CELEBRITIES AS OXFORD MEN—(continued)

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.

Of a melancholic and somewhat bitter disposition already, he was, if possible, even more lonely and unsought than the average freshman. This condition of things caused him no regret. All his friends he brought with him to line the bookshelves, and, sporting his oak against an unrealising and unappreciative world, he revelled in the poets and the classics with uninterrupted bliss. But the vitality of youth does not long remain daunted, and Johnson soon threw off his melancholia and sallied forth into the cobbled streets in search of amusement or adventure. Through the bare-armed trees of the Broad Walk he made his way and joined in the sliding in the frozen Christ Church meadows. Work was forgotten in the biting, frosty, invigorating air, and for four days his tutor saw him not. Ice does not come every year, and Johnson made the most of it while it lasted.

The college exercises were child’s play to him. Unlike the majority of Undergraduates of the time, who read nothing but what was put into their hands by their tutor, Johnson brought with him to the university such a wide acquaintance with books, both of classics and poetry, that the Master of Pembroke said in all sincerity that he was better qualified for the university than any man during his time. With such knowledge and with the impetuousness that was always one of his chief characteristics, it is not to be wondered at that Johnson dashed off his exercises at top speed, and with a brilliance that created awe in the minds of the Dons. In one case, for instance, being requested to translate Pope’s Messiah into Latin verse, Johnson retired to his chamber and there, behind closed doors, wrote feverishly on a corner of his book-strewn table. The results of his rapid labours were twofold. He established a great reputation not only in his college but in the entire university, and, more than that, earned Pope’s highest praise, and brought about his statement that in later days it would be a question whether his own or Johnson’s version would be considered the original. One of his favourite haunts was Pembroke gate. There he lounged away his mornings, doing no work, attending no lectures, and preventing a crowd of listening Undergraduates from doing work or attending lectures. Like a king surrounded by his court, Johnson, unkempt of hair and ragged of clothes, with shoes down at heel and fit only for the rubbish heap, let fly his wit and satire upon every topic. The shouts of laughter which he provoked from his compeers bound them to him as though he had been a Pied Piper, and it was to empty benches that the Dons delivered their empty discourses. Against the tutors and Fellows also he turned his tongue, and his satire and humour at their expense allied the Undergraduates still more closely to him. But these merry meetings in the Pembroke gateway were only a pose on Johnson’s part. He wished to convey a certain impression, and he succeeded. The Master of Pembroke told Boswell that he “was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life.”

This was indeed a proof of the success of his pose; for in reality he was neither gay nor happy. His poverty, the bareness of his rooms, the shabbiness of his dress, the consequent inability to go anywhere, even into Christ Church, or do any of the things that the other men did who had money, ground into his soul. He was bitterly sensitive of these things, and the least reference to them, however delicate or well-meaning, either aroused a torrent of hot words, or caused him to retreat clam-like into his shell. The man who in a spirit of discreet friendship crept up to his rooms, left a new pair of shoes outside his door and stole unseen away, was only rewarded for his good-nature by learning that Johnson had thrown them out of the window in a burst of fury against the creation that had left him penniless. It was only the fact that scornful eyes (or at any rate Johnson’s touchiness interpreted scorn into them) were turned upon his shoes, through which his feet peered frankly out, that Johnson ceased going to Christ Church to obtain, second hand, the lectures of Bateman from his friend Taylor. He conceived poverty to be an awful and dangerous state. After his father had died, leaving practically nothing for his mother and himself, Johnson wrote in one of his little diaries: “Meanwhile let me take care that the powers of my mind may not be debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into criminal act.” By force of having no money, and not receiving any remittances from his father, by whom every penny had to be made to go the distance of two, he naturally incurred debts at Oxford. As he knew, however, that it would be only with difficulty that his expenses would be met at all, his debts were not large, and any incipient extravagance that may have been in him was crushed out very early. His one great craving was to replenish his library, and as this was impossible he took every opportunity of visiting the well-stocked libraries of other people. These gave him intense joy, and his first move was always to cross to the bookshelves and there, oblivious of his host and the whole world, to pour over the beloved volumes.

