When smoking began to go out of fashion, learning began to go out of fashion also.
WATSON: Life. He was very irregular in his habits of eating, dining one day heartily, and fasting the three following. Thus, when asked by a friend to stay to dinner, “Thank you, sir,” he replied, “I dined yesterday.”
He once offered to make a rhyme on any subject, and the Latin gerund was suggested. He immediately responded to the challenge:—
If I had a son, I should endeavor to make him familiar with French and German authors, rather than with the classics. Greek and Latin are only luxuries.
Mr. Southey is a wonderful writer. His works will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.
“And only then,” unnecessarily added Byron.—Ibid.
Of a volume of poems not remarkable for originality or elegance, he said, “They have much of Horace, and much of Virgil, but nothing Horatian and nothing Virgilian.”—Ibid.
A man once said to Porson, “My opinion of you is most contemptible.”—“I never knew an opinion of yours,” he retorted, “that was not contemptible.”—Ibid.
