ABSTRACT
Dated ‘1810’ in Esd, which supplies the title. Cameron (Esd Nbk 199–200), noting that ‘1810’ was first written ‘1811’, assigns it to the Christmas vacation, but S.’s solitude amid a ‘varied multitude’, and his conformist draining of ‘the genial bowl’ (possibly even the ‘busy beings’ round him) suggest S.’s first term at Oxford, November 1810. Hogg notes that on first meeting S. he ‘had no acquaintance with any one’ (Hogg i 52), avoided ‘all communication’ during the mornings (i 91), missed College dinner whenever possible (i 85), welcomed the ‘oak’ (i 93), shunned his ex-schoolfellows (i 124), and disliked social gatherings (i 208–9). S. enjoyed companionship but was non-gregarious, and his numbed reaction to College life was exacerbated by the shock of his broken love-affair. Later both Hogg and S. affected singularity: ‘These two young men gave up associating with anybody else some months since, never dined in College, dressed differently from all others, and did everything in their power to show singularity’ (R. Clarke to John Hogg, 6 April 1811, quoted in S in Eng 221). Cp. S.’s criticism of ‘self-centred seclusion’ in the Preface and text of Alastor. Rossetti first printed this poem as ‘Copied out by Mr. Garnett’ (Rossetti 1870 i 599), which Forman took to mean ‘from the original MS at Boscombe’ (Forman 1876–7 iv 319). No such ‘original MS’ survives, and it is highly unlikely that a copy ever existed among the MSS descended from S.’s widow. The poem occupies just one page in Esd, whose existence was not generally known of in 1877: its text in Rossetti 1870 supports the assumption that it was among the verses supplied to Garnett by a former ‘governess in the Esdaile family’ (L about S 87–8).
