PORSON, RICHARD English classical scholar, was born on Dec. 25, 1759, at East Ruston, in Norfolk, of humble parents. After attending the village school, he was en tered on the foundation of Eton in and in 1778, through the generosity of Sir George Baker, the physician, entered Trinity college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow four years later.
The publication of his Notae breves ad Toupii emendations in Suidam in 1790 established his fame as a scholar. During the same year, in the Gentleman's Magazine, he wrote the three letters on Hawkins's Life of Johnson, which have been reprinted in Kidd's Tracts and Criticisms of Porson, and in a volume of Porson's Correspondence. They are admirable specimens of his dry humour, and prove his intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare and the other English dramatists and poets. In the same periodical, in the course of 1788 and 1789, the Letters to Archdeacon Travis, on the spurious verse i. John v. 7 (collected in 1790 into a volume), writ ten in defence of Gibbon, had appeared. In 1792, his fellowship being no longer tenable by a layman, Porson moved to London, but in November of the same year was elected to the Greek professorship at Cambridge. Apart from his duties, the tragedians, Aristophanes, Athenaeus, and the lexicons of Suidas, Hesychius and Photius occupied most of his time.
Euripides he published the Orestes in 1798 the Phoenissae in 5799 and the Medea in 1801, the last with his name on the title-page.
Meanwhile he collated the Harleian ms. of the Odyssey for the Grenville Homer issued in 1801. When the London Institution was founded in 1806, he was appointed principal librarian. Porson died on Sept. 59, 1808.
In learning he was superior to Valckenaer, in accuracy to Bentley. His minute collations of mss. and his brilliant emenda tions marked a great advance in Greek scholarship, though in his day comparative philology scarcely existed.
See Barker, Porsoniana (London, 1852) ; Kidd, "Imperfect Outline of the Life of R.P.," prefixed to his collection of the Tracts and Criticisms; the Life by J. S. Watson (1861) ; Dict. Nat. Biog.; and J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, ii. (19o8). Porson's publications include: Notae in Xenophontis anabasin (1786) ; Appendix to Toup (1790) ; Letters to Travis (179o) ; Aeschylus (1795, 18o6) ; Euripides ; Adversaria (Monk and Blomfield, 1812) ; Tracts and Criticism (Kidd, 1815) ; Aristophanica (Dobree, 182o) ; Notae in Pausaniam (Gaisford, 182o) ; Photii lexicon (Dobree, 1822) ; Notae in Suidam (Gaisford, 5834) ; Correspondence (Luard, edited for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1867). Dr. Turton's vindication appeared in 1827.