June 1802 addressed another letter to the silent Professor.

"To the most learned and celebrated Mr. RICHARD PORSON, HENR. CAROL. ABR. EICHSTÄDT, Professor at Jena, wishes the greatest health.

"It is almost a year, most excellent Porson, since I sent you a letter accompanied with the first volumes of Diodorus and Lucretius, which, through my efforts, such as they were, had made their way into the world. To Diodorus I had prefixed your own honoured name, as a πρόσωπον τηλαυγές, that I might testify, at least by a respectful preface, that esteem for you which I had no other means of expressing. I prefixed the names also of Coray, Wolff, and Wyttenbach, who, with yourself, so eminently adorn and support the cause of learning, that no age, in my opinion, has ever seen a more illustrious quatuorvirate of critics. Those three great men accepted my tribute of good-will in such a spirit as I desired, and viewed my work with such favour that they not only forgave the presumption of the dedicator, but contributed their efforts to illustrate the writer whom I had dedicated to them. From you, most honoured Porson, I have received no answer, whether because my offerings are thought unworthy of your acceptance, or whether (as I would rather suppose) because my letter and books have not found their way into your hands; for the parcel of books, after having been detained a long time at Hamburg, was at length sent back to me with a note from the prefect of public transport at Hamburg, signifying that it could not be transmitted unless it bore the name of some Hamburg merchant, to whose charge it must be intrusted. I accordingly sent off the books a second time, addressed to Bohn, a Hamburg bookseller, by whom they were consigned to Geisweiler, a bookseller of London, who was then returning from Leipsic, and to whom they were intrusted on the express condition that they should be conveyed to you by his agency. I am therefore extremely desirous to know whether Geisweiler kept his promise, and

1802.]

EICHSTÄDT'S "DIODORUS SICULUS."

253

took care that what was consigned to him, not without expense, was faithfully delivered.

"The second volume of my Diodorus has been recently published. I have a copy set apart for you, but keep it at home, through fear of trusting it to the hazards of travelling. I accordingly request you, most excellent Porson, unless my efforts find no favour with you, to let me know, as soon as possible, by what means this volume may be sent to London, and to whom it should be addressed. For, the more desirous I am to make my respect and esteem known to you, the more anxiously must I take care that my letters and books, the indications of my regard, may not fail of their purpose and object. Farewell, most worthy of men, and look on me with

favour.

"Jena, June 1, 1802."

Whether Porson ever had the grace to acknowledge the receipt of the books, is unknown.

CHAP. XXI.

PORSON SUPPOSED TO HAVE PREPARED AN EDITION OF THE HIPPOLYTUS. WHY HE DISCONTINUED

EURIPIDES.

HIS LETTER TO THE

"MONTHLY REVIEW SIGNED J. N. DAWES. PORSON'S INSCRIPTION

-

FOR A FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF CERES. HIS LABOURS ON THE ROSETTA STONE. LETTER OF PORSON TO DALZEL. - SENT TO THE 66 MUSEUM CRITICUM," WITH REMARKS, BY TATE. DALZEL REPLIES TO PORSON.- QUESTION AS TO THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE SIX MORE LETTERS TO GRANVILLE SHARP."—OBJECT OF THE LETTERS.-PORSON RECEIVES AN EPISTLE FROM TITTMANN OF LEIPSIC.

WITH the last edition of the Hecuba, the published labours of Porson on Euripides terminated. It has been stated in print that he left a transcript of the Hippolytus ready for the press, but, if he did so, it has never had the fortune to meet the eye of the public.

Maltby understood from Dr. Raine that such a transcript had been prepared, but it was not to be found among Porson's papers, he said, at his death. The doctor seems to have had a strong impression that it had been stolen, and to have intimated to Maltby whom he suspected; and Barker, from a conversation that he had with Maltby on the subject, concluded that either Upcott or Savage, the sub-librarian of the London Institution, was the object of Raine's suspicion.* Monk, when he published the play, had a portion of it,

* Barker's Lit. Anecdotes, vol. i. P. 63.

1803.]

PORSON'S INACTIVITY.

255

from ver. 176 to 266, corrected and written out in Porson's hand, and had heard Porson say that he felt no doubt of having restored that passage to the state in which it had come from Euripides himself.* No other portion is mentioned as having fallen into Monk's hands.

Some notes were also left by Porson on the two Iphigenias and the Supplices, but these had been made when he was very young, and required careful revision. Many of them are given in the Glasgow "Variorum edition. Why he did not continue his attention to Euripides, and endeavour, as he expressed it, to complete the web which he had begun to weave, is a question that has often been asked. The true answer to it, we fear, is that he was fast falling, deeper and deeper, into habits which unfitted him for steady perseverance in any kind of mental labour, so that his days were either wasted in indolence, or employed only in desultory efforts that ended in little or nothing. A man who, in health that had long been far from good, spent his evenings, and perhaps his nights, in convivial indulgence, would be but ill fitted for toilsome research and calm disquisition. If he was naturally indolent, too, and averse to write, when he was in full vigour, and his head clear, how much more would this be the case when he was debilitated and overclouded!

About this period, or not long before, he was offered by the London booksellers 3000l. for an edition of Aristophanes, which, with his knowledge of that author, he might have completed, in Dr. Raine's opinion, in six months; but the money proved no inducement to him to commence it.

* Monk's Pref. to the Hippol.

During the six years, however, that elapsed between the appearance of the second edition of his Hecuba and his death, he was not wholly idle, but made exertions, from time to time, to do something. In October 1802, having observed that he had made a mistake in his note on the 782nd verse of the Hecuba by proposing to read, at the end of Androm. 1116, Tux d'œv ἐν ἐμπύροις, without noticing that the commencement was εὔξαιτο Φοίβω, he wrote the following letter on the subject to the editor of the "Monthly Review;" intending subsequently to translate it into Latin, and incorporate it in a body of addenda to the play," which," in Mr. Kidd's phrase, "were appropriated to high matter seasoned with a little wholesome chastisement." This intention, however, he left wholly unexecuted.

"SIR,

" I agree with Mr. Cogan, that the passages of Euripides and Sophocles sufficiently defend one another, and prove, at least in poetry, the legitimate use of the verb Tvyxáve, without the participle v.

"My friend, Mr. C. Falconer, jun., pointed out to me another mistake in Mr. Porson's note, which Mr. Cogan has omitted to correct, either through forbearance or oversight. If in Euripides, Androm. 1116, we read [svğairo Poißo] TUXE Sav év éμπúρois, there will be an hiatus valde deflendus, which Mr. Porson will, I dare say, retract, when it is mentioned to him. I draw this conclusion from two of his own notes, one upon the 571st verse of the Hecuba, where he quotes with approbation my namesake's (Dawes, Misc. Crit. pp. 216, 217) censure of a similar mistake of King's; the other on Orestes, v. 792, where Mr. Porson proposes a conjecture to remedy the same fault in a comic poet.

"While I am on this subject of the hiatus, it may not be improper to rescue another passage from the attacks of critics. Machon (Athenæus xii. p. 580 D.) tells us that Gnathæna,