Richard Porson - Later Life and Death

Later Life and Death

In 1806, when the London Institution was founded in the Old Jewry, he was appointed principal librarian with a salary of £200 a year and a suite of rooms; and thus his latter years were made easy as far as money was concerned.

Among his most intimate friends was James Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle; and he married Perry's sister, Mrs Lunan, in November 1796. Porson then drank less; but she died a few months after her marriage (12 April 1797), and he returned to his chambers in the Temple and his old habits. Perry's friendship induced him to spend his time in writing for the Morning Chronicle.

For some months before his death he had appeared to be failing: his memory was not what it had been, and he had some symptoms of intermittent fever; but on 19 September 1808 he was seized in the street with a fit of apoplexy, and after partially recovering died on the 25th. He was buried in Trinity College, close to the statue of Newton, at the opposite end of the chapel to where rest the remains of Bentley.