THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM COLLINS
WILLIAM COLLINS
_THE_
POETICAL WORKS
OF
WILLIAM COLLINS.
_WITH A MEMOIR._
[Illustration: _Perennis et Fragrans._]
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1865.
CONTENTS.
Page
Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas v
An Essay on the Genius and Poems of Collins, by Sir Egerton
Brydges, Bart. xliii
ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.
Selim; or, The Shepherd's Moral 3
Hassan; or, The Camel Driver 7
Abra; Or, The Georgian Sultana 11
Agib And Secander; or, The Fugitives 15
ODES.
To Pity 21
To Fear 24
To Simplicity 28
On the Poetical Character 31
Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746 34
To Mercy 35
To Liberty 37
To a Lady, On the Death of Colonel Ross, written in May,
1745 44
To Evening 48
To Peace 52
The Manners 54
The Passions 58
On the Death of Thomson 63
On the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland;
considered as the Subject of Poetry; inscribed to Mr.
John Home 66
An Epistle, addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on his Edition of
Shakespeare's Works 78
Dirge in Cymbeline, sung by Guiderus and Arviragus over
Fidele, supposed to be dead 87
Verses written on a Paper which contained a Piece of
Bride-cake, given to the Author by a Lady 89
To Miss Aurelia C----R, on her Weeping at her Sister's
Wedding 91
Sonnet 91
Song. The Sentiments borrowed from Shakespeare 92
On our late Taste in Music 94
Observations on the Oriental Eclogues, by Dr. Langhorne 101
Observations on the Odes, by the same 118
MEMOIR OF COLLINS.
"A Bard,
Who touched the tenderest notes of Pity's lyre."
HAYLEY.
No one can have reflected on the history of genius without being
impressed with a melancholy feeling at the obscurity in which the lives
of the poets of our country are, with few exceptions, involved. That
they lived, and wrote, and died, comprises nearly all that is known of
many, and, of others, the few facts which are preserved are often
records of privations, or sufferings, or errors. The cause of the
lamentable deficiency of materials for literary biography may, without
difficulty, be explained. The lives of authors are seldom marked by
events of an unusual character; and they rarely leave behind them the
most interesting work a writer could compose, and which would embrace
nearly all the important facts in his career, a "History of his Books,"
containing the motives which produced them, the various incidents
respecting their progress, and a faithful account of the bitter
disappointment, whether the object was fame or profit, or both, which,
in most instances, is the result of his labours. Various motives deter
men from writing such a volume; for, though quacks and charlatans
readily become auto-biographers, and fill their prefaces with their
personal concerns, real merit shrinks from such disgusting egotism, and,
flying to the opposite extreme, leaves no authentic notice of their
struggles, its hopes, or its disappointments. Nor is the history of
writers to be expected from their contemporaries; because few will
venture to anticipate the judgment of posterity, and mankind are usually
so isolated in self, and so jealous of others, that neither time nor
inclination admits of their becoming the Boswells of all those whose
productions excite admiration.
If these remarks be true, surprise cannot be felt, though there is
abundance of cause for regret, that little is known of a poet whose
merits were not appreciated until after his decease: whose powers were
destroyed by a distressing malady at a period of life when literary
exertions begin to be rewarded and stimulated by popular applause.
For the facts contained in the following Memoir of Collins, the author
is indebted to the researches of others, as his own, which were very
extensive, were rewarded by trifling discoveries. Dr. Johnson's Life is
well known; but the praise of collecting every particular which industry
and zeal could glean belongs to the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the result of
whose inquiries may be found in his notes to Johnson's Memoir, prefixed
to an edition of Collins's works which he lately edited. Those notices
are now, for the first time, wove into a Memoir of Collins; and in
leaving it to another to erect a fabric out of the materials which he
has collected instead of being himself the architect, Mr. Dyce has
evinced a degree of modesty which those who know him must greatly
lament.
* * * * *
WILLIAM COLLINS was born at Chichester, on the 25th of December, 1721,
and was baptized in the parish church of St. Peter the Great, alias
Subdeanery in that city, on the first of the following January. He was
the son of William Collins, who was then the Mayor of Chichester, where
he exercised the trade of a hatter, and lived in a respectable manner.
His mother was Elizabeth, the sister of a Colonel Martyn, to whose
bounty the poet was deeply indebted.
Being destined for the church, young Collins was admitted a scholar of
Winchester College on the 19th of January, 1733, where he was educated
by Dr. Burton; and in 1740 he stood first on the list of scholars who
were to be received at New College. No vacancy, however, occurred, and
the circumstance is said by Johnson to have been the original misfortune
of his life. He became a commoner of Queen's,[1] whence, on the 29th of
July, 1741, he was elected a demy of Magdalen College. During his stay
at Queen's he was distinguished for genius and indolence, and the few
exercises which he could be induced to write bear evident marks of both
qualities. He continued at Oxford until he took his bachelor's degree,
and then suddenly left the University, his motive, as he alleged, being
that he missed a fellowship, for which he offered himself; but it has
been assigned to his disgust at the dulness of a college life, and to
his being involved in debt.
