When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr. Adams,
he said; 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they
mistook for frolick. 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.'
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 cotemporaries 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.
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