Sometimes, in a fit of abstraction, he would go without a dinner. One day, when Rogers asked him to stay and dine, he replied, "Thank you, no; I dined yesterday." Porson used to relate, with much glee, his school anecdotes, the tricks he used to play upon his master and schoolfellows, and the little dramatic pieces which he wrote for private representation. In describing his narrow means, he used to say, "I was almost then destitute in the wide world, with less than 40_l._ a year for my support, and without a profession; for I could never bring myself to subscribe Articles of Faith. I used often to lie awake for a whole night, and wish for a large pearl." He seemed to delight in company of low grade. At Cambridge, after sitting five hours, and drinking two bottles of sherry, he began to clip the king's English, to cry like a child at the close of his periods; and, in other respects, to show marks of extreme debility. At length, he rose from his chair, staggered to the door, and made his way downstairs without taking the slightest notice of his companion. Subsequently he went out upon a search for the Greek Professor, whom he discovered near the outskirts of Cambridge, leaning upon the arm of a dirty bargeman, and amusing him by the most humorous and laughable anecdotes. However, Porson could place a strong restraint upon himself when necessary. When he went to stay with his sisters, in the year 1804, it is said that he only took two glasses of wine a day for eleven weeks. Porson was a man of ready wit and repartee. When asked by a Scotch stranger at the Gray's Inn Coffee-house if Bentley were not a Scotchman, he replied, "No, sir, Bentley was a Greek scholar." He said Bishop Pearson would have been a first-rate critic if he hadn't muddled his brains with divinity. Dr. Parr once asked him, in his pompous manner, before a large company, what he thought about the introduction of moral and physical evil into the world. "Why, Doctor," said Porson, "I think we should have done very well without them." On his academic visits to the Continent, Porson wrote:-- "I went to Frankfort, and got drunk With that most learn'd Professor Brunck: I went to Worts, and got more drunken, With that more learn'd Professor Runcken." Porson said one night, when he was very drunk, to Dodd, who was pressing him hard in argument, "Jemmy Dodd, I always despised you when sober, and I'll be d----d if I'll argue with you now that I am drunk." Porson, in a social party, offered to make a rhyme on anything, when some one suggested one of the Latin gerunds, and he immediately replied:-- "When Dido found Æneas would not come, She mourned in silence, and was _Di-do-dum_." A gentleman said to the great "Grecian," with whom he had been disputing--"Dr. Porson, my opinion of you is most contemptible." "Sir," returned the Doctor, "I never knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible."