Mark Twain? Oscar Wilde? Thomas Love Peacock? Algernon Falconer? Richard Porson?

Question for Quote Investigator: The complexities of the German language inspired the following comical statement:
Life is too short to learn German.
This statement has been attributed to U.S. humorist Mark Twain, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, English satirist Thomas Love Peacock, and English classical scholar Richard Porson. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in the satirical novel “Gryll Grange” by Thomas Love Peacock. The work was serialized in “Fraser’s Magazine”1 of London in 1860 and published as a book in 1861.
A fictional character named Algernon Falconer uttered the statement while he was discussing his library which centered on books in English, Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, but not German. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2
It was a dictum of Porson, that “Life is too short to learn German:” meaning, I apprehend, not that it is too difficult to be acquired within the ordinary space of life, but that there is nothing in it to compensate for the portion of life bestowed on its acquirement, however little that may be.
Richard Porson was a scholar at the University of Cambridge who was acclaimed for his knowledge of Greek. He was born in 1759 and died in 1808. QI has found no substantive evidence that Porson authored the statement under analysis. QI conjectures that Thomas Love Peacock crafted the quip and assigned it to Porson to accentuate its humor. Alternatively, Peacock was simply repeating a pre-existing joke.
QI believes that the attributions to Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain are unsupported although germane quotations from Twain are listed further below.
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
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