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he spoke with disapprobation of his Oriental Eclogues, as not sufficiently expressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his Irish Eclogues. He showed them, at the same time, an Ode, inscribed to Mr. John Hume, on the Superstitions of the Highlands; which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has yet found.*

His disorder was not alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness,-a deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former vigour.

The approaches of this dreadful malady 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.

To what I have formerly said of his writings, may be added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of common order, seeming to think, with some late candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion,

* It is inserted in the present and late editions.

As

clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants.
men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry
of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little
pleasure.

"There is a curious anecdote of this singular and unfortunate man, which will shew what a quick feeling and sensibility he possessed from his earliest days. The boys on the foundation at Winchester College are lodged in seven chambers. Collins belonged to the same chamber with William Smith of Chichester, afterwards Treasurer of the Ordnance; by whom he was observed one morning to be particularly depressed and melancholy. Being pressed to disclose the cause, he at last said it was in consequence of a dream: for this he was laughed at, but desired to tell what it was; he said, he dreamed that he was walking in the fields where there was a lofty tree; that he climbed it, and when he had nearly reached the top, a great branch, upon which he had got, failed with him, and let him fall to the ground. This account caused more ridicule; and he was asked how he could possibly be affected by this common consequence of a school-boy adventure, when he did not pretend, even in imagination and sleep, to have received any hurt, he replied, that the Tree was the Tree of Poetry.

The first time that Mr. Smith saw him, after they had left the College, was at an interval of twelve or fourteen

1

years; and when, in a deplorable state of mind, he had been long under confinement: but no sooner had his old school-fellow on this occasion presented himself, than he exclaimed, Smith, do you remember my Dream!'

It does not appear that the topic was further dwelt upon. It is probable indeed that his enfeebled mind was exhausted by this effort, or sudden burst of anguished recollection. The presence of this old friend, altogether unexpected, and at so long an interval, drew to a point all that his miserable mind had been long brooding over, under the accumulated pressure of disease, distraction, and despair; which being interpreted, was plainly this- I feel and know that I have attained high poetical distinction and eminence; but I have, by my irregularities, sadly deprived myself of that hope which I fostered from my cradle, and know that I was otherwise destined to have realized I have impaired and overturned my mind, that rare faculty, by which I was to have sustained the Poetical Character, (a boon scarce. ever, and, perhaps, of all the Sons of Soul, to one only imparted, p. 31.) When I was climbing with success, and had got high in the Tree, my grossness broke its branch under me, and I fell to the ground instead of reaching the top.'

"This anecdote Mr. Smith related to Dr. Busby, late Dean of Rochester, who was, like himself, a Wykehamist, and a native of Sussex."

For the foregoing paragraph I am indebted to a learned and intimate Friend, to whom Dr. Busby used to relate the story; and who, being unwilling it should be forgotten,

communicated it to me, to be employed as is here done. It is indeed to his advice and liberal assistance that the present Edition of his favourite Poet is owing.-C.

The character which Dr. Johnson has given of his friend can hardly be perused without exciting some degree of surprise. He allows him no poetical faculty whatever, without making a considerable detraction from it. He had employed his mind upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy: but he had indulged some peculiar habits of thinking, which led him to flights of imagination, surpassing the bounds of nature: with these flights he was delighted; but they were such, that the mind could not be reconciled to them without a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. Even for this he had rather an inclination than a genius; and did not always attain what he always desired; which was the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance.' Here is the same charge against Collins which he had brought against Cowley, and those of his class. What was vicious was produced by a voluntary deviation from nature, in pursuit of something new and strange.'-Life of Cowley. His praise of Collins is scanty, and merely negative. His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but sometimes obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.'

To answer this injurious representation by a naked assertion to the contrary might be sufficient, for it is not supported by any proof or example: but he who will consider how the Odes of Gray have been treated by the same critic, will not require any circumstantial refutation of what he has advanced respecting these of Collins. In fact he had no congenial feeling with either of those Poets. He could perceive the extravagance of Donne and his School; and he has successfully detected and exposed them; but there were others endued with a fancy not irregular or illegitimate, who could soar to a height beyond his view.

Collins's poetry is not indeed of the first order: it exhibits no display of the human heart, or the secret workings of passion; nor do we find in it any sublime doctrines of religious or moral wisdom, which are the highest excellencies of the art. But there is another species of poetry, whose excellence consists and terminates in the exercise of a strong and lively imagination, displaying itself in active and unbounded excursions, and clothing its objects in metaphor and allegory. Among the British Poets of this class, Collins is entitled to the first rank, perhaps to the chief place. In his poetry there is no fantastical conceptions like those of the metaphysical poets (as Dr. Johnson calls them); nothing like wit, in the common acceptance of the word. There is sometimes obscurity; for unusual and sublime ideas cannot always be plainly expressed, especially in figurative language: but at other times his manner is so comprehensive and clear as to call

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