to this circumstance, when he found himself enabled to do justice to his own delicacy; and therefore he desired his bookseller to balance the account of that unfortunate publication, declaring he himself would make good the deficiency; the bookseller readily acquiesced in the proposal, and gave up to Mr. Collins the remainder of the impression, which the generous, resentful bard immediately consigned to the flames." Collins's better fortunes came too late to be of any essential service. From poverty and neglect he had sought relief in dissipation, and the result had been a nervous disorder, with an unconquerable depression of spirits. His vital powers became feeble and exhausted, and he at last fell into a state of intellectual torpor, now and then lit up with a gleam of vigor and intelligence, but verging continually to actual mental alienation. "The approaches of this dreadful malady," says Johnson," he began to feel soon after his uncle's death; and, with the usual weakness of men so diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce. But his health continually declined, and he grew more and more burthensome to himself." It was not till after the autumn of 1750 that he fell into this state; for the only letter of Collins's known to be extant shows that he had produced about that time an Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre, which is unfortunately lost. This circumstance renders the letter one of peculiar interest. The honor to which it alludes was the setting to music of his Ode on the Passions. "TO DR. WILLIAM HAYES, PROFESSOR OF MUSIC, OXFORD. "SIR: Mr. Blackstone, of Winchester, some time since informed me of the honor you had done me at Oxford last summer; for which I return you my sincere thanks. I have another more perfect copy of the ode; which, had I known your obliging design, I would have communicated to you. Inform me by a line, if you should think one of my better judgment acceptable. In such case I could send you one written on a nobler subject; and which, though I have been persuaded to bring it forth in London, I think more calculated for an audience in the university. The subject is the Music of the Grecian Theatre; in which I have, I hope naturally, introduced the various characters with which the chorus was concerned, as Edipus, Medea, Electra, Orestes, etc. etc. The composition, too, is probably more correct, as I have chosen the ancient tragedies for my models, and only copied the most affecting passages in them. "In the mean time, you will greatly oblige me by sending the score of If the last. If you can get it written, I will readily answer the expense. you send it with a copy or two of the ode (as printed at Oxford) to Mr. Clarke, at Winchester, he will forward it to me here. I am, sir, "With great respect, your obliged humble servant, "Chichester, Sussex, November 8, 1750." "WILLIAM COLLINS. "P. S. Mr. Clarke past some days here while Mr. Worgan was with me ; from whose friendship, I hope, he will receive some advantage." Among the papers of Mr. Hymers, a communication was found from Mr. Thomas Warton, which contains a very interesting account of the poet's latter days. "I often saw Collins in London in 1750. This was before his illness. He then told me of his intended History of the Revival of Learning, and proposed a scheme of a review, to be called the Clarendon Review, and to be printed at the university press, under the conduct and authority of the university. About Easter, the next year, I was in London; when, being given over, and supposed to be dying, he desired to see me, that he might take his last leave of me; but he grew better; and in the summer he sent me a letter on some private business, which I have now by me, dated Chichester, June 9, 1751, written in a fine hand, and without the least symptom of a disordered or debilitated understanding. In 1754, he came to Oxford for change of air and amusement, where he stayed a month; I saw him frequently, but he was so weak and low that he could not bear conversation. Once he walked from his lodgings, opposite Christ Church, to Trinity College, but supported by his servant. The same year, in September, I and my brother visited him at Chichester, where he lived, in the cathedral cloisters, with his sister. The first day he was in high spirits at intervals, but exerted himself so much that he could not see us the second. Here he showed us an Ode to Mr. John Home, on his leaving England for Scotland. . . Mr. Home has no copy of it. He also showed us another ode, of two or three four-lined stanzas, called the Bell of Arragon; on a tradition that, anciently, just before the King of Spain died, the great bell of the cathedral of Sarragossa, in Arragon, tolled spontaneously. It began thus : The bell of Arragon, they say, Spontaneous speaks the fatal day.' Soon afterwards were these lines: Whatever dark, aërial power, Commissioned, haunts the gloomy tower.' The last stanza consisted of a moral transition to his own death and knell, which he called 'some simpler bell.' I have seen all his odes already published in his own handwriting; they had the marks of repeated correction: he was perpetually changing his epithets. Dr. Warton, my brother, has a few fragments of some other odes, but too loose and imperfect for publication, yet containing traces of high imagery. In the Ode to Pity, the idea of a Temple of Pity, of its situation, construction and groups of paintings, with which its walls were decorated, was borrowed from a poem, now lost, entitled The Temple of Pity, written by my brother, while he and Collins were school-fellows at Winchester College. .... "In illustration of what Dr. Johnson has related, that