with complacency on his situation in the University, but was always complaining of the dulness of a college life.' His fastidious, restless, fanciful spirit chafed at a pedestrian existence. The anecdote of Hampton's descent upon a tea-party in Collins's rooms, where 'several intelligent friends were assembled... to enjoy each other's conversation', is most diverting. Before a word had been spoken, Hampton, a Wykehamist, and afterwards a celebrated translator of Polybius, kicked the tea-table and all its contents to the other side of the room. This is very characteristic of the attitude of the 'brutal scholar' towards 'intelligent conversations': no less characteristic was the behaviour of Collins, who 'took no notice of the aggressor, but getting up from his chair calmly, began picking up the slices of bread and butter, and the fragments of his china, repeating very mildly,

'Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae.'

It is comforting to be assured by Gilbert White that the poet was usually of a warm temper.

He was soon quit of Oxford and its Philistinism and essays and discipline. The migration to London was ostensibly due to disgust because he did not obtain a fellowship; but really and more naturally it was owing to a desire to plunge into the great world and to escape his creditors, 'his bookseller, his tailor, and other tradesmen.' His father had died ten years earlier, leaving his affairs rather em

barrassed', and just before or soon after leaving Oxford the poet lost his mother too, on July 6, 1744, and quickly dissipated the small property which she left to him. He had taken his B.A. degree in November, 1743, and the natural date for resigning his demyship would be July 16, 1744. Besides, unless the copyhold property which he inherited from his mother had been very small, he could not, while holding it, have retained his demyship for more than a short time, nor have been elected to a fellowship. So that there were many reasons why he should have decided to leave Oxford.

When he reached London he hastened to call upon his cousin Mr. George Payne, who had the management of Colonel Martin's affairs in his absence; and by a strange error of diplomacy Collins appeared in his gayest clothes with a feather in his hat; 'at which,' said Mr. Ragsdale in recounting the incident, 'his relation expressed surprise, and told him that his appearance was by no means that of a young man who had not a single guinea he could call his own. This gave him great offence; but remembering his sole dependence for subsistence was in the power of Mr. Payne, he concealed his resentment; yet could not refrain from speaking freely behind his back, and saying "he thought him a d-d dull fellow"; though, indeed, this was an epithet he was pleased to bestow on every one who did not think as he would have them.'

It is not certain in what year Collins paid a visit

to his military uncle in Flanders; but it must have been either before the summer of 1745 or between June, 1746, and June, 1747, and the visit is more likely to have taken place when Collins had just left the University and was doubtful in his choice of a profession: his earliest biographer, Dr. Langhorne, stated that it was after the failure of the Odes, in 1747. At all events he is said to have written very entertaining letters home, which are unfortunately lost; and it was probably on this occasion that his uncle thought him 'too indolent even for the army'. He had always been intended by his father for the Church; and he even went so far as to apply to Mr. Green, Rector of Birdham, near Chichester, for a curacy, and to obtain all the necessary credentials. But he was dissuaded by Hardman, a tobacconist in Fleet Street, from taking Orders.

Whatever may have been his doubts and disappointments, he was launched upon the sea of London literary life; he received, on demand, supplies of money from his cousin, Mr. Payne; he lodged with a Miss Bundy at the corner of King's Square Court in Soho, and, as Gilbert White afterwards described it, he 'commenced a man of the town, spending his time in all the dissipation of Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and the playhouses; and was romantic enough to suppose that his superior abilities would draw the attention of the great world, by means of whom he was to make his fortune.... He was passionately fond of

music; good-natured and affable; warm in his friendships, visionary in his pursuits; and, as long as I knew him, very temperate in his eating and drinking. He was of a moderate stature, of a light and clear complexion, with grey eyes, so very weak at times as hardly to bear a candle in the room; and often raising within him apprehensions of blindness.' One of his greatest friends was James Thomson the poet, who was then living in Kew Foot Lane, Richmond; by him Collins is said to have been introduced to the Prince of Wales. Many of his days were spent at Richmond, either with Thomson or with a neighbour, John Ragsdale, to whose house he had a general invitation; he would write fragments of poems and odes, and then burn them in the fire, in spite of his host's efforts to save them. At other times he was bent solely on the pleasures of companionship and gaiety; Ranelagh was recently opened, at Vauxhall Dr. Arne's music was a new feature of the entertainment. Collins made the acquaintance of many actors-Foote, who had been his contemporary at Oxford, and who sprang into fame in 1747, Garrick, Woodward, Quin, Murphy, and others; he had the liberty of the scenes and green-room, where he made diverting observations on the vanity and false consequence of that class of people; and his manner of relating them to his particular friends was extremely entertaining.' He was well known at Slaughter's in St. Martin's Lane, the resort of painters and sculptors, and at the Bedford Coffee-house' under the Piazza, Covent Garden',

which was naturally frequented by actors from Drury Lane and a brilliant company of Bohemians. It is recorded that Dr. Arne was the only man in a suit of velvet in the dog-days. "This Coffee-house,' said the Connoisseur in 1754 (No. 1.), 'is every night crowded with men of parts. Almost every one you meet is a polite scholar and a wit. Jokes and bon mots are echoed from box to box; every branch of literature is critically examined, and the merit of every production of the press, or performance at the theatres, weighed and determined.... We can now boast men of superior abilities [to those of Addison, Steele, and Pope]; men, who without any one acquired excellence, by the mere dint of an happy assurance, can exact the same tribute of veneration, and receive it as due to the illustrious characters, the scribblers, players, fiddlers, gamblers, that make so large a part of the company at the Bedford."

With such associates Collins dissipated the money given to him by his apprehensive cousin on behalf of the Lieutenant-Colonel. We may well believe that he took his full share of the gaiety and wit, had a regular seat near Foote's select corner of the room, exchanged news with old Dr. Barrowby, an insatiable scandal-monger, discussed John Armstrong's new poem The Art of Preserving Health with its author, Young's Night thoughts or Shenstone's Schoolmistress, with his literary friends, Millar, Davies or Manby the publishers, or Ragsdale or Dr. Hill or Joseph Warton or Dr. Johnson. For in those days