climacteric!

"I remember to have seen Porson at Cambridge, in the hall of our
college, and in private parties, but not frequently; and I never
can recollect him except as drunk or brutal, and generally both: I
mean in an evening, for in the hall he dined at the Dean's table,
and I at the Vice-master's, so that I was not near him; and he then
and there appeared sober in his demeanour, nor did I ever hear of
excess or outrage on his part in public,--commons, college, or
chapel; but I have seen him in a private party of undergraduates,
many of them fresh men and strangers, take up a poker to one of
them, and heard him use language as blackguard as his action. I
have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his
intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of
all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson
was the most bestial, as far as the few times that I saw him went,
which were only at William Bankes's (the Nubian discoverer's)
rooms. I saw him once go away in a rage, because nobody knew the
name of the 'Cobbler of Messina,' insulting their ignorance with
the most vulgar terms of reprobation. He was tolerated in this
state amongst the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a
madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to recite, or rather
vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot;
and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser
exhibition than this man's intoxication.

"I perceive, in the book you sent me, a long account of him, which
is very savage. I cannot judge, as I never saw him sober, except in
_hall_ or combination-room; and then I was never near enough to
hear, and hardly to see him. Of his drunken deportment, I can be