"When Billy found he scarce could stand, 'Help! help!' he cried, and stretched his hand To faithful Harry calling, Quoth Hal, 'My friend, I'm sorry for't; 'Tis not my practice to support A minister that's falling.'" "'Who's up?' inquired Burke of a friend at the door; 'Oh! no one,' says Paddy, 'though Pitt's on the floor.'" Porson was not imposed upon for a moment by the Ireland forgeries of Shakspeare, and when asked to set his name to a declaration of belief in their genuineness, replied, with a smile, that he was "slow to subscribe articles of faith." Scholars, however, owe a debt of gratitude to Ireland, of which, perhaps, they are seldom conscious; for it was the alleged discovery of Shakspearian plays that drew from Porson one of the cleverest specimens of his peculiar powers that remain to us. We mean the translation of "Three Children sliding on the Ice," which he sent to the _Morning Chronicle_, as a fragment of Sophocles, recently discovered by a friend of his at the bottom of an old trunk. Porson had high animal spirits; and he is said once, for a wager, to have carried a young lady round the room in his teeth. His conversation, however, after a certain period of the evening, was not always fit for ladies. Rogers once took him to a party, where several women of fashion were present, who were anxious to hear him talk. The Professor, who hated being made a lion, selected for his theme the soup of Vauxhall, and at last, we are told, talked so oddly, that all the women retreated except the famous Lady Crewe, who was not to be frightened by any man. "After this," says Rogers, "I brought him home as far as Piccadilly, where I am sorry to say I left him sick in the middle of the street."