And, when the choristers chanted their anthem, the listening and bewildered poet, carried out of himself by the solemn strains, and his own too susceptible imagination, moaned and shrieked, and awoke a sadness and a terror most affecting amid religious emotions; their friend, their kinsman, and their poet, was before them, an awful image of human misery and ruined genius!-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812-13, Literary Disappointments, Calamities of Authors.

He wrote an "Ode on the Passions," in which, after dwelling on Hope, Fear, Anger, Despair, Pity, and describing them with many picturesque circumstances, he dismisses Love with a couple of lines, as dancing to the sound of the sprightly viol, and forming with joy the light fantastic round. Such was Collins' idea of love! JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1829, The Loves of the Poets, vol. 2, p. 311. Collins's person was of the middle size and well formed; of a light complexion, with gray, weak eyes. His mind was deeply imbued with classical literature, and he understood the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He was well read, and was particularly conversant with early English writers, and to an ardent love of literature he united, as is manifest from many of his pieces, a passionate devotion to Music, that

-Sphere-descended maid,

Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid." -NICOLAS, SIR HARRIS NICHOLAS, 1831? ed. Collins's Poetical Works, Memoir.

Much speculation has taken place as to the causes of Collins's irresolution; but human motives are not easily determined. The evidences are too many to doubt, that he was at this time indolent and undecided; but fond of pleasure and eager for excitement. His truest friend has spoken of habits of dissipation and long association

with "fortuitous companions." But his studies were extensive, and his scholarship commanded the respect of learned men. As with his friends the Wartons, his taste led him to the study of the older English writers. He was acquainted with the riches of the Elizabethan poets at a time when few English students strayed beyond Cowley; and he read in the Italian, French, and Spanish languages those poems and romances which, to the more sober taste of Johnson, "passed the bounds of nature." At this time he composed his Odes, upon which his fame rests.-THOMAS, W. MOY, 1858-92, ed., The Poetical Works of William Collins, p. xix.

PERSIAN ECLOGUES

1742

The following eclogues, written by Mr. Collins, are very pretty; the images, it must be owned, are not very local; for the pastoral subject could not well admit of it. The description of Asiatic magnificence and manners is a subject as yet unattempted amongst us, and, I believe, capable of furnishing a great variety of poetical imagery.-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1767, The Beauties of English Poetry.

Mr. Collins wrote his Eclogues when he was about seventeen years old, at Winchester school, and, as I well remember, had been just reading that volume of Salmon's Modern History which described Persia; which determined him to lay the scene of these pieces, as being productive of new images and sentiments. In his maturer years he was accustomed to speak very contemptuously of them, calling them his Irish Eclogues, and saying they had not in them one spark of Orientalism; and desiring me to erase a motto he had prefixed to them in a copy he gave

me:

-quos primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis.

Virg.

He was greatly mortified that they found more readers and admirers than his Odes. -WARTON, JOSEPH, 1797, ed. Pope's Works, vol. I, p. 61.

His "Hassan, or the Camel-Driver," is, I verily believe, one of the most tenderly sublime, most sweetly descriptive poems in the cabinet of the Muses.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1798 1820, Literary Hours, vol. I, No. xvi, p. 260.

Collins published his "Oriental Eclogues" while at college, and his lyrical poetry at

the age of twenty-six. Those works will abide comparison with whatever Milton wrote under the age of thirty. If they have rather less exuberant wealth of genius, they exhibit more exquisite touches of pathos. Like Milton, he leads us into the haunted ground of imagination; like him, he has the rich economy of expression haloed with thought, which by a single few words often hints entire pictures to the imagination. . . . The pastoral eclogue, which is insipid in all other English hands, assumes in his a touching interest, and a picturesque air of novelty. It seems that he himself ultimately undervalued those eclogues, as deficient in characteristic manners; but surely no just reader of them cares any more about this circumstance than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

Although he has so exquisitely described the Passions, the greatest want of his poetry is passion. He has the highest enthusiasm, but little human interest. His figures are warm with the breath of genius, but there is little of the life'sblood of heart about them. Hence his "Oriental Eclogues," although full of fine description, are felt to be rather tame and stiff.-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1854, ed., The Poetical Works of Goldsmith, Collins and T. Warton, p. 83.

The "Persian Eclogues" have much of the rich and peculiar diction of Collins. He is said, on more than one authority, to have expressed his dissatisfaction with them, by calling them his "Irish Eclogues;" but in this he no doubt simply referred to some remarkable blunders in his first edition.-THOMAS, W. MoY, 1858-92, ed., The Poetical Works of William Collins, p. lvi.

For tenderness, simplicity, and grace, must be pronounced as amongst the most beautiful pastoral poetry which we possess.-WALLER, J. F., 1881, Boswell and Johnson, Their Companions and Contemporaries, 123.

ODE TO LIBERTY 1747

After an overture worthy of Milton's or of Handel's "Agonistes," a prelude that peals as from beneath the triumphal hand of the thunder-bearer, steadily subsides through many noble but ever less

and less noble verses, towards a final couplet showing not so much the flatness of failure as the prostration of collapse.SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 282.

ODE TO EVENING

In his address to Evening, he has presented us with the first fortunate specimen of the blank ode. Nothing but his own ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland can exceed the fine enthusiasm of this piece; the very spirit of Poussin and Claude breathe throughout the whole, mingled indeed with a wilder and more visionary train of idea, yet subdued and chastened by the softest tones of melancholy.—DRAKE, NATHAN, 1798-1820, Literary Hours, vol. II, No. xxv, p. 36.

If Collins live by the reputation of one, more than of another, performance, it strikes me that his "Ode to Evening" will be that on which the voice of posterity will be more uniform in praise. It is a pearl of the most perfect tint and shape. -DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 733, note.

His "Ode to Evening" is, perhaps, the most original of his odes. The fine tone of tranquil musing that pervades it is felt by every poetic reader. A subdued and peaceful spirit breathes through it, as in the solitude and stillness of a twilight country. The absence of rhyme leaving the even glow of the verse unbroken, and the change at the end of each stanza into shorter lines, as if the voice of the reader dropped into a lower key, contribute to the effect. To those who feel its spirit the living world is far away, and even the objects in the surrounding landscape, by which the picture is completed, are seen only in their reflection in the poet's mind. The bat and the beetle which are abroad in the dusky air; the brown hamlets and dim-discovered spires; the springs that have a solemn murmur, and the dying gales, are but images of that rapt and peaceful mood. It must, however, be acknowledged that some obscurity in the invocation arises from the long inversion of the sense, by which that which in logical order is the first sentence in the poem is carried over to the last two lines of the fourth stanza.-THOMAS, W. MOY, 185892, ed., The Poetical Works of William Collins, p. liv.

The most perfect and original poem of Collins, as well as the most finely appreciative of Nature, is his Ode to Evening. No doubt evening is personified in his address as "maid composed," and "calm votaress," but the personification is so delicately handled, and in so subdued a tone, that it does not jar on the feelings, as such personifications too often do.

There is about the whole ode a subdued twilight tone, a remoteness from men and human things, and a pensive evening musing, all the more expressive, because it does not shape itself into definite thoughts, but reposes in appropriate images. SHAIRP, JOHN CAMPBELL, 1877, On Poetic Interpretation of Nature, pp. 207, 208.

Displays a sustained power of painting landscape effects which Collins does not repeat elsewhere.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 233.

Collins is best known by his Ode on "The Passions," but incomparably his

finest and most distinctive work is the "Ode to Evening." The superior popularity of "The Passions" is easily explained. It might be recited at a penny reading, and every line of its strenuous rhetoric would tell; every touch would be at once appreciated. But the beauties of the "Ode to Evening" are of a much stronger kind, and the structure of it is infinitely more complicated. . . . It is a poem to be taken into the mind slowly; you cannot take possession of it without effort. Give a quiet evening to it; return to it again and again; master the meaning of it deliberately part by part, and let the whole sink into your mind softly and gradually, and you will not regret the labor. You will find yourselves in possession of a perpetual delight, of a music that will make the fall of evening forever charming to you. MINTO, WILLIAM, 1894, The Literature of the Georgian Era, ed. Knight, pp. 93, 94.

THE PASSIONS

"The Ode to the Passions" is, by universal consent, the noblest of Collins's 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 on Fear and Despair, each dashed out in four lines, of which every word is like inspiration. Beautiful as Spenser is, and sometimes sublime, yet he redoubles his touch too much, and often introduces some coarse feature or expression, which destroys the spell. Spenser, indeed, has other merits of splendid and inexhaustible invention, which render it impossible to put Collins on a par with him but we must not estimate merit by mere quantity: if a poet produces but one short piece, which is perfect, he must be placed according to its quality. And surely there is not a single figure in Collins's "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. BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1831? An Essay on the Genius and Poems of Collins.

All that Collins has written is full of

imagination, pathos, and melody. The defect of his poetry in general is that there is too little of earth in it: in the purity and depth of its beauty it resembles the bright blue sky. Yet Collins had genius enough for anything; and in his ode entitled "The Passions," he has shown with how strong a voice and pulse of humanity he could, when he chose, animate his verse, and what extensive and enduring popularity he could command.CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 284.

Its grace and vigour, its vivid and pliant dexterity of touch, are worthy of all their long inheritance of praise; and altogether it holds out admirably well to the happy and harmonious end.-SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 282.

GENERAL

In simplicity of description and expression, in delicacy and softness of numbers, and in natural and unaffected tenderness, they are not to be equalled by anything of the pastoral kind in the English language. -LANGHORNE, WILLIAM, 1765-81, The Poetical Works of William Collins, Memoir. Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay, Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing. -CHATTERTON, THOMAS, 1770? February, An Elegy.

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 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.JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Collins, Lives of the English Poets.

One of our most exquisite poets, and of whom, perhaps, without exaggeration it may be asserted, that he partook of the credulity and enthusiasm of Tasso, the magic wildness of Shakspeare, the sublimity of Milton, and the pathos of Ossian. DRAKE, NATHAN, 1798-1820, Literary Hours, vol. 1, No. iii, p. 49.

There was Collins, 'tis true, had a good deal to say,

But the dog had no industry.
-HUNT, LEIGH, 1811, The Feast of the
Poets.

Like Collins, ill-starr'd name!
Whose lay's requital was that tardy Fame,
Who bound no laurel round his living head,
Should hang it o'er his monument when dead.
-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1813, The Bridal
of Triermain.

He had that true vivida vis, that genuine inspiration, which alone can give birth to the highest efforts of poetry. He leaves stings in the minds of his readers, certain traces of thought and feeling, which never wear out, because nature had left them in his own mind. He is the only one of the minor poets of whom, if he had lived, it cannot be said that he might not have done the greatest things. The germ is there. He is sometimes affected, unmeaning and obscure; but he also catches rich glimpses of the bowers. of Paradise, and has lofty aspirations after the highest seats of the Muses. With a great deal of tinsel and splendid patchwork, he has not been able to hide the solid sterling ore of genius. In his best works there is an attic simplicity, a pathos, and fervour of imagination, which make us the more lament that the efforts of his mind were at first depressed by neglect and pecuniary embarrassment, and at length buried in the gloom of an

unconquerable and fatal malady.

I should conceive that Collins had a much greater poetical genius than Gray: he had more of that fine madness which is inseparable from it, of its turbid effervescence, of all that pushes it to the verge of agony or rapture.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture vi.

The most accomplished Scholar, and the most original Poet of his age.-NEELE, HENRY, 1827-29, Lectures on English Poetry, p. 213.

It is not, however, inconsistent with a high respect for Collins, to ascribe every possible praise to that unrivaled production, the "Ode to the Passions," to feel deeply the beauty, the pathos, and the sublime conceptions of the Odes to Evening, to Pity, to Simplicity, and a few others, and yet to be sensible of the occasional obscurity and imperfections of his imagery in other pieces, to find it difficult to discover the meaning of some passages, to think the opening of four of his odes which commence with the common-place invocation of "O thou," and the alliteration by which so many lines are disfigured, blemishes too serious to be forgotten, unless the judgment be drowned in the full tide of generous and enthusiastic admiration of the great and extraordinary beauties by which these faults are more than redeemed. That these defects are to be ascribed to haste it would be uncandid to deny; but haste is no apology for such faults in productions which fill a hundred pages, and which their author had ample opportunities to remove.-NICOLAS, SIR HARRIS NICHOLAS, 1831? ed. Collins's Poetical Works, Memoir.

When Collins is spoken of as one of the minor poets, it is a sad misapplication of the term. Unless he be minor because the number and size of his poems is small, no one is less a minor poet. In him every word is poetry, and poetry either sublime or pathetic. He does not rise to the sublimity of Milton or Dante, or reach the graceful tenderness of Petrarch; but he has a visionary invention of his own, to which there is no rival. As long as the language lasts, every richly gifted and richly cultivated mind will read him with intense and wondering rapture; and will not cease to entertain the conviction, from his example, if from no other, that true poetry of the higher orders is real

inspiration.-BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1831? An Essay on the Genius and Poems of Collins.

That he should never before have heard of Collins, shows how little Collins has been heard of in his life-time; and that Cowper, in his knowledge of contemporary literature, was now awakening, as it were, from a sleep of twenty years. In the course of those years Collins's Odes, which were utterly neglected on their first appearance, had obtained their due estimation. It should also be remembered, that in the course of one generation these poems, without any adventitious aid to bring them into notice, were acknowledged to be the best of their kind in the language. Silently and imperceptibly they had risen by their own buoyancy, and their power was felt by every reader who had any true poetic feeling. SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, p. 321.

If we admire the genius and skill which have compressed into the few pages of Gray's collected poems so many noble images, so many exquisite movements of harmony, and so much splendour and propriety of diction, we shall find that an intense susceptibility for beauty has concentrated into the yet smaller compass of Collins's productions a quantity and depth

of loveliness of a kind even more permanently attractive to the reader. If Gray was the more accomplished artist, Collins was the more born poet. In Collins the first thing we remark is the inimitable. felicity of his expression. Gray's lovely and majestic pictures are careful, genial, artistic paintings of nature; those of Collins are the images of nature in the camera obscura. Gray is the light of day; Collins is the Italian moonlight-as bright almost, but tenderer, more pensive, more spiritual,

"Dusk, yet clear; Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen. -SHAW, THOMAS B., 1847, Outlines of English Literature, p. 298.

The Odes of Collins are fuller of the fine and spontaneous enthusiasm of genius, than any other poems ever written by one who wrote so little. We close this tiny volume with the same disappointed surprise, which overcomes us when a harmonious piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished. His range of tones is very

wide: it extends from the warmest rapture of self-entranced imagination, to a tenderness which makes some of his verses sound like gentle weeping. The delicacy of gradation with which he passes from thought to thought, has an indescribable charm, though not always unattended by obscurity; and there is a marvellous power of suggestion in his clouds of allegoric imagery, so beautiful in outline, and coloured by a fancy so purely and ideally refined. His most popular poem, "The Passions," can hardly be allowed to be his best of some of his most deeply marked characteristics it conveys no adequate idea. Readers who do not shrink from having their attention put to the stretch, and who can relish the finest and most recondite analogies, will delight in his Ode entitled "The Manners," and in that, still nobler and more imaginative, "On the Poetical Character." Every one, surely, can understand and feel the beauty of such pieces as the Odes "To Pity," "To Simplicity," "To Mercy." Nor does it require much reflection to fit us for appreciating the spirited lyric "To Liberty" or for being entranced by the finelywoven harmonies and the sweetly romantic pictures, which, in the "Ode to Evening." remind us of the youthful poems of Milton. SPALDING, WILLIAM, 1852-82, A

History of English Literature, p. 341.

With some occasional exaggeration and over-luxuriance, this author's language is for the most part exquisitely musical and refined. ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1868-75, Chaucer to Wordsworth, p. 357.

There belong to Collins a new intensity of emotion, a vividness of personification, a broader sweep of imagination, which decidedly distinguish his composition from that of his cotemporaries, and impart to the reader a sense of larger, freer, gladder motion. As a vigorous bird proportions his curves of flight to his power of muscle, so Collins adopts a more varied and continuous rhythm. His successive impulses gather up and weave together more lines, and we are borne on the strong wing of a single image through a series. of varying melodies, that will not fall apart into brief, measured stanzas.BASCOM, JOHN, 1874, Philosophy of English Literature, p. 216

What a notion it gives us of the power of poetry that this poor mad-house patient