Richard Porson - Early Life

Early Life

He was born at East Ruston, near North Walsham, in Norfolk, the eldest son of Huggin Person, parish clerk. His mother was the daughter of a shoemaker from the neighbouring village of Bacton. He was sent first to the village school at Bacton, kept by John Woodrow, and afterwards to that of Happisburgh kept by Mr Summers, where his extraordinary powers of memory and aptitude for arithmetic were soon discovered. His literary skill was partly due to the efforts of Summers, who long afterwards stated that during fifty years of scholastic life he had never come across boys so clever as Porson and his two brothers. He was well grounded in Latin by Summers, remaining with him for three years. His father also took pains with his education, making him repeat at night the lessons he had learned in the day. He would frequently repeat without making a mistake a lesson which he had learned one or two years before and had never seen in the interval. For books he had only what his father's cottage supplied—a book or two of arithmetic, John Greenwood's England, Jewell's Apology, and an odd volume of Chambers' Cyclopaedia picked up from a wrecked coaster, and eight or ten volumes of the Universal Magazine.