NOTES

ON

DR. JOHNSON'S LIFE OF COLLINS.

NOTE 1, p. 1. William Collins was born, etc. The following certificate of his baptism has been procured for the present work:

"1721, William, the son of William Collins, then mayor of this city, and Elizabeth his wife, was baptized 1st of January.".

I certify that the above is a true extract from the register of baptisms belonging to the parish of St. Peter the Great, alias Subdeanery, Chichester. J. DAVIES, curate.

August 31st, 1826.

Note 2, p. 1. Admitted scholar of Winchester college.

"His father," says Langhorne, "intended him for the service of the church; and with this view, in the year 1733, he was admitted a scholar of that illustrious seminary of genius and learning, Winchester college."

Note 3, p. 2. He became a commoner of Queen's college.

Where," says Langhorne, "he continued till

July 1741, when he was elected a demy of Magdalen college. During his residence at Queen's, he was at once distinguished for genius and indolence; his exercises, when he could be prevailed upon to write, bearing the visible characteristics of both.”

While at Magdalen college, in January 1742, Collins published his eclogues, under the title of Persian Eclogues, and in December of the following year, Verses to sir Thomas Hanmer on his edition of Shakspeare. Langhorne says that he wrote the eclogues during his residence at Magdalen, but he is mistaken. "Mr. Collins," observes Dr. Joseph Warton," 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 [there] 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 :

VIRG.

Quos primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis. He was greatly mortified that they found more readers and admirers than his odes."-Notes on Pope's Works, vol. i. p. 61.

Note 4, p. 2. He now, about 1744, came to London.

Langhorne says he removed to London in 1743. Note 5, p. 2. His great fault was irresolution. "Collins was, however, not idle, though without

application; for, when reproached with idleness by a friend, he showed instantly several sheets of his version of Aristotle, and many embryos of some lives he had engaged to compose for the Biographia Britanica: he never brought either to perfection. What then was this irresolution, but the vacillations of a mind broken and confounded? He had exercised too constantly the highest faculties of fiction, and he had precipitated himself into the dreariness of real life. None but a poet can conceive, for none but a poet can experience, the secret wounds inflicted on a mind made up of romantic fancy and tenderness of emotion, who has staked his happiness on his imagination, and who feels neglect, as ordinary men might the sensation of being let down into a sepulchre, and being buried alive. The mind of Tasso, a brother in fancy to Collins, became disordered by the opposition of the critics; but their perpetual neglect had not injured it less. The elegant Hope of the ancients was represented holding some flowers, the promise of the spring, or some spikes of corn, indicative of approaching harvest-but the Hope of Collins had scattered its seed, and they remained buried in the earth."-D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, vol. ii. p. 201.

Note 6, p. 2. He planned several tragedies.

"In his Ode to Fear," says Mr. T. Campbell, "he hints at his dramatic ambition, and he planned several tragedies. Had he lived to enjoy and adorn existence, it is not easy to conceive his sensitive spirit and harmonious ear descending to mediocrity in any path of poetry; yet it may be doubted if his mind had not a passion for the visionary and remote

forms of imagination, too strong and exclusive for the general purposes of the drama. His genius loved to breathe rather in the preternatural and ideal element of poetry than in the atmosphere of imitation, which lies closest to real life; and his notions of poetical excellence, whatever vows he might address to the manners, were still tending to the vast, the undefinable, and the abstract."-Specimens, vol. v. p. 311.

Collins was an ardent admirer and student of the old English dramatists." I was informed," says Thomas Warton, "by the late Mr. Collins of Chichester, that Shakspeare's Tempest, for which no origin is yet assigned, was formed on this favourite romance, [Aurelio and Isabella.] But although this information has not proved true on examination, an useful conclusion may be drawn from it, that Shakspeare's story is somewhere to be found in an Italian novel, at least that the story preceded Shakspeare. Mr. Collins had searched this subject with no less fidelity than judgment and industry: but his memory failing in his last calamitous indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one novel for another."-Hist. of Eng. Poet. vol. iii. p. 478.

That our poet admired Ben Jonson, we learn from Tom Davies, who, speaking of the epilogue to Every man out of his Humour, at the presentation before queen Elizabeth, observes, "Mr. Collins, the author of several justly esteemed poems, first pointed out to me the particular beauties of this occasional address."-Dram. Miscel. vol. ii. p. 77.

As we are now on the subject of our poet's studies, his fondness for black letter reading may be men

tioned.

"In the dispersed library of the late Mr. William Collins," says Thomas Warton, "I saw a thin folio of two sheets in black letter, containing a poem in the octave stanza, entitled Fabyl's Ghoste, printed by John Rastell in the year 1533."-Hist. of Eng. Poet. vol. iii. p. 81.

"Among the books," says the same writer, "of my friend, the late Mr. William Collins of Chichester, now dispersed, was a collection of short comic stories in prose, printed in the black letter under the year 1570, sett forth by maister Richard Edwardes, mayster of her majesties revels. Among these tales Iwas that of the Induction of the tinker in Shakspeare's Taming of the Shrew," etc.-Hist. of Eng. Poet. vol. iii. 292.

p.

Note 7, p. 2. He wrote, now and then, odes and other poems.

His Odes on several descriptive and allegoric subjects, appeared in December 1746, though the titlepage bears the date 1747. Millar, an eminent bookseller in the Strand, "purchased the copy at a very handsome price for those times, and at his own expense and risk did all in his power to introduce Mr. Collins to the notice of the public." (Monthly

a In the memoir prefixed to Langhorne's first edition of Collins's poetical works, 1765, was the following passage concerning this well-known publisher: Mr. Millar, a bookseller in the Strand, and a favourer of genius, when once it has made its way to fume, published them [the odes] on the author's account. He happened, indeed, to be right not to publish them on his own." Discovering, however, that he had unjustly charged Millar with illiberality towards our poet, Langhorne silently omitted this obnoxious passage in subsequent editions.'