to literature. While at college he published his Persian Eclogues (1742), afterwards republished with the title of Oriental Eclogues, and next year his Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his Edition of Shakspeare. Collins, as Johnson remarks, 'had ✓ many projects in his head.' He planned several tragedies, and issued Proposals for a History of the Revival of Learning, a work which he never accomplished. He was full of high hopes and magnificent schemes, but wanted steadiness of purpose and application. Through Johnson he obtained an advance from a bookseller for a projected translation of Aristotle's Poetics. In 1746 he published his Odes, which were purchased by Millar the bookseller, but failed to attract attention. The poet in disgust burnt the unsold copies, sank under the disappointment, and became still more indolent and dissipated. The fine promise of his youth, his ardour and ambition, melted away under this baneful and depressing influence. Once again, however, he strung his lyre. Thomson died in 1748: Collins-who lived some time at Richmond-knew and loved him, and seems to have been thus sketched by Thomson in a stanza of the Castle of Indolence : Of all the gentle tenants of the place, But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind. When Thomson died Collins quitted Richmond, and commemorated his brother-poet in a touching ode. Among his friends was also Home, the author of Douglas, to whom he addressed an ode, found unfinished after his death, on the Superstitions of the Highlands. It was communicated by Carlyle of Inveresk to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and printed in their Transactions in 1788, not without alterations and additions by Carlyle and Henry Mackenzie. Collins loved to dwell on these dim and visionary objects, and the compliment he pays to Tasso might almost be applied to himself: Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders which he sung. In the midst of the poet's difficulties and distresses, his uncle died (1749) and left him about £2000; 'a sum,' says Johnson, which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust.' Le had sunk into a state of nervous prostration; all hope or power of exertion had fled. Johnson met him one day, carrying with him as he travelled an English Testament : 'I have but one book,' said Collins, but it is the best.' A voyage to France failed to dissipate his melancholy, and for a time he was the inmate of a madhouse. In his later days he was tended by his sister in Chichester. He used, when at liberty, to wander day and night among the aisles and cloisters of Chichester Cathedral, accompanying the music with sobs and moans. After passing six years in this condition, he died in utter obscurity on 12th June 1759. Two odes written in his later years, on the Music of the Grecian Theatre and the Bell of Aragon, have been lost. For long the Oriental Eclogues were the most esteemed of Collins's works; he himself thought otherwise, and the world soon came to be of his opinion. Southey remarked that, though utterly neglected on their first appearance, the Odes of Collins in one generation and without any adventitious aid, 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.' This true estimate is fully established, though there is in Collins some lack of human interest and of action. The Eclogues are free from the occasional obscurity and remoteness of the Odes, though they too are rather tame, and, with the exception of the second, rather pointless and defective in story. Collins, like Gray, holds a middle position between the school of Pope and the school of Wordsworth. In his maturer work he is almost completely free from the so-called 'poetic diction' of the eighteenth century. He has not the passionate feeling for nature of later poets, but his feeling is at least real and not conventional. In respect of natural poetic gifts, Johnson, in spite of prejudices, recognised in Collins something lacking in Gray, whom it was usual to set beside Collins or even rank as his superior. Coleridge and Mrs Browning place him above Gray. Mr Swinburne vehemently denounces all linking of the two contemporaries together; as a lyric poet, Gray is not worthy to unloose Collins's shoe-latchet. Collins had, and Gray had not, the gift of lyric song, a purity of music and clarity not found from Marvell to Blake. The muse gave verse to Collins: she did but give luck to Gray.' Collins could put more music into a note than could all the rest of his generation into all the labours of their lives. But his range was narrow. He had not Goldsmith's power of compelling human emotion; and his choice of subjects, and his subtler modes of treatment, debar him from the popularity of the author of the Elegy. His most highly finished ode is that To Evening, which is unsurpassed for exalted tone and exquisite diction. The ode on The Passions has merits of a different order, but shows genius of even wider scope. The allegorical character of this ode and its companion pieces, To Liberty, To Mercy, and To Pity, removes them from direct human sympathy. The Ode to Liberty first after Milton 'blows the clarion of republican faith.' No poet made more use of metaphors and personification. Pity is presented with 'eyes of dewy light;' and Danger is described with the distinctness of sculpture : Danger, whose limbs of giant mould Of some loose hanging rock to sleep. That Collins was capable of simplicity and pathos is shown by his two most popular poems, On the Death of the Poet Thomson, and the ode quoted below beginning 'How sleep the brave.' The scene of the following eclogue, the second of the series, is the desert at midday : Hassan; or the Camel-driver. In silent horror, o'er the boundless waste, 'Ah! little thought I of the blasting wind, The thirst or pinching hunger that I find! Bethink thee, Hassan, where shall thirst assuage, When fails this cruse, his unrelenting rage? Soon shall this scrip its precious load resign, Then what but tears and hunger shall be thine? 'Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 'Curst be the gold and silver which persuade Or why fond man so easily betrayed? Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 'O cease, my fears! All frantic as I go, When thought creates unnumbered scenes of woe, What if the lion in his rage I meet! Oft in the dust I view his printed feet; Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, At that dead hour the silent asp shall creep, 'O hapless youth! for she thy love hath won, The tender Zara, will be most undone. Big swelled my heart, and owned the powerful maid, When fast she dropped her tears, as thus she said: "Farewell the youth whom sighs could not detain, Whom Zara's breaking heart implored in vain! Yet as thou go'st, may every blast arise Weak and unfelt as these rejected sighs! Safe o'er the wild no perils mayst thou see, No griefs endure, nor weep, false youth, like me.” Say with a kiss, she must not, shall not mourn; He said, and called on Heaven to bless the day When back to Schiraz' walls he bent his way. Ode written in 1745. How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By fairy hands their knell is rung, For when thy folding-star arising shows The fragrant hours, and elves Who slept in flowers the day, And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake Reflect its last cool gleam. But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain, That from the mountain's side And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires; And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, While Summer loves to sport While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, And rudely rends thy robes; So long, sure found beneath the sylvan shed, Thy gentlest influence own, The Passions, an Ode for Music. When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her shell, Thronged around her magic cell; Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possessed beyond the muse's painting; By turns they felt the glowing mind Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined; Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired, Filled with fury, rapt, inspired, From the supporting myrtles round, They snatched her instruments of sound; And as they oft had heard apart Sweet lessons of her forceful art, Each (for madness ruled the hour) Would prove his own expressive power. First Fear his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords, bewildered laid; And back recoiled, he knew not why, Even at the sound himself had made. Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire In lightnings owned his secret stings; In one rude clash he struck the lyre, And swept with hurried hand the strings. With woful measures wan Despair, Low, sullen, sounds his grief beguiled; A solemn, strange, and mingled air; 'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild. But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, And longer had she sung, but with a frown He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down, The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe; The doubling drum with furious heat; And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Dejected Pity at his side Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien, [his head. While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from Thy numbers, Jealousy, to naught were fixed; Sad proof of thy distressful state; Of different themes the veering song was mixed, And now it courted Love, now raving called on Hate. With eyes upraised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired; In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole: But O! how altered was its sprightlier tone, Her buskins gemmed with morning-dew, The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known; The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen, And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial: To some unwearied minstrel dancing: As if he would the charming air repay, O Music! sphere-descended maid, Dirge in Cymbeline, sung by Guiderius and Arviragus. To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom, And rifle all the breathing spring. No wailing ghost shall dare appear And melting virgins own their love. No withered witch shall here be seen, The red-breast oft, at evening hours, When howling winds, and beating rain, The tender thought on thee shall dwell. Each lonely scene shall thee restore, And mourned till Pity's self be dead, Ode on the Death of Mr Thomson. [The scene is on the Thames, near Richmond.] In yonder grave a Druid lies, Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To deck its poet's sylvan grave. In yon deep bed of whispering reeds May love through life the soothing shade. The maids and youths shall linger here, And while its sounds at distance swell Shall sadly seem in Pity's ear To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell. Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, When Thames in summer wreaths is drest; And oft suspend the dashing oar, To bid his gentle spirit rest. And oft, as Ease and Health retire To breezy lawn, or forest deep, The friend shall view yon whitening spire, And 'mid the varied landscape weep. But thou, who own'st that earthy bed, That mourn beneath the gliding sail? Yet lives there one whose heedless eye Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near? With him, sweet bard, may fancy die, And joy desert the blooming year. But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide No sedge-crowned sisters now attend, Now waft me from the green hill's side, Whose cold turf hides the buried friend. And see, the fairy valleys fade, Dun night has veiled the solemn view. Yet once again, dear parted shade, Meek nature's child, again adieu! The genial meads, assigned to bless Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom; Long, long thy stone and pointed clay In the Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands, according to Mr Lowell, the whole. Romantic School is foreshadowed;' while Mr Gosse has said that it contains passages which are 'unrivalled for rich melancholy fullness' between Milton and Keats. But it deals only very lightly, and in about half of its thirteen stanzas, with specific superstitions; about half are compliment to Home and praise of Scotland generally. One stanza puts the will-o'-the-wisp at the service of the kelpie; two stanzas are devoted to the melancholy fate of the swain who becomes the victim, and the distress of his bereaved widow and children. Then follow these stanzas: Unbounded is thy range; with varied skill Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle, To that hoar pile, which still its ruin shows: In whose small vaults a pigmy-folk is found, Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows, And culls them, wondering, from the hallowed ground! Or thither, where, beneath the showery west, The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid; The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold, But, oh, o'er all, forget not Kilda's race, On whose bleak rocks, which