his master for a bottle of embrocation which was on the chimney-piece. ‘I drank it an hour ago,’ said Porson.

When Hoppner the painter was residing in a cottage a few miles from London, Porson, one afternoon, unexpectedly arrived there. Hoppner said that he could not offer him dinner, as Mrs. H. had gone to town, and had carried with her the key of the closet which contained the wine. Porson, however, declared that he would be content with a mutton-chop, and beer from the next alehouse; and accordingly stayed to dine. During the evening Porson said, ‘I am quite certain that Mrs. Hoppner keeps some nice bottle, for her private drinking, in her own bedroom; so, pray, try if you can lay your hands on it.’ His host assured him that Mrs. H. had no such secret stores; but Porson insisting that a search should be made, a bottle was at last discovered in the lady’s apartment, to the surprise of Hoppner, and the joy of Porson, who soon finished its contents, pronouncing it to be the best gin he had tasted for a long time. Next day, Hoppner, somewhat out of temper, informed his wife that Porson had drunk every drop of her concealed dram. ‘Drunk every drop of it!’ cried she: ‘my God, it was spirits-of-wine for the lamp!'”

Mark Pattison, Memoirs

“I may take this opportunity of explaining what my position in college as tutor was at this time. At that time there was no subdivision of labour such as is now established in the form of combined lectures. The tutors of each college taught everything that was taught in the college to all its students. Under this monstrous abuse, of which I have written the history several times in other places, a zealous tutor was entirely baffled as to what course to take; if he wanted to make a good lecture on any one classical book, say Herodotus, he must devote an amount of time to his preparation for it which was quite inconsistent with his also doing well the other lectures he had to give — looking over Latin writing, teaching English composition, seeing that men know their divinity, and the vague but heavy duties of personal inspection and advice. I never could let routine be routine, or do anything with any comfort to myself, unless I tried to do it as well as I could. It so happened that among other lectures Herodotus fell to me. I took vast pains with this;  read up everything I could, and after some terms’ apprenticeship and much bungling, became able to give what was for those times a really good lecture. But then to do this it was impossible to keep up equally well with Livy and Sophocles and the Greek Testament, and perhaps another book or two. I had the mortification of sitting there and hearing men translate Sophocles to me unprofitably, as knowing I could not teach them the niceties of Greek erratic idiom. Here I was but struggling with the fetters of an impossible system, though it was not till years after that I came to conceive where it was that the fault lay. I was honestly labouring to make the best I could of my Sparta. But I had other college difficulties to contend with in my colleagues.”

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces:

‘Ignatius pulled his flannel nightshirt up and looked at his bloated stomach. He often bloated while lying in bed in the morning contemplating the unfortunate turn that events had taken since the Reformation. Doris Day and Greyhound Scenicruisers, whenever they came to mind, created an even more rapid expansion of his central region. But since the attempted arrest and the accident, he had been bloating for almost no reason at all, his pyloric valve snapping shut indiscriminately and filling his stomach with trapped gas, gas which had character and being and resented its confinement. He wondered whether his pyloric valve might be trying, Cassandralike, to tell him something. As a medievalist Ignatius believed in the rota Fortunae, or wheel of fortune, a central concept in De Consolatione Philosophiae, the philosophical work which had laid the foundation for medieval thought. Boethius, the late Roman who had written the Consolatione while unjustly imprisoned by the emperor, had said that a blind goddess spins us on a wheel, that our luck comes in cycles. Was the ludicrous attempt to arrest him the beginning of a bad cycle? Was his wheel rapidly spinning downward? The accident was also a bad sign. Ignatius was worried. For all his philosophy, Boethius had still been tortured and killed. Then Ignatius’ valve closed again, and he rolled over on his left side to press the valve open.

“Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel,” Ignatius belched.
“Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity.”
“What you mumbling about in there, boy?” his mother asked through the closed door.
“I am praying,” Ignatius answered angrily.
“Patrolman Mancuso’s coming today to see me about the accident. You better say a little Hail Mary for me, honey.”
“Oh, my God,” Ignatius muttered.
“I think it’s wonderful you praying, babe. I been wondering what you do locked up in there all the time.”
“Please go away!” Ignatius screamed. “You’re shattering my religious ecstasy.”’