His faculty for poetical and prose writings was already strongly developed when first he came up to Oxford, and the original points of view from which he wrote his themes were a subject of great comment. The rest of the Undergraduates were as children when compared to one of his mental abilities. Even his tutor admitted that his position was farcical, and that Johnson was far above him in brain capacity, for he said on one occasion that “I was his nominal tutor but he was above my mark.” And the lad was then but some nineteen years of age! Merely to perform college exercises was absurd and irritating to one of his hasty dispositions. Having rattled them off, he used to read by himself, but with such a varied and impetuous taste that his knowledge seemed to include every subject of which anything had ever been written. Boswell says that “he told me, that from his earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to an end; that he read Shakespeare at a period so early, that the speech of the ghost in Hamlet terrified him when he was alone; that Horace’s Odes were the composition in which he took most delight, and it was not long before he liked his Epistles and Satires.... What he read most solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little epigram; that the study of which he was most fond was Metaphysicks.” But for all his brilliance Johnson went down without taking a degree. His father’s death rendered it impossible for him to remain at Oxford for the full course, and he never went in for the schools.

While at the university he did not form many great friendships. His was not the temperament. A highly sensitive man, surrounded for the most part by men of some wealth who were ever ready to incur expenses, he was always on the look-out for an objectionable glance of pity or sympathy, than which there was to him nothing worse or more heinous. With his wonderful talents it was rather for him to look down upon the vacuous moneyed men than permit himself to be patronised by them. Consequently, fully realising the almost insurmountable handicap of comparative penury, Johnson preferred to make his way by force of brain power or not at all, rather than bow down to the man with a fat purse. As he himself said in after life, “I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all authority.”

As a man of readiness and physical pluck he was without rival. In the summer the thought of sunshine and the wonderful green colourings of the trees called him from his books, and collecting a companion on the way, he was used to saunter through the parks to enjoy a bathe. His pulses tingling with the delight of being alive and young on a glorious day, with the softly waving branches rustling overhead, and the quiet river gliding at his feet, Johnson’s flow of fancies kept his companion entranced until they had thrown off their clothes and were ready for the first cool splash. There existed apparently a certain deep hole in the river bed in one of the places where they used to bathe, and Johnson’s friend warned him of the danger. Immediately, with the uncaring folly of youth, Johnson plunged into the very spot to his friend’s horror and anxiety. In a few moments he emerged, blowing like a healthy grampus, and poured ridicule upon his well-meaning if timid friend. He was, indeed, foolhardy to the point of braggadocio. A very sure proof of this is afforded by an incident which occurred when he was staying at Mr Beauclerk’s house in the country. The guests were outside the house one day on the lawn discussing the merits of their guns, when one of them pointed out that if a gun were loaded with many balls there was a danger of its bursting. Johnson promptly slipped in some seven or eight and fired his gun against the wall of the house. Instead of rating him soundly for his egregiously childish love of showing off, Boswell, in his blind idolatry, praises this up as being “resolution.”

At Oxford, and in fact afterwards, it was Johnson’s habit to sally forth at night time for solitary walks. His great affection for Oxford was doubtless stimulated by these lonely prowls through the moonlit streets, and his entire disregard for the consequences of his actions helped him in his climbs back into college. One can picture him dropping out of Pembroke after careful glances to right and left to see that all was clear, and marching along with his hands behind his back, safe from the scornful eyes of Smarts, which made his mean clothes infinitely more uncomfortable, his eyes drinking in the beauties of the wonderful skyline of the City of Spires, his mind occupied perhaps in thinking out Rasselas as he made his way through the narrow, deserted streets. On one of these expeditions four roughs sprang out upon him suddenly from the shadow of a gateway, intent on relieving him of the purse and jewellery which they supposed him to have. Their mistake was twofold, for, in addition to lighting upon a poor man, they had also caught a tartar. Johnson, young and active, struck out lustily and with skill, and, setting his back to the wall, battered the scoundrels right royally. Savage at being resisted, the men renewed their attack with the idea of vengeance, but Johnson, with no other aid than his fists, kept them at bay until the quick tramp of feet hurrying round the corner announced the presence of the watch, and both the attackers and their would-be victim were carried off to the round-house.

At a later period in his career when, one would have thought, his quick temper should have been entirely under control, he had an amusing adventure in the playhouse at Lichfield which showed, plainly enough, both that he could still lose his temper and that he had sufficient strength to carry things through. A chair had been placed for Johnson’s express use between the side scenes. Wishing, however, to speak with some one in another part of the building, he left it for a moment. Some gentleman promptly took possession, and Johnson, finding on his return that his place was occupied, civilly demanded his seat. The gentleman rudely refused to give it up. In a flash Johnson laid hold of him and tossed both man and chair into the pit.

