George Gordon at the Cider Cellar, he suddenly said, "Friend George, do you not think the widow Lunan an agreeable sort of personage as times go?" Gordon. said something in the affirmative. "In that case," continued Porson, " you must meet me to-morrow morning at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields at eight o'clock;" and, without saying more, paid his reckoning and retired. George Gordon was somewhat astonished, but, knowing that Porson was likely to mean what he said, determined to comply with the invitation, and repaired to the church at the hour specified, where he found Porson with Mrs. Lunan and a female friend, and the parson waiting to begin the ceremony. When service was ended, the parties separated, the bride and her friend retiring by one door, and Porson and George Gordon by another. Pryse Gordon is however mistaken about the church at which the marriage took place, for the register of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields has been searched in vain for a record of it. Gordon, on inquiry, found that it was some time since Porson had proposed, but that Mrs. Lunan, as he wished the ceremony to be performed without her brother's knowledge, had been unwilling to listen, and that it was only on finding that she must either yield to Porson's obstinacy on the point, or reject him altogether, that she was induced to give her consent. Gordon urged him to declare his marriage to Perry, but he declined, and they parted. He was determined, however, that Perry should not be kept in ignorance of the affair, especially as he himself had taken part in it, and was preparing to go 1795.] HIS WEDDING-DAY. 127 to the "Morning Chronicle" Office to give intimation of what had happened, when Porson returned, and said, "Friend George, I shall for once take advice, which, as you know, I seldom do, and hold out the olivebranch, provided you will accompany me to the Court of Lancaster; for you are a good peace-maker." Lancaster Court, in the Strand, was Perry's place of residence, and hence Porson often called him "My Lord of Lancaster." Gordon agreed, and, as they found Perry at home, Porson made him such a speech as inclined him, though he was somewhat hurt at the secresy, to reconciliation, when a dinner was provided, as Pryse Gordon states, and an apartment selected for the newly-married couple. How long the Professor sat after the dinner, we are not told; but, if Beloe may be believed, he soon sought other company. "What shall we call it," says he*, "waywardness, inconsiderateness, or ungraciousness? but it is a well-known fact that he spent the day" [it could only have been the evening of the day] "of his marriage with a very learned friend, now a judge, without either communicating the circumstance of his change of condition, or attempting to stir till the hour prescribed by the family obliged him to depart." On leaving this friend's house, he adjourned, as a surgeon named Moore, an acquaintance of Barker's, asserted, to the Cider Cellar, where he stayed till eight the next morning.t If this be true, it is perhaps greater neglect than was ever before shown to a wife on the day of her marriage. Budæus, it is true, was said to have studied on his wedding-day as on other days; Stothard went from the church to his easel; and John Kemble, after performing at the theatre, required to be reminded to fetch his wife home. But there are few instances, we believe, of the bridegroom having deliberately absented himself from the bride through the marriage night, for the mere sake of indulgence with his boon companions. "One forenoon," says Maltby*, "I met Porson in Covent Garden, dressed in a pea-green coat. He had been married that morning, as I afterwards learned from Raine, for he himself said nothing about it. He was carrying a copy of Le Moyen de Parvenir, which he had just purchased off a stall; and, holding it up, he called out jokingly, 'These are the sort of books to buy.' Mrs. Porson's first husband, a Scotchman, was a bookbinder, who had lived in Shire Lane, and with whom Perry had for some time been a lodger†; but, proving a worthless fellow, she had been divorced from him by the Scotch law, and he was still alive, and had married again, when Porson took her. She had had two or more children by Lunan, whom her brother had taken under his charge and sent to school. At the time that Porson became acquainted with her, she was living with Perry as his housekeeper. "She was amiable and good-tempered," says Colonel Gordon, "and the Professor treated her with all the kindness of which he was capable." By the testimony of Kiddf, the death of Porson's * Rogers's Table-Talk, "Porsoniana," p. 305. John Taylor's "Records of My Life," vol. i. p. 241. 1796.] TRANSCRIPT OF PHOTIUS. 129 wife was an event deeply to be regretted, since, during the short period of his marriage, "he evidently became more attentive to times and seasons, and might have been won by domestic comforts from the habit of tippling, which was doubtless as much a disease as the gout, and must have tended to impair a constitution naturally vigorous." That he was not, with all his eccentricities, an ill husband, may be inferred from the fact that Perry, his brother-in-law, continued to be his firm friend, and to pay him the greatest attention, to the end of his life. Perry indeed is said to have had greater influence with him than any other person; for he would listen to remonstrances from Perry which he would not have endured from any one else; and he was sometimes induced, by Perry's intervention, to accept favours or attentions which the independence of his spirit would otherwise have spurned. From the time of his wife's death, according to the memoir in the "Gentleman's Magazine," his asthma, with which he had been afflicted ever since he had the imposthume on his lungs, in the early part of his life, greatly increased, so as to prevent him from close or long-continued application to any kind of study. This malady, the writer suggests, may possibly have been aggravated by his sedentary habits. While he was on a visit to Perry at Merton, a fire broke out in the house, which destroyed a performance on which he had bestowed the labour of at least ten months. He had borrowed the manuscript of the Greek Lexicon compiled by Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople, from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, engaging K to make a complete copy of it. This manuscript is known as the Codex Galeanus, from having been presented to Trinity College by the learned Gale, and, from its evident antiquity, may reasonably be supposed to be a transcript extremely valuable. Porson carried it with him wherever he went. On the morning of the day on which the fire occurred, he set out from Merton on a ride to London, taking with him the manuscript, but leaving the transcript, which he had just finished, behind him. As he was on the road, he felt, he thought, some apprehensions of approaching evil, and stopped three or four times on the way, deliberating whether he should return for his books and papers. Once he actually turned back his horse's head; but at last, trusting that his fears were idle, he resolved on continuing his journey. The following night, during his absence, the fire broke out, and the copy was destroyed. Dr. Raine was the first to inform him of his loss; and Porson, on hearing the news, inquired if any lives had been lost. Dr. Raine replied in the negative. "Then," rejoined Porson, "I will tell you what I have lost; twenty years of my life;" repeating, at the same time, the stanza of Gray, "To each his sufferings; all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan, The tender for another's pain, The unfeeling for his own."* How he meant these lines to be applied, we are left to conjecture. Among the effects destroyed at the same time were a copy of Kuster's Aristophanes, the margins * Kidd, Tracts, p. xxxix. |