t portion of Johnson's Lives,
but possibly a year earlier. I perused it with a mixture of delight,
melancholy, and disgust; the first passage which struck me was this: "As
he brought with him [to Oxford], for so the whole tone of his
conversation discovered, 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 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," &c., &c.--"Thus was lost to the world this
unfortunate person, in the prime of life, without availing himself of
fine abilities, which, if properly improved, must have raised him to the
top of any profession, and have rendered him a blessing to his friends,
and an ornament to his country."

The vulgarity and narrow-mindedness of this last paragraph filled me
with indignation and contempt. In a selfish point of view Collins
might, unquestionably, have done better by binding himself to the
trammels of a profession; but would he have been more an honor to his
friends and an ornament to his country? Are the fruits of genius he has
left behind no ornament or use to his country? Professional men, for the
most part, live for themselves, and not for the world. Who now remembers
Lord Camden, Lord Thurlow, Lord Rosslyn, Lord Kenyon, Lord Ellenborough,
or a hundred episcopal or medical characters, all rich and famous in
their day?

The character of his person and habits we read with deep interest. "He
was passionately fond of music, good-natured, and affable, warm in his
friendships, and 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 gray eyes, so very weak at times
as hardly to bear a candle in the room, and often raising within him
apprehensions of blindness."

The letter from Mr. John Ragsdale is addressed to Mr. William Hymers,
Queen's College, Oxford, dated "Hill Street, Richmond, in Surrey, July,
1783." He appears to have been a tradesman in Bond Street; and he
surveyed the character of Coll