during his last malady he was a greater reader of the Bible, I am favored with the following anecdote from the Reverend Mr. Shenton, Vicar of St. Andrews, at Chichester, by whom Collins was buried: Walking in my vicarial garden one Sunday evening, during Collins's last illness, I heard a female (the servant, I suppose) reading the Bible in his chamber. Mr. Collins had been accustomed to rave much, and make great moanings; but while she was reading, or rather attempting to read, he was not only silent but attentive likewise, correcting her mistakes, which indeed were very frequent, through the whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis.' I have just been informed, from undoubted authority, that Collins had finished a Preliminary Dissertation to be prefixed to his History of the Restoration of Learning, and that it was written with great judgment, precision and knowledge of the subject." The ode referred to by Warton was long supposed to be lost. Dr. Johnson alludes to it as a poem which the Wartons thought superior to Collins's other works, "but which no search has yet found.” Nearly forty years after it was written it first appeared in print; a most remarkable proof of the little interest that attached to the memory of the writer. At a meeting of the Royal Society of Edin burgh, on the 19th of April, 1784, the Rev. Dr. Carlyle, minister of Inveresk, read the copy of an unpublished ode written " by the late Mr. William Collins." The committee appointed to superintend the publication of the Society's Transactions judged this ode "extremely deserving of a place in that collection," and requested Mr. Alexander Fraser Tytler, one of their number, to procure from Dr. Carlyle every degree of information which he could give concerning it. In reply to a communication to this effect, Dr. Carlyle sent his original MS. to Mr. Tytler, with the following statement: "The manuscript is in Mr. Collins's handwriting, and fell into my hands among the papers of a friend of mine and Mr. John Home's, who died as long ago as the year 1754. Soon after I found the poem, I showed it to Mr. Home, who told me that it had been addressed to him by Mr. Collins on his leaving London, in 1749; that it was hastily composed and incorrect; but that he would one day find leisure to look it over with care. Mr. Collins and Mr. Home had been made acquainted by Mr. John Barrow (the cordial youth mentioned in the first stanza), who had been, for some time, at the university of Edinburgh; had been a volunteer, along with Mr. Home, in the year 1746; had been taken prisoner with him at the battle of Falkirk, and had escaped, together with him and five or six other gentlemen, from the castle of Donn. Mr. Barrow resided, in 1749, at Winchester, where Mr. Collins and Mr. Home were for a week or two together on a visit. Mr. Barrow was paymaster in America in the war that commenced in 1756, and died in that country. I thought no more of the poem till a few years ago, when, on reading Dr. Johnson's Life of Collins, I conjectured it might be the very copy of verses which he mentions, which he says was much prized by some of his friends, and for the loss of which he expresses regret. I sought for it among my papers; and perceiving that a stanza and a half were wanting, I made the most diligent search I could for them, but in vain. Whether or not this great chasm was in the poem when it first came into my hands, is more than I can remember at this distance of time." As a "curious and valuable" fragment, he thought it could not appear with more advantage than in the collection of the Royal Society; in which it was published accordingly, in 1789. As it then appeared, the fifth stanza and one half of the sixth, contained on a lost leaf of the manuscript, were ingeniously supplied by Mr. Henry Mackenzie, at the request of Mr. Tytler. The manuscript was evidently the first rough draft, as was apparent from the erasures and substitutions of words, and the new modelling of the twelfth stanza. The following original passages in that stanza, compared with the text as it now appears, show how much it had been improved by the second thoughts of the author: Ver. 5. Ver. 13. VARIATIONS. How have I trembled, when, at Tancred's side, Hence, sure to charm, his early numbers flow, Though strong, yet sweet Though faithful, sweet; though strong, of simple kind, Hence, with each theme, he bids the bosom glow, While his warm lays an easy passage find, Poured through each inmost nerve, and lull the harmonious ear. Ver. 16. Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong and clear. The publication of the ode drew forth from a correspondent of the St. James's Chronicle a statement that the copy seen by the Wartons at Chichester, in 1754, was without one interpolation or hiatus, and was evidently prepared for the press. Soon afterwards the ode appeared in the form which it still retains in the best editions, and which is claimed to be its complete and authentic text. It was inscribed by the anonymous editor to the Wartons, and was issued in quarto by a respectable bookseller. Sir Egerton Brydges, on internal evidence, is disposed to denounce this version as a fabrication; but the general acceptance of it by all the editors of Collins as supplying most successfully the chasm in Dr. Carlyle's copy, would seem to warrant a belief in its genuineness. Collins is described, by a person who knew him well, (the correspondent, already cited, of the Gentleman's Magazine,) as being of the middle size, with a bright and clear complexion, and gray eyes, so weak as not always to bear the light of a candle without pain. Langhorne represents him with a tall figure, brown complexion, |