Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
Dr. Porson
[Richard Porson, an eminent Greek scholar; born in Norwich, England, Dec. 25, 1759; Greek professor at Cambridge, 1790 or 1792; died September, 1808.]
In some places he draws the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
From “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” V. 1; quoted in the “Letters to Travis,” of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
Wit is in general the finest sense in the world. I had lived long before I discovered that wit was truth.
When smoking began to go out of fashion, learning began to go out of fashion also.
WATSON: Life. He was very irregular in his habits of eating, dining one day heartily, and fasting the three following. Thus, when asked by a friend to stay to dinner, “Thank you, sir,” he replied, “I dined yesterday.”He once offered to make a rhyme on any subject, and the Latin gerund was suggested. He immediately responded to the challenge:—“When Dido found Æneas would not come,She mourned in silence, and was di-do-dum.”
If I had a son, I should endeavor to make him familiar with French and German authors, rather than with the classics. Greek and Latin are only luxuries.
Mr. Southey is a wonderful writer. His works will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.
“And only then,” unnecessarily added Byron.—Ibid.Of a volume of poems not remarkable for originality or elegance, he said, “They have much of Horace, and much of Virgil, but nothing Horatian and nothing Virgilian.”—Ibid.A man once said to Porson, “My opinion of you is most contemptible.”—“I never knew an opinion of yours,” he retorted, “that was not contemptible.”—Ibid.
If I had a carriage, and met a well-dressed person on the road, I would always invite him in, and learn from him what I could.
