account as given me by Dr. Adams, he said, 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick[1]. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority[2].'
The Bishop of Dromore observes in a letter to me,
'The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I have heard him say, what ought to be recorded to the honour of the present venerable master of that College, the Reverend William Adams, D.D., who was then very young, and one of the junior fellows; that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man, whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself, "though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it."
'I have heard from some of his contemporaries that he was generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much extolled.'
He very early began to attempt keeping notes or memorandums, by way of a diary of his life. I find, in a parcel of loose leaves, the following spirited resolution to contend against his natural indolence:
'Oct. 1729. Desidiœ valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.—I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her syren strains.'
I have also in my possession a few leaves of another Libellus, or little book, entitled Annales, in which some of the early particulars of his history are registered in Latin.
I do not find that he formed any close intimacies with
- ↑ See Post, June 12, 1784.
- ↑ Perhaps his disregard of all authority was in part due to his genius, still in its youth. In his Life of Lyttelton he says:—'The letters [Lyttelton's Persian Letters] have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward.' Johnson's Works, viii. 488.
