she could of his remaining enthusiasm for poetry, but destroyed all his papers, in a paroxysm of resentment because he squandered what little money he had, or gave it away to the boys in the cloisters. This anecdote rests on the authority of a son of her second husband, Dr. Durnford, who related it to Mr. Park. For the honor of human nature we must refuse our belief to it.

Johnson was attached to Collins, and during his illness was a frequent inquirer after his health. His correspondence with Joseph Warton contains several allusions to his friend, which are preserved in the following extracts :

"March 8, 1754.

"But how little can we venture to exult in any intellectual powers or literary attainments, when we consider the condition of poor Collins! I knew him a few years ago, full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs. What do you hear of him? are there hopes of his recovery? or is he to pass the remainder of his life in misery and degradation? perhaps with complete consciousness of his calamity.”

"December 24, 1754.

"Poor dear Collins! Let me know whether you think it would give him pleasure if I should write to him. I have often been near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration."

"April 15, 1756.

"What becomes of poor dear Collins? I wrote him a letter, which he never answered. I suppose writing is very troublesome to him. That man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty; but it is yet more dreadful to consider that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that understanding may make its appearance and depart, that it may blaze and expire."

We hear nothing of Collins's life after the visit of the Wartons, except that he passed his last year in a state bordering on insanity, till he was released from his sufferings on the 12th of June, 1759 He was buried in the church of St. Andrew, at Chichester, where a monument by Flaxman was long afterwards erected, by subscription, to his memory. In this Collins is represented in a reclining posture, with his lyre and a neglected poem lying upon the ground, and the

Gospel open on a table before him. On the pediment ideal pictures of Love and Pity embracing are placed in relief. This monument was completed in 1795. It was projected not only to do honor to Collins, but to afford an early field for the talents of Flaxman. The son of the poet Hayley, then a student of the sculptor, sat for the figure; and the epitaph was the joint production of two Sussex poets, W. Hayley and J. Sargent.

"Ye who the merits of the dead revere,

Who hold misfortune's sacred genius dear,
Regard this tomb, where Collins, hapless name,
Solicits kindness with a double claim.

Though nature gave him, and though science taught
The fire of fancy, and the reach of thought,
Severely doomed to penury's extreme,

He passed in maddening pain life's feverish dream,
While rays of genius only served to show
The thickening horror, and exalt his woe.
Ye walls that echoed to his frantic moan,
Guard the due records of this grateful stone;
Strangers to him, enamored of his lays,
This fond memorial to his talents raise.
For this the ashes of a bard require,

Who touched the tenderest notes of pity's lyre ;
Who joined pure faith to strong poetic powers;
Who, in reviving reason's lucid hours,
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest,

And rightly deemed the book of God the best.'

"The neglected author of the Persian Eclogues," wrote Goldsmith, in 1759, "which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language, is still alive; happy, if insensible of our neglect, not raging at our ingratitude." Within four months afterwards, the poet was in his grave. Six years later Dr. Langhorne published an edition of his collected poems, with commentaries and a biographical notice. But thirty-eight years after the appearance of his Odes, Cowper first heard of their author through the memoir in Dr. Johnson's Collection one of his most remarkable and inexplicable produc

tions.

A few years after the death of Collins, Johnson communicated to

the Poetical Calendar a critical notice, which renders ample justice to its subject:

"Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens.

"This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always desired by him, but were not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendor. This idea which he had formed of excellence led him to oriental fictions and allegorical imagery; and, perhaps, while he was intent upon description, he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.

"His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed, and long association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervor of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure or casual temptation.

"The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it. These clouds, which he perceived gathering on his intellects, he endeavored to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. He was for some time confined in a house of lunatics, and afterwards returned to the care of his sister in Chichester, where death, in 1759, came to his relief.

"After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had directed to meet him; there was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school; when his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, I have but one book,' said Collins, but that is the best.'

When preparing the life for his edition of the poets, Johnson extracted this account of Collins as having been written when his character was, perhaps, more deeply impressed on his memory, and speaks of him as a man with whom he once delighted to converse, and whom he still remembered with tenderness. He then proceeds in the following severe strain of censure:

"To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully labored, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.'

But in spite of the neglect of his contemporaries, and the sweep.ng condemnation of Dr. Johnson, Collins has risen in the estimation of critics and the literary world, till his poems are now universally acknowledged, as Southey says, "to be the best of their kind in the language." We have studied them to discover the faults pointed

out by Dr. Johnson, and we must acknowledge without the least success. To us they give unmixed delight, and we regard the author with an admiration that grows as we contemplate and dwell upon his works. It has been usual to mention Alexander's Feast as the first ode in the English language, and Gray's Odes as only second to it. And yet the magnificent lyric of Dryden is justly liable to the objection that it sometimes sinks to the level of a drinking-song; and even the poet's annotations do not render The Bard and The Progress of Poetry intelligible altogether to any other than readers of considerable culture. No such criticism applies to the Ode on the Passions. It sustains the lyric dignity in every line and sentiment, and does not require a note of illustration. For pictorial effects, variety and harmony of versification, energy and beauty of expression, it is inferior to none of the master-pieces to which we have referred; and is in one respect, at least, superior to Gray's, that it does not betray the art with which it is constructed. We cannot but assent most heartily to the remark of Campbell, that the lyrics of Collins will abide comparison with whatever Milton wrote under the age of thirty; and we are willing even to venture the opinion that there is no English poet since Milton who so nearly approaches him in that affluent diction, that splendid imagery, and that elevation and solemnity of tone, which are the characteristics of his genius.