They bore him out at twilight hour, Each maid was woe but Lucy chief, NOTES TO COLLINS. ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. PAGE 30, line 16.—Bassora, the gulf of that name, famous for the pearl fishery. Page 33, line 4. "In this line he does not merely seem to describe the sultry desert, but brings it home to the senses."-Campbell. Page 35, line 17. That these flowers are found in very great abundance in some of the provinces of Persia, see the "Modern History" of the ingenious Mr. Salmon. - Collins. ODE TO PITY. Pella's bard, Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a comparison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master of the tender passions, v тqayızáτegos. - Collins. Page 43, line 16. The river Arun runs by the village of Trotton, in Sussex, where Otway had his birth. — Collins. ODE TO FEAR. Alluding to the Kúvas äquztous of Sophocles. See the Electra. Page 46, line 3.-The bard-Eschylus. "It may be remarked, that when we are anxious to communicate the highest possible character of sublimity to anything we are describing, we generally contrive, either directly, or by means of some strong and obvious association, to introduce the image of the heavens, or of the clouds; or, in other words, of sublimity, properly so called. In Collins' Ode to Fear, the happy use of a single word (thunders) identifies at once the physical with the moral sublime, and concentrates the effect of their united force."— Dugald Stewart. ODE TO SIMPLICITY. The andav, or nightingale, for which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness. ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. One, only one, unrivalled fair Florimel. See Spenser, Leg. 4th. Page 51, line 8. - The tarsel. - The male falcon. ODE WRITTEN IN 1746. "What a quantity of thought is here condensed in the compass of twelve lines, like a cluster of rock crystals, sparkling and distinct, yet receiving and reflecting lustre by their combination. The stanzas themselves are almost unrivalled in the association of poetry with picture, pathos with fancy, grandeur with simplicity, and romance with reality. The melody of the verse leaves nothing for the ear to desire, except a continuance of the strain, or rather the repetition of a strain which cannot tire by repetition. The imagery is of the most delicate and exquisite character.” James Montgomery's Lectures. ODE TO MERCY. Probably written on the occasion of the then recent rebellion, like the shorter ode; the latter being, as Langhorne supposed, consecrated to the memory of those who fell; the former, designed to awaken compassion for the unfortunate prisoners. ODE TO LIBERTY. Alluding to that beautiful fragment of Alcæus : Εν μύρτου κλαδὶ τὸ ξίφος φορήσω, Τυδείδην τε φασιν Διομήδεα. Εν μύρτου κλαδὶ τὸ ξίφος φορήσω, Ανδρα τύραννον Ιππαρχον ἐκαινέτην. Ισονόμους τ' Αθήνας ἐποιήσατον. This fragment, we believe, is an entire poem. It has been thus translated. HYMN On Harmodius and Aristogiton. My sword I'll hang upon the myrtle-bough ; All hail for since the tyrant fell by you, Page 55, line 15. Where the great soul of swift Achilles fled, The tyrant bled, the base Hipparchus fell. You sunk in death the ruthless tyrant's rage, Page 54, line 19. Let not my shell's misguided power C1 Μὶ μὲ ταῦτα λέγωμες, ἃ δάκρυον ηγαγε Δηοΐ. Callimach. Ὕμνος εἰς Δήμητρα. "They whom Science loved to name." - The family of the Medici. Page 55, line 19.-The little republic of San Marino. Page 55, line 22.-The Venetians. Page 55, line 23. - The Doge of Venice. The Dutch, amongst whom there are very severe penalties for those who are convicted of killing this bird. They are kept tame in almost all their towns, and particularly at the Hague, of the arms of which they make a part. The common people of Holland are said to entertain a superstitious sentiment, that if the whole species of them should become extinct they should lose their liberties. Collins. Page 56, line 8. — Queen Elizabeth. Page 56, line 16. This tradition is mentioned by several of our old historians. Some naturalists, too, have endeavored to support the probability of the fact by arguments drawn from the correspondent disposition of the two opposite coasts. I do not remember that any poetical use has been hitherto made of it. - Collins. Page 57, line 1. There is a tradition in the Isle of Man, that a mermaid, becoming enamored of a young man of extraordinary beauty, took an opportunity of meeting him one day, as he walked on the shore, and opened her passion to him, but was received with a coldness occasioned by his horror and surprise at her appearance. This, however, was so misconstrued by the sea-lady, that, in revenge for his treatment of her, she punished the whole island, by covering it with a mist; so that all who attempted to carry on any commerce with it either never arrived at it, but wandered up and down the sea, or were, on a sudden, wrecked upon its cliffs. Collins. ODE TO A LADY. The lady is believed to have been Miss Elizabeth Goddard, who was then staying at the house of Lord Tankerville, near Chichester, and overlooking the village of Harting. Of this lady, who was engaged to Colonel Ross, Collins is said to have been enamored. She was one day older than himself, and he playfully complained that he came into the world a day after the fair. The ode was printed, without the seventh and eighth stanzas, in Dodsley's Museum for June 7, 1746. T. Warton had seen the original manuscript, with many interlineations and alterations. The fourth stanza stood thus : "Even now, regardless of his doom, With shadowy trophies crowned; ODE TO Evening. Page 61. In an article on Dr. Sayer's works, in the London Quarterly Review (vol. xxxv., p. 211), Southey speaks of the unrhymed lyrical measures which had been tried by Milton with unhappy success, and says that his translation of "Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa" -uncouth in syntax, as well as sound-bears no other resemblance to the Latin measure, which it was designed to imitate, than that it consists of two long and two short lines. He adds, however, that it "presents the only example of a rhymeless stanza which can fairly be said to have become naturalized in our language. COLLINS saw what could be made of it, and few poems have been more frequently imitated than the 'Ode to Evening,' to which he has so finely and beautifully applied its slow and solemn movement." Another writer, in the same journal (vol. li., p. 25), cites the translation from Horace, alluded to above, as a proof that it is not true that "rhyme is indispensable to the perfection of some kinds of lyric verse in English." He adds that, in his judgment, this rhymeless ode of Collins' " is not surpassed for musical effect in any language in Europe." We certainly know nothing sweeter or more musical in the whole range of English poetry. THE MANNERS. Page 66, line 9.- Alluding to the Milesian tales, some of the earliest romances. Page 66, line 17. Monsieur Le Sage, author of the incomparable Adventures of Gil Blas de Santillane, who died in Paris, in the year 1745. — Collins. THE PASSIONS. The Ode to the Passions is, by universal consent, the noblest of COLLINS' productions, because it exhibits a much more extended invention, not of one passion only, but of all the passions combined, acting, according to the powers of each, to one end. The execution, also, is the happiest ; each particular passion is drawn with inimitable force and compression. Let us take only Fear and Despair; each dashed out in four lines, of which every word is like inspiration. *** And surely there is not a single figure in Collins' Ode to the Passions which is not perfect, both in conception and language. He has had many imitators, but no one has ever approached him in his own department."- Sir Egerton Brydges ODE ON THE DEATH OF THOMSON. Thomson died on the 27th of August, 1748, and in the following June the ode appeared. No other memorial of the friendship of the poets has been preserved. Page 71, line 6. The harp of Æolus, of which see a description in the "Castle of Indolence." - Collins. Page 71, line 19. Richmond church, in which Thomson was buried. Page 72, line 4. "When Thomson died, Collins breathed forth his regrets in an elegiac poem, in which he pronounces a poetical curse upon him who should regard with insensibility the place where the poet's remains were deposited. The poems of the mourner himself have now passed through innumerable editions, and are universally known; but if, when Collins |