1781 



ACCOUNT OF COLLINS 



6^ 



the roll, * and was entered a commoner of Queen's College. 

 There, no vacancy offering for New College, he remained a 

 year or two, and then was chosen a demy of Magdalen 

 College, where, I think, he took a degree. As he brought 

 with him (for so the whole turn of his conversation dis- 

 covered) too high an opinion of his school acquisitions, and 

 a sovereign contempt for all academic studies and discipline, 

 he never looked with any complacency on his situation in 

 the University, but was always complaining of the dulness 

 of a College life. In short, he threw up his demyship, and, 

 going to London, commenced a man of the town, spending 

 his time in all the dissipation of Kanelagh, 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 which he was to make his fortune. 



In this pleasurable way of life he soon wasted his little 

 property and a considerable legacy left him by a maternal 

 uncle, a colonel in the army to whom the nephew made 

 a visit in Flanders during the war. While on this tour 

 he wrote several entertaining letters to his Oxford friends, 

 some of which I saw. In London I met him often, and 

 remember he lodged in a little house with a Miss Bundy, 

 at the corner of King's Square-court, Soho, now a ware- 

 house, for a long time together. When poverty overtook 

 him, poor man, he had too much sensibility of temper to 

 bear with his misfortunes, and fell into a most deplorable 

 state of mind. How he got down to Oxford I do not 

 know ; but I myself saw him under Merton wall, in a very 

 affecting situation, struggling, and conveyed by force in 

 ,the arms of two or three men, towards the parish of S* 

 Clement, in which was a house that took in such unhappy 

 [objects; and I always understood that, not long after he 



* Mr. Joseph Warton, now Dr. Warton, headmaster at Winton School, 

 [was at the same time second upon roll ; and Mr. Mulso, now (1781) pre- 

 [bendary of the Church at Winton, third upon the roll.— V. 