In spite of the fact that Johnson at Pembroke suffered tortures from being poor, and that his gay and frolicsome habits were merely a cloak to hide his bitterness, yet he contracted a love for his college which endured to his death. It was a matter of pride to him to run over the list of names of the celebrated men educated at the same college: such names as Spenser, Shenstone, Blackstone, and others. In the “Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Hannah Moore” is found the following passage illustrative of his love for the old college. “Who do you think is my present cicerone at Oxford? Only Dr Johnson! and we do so gallant it about! You cannot imagine with what delight he showed me every part of his own college.... Dr Adams, the Master of Pembroke, had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner Johnson begged to conduct me to see the college, he would let no one else show it me but himself. ‘This was my room; this Shenstone’s.’ Then after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, ‘In short,’ said he, ‘we were a nest of singing birds. Here we walked, there played cricket.’ He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he passed there.... But alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed—spiritless and wan. However he made an effort to be cheerful....”

As a last token of his love for Pembroke he sent the college a present of all his works. This was done just before his death, and Boswell tells us that he was most anxious to bequeath his house at Lichfield to the college as well. His friends, however, “very properly dissuaded him from it.”

And now reluctantly I lay down my pen. It would be possible to continue for ever with such a subject as Oxford. Oxford, filled with the mystic echoes of the past, and the life and movement of the present, where a man passes four of the best years of his life, making livelong friendships, feeling things, doing things, and seeing things which remain indelibly engraved in his mind. Memories of Oxford have moved singers and poets to ecstasies of emotional utterance, inspired great writers with beautiful thoughts, and have been the one ray of comforting light in dark and miserable lives. Is there, or has there ever been, a man who, having known the protection of the old city’s walls, and explored the tree-shaded meanderings of the limpid Cher, having rioted after an athletic triumph and burnt the midnight oil with an intimate friend, having been, in short, a full-blooded Undergraduate, has gone down without any love for Alma mater in his heart, who has felt no thrill in after years when looking back upon his Oxford years? Surely such a creature was never born. Oxford’s charm is, essentially, not for the few. It strikes the heart of every one of her countless sons. Year follows year, and century, century, and the stream of men flows unceasingly in and out of the city’s gates. Does Oxford change, however? Another wrinkle on her face may betray the lapse of many decades, but her beauty remains. She is still the same.

“Still on her spire the pigeons hover;
Still by her gateway haunts the gown;
Ah, but her secret? you, young lover,
Drumming her old ones, forth from town,
Know you the secret none discover?
Tell it when you go down.
“Yet if at length you seek her, prove her,
Lean to her whispers never so nigh;
Yet if at last not less her lover
You in your hansom leave the High;
Down from her towers a ray shall hover—
Touch you, a passer by.”[31]

PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.

Footnotes:

[1] “Reminiscences of Oxford,” by L. Quiller-Couch.

[2] “Reminiscences of Oxford,” by L. Quiller-Couch.

[3] “Random Records,” by G. Colman the younger (London, 1830).

[4] “Random Records,” by G. Colman the younger (London, 1830).

[5] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[6] “Reminiscences of Oxford,” by L. Quiller-Couch.

[7] “Oxford Studies,” by J. R. Green (Macmillan & Co).

[8] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Reminiscences of Oxford,” by L. Quiller-Couch.

[11] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[12] “Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth” (London 1820).

[13] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[14] “Reminiscences of Oxford,” by L. Quiller-Couch.

[15] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[16] “Reminiscences of a Literary Life,” by T. F. Dibdin, London, 1836.

[17] “Recollections of Particulars in Life of late Mr William Shenstone,” by the Rev. Richard Graves.

[18] Terrae Filius.

[19] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[20] “Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon” (London, 1796).

[21] “Essays Moral and Literary,” by Vicesimus Knox.

[22] “Oxford Studies,” by J.R. Green (Messrs Macmillan & Co.).

[23] “Social Life at the Universities,” by Chris. Wordsworth.

[24] “Life of William, Earl of Shelburne,” by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice (London, 1895).

[25] “University Education,” by Dr Newton (London, 1726).

[26] “Boswell’s Life of Johnson.”

[27] “Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon” (London, 1796).

[28] “Reminiscences of a Literary Life,” by T. F. Dibdin.

[29] “Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth” (London, 1820).

[30] To which he transferred from Magdalen Hall.

[31] A. C. Quiller-Couch.