Porson, RICHARD, perhaps our greatest Greek scholar, was born on Christmas Day 1759, at East Ruston in Norfolk, where his father was parish clerk. The Rev. T. Hewitt, curate of the parish, noticing the boy's omnivorous appetite for books and his marvellous memory, had him educated along with his own sons, and brought him under the notice of a neighbouring squire, Mr Norris, the founder of the Norrisian professorship at Cambridge, who sent him to Eton in August 1774. Here he remained four years, and in 1778 was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, mainly by the help of the physician Sir George Baker. He was elected a scholar in 1780, next year won the Craven Scholarship, and subsequently the first chancellor's medal. In 1782 he was elected a Fellow of Trinity. He now began to contribute to Maty's Review, his first critique being on Schutz's Æschylus, and his finest on Bruck's Aristophanes.
He also opened a correspondence with the veteran scholar David Ruhnken of Leyden. His Note brevies ad Toupii Emendationes in Suidam (1790) first carried his name beyond England as a scholar of the highest rank. In 1787 appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine his three sarcastic letters on Hawkins' Life of Johnson; and during 1788 and 1789, in the same periodical, his far more famous and trenchant Letters to Archdeacon Travis, on the Spurious Verse 1 John v. 7 (coll. 1790)—'the most acute and accurate piece of criticism since the days of Bentley,' says Gibbon. Porson naturally incurred great odium on account of the side which he took in this controversy, and it is said that one old Norwich lady, who had him in her will for a legacy of £300, cut it down to £30 when she heard that he had written a book against Christianity. In 1792 his fellowship ceased to be tenable by a layman, whereupon some friends raised a fund to preserve him from want, and about £100 a year was secured. This he accepted on condition that after his death the money should be returned to the donors, but when they refused to take it back it was used to form a foundation for the Porson prize at Cambridge. He was also appointed to the regius professorship of Greek in the university of Cambridge, an office worth £40 a year. In 1795 he edited the plays of Æschylus for the Foulis press at Glasgow, and between 1797 and 1801 four of Euripides, the Hecuba, the Orestes, the Phænissæ, and the Medea. He also collated the Harleian MS. of the Odyssey for the Grenville Homer. He married in 1796, but his wife died five months later, too soon to cure him of his dilatory and slovenly habits and his thirst for drink. In 1806 he was appointed librarian of the newly-founded London Institution, with a salary of £200, but neglected his duties. He was suddenly struck down with apoplexy in the Strand, 19th September 1808, and died six days later. He was buried in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. Porson possessed a stupendous memory, unwearied industry, great acuteness, fearless honesty, and masculine sense, but was hindered all his life by poverty, ill-health, dilatoriness, and fits of intemperance. With all his powers he achieved but little, and to justify contemporary admiration there remain, besides the works already named, but a few bon-mots, some brilliant emendations, the posthumous Adversaria (1812), and notes on Aristophanes (1820), the lexicon of Photius (1822), Pausanias (1820), and Suidas (1834). His Tracts and Criticisms were collected by Kidd (1815).
See 'Porsoniana' in Rogers' Table-Talk (1856), H. R. Luard in Cambridge Essays (1857), and the Rev. J. Selby Watson's Life (1861). His Correspondence was edited by Luard for the Cambridge Antiq. Soc. (1867).