The following communication by Thomas Warton, found among the papers of Mr. Hymers, appeared first in the Reaper, and has been copied from that work into the Gleaner, A few passages, chiefly concerning various readings, are now omitted, as they are given in other parts of this volume: "I often saw Collins in London in 1750. This was before his illness. He then told me of his intended History of the Revival of Learning, and proposed a scheme of a review, to be called the Clarendon Review, and to be printed at the university press, under the conduct and authority of the university. About Easter, the next year, I was in London; when, being given over and supposed to be dying, he desired to see me, that he might take his last leave of me: but he grew better, and in the summer he sent me a letter on some private business, which I have now by me, dated Chichester, June 9, 1751, written in a fine hand, and without the least symptom of a disordered or debilitated understanding. In 1754 he came to Oxford for change of air and amusement, where he stayed a month; I saw him frequently, but he was so weak and low, that he could not bear conversation. Once he walked e The Reaper, the greater part of which was written by the late Mr. Maude, of Wensley-dale in Yorkshire, was originally published in the York Chronicle, from January 1796 to June 1797, and was reprinted in an octavo volume, though never published, in 1798. My only acquaintance with this scarce work is from the specimens of it in Dr. Drake's Gleaner. Dr. Drake has politely informed me that nothing more concerning Collins than what he has extracted (and all of which is given in the present volume) was contained in either form of the work. from his lodgings, opposite Christ church, to Trinity college, but supported by his servant. The same year, in September, I and my brother visited him at Chichester, where he lived in the cathedral cloisters, with his sister. The first day he was in high spirits at intervals, but exerted himself so much that he could not see us the second. Here he showed us an ode to Mr. John Home on his leaving England for Scotland, in the octave stanza, very long, and - beginning, Home, thou return'st from Thames. I remember there was a beautiful description of the spectre of a man drowned in the night, or in the language of the old Scotch superstitions, seized by the angry spirit of the waters, appearing to his wife with pale blue cheek, etc. Mr. Home has no copy of it. He also showed us another ode, of two or three four-lined stanzas, called the Bell of Arragon; on a tradition that, anciently, just before a king of Spain died, the great bell of the cathedral of Sarragossa, in Arragón, tolled spontaneously. It began thus: The bell of Arragon, they say, Soon afterwards were these lines: 1 Whatever dark aerial power, Commission'd, haunts the gloomy tower. The last stanza consisted of a moral transition to his own death and knell, which he called some simpler bell.' I have seen all his odes already published in his own handwriting; they had the marks of re peated correction: he was perpetually changing his epithets. Dr. Warton, my brother, has a few fragments of some other odes, but too loose and imperfect for publication, yet containing traces of high imagery. "In illustration of what. Dr. Johnson has related, that during his last malady he was a great reader of the Bible, I am favoured with the following anecdote from the reverend Mr. Shenton, vicar of St. Andrew's, at Chichester, by whom Collins was buried: Walking in my vicarial garden one Sunday evening, during Collins's last illness, I heard a female (the servant, I suppose,) reading the Bible in his chamber. Mr. Collins had been accustomed to rave much, and make great moanings; but while she was reading, or rather attempting to read, he was not only silent but attentive likewise, correcting her mistakes, which indeed were very frequent, through the whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis.' I have just been informed, from undoubted authority, that Collins had finished a Preliminary Dissertation to be prefixed to his History of the Restoration of Learning, and that it was written with great judgment, precision, and knowledge of the subject. "T. W." Note 13, p. 7. Whom I yet remember with ten derness. How great a regard Johnson had for Collins, the following extracts from his letters to Joseph Warton sufficiently testify: "March 8, 1754. "But how little can we venture to exult in any intellectual powers or literary attainments, when we consider the condition of poor Collins. I knew him a few years ago full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs. What do you hear of him? are there hopes of his recovery? or is he to pass the remainder of his life in misery and degradation ? perhaps with complete consciousness of his calamity." "December 24, 1754. "Poor dear Collins! Let me know whether you think it would give him pleasure if I should write to him. I have often been near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration." "April 15, 1756. "What becomes of poor dear Collins? I wrote him a letter which he never answered. I suppose writing is very troublesome to him. That man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty; but it is yet more dreadful to consider that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that understanding may make its appearance and depart, that it may blaze and expire."-Wooll's Memoirs of Dr. J. Warton, p. 219. 229. 239. Note 14, p. 8. The poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise, when it gives little pleasure. "The criticism of Johnson," says Mr. D'Israeli, on the poetry of Collins, that as men are often 66 esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise, when it gives little pleasure, might almost have been furnished from the lumbering pen of old Dennis. But Collins, from the poetical, never extorted praise, for it is given spontaneously; he is much more loved than esteemed, for he does not give little pleasure. Johnson, too, describes his lines as of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. Even this verbal criticism, though it appeals to the eye, and not to the ear, is false criticism; since Collins is certainly the most musical of poets. How could that lyrist be harsh in his diction, who almost draws tears from our eyes, while his melodious lines and picturing epithets are remembered by his readers? He is devoured with as much enthusiasm by one party, as he is imperfectly relished by the other."-Calam. of Auth. vol. ii. p. 215. When Johnson's Lives of the Poets first appeared, Collins was an author so little known, that few readers were aware of the injustice of the doctor's criticism on his poetry. In a manuscript letter by Beattie, in my possession, written immediately after the publication of the Lives, mention is made of the severity with which Milton, Gray, and even Lyttelton, are handled by Johnson, but no notice is taken of the treatment of Collins. Till Cowper met with our poet's name in Johnson's work, he had never heard of him. "I have lately finished," says that amiable recluse, in a letter to Newton, March 19, 1784, 66 eight volumes of Johnson's Prefaces, or Lives of the Poets. In all that number I observe but one man, a poet of no great fame, of whom I did not D |