On arriving in London, which was either in 1743 or 1744, he became, says
Johnson, "a literary adventurer, with many projects in his head and very
little money in his pocket." Collins was not without some reputation as
an author when he proposed to adopt the most uncertain and deplorable of
all professions, that of literature, for a subsistence. Whilst at
Winchester school he wrote his Eclogues, and had appeared before the
public in some verses addressed to a lady weeping at her sister's
marriage, which were printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, Oct. 1739,
when Collins was in his eighteenth year. In January, 1742, he published
his Eclogues, under the title of "Persian Eclogues;"[2] and, in
December, 1743, his "Verses to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his Edition of
Shakespeare," appeared. To neither did he affix his name, but the latter
was said to be by "a Gentleman of Oxford."
From the time he settled in London, his mind was more occupied with
literary projects than with steady application; nor had poesy, for which
Nature peculiarly designed him, sufficient attractions to chain his
wavering disposition. It is not certain whether his irresolution arose
from the annoyance of importunate debtors, or from an original infirmity
of mind, or from these causes united. A popular writer[3] has defended
Collins from the charge of irresolution, on the ground that it was but
"the vacillations of a mind broken and confounded;" and he urges, that
"he had exercised too constantly the highest faculties of fiction, and
precipitated himself into the dreariness of real life." But this
explanation does not account for the want of steadiness which prevented
Collins from accomplishing the objects he meditated. His mind was
neither "broken nor confounded," nor had he experienced the bitter pangs
of neglect, when with the buoyancy of hope, and a full confidence in his
extraordinary powers, he threw himself on the town, at the age of
twenty-three, intending to live by the exercise of his talents; but his
indecision was then as apparent as at any subsequent period, so that, in
truth, the effect preceded the cause to which it has been assigned.
Mankind are becoming too much accustomed to witness splendid talents and
great firmness of mind united in the same person to partake the mistaken
sympathy which so many writers evince for the follies or vices of
genius; nor will it much longer tolerate the opinion, that the
possession of the finest imagination, or the highest poetic capacity,
must necessarily be accompanied by eccentricity. It may, indeed, be
difficult to convert a poetical temperament into a merchant, or to make
the man who is destined to delight or astonish mankind by his
conceptions, sit quietly over a ledger; but the transition from poetry
to the composition of such works as Collins planned is by no means
unnatural, and the abandonment of his views respecting them must, in
justice to his memory, be attributed to a different cause.
The most probable reason is, that these works were mere speculations to
raise money, and that the idea was not encouraged by the booksellers;
but if, as Johnson, who knew Collins well, asserts, his character wanted
decision and perseverance, these defects may have been constitutional,
and were, perhaps, the germs of the disease which too soon ripened into
the most frightful of human calamities. Endued with a morbid
sensibility, which was as ill calculated to court popularity as to bear
neglect; and wanting that stoical indifference to the opinions of the
many, which ought to render those who are conscious of the value of
their productions satisfied with the approbation of the few; Collins was
too impatient of applause, and too anxious to attain perfection, to be a
voluminous writer. To plan much rather than to execute any thing; to
commence to-day an ode, to-morrow a tragedy, and to turn on the
following morning to a different subject, was the chief occupation of
his life for several years, during which time he destroyed the principal
part of the little that he wrote. To a man nearly pennyless, such a life
must be attended by privations and danger; and he was in the hands of
bailiffs, possibly not for the first time, very shortly before he became
independent by the death of his maternal uncle, Colonel Martyn. The
result proved that his want of firmness and perseverance was natural,
and did not arise from the uncertainty or narrowness of his fortune; for
being rescued from imprisonment, on the credit of a translation of
Aristotle's Poetics, which he engaged to furnish a publisher, a work, it
may be presumed, peculiarly suited to his genius, he no sooner found
himself in the possession of money by the death of his relative, than he
repaid the bookseller, and abandoned the translation for ever.
From the commencement of his career, Collins was, however, an object
for sympathy instead of censure; and though few refuse their compassion
to the confirmed lunatic, it is rare that the dreadful state of
irresolution and misery, which sometimes exist for years before the
fatal catastrophe, receives either pity or indulgence.
In 1747, Collins published his Odes, to the unrivaled splendour of a few
of which he is alone indebted for his fame; but neither fame nor profit
was the immediate result; and the author of the Ode on the Passions had
little reason to expect, from its reception by the public, that it was
destined to live as long as the passions themselves animate or distract
the world.
It is uncertain at what time he undertook to publish a volume of Odes in
conjunction with Joseph Warton, but the intention is placed beyond
dispute by the following letter from Warton to his
