the finical, the splendid, or the coxcomb bookseller?  Stap my vitals, but the author grows scurrilous in his grand climacteric!

“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 undergraduates, many of them fresh men 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.

“With the Reviews I have been much entertained.  It requires to be as far from England as I am to relish a periodical paper properly:  it is like soda-water in an Italian summer.  But what cruel work you make with Lady * * * *!  You should recollect that she is a woman; though, to be sure, they are now and then very provoking; still, as authoresses, they can do no great harm; and I think it a pity so much good invective should have been laid out upon her, when there is such a fine field of us Jacobin gentlemen for you to work upon.

     “I heard from Moore lately, and was sorry to be made aware of his
     domestic loss.  Thus it is—­’medio de fonte leporum’—­in the acme of
     his fame and his happiness comes a drawback as usual.

“Mr. Hoppner, whom I saw this morning, has been made the father of a very fine boy[15].—­Mother and child doing very well indeed.  By this time Hobhouse should be with you, and also certain packets, letters, &c. of mine, sent since his departure.—­I am not at all well in health within this last eight days.  My remembrances to Gifford and all friends.

     “Yours, &c.