PORSON.
A favorite diversion of Porson, when among a party of literary men, was to quote a few lines of poetry, and ask if any of the company could tell where they came from. He frequently quoted the following lines without finding any one able to name the author:—
For laws that are inanimate,
And feel no sense of love or hate,
That have no passion of their own,
Or pity to be wrought upon,
Are only proper to inflict
Revenge on criminals as strict:
But to have power to forgive
Is empire and prerogative;
And ’tis in crowns a nobler gem
To grant a pardon than condemn.
The lines remind the Shakspeare student of a similar verse in Measure for Measure, (Act III, Sc. 2.):—
He that the sword of state would bear,
Should be holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go, &c.
The company generally guessed every likely author but the right one. When conjecture was exhausted, Porson would satisfy curiosity by telling them the lines were in Butler’s Hudibras, and would be found in The Heroic Epistle of Hudibras to his Lady, which few people ever did read, and no one now thinks of reading.