his wit and agreeable conversation made him welcome. In 1795 he married the sister of Mr. Perry, of "The Morning Chronicle;" to which he contributed several papers, under the signature of "S. England," continuing at the same time to write criticisms for the magazines.

In 1797 his first edition of the "Hecuba" of Euripides appeared; but it was in the preface to his second edition of this play that he announced the new canons respecting the Iambic metre of the Greek tragedians, the discovery of which gained him so much celebrity in the learned world. One of these, that respecting the Cretic foot, is supposed to have been first observed by Porson about 1790. The writer of the memoir of him in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" says, that he heard it alluded to in conversation with Porson in 1791. The anecdote respecting the circumstances under which the Cretic was spoken of is curious, and is evidently told by one who had been Porson's intimate associate. Porson, it seems, was "somewhat characteristically" attempting to fill his glass out of an empty bottle. Some Greek was ventured on, and it was observed how much better it was to say

than

Πᾶν ἐκπέπωκας· οὐδ ̓ ἔνεστι κότταβος,

Πᾶν ἐκπέπωκας· οὐ λέλειπται κότταβος.

The last work which he published was a third edition of the "Hecuba." He continued to reside partly at Cambridge and partly at London, until his death in 1808. About a year before that event he had been elected principal librarian of the London Institution, Moorfields.

Porson's powers of mind were such as are very rarely found among men even of the most cultivated intellect. His memory was gigantic-perhaps "elephantine" would be the more proper epithet-on account of the power which it had of apprehending and retaining the minutest as well as the most important subjects.

"Nothing came amiss," says Mr. Weston, "to his memory. He would set a child right in his twopenny fable-book, repeat the whole moral tale of the Dean of Badajoz, a page of Athenæus on cups, or of Eustathius on Homer, even though he did every thing to impair his mental faculties."

Porson was conscious of his own powers; and though frank and good-humoured even to a fault with the unlearned, he was unbending among those who assumed the title of scholars. It has been observed that he neither would give nor take praise;

and when he was told that a person named had called him a giant in literature, he remarked that a man had no right to tell the height of that which he could not measure.

Like his great Cambridge predecessor Bentley, he wrote English with remarkable purity and force. His observations on "Gibbon's History" may rank among the best specimens of caustic sarcasm in the language. Without at all undervaluing classical studies, without undervaluing the necessity of those studies being carried on accurately as well as extensively, without undervaluing the importance of Porson's contributions to our knowledge of the great classical writers, it is impossible not to join in the regret, that partly from necessity, partly from choice, Porson so far limited the exercise of his surpassing intellect; and that the possessor of an undeniably great genius should be almost exclusively known as the verbal critic of the great works which the genius of others has bequeathed to us. (Encyclopædia Britannica.)

GEORGE STEEVENS.

THE consideration of the life of the learned annotator on the ancient drama, reminds me not to pass unnoticed the celebrated annotator on the writings of our own great dramatist, Shakspeare.

George Steevens was born in 1736. He was educated first at Kingston-upon-Thames, and afterwards at Eton. On leaving Eton he succeeded to a scholarship at King's College.

Steevens possessed a good private fortune, and the whole object of his life seems to have been to illustrate and edit Shakspeare.

In 1766 he published twenty of Shakspeare's plays, in four volumes, 8vo. In 1773, with the assistance of Dr. Johnson, he published an illustrated edition of the poet's whole works, in ten volumes, 8vo, of which a second edition appeared in 1785, and a third, in fifteen volumes, in 1793. Mr. Steevens had studied the age of Shakspeare, and had employed his persevering industry in becoming acquainted with the writings, manners, and laws of that period, as well as the provincial peculiarities, whether of language or custom, which prevailed in different parts of the kingdom, but more particularly in those where Shakspeare passed the early years of his life. This store of knowledge he was continually increasing by the acquisition of the rare and obsolete publications

of a former age, which he spared no expense to obtain. Steevens died in 1800.

I come now to a group of statesmen, whom I ought perhaps to have introduced at an earlier part of the chapter. But Earl Grey is a statesman whose principal public actions have occurred so very recently, that it seemed desirable to defer any memoir of him until I had recapitulated those whose names are not so inseparably connected with the party disputes of the present time. There was not the same reason for deferring the notice of Lord Grenville; but his name and Lord Grey's are so generally mentioned together, that I have waited until immediately before the time of introducing the memoir of Earl Grey, before I have commenced that of

LORD GRENVILLE.

WILLIAM WYNDHAM GRENVILLE was born in 1753, and educated at Eton and Christchurch. In 1782 he became a member of the House of Commons, and he was soon afterwards made Paymaster of the Forces. He devoted himself to the support of Pitt, and steadily followed his fortunes through the disputes of the coalition, and the discussions and parliamentary struggles that arose on the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War.

As early as 1789, Mr. Grenville received the distinction of being made Speaker of the House of Commons. In the same year he was made Home Secretary, and in 1790 he was made a peer. He soon after that time exchanged the Home Secretaryship for that of the Foreign Department. He was a vehement enemy of the various French Revolutionary Governments, and lent the whole force of his great abilities to urging this country to the most zealous prosecution of the war.

In 1801 he left office together with Mr. Pitt, but he did not return to it with him in 1804. Lord Grenville was a warm supporter of the Catholic claims; he had also strongly promoted the union of this country and Ireland. Lord Grenville thought that the hope of Catholic Emancipation had been held out to Ireland as an inducement to consent to the Union; and accordingly, in 1804, he peremptorily refused to join the administration, unless on the terms of making a Catholic Relief Bill one of the government measures. Pitt abandoned the Catholic claims and took

office, and immediately Lord Grenville joined the Whig party, with whom to the end of his public life he continued to act.

Lord Brougham observes that "a greater accession to the popular cause and the Whig party it was impossible to imagine, unless Mr. Pitt himself had persevered in his desire of rejoining the standard under which his first and noblest battles were fought. All the qualities in which their long opposition and personal habits made them deficient, Lord Grenville possessed in an eminent degree long habits of business had matured his experience and disciplined his naturally vigorous understanding; a life studiously regular had surrounded him with the respect of his countrymen, and of those whom the dazzling talents of others could not blind to their loose propensities or idle habits; a firm attachment to the Church as by law established attracted towards him the confidence of those who subscribe to its doctrines and approve its discipline; while his tried prudence and discretion were a balance much wanted against the opposite defects of the Whig party, and especially of their most celebrated leader."

Lord Grenville was Premier of the Whig ministry in 1806. On its dismissal he resumed his place on the opposition benches, and twice refused to return to office on terms which he deemed inconsistent with his duty and his principles.

This honourable and high-minded statesman died in 1834. The last years of his life had been spent in retirement, during which a renewal of the classical studies of his youth formed his principal occupation and delight. He had been distinguished at Eton for his Latin, and he formed a collection of very beautiful translations, which he had made into that language, from various pieces of Greek and modern poetry. These were printed for private circulation under the title of "Nuga Metricæ." Lord Brougham says of him :

"The endowments of this eminent statesman's mind were all of a useful and commanding sort-sound sense, steady memory, vast industry. His acquirements were in the same proportion valuable and lasting—a thorough acquaintance with business in its principles and in its details; a complete mastery of the science of politics as well theoretical as practical; of late years a perfect familiarity with political economy, and a just appreciation of its importance; an early and most extensive knowledge of classical literature, which he improved instead of abandoning, down to the

close of his life; a taste formed upon those chaste models, and of which his lighter compositions, his Greek and Latin verses, bore testimony to the very last. His eloquence was of a plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which neglected if it did not despise ornament, and partook in the least possible degree of fancy, while its declamation was often equally powerful with its reasoning and its statement." (Biog. Dict.-Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches.)

EARL GREY.

THE time is not yet come for a full and fair biography of this great statesman to be written. The struggle of the Reform Bill is too recent, the anger, the surprise, the triumph, the hopes, the disappointments, which that measure created, are still too active. It is too much connected with the question of other political changes, which some are fiercely seeking, and others sternly resisting, for us to be able to contemplate the Reform Minister with the calmness which history requires. Lord Grey, at some future time, will occupy a large space in every book that treats of any epoch, or any institution, with which his name is connected. But this work is designed to commemorate the past, and not to put forward any theories as to the state affairs of the present time. Its writer will therefore be pardoned if only a brief notice of the dates of the chief events in Lord Grey's life is here inserted; nor will the brevity of this memoir be imputed to an inability to appreciate the importance of Lord Grey's actions, or to any unwillingness to do justice to his character.

Charles Grey was born in 1764. He was educated at Eton and Oxford; and at the age of twenty-two became a member of Parliament. He was sincerely attached to Mr. Fox, both politically and personally. The best proof of the high opinion which Fox, Burke, and the other chiefs of the Whig party, at that time formed of Mr. Grey's abilities, is, that he was appointed one of the managers for the House of Commons in the celebrated impeachment of Warren Hastings.

Mr. Grey, like his leader, Fox, strongly opposed the war against France; and he was one of the small band of adherents, who, night after night, faced, by the side of Fox, the large and wellorganised majorities of the minister.