The Sexagenarian
(vol. i. p. 98), speaks of Mansel as "a young man remarkable for his personal confidence, for his wit and humour, and, above all, for his gallantries." Apparently, on the same somewhat unreliable authority, he was, as Master, a severe disciplinarian, and extremely tenacious of his dignity (i. p. 99).
[cross-reference: return to Footnote 3 of Letter 51]
[cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 58]
Byron probably refers to Richard Porson (1759-1808), Professor of Greek (1792-1808). The son of the parish clerk of Bacton and Earl Ruston, in Norfolk, Porson was entered, by the kindness of friends, on the foundation of Eton College (1774-1778). At Trinity, Cambridge, he became a Scholar in 1780, and a Fellow (1782-1792). In 1792, as he could not conscientiously take orders, he vacated his Fellowship, but was elected Professor of Greek. When Byron was at Cambridge, Porson's health and powers were failing. Silent and reserved, except in the society of his friends, a sloven in his person, he had probably taken to drink as a cure for sleeplessness. In a note to the
Pursuits of Literature
(Dialogue iv. lines 508-516),
"What," asks the author, J. T. Mathias, himself a Fellow of Trinity, "is mere genius without a regulated life! To show the deformity of vice to the rising hopes of the country, the policy of ancient Sparta exhibited an inebriated slave."