on the 19th of January, 1733, where he was educated
by Dr. Burton; and in 1740 he stood first on the list of scholars who
were to be received at New College. No vacancy, however, occurred, and
the circumstance is said by Johnson to have been the original misfortune
of his life. He became a commoner of Queen's,[1] whence, on the 29th of
July, 1741, he was elected a demy of Magdalen College. During his stay
at Queen's he was distinguished for genius and indolence, and the few
exercises which he could be induced to write bear evident marks of both
qualities. He continued at Oxford until he took his bachelor's degree,
and then suddenly left the University, his motive, as he alleged, being
that he missed a fellowship, for which he offered himself; but it has
been assigned to his disgust at the dulness of a college life, and to
his being involved in debt.

On arriving in London, which was either in 1743 or 1744, he became, says
Johnson, "a literary adventurer, with many projects in his head and very
little money in his pocket." Collins was not without some reputation as
an author when he proposed to adopt the most uncertain and deplorable of
all professions, that of literature, for a subsistence. Whilst at
Winchester school he wrote his Eclogues, and had appeared before the
public in some verses addressed to a lady weeping at her sister's
marriage, which were printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, Oct. 1739,
when Collins was in his eighteenth year. In January, 1742, he published
his Eclogues, under the title of "Persian Eclogues;"[2] and, in
December, 1743, his "Verses to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his Edition of
Shakespeare," appeared. To neither did he affix his name, but the latter
was said to be by "a Gentleman of Oxford."

From the time he settled in London, his mind was more occupied with
literary projects than with steady application; nor had poesy, for which
Nature peculiarly designed him, sufficient attractions to chain his
wavering disposition. It is not certain whether his irresolution arose
from the annoyance of importunate debtors, or from an original infirmity
of mind, or from these causes united. A popular writer[3] has defended
Collins from the charge of irresolution, on the ground that it was but
"the vacillations of a mind broken and confounded;" and he urges, that
"he had exercised too constantly the highest faculties of fiction, and
precipitated himself into the dreariness of real life." But this
explanation does