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ristotle's Poetics, which he engaged to write, with a large commentary, advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into the country. Dr. Johnson says, that Collins shewed him the guineas safe in his hand.

Under these circumstances, so mortifying to every just expectation, when neither his wants were relieved, nor his reputation extended, he found some consolation in visiting his uncle, Colonel Martin, who was at that time with his regiment in Flanders. Soon after the Colonel died and left Collins about two thousand pounds, a sum which the poet could scarce. ly think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust. The guineas he had borrowed of the book. seller were then repaid, and the translation, from his natural indolence, of course neglected,

Dr. Johnson, with his usual energy, observes, "that as man is not born for happiness, so Collins, who while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study, than his life was assailed by the more dreadful calamities of disease and insani ty:" and we cannot more effectually do justice to the character of our author, than by transcribing it from the pen of that nervous and elegant writer.

"Mr. Collins," says the Doctor, "was a man of extensive literature and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted not only with the classic writers, both Latin and Greek, 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,

geníi, 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 some. times caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour. 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 production of a mind not deficient in force, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or of 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 in 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 compa nions, will at last relax the strictness of truth and abate the fervour 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 distinction of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but pro

ceeded from 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 unchains 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 endeavoured 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 1756, 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 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,' says Collins, but that is the best.'

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"Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.

"He was visited at Chichester, in his last illness by his learned friends Dr. Warton and his brother, to whom he spoke with disapprobation of his Oriental Eclogues, as not sufficiently expressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his Irish Eclogues. shewed them at the same time an ode inscribed to

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Mr. John Hume, which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has yet found.

"His disorder was not alienation of mind, but gene. ral laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than 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; 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."

Notwithstanding the rigour with which this great critic comments on the productions even of his acknowledged friends, the poems of Collins are held in high estimation, as appears from the pains bestowed by a writer of evident ability on his Oriental Ec logues, and the selection of his Ode on the Passions, which, as peculiarly adapted to display the powers

of speech, and call forth all the pathos and animation of the most accomplished orators, has been the subject of recital in all the readings that have lately been so liberally patronized in the metropolis and the most populous places in the kingdom.

A monument of the most exquisite workmanship has been erected by public subscription to Collins. He is finely represented as just recovered from a wild fit of phrensy to which he was unhappily subject, and in a calm and reclining posture, seeking refuge from his misfortunes in the consolations of the Gospel, while his lyre and one of the finest of his poems lie neglected on the ground. Above are two beautiful figures of Love and Pity entwined in each others arms. The whole was executed by the inge nious Flaxman, at that time lately returned from Rome, and if any thing can equal the expresssive sweetness of the sculpture, it is the following most excellent epitaph, written by Mr. Hayley.

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.

Tho' Nature gave him, and tho' Science taught
The fire of Fancy, and the reach of thought,
Severely doom'd to Penury's extreme,

He pass'd in madd'ning pain life's fev'rish dream,
While rays of genius only serv'd to shew
The thick'ning horror, and exalt his woe.
Ye walls that echo'd to his frantic moan,
Guard the due records of this grateful stone;
Strangers to him, enamour'd of his lays,
This fond memorial to his talents raise.

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