CHAPTER XIX
CELEBRITIES AS OXFORD MEN—(continued)
William Collins—Joins the Smarts—Forgets how to work—Oxford kills his will-power—Loses his reason—Samuel Johnson at Pembroke—A lonely freshman—Translates Pope’s Messiah—Suffers horribly from poverty—Dr Adam, his tutor—Readiness and physical pluck—Love of showing off—His love of Pembroke.
William Collins has been claimed as the greatest lyric poet of the eighteenth century. But, as is so often the case with famous men, his genius during his life time received no recognition. It was only when the world learned of his death, after he has been removed from a madhouse, that his few works began to come in for the notice which they deserved. Perhaps one of the reasons that life brought him no triumphant successes was the fact that he knew not how to work; and the blame of this undoubtedly falls upon Oxford. Whilst at school Collins worked steadfastly both in the matter of examinations and independent poems. It was at Winchester that he wrote his Persian Eclogues, and in proof of his capacity for study he headed the list for nomination to an Oxford college, which included Warton and Whitehead. Oxford caused him to dwindle into a mere dilettante, a Smart, although he was accused falsely of bringing with him from school “a sovereign contempt for all academic studies and discipline.” The beginning of his Undergraduate life was marked by his strutting about in fine clothes with a feather in his cap, and running up heavy bills at the booksellers and tailors. The steady reading which he must have got through to enable him to head the school list was now laughed at. No one else did any work. Why should he? The Dons at Magdelen did not enforce the college exercises, and those which Collins condescended to put in showed signs of great genius and great indolence. The atmosphere of slacking, and card and wine parties which prevailed in the university seized hold of Collins, and he indulged himself to the full.
From time to time the poetry that was in him overflowed in an ode or two, but he was delighted to be interrupted by some genial friend in the middle of his work, and there the poem would be left. He frequented parties daily, entering thoroughly into the spirit of flippancy which characterised all his smart friends. He loved to be the centre of attraction, to talk and laugh and jest with a circle of admirers. Those who did not think as he did were dubbed “damned dull fellows.” The complete liberty enjoyed by him as a gownsman killed the habit of work so forcibly inculcated at his school. No sooner did he sit down in his rooms to read than the thought of a call that he must pay brought him to his feet again. His entire freedom was his ruin. Had he been compelled to work during certain hours every day, it is certain that Collins would have been less of a butterfly, and probable that he would not have lost his reason. As it was, the lax authority bred in him a desire to partake of the dissipation and gaiety of London, and caused him to relegate work and poetry to a secondary and quite unimportant consideration. He became content merely to draw up the outline of vast schemes for future work. That which he did complete was short and unsatisfying. He began other things and never completed them. In momentary bursts of enthusiasm he would dash off the commencement of some perfect lyric with inspiration and genius. But his powers of concentration had been sapped. He had not the strength to go on working. The call to a tea-party, any outside matter of no importance, was sufficient to make him throw his work into the fire and rush off to enjoy himself. He even went so far as to receive money on the scenario of a work on condition of promising the completion by a certain date. For some days he was steadied. His usual haunts saw him not. Behind sported oak he sat and toiled, striving to conquer the distracting thoughts aroused by the chime of a bell, the street cries which drifted up to his window, the rustle of a branch in the trees outside, the tramp of footsteps on his staircase, the shouts from a distant quad. The effort was too much for him. Oxford had completely stifled whatever will-power he had ever possessed. He was beaten by her, robbed of the faculty of using the gifts which God had given him. He emerged from the struggle with several pages of scenario, and nothing more was ever attempted.
The praise of his friends round the Oxford tea-tables turned him into a consistent prevaricator. “To-morrow I will write! To-morrow shall see my epoch-making poem. To-morrow!” But to-morrow came and was passed in equal idleness and futilities. “Wait till I get to London. Ah, then!” He was convinced that he had but to arrive in the metropolis to be the centre of a storm of praise and admiration. The praise and adulation poured upon him by his fellow Undergraduates convinced him that his wit and genius would make a brilliant success in London, and win him a fortune. But it was not to be. His weakness and lack of resolve and initiative had triumphed. He became an habitué of coffee-houses, and formed acquaintances with actors, wasting his time at stage doors. He soon dissipated his money, and became badly in debt. The schemes for work by which to win fame and retrieve his fortunes died at their birth, and nothing was carried through.
There cannot be definitely laid at Oxford’s door the accusation of being the root of the insanity which subsequently developed in him. But it was undoubtedly the fault of Oxford that he lost so soon the power over his will which he possessed before his Undergraduate days. Such a man as Collins needed the control of a guiding hand, some strong man whose influence would have acted as a spur, and whose example would have led to regular hours and serious work. Oxford, however, provided no such man. The appointed tutor, who must have been a person gross in mind and body, took no trouble with his charge, exercised no care, left him, indeed, to his own resources. With him lies the blame for Collins’ madness. By leaving him to follow the loose example of the Undergraduates of the time, who acted upon the caprice of the moment whether for good or evil, that tutor withheld, however unconsciously, the support for which the fragile mind of Collins craved. Consequently, under the evil influence of eighteenth-century Oxford, the holds upon his will which kept Collins within the bounds of sanity were gradually loosened, until at length, a few years after his going down, his reason entirely left him, and he who should have been one of the world’s greatest poets was lost.
In a room on the second floor over the gateway at Pembroke Dr Johnson lived during his Undergraduate career. A large-browed, unusual looking lad, whose clothes were even then ill-fitting and badly cut, he came up at the age of nineteen under the protecting wing of his father; was duly introduced to his tutor, and moved in, reverently and tenderly, the only household gods that he possessed—his books.