know, before they granted it, whether Porson was disposed to make use of the papers, and commissioned Professor Hailstone, it appears, to ascertain Porson's inclinations regarding the matter. Porson replied to Hailstone thus: "DEAR HAILSTONE, Eton, Nov. 1789. "I have received yours, and, after desiring you to thank the Seniors for the honour they have done me, shall answer you with all possible conciseness, that I have no design of making any use of Bentley's papers respecting Homer, and that, generally speaking, I think there will be no harm in letting Professor Heyne have a copy of his notes and emendations; for that, I should imagine, to be more proper than to let the manuscript travel so far. But there is another question which perhaps ought to be asked, whether these notes, as being hasty and negligent, written principally for private use, &c. &c., always answer to the known character of their author, and whether for that reason they ought to be published at all? I must confess myself unable to solve this question, having only had a cursory and superficial view of the papers, though I recollect approving very much of some things in them. But as I make no doubt that there are many of less or no value, if it should be thought advisable to grant the Professor's request, it ought perhaps to be made a condition that he should preserve and publish nothing of Bentley's but what was agreeable to his known abilities and worthy of his acumen. And this irresolute resolution is all that I am able to resolve upon at present. "R. PORSON." CHAP. V. PORSON RESOLVES NOT TO ENTER THE CHURCH. RESIGN HIS FELLOWSHIP. แ IN CONSEQUENCE IS MEETS WITH TRAVIS'S OBLIGED ΤΟ THE 66 PORSON'S fellowship was held under the obligation of resigning it at the end of ten years, unless he should enter into Orders. He in consequence devoted himself, according to his biographer in the "Gentleman's Magazine," to a large course of theological reading, that he might ascertain whether he could, with satisfaction to himself, subscribe to the Articles of the Church. He did not come to a determination on the subject, we are told, without many painful days and months of study. "His heart and mind," says the writer, "were deeply penetrated by the purest sentiments of religion; and it was a memorable and most estimable feature of his character, that in no moment the most unguarded, in that ardour of discussion which alone drew him into indulgence, was he ever known to utter a single expression of discontent at the Establishment, of derision at those who thought differently from himself, much less of profanation or impiety." But the result of his reading was, that he resolved not to go into the Church. He therefore," as early as 1788, made up his mind to surrender his fellowship, though, with an enfeebled constitution, he had nothing to depend upon but acquirements that are very unprofitable to their owner." 66 In speaking to Mr. Maltby of his theological studies, "I found," said he, "that I should require about fifty years' reading to make myself thoroughly acquainted with divinity, to satisfy my mind on all points,-and therefore I gave it up. There are fellows who go into a pulpit assuming everything, and knowing nothing; but I would not do so."* If Porson had entered a pulpit, his audience would at least have heard from him sense of some kind, not visionary conceitedness, such as proceeded from his schoolfellow, Simeon. But how, if he had taken charge of a parish, he would have been regarded by his parishioners, may be doubtful, for, as the shepherd told Don Quixote, "that clergyman must be over and above good, who obliges his parishioners to speak well of him, especially in country towns." But to resign a Trinity fellowship, from difficulties as to creed, at a time when most of the clergy had laxer notions in regard to doctrines than they appear to have at present, and had certainly less show of strictness in their lives, manifested great conscientiousness and honesty. Among the volumes with which he met in the course of his theological reading was that of Archdeacon * Rogers's Table Talk, "Porsoniana," p. 309. Travis's "Letters to Gibbon" on the disputed text of 1 John v. 7; a work which he determined to assail. The genuineness of this text had ceased to be maintained among scholars, except by a very few; and Gibbon had observed, in a note on the third volume of his "History," that "the three witnesses have been established in our Greek Testaments by the prudence of Erasmus, the honest bigotry of the Complutensian editors, the typographical fraud or error of Robert Stephens in the placing a crotchet, and the deliberate falsehood or strange misrepresentation of Theodore Beza." This dictum of Gibbon Mr. Travis took upon himself to overthrow, and in consequence addressed to the historian those five Letters which appear to the unexamining reader to present many satisfactory arguments, but which, when subjected to the critical perspicuity of a Porson, are found to contain little of solidity beneath their speciousness. Porson's strictures appeared in the form of Letters in the "Gentleman's Magazine," in 1788 and 1789, and the whole was published in a volume by Egerton, whom Beloe calls "the black-letter bookseller," in 1790. It is not our purpose to weary our readers with a recapitulation of all the arguments that have been made on every point in this controversy, but it is hardly fitting to write a Life of Porson without attempting to show, what he had to overthrow in the contest, and how he made his attacks. Before entering upon the summary that follows, it will be better for the reader to peruse the beginning of the fifth chapter of St. John's first epistle, with the omission of the seventh verse and the words "in earth" in the eighth, and he will see that the sense and scope of the passage are quite complete without those insertions. The question respecting their genuineness is merely a question of criticism; the Christian religion will stand equally sure, whatever be the opinion of Christians concerning them. Erasmus, in 1516, published the "Editio Princeps of the Greek Testament from Greek manuscripts. But as the five Greek manuscripts which he consulted did not contain 1 John v. 7, he omitted the verse. For this omission he was attacked by the Papists, and afterwards by some of the Protestants, who supposed that, as it was in their Latin copies, it was also in the Greek. He was importuned to insert it in the second edition, which appeared in 1519, but refused: "I give you," said he, "a Greek Testament; I cannot print the First Epistle of Saint John differently from what I find it in the Greek; but if you, on examining your manuscripts, show me one that has the verse, I will insert it." The advocates of the verse sought for a long time in vain; but at length it was announced that a manuscript containing it had been found in England. A transcript of it having been forwarded to him, he adhered to his word, and inserted it, though with a remark that he suspected interpolation from the Latin, in his third edition in 1522. Where this manuscript was, the researches of later days were long unable to discover, but it was at last found, after a "profound sleep," as Porson says, "of two centuries," in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. In the same year, 1522, though bearing the date of 1514, was published the Complutensian edition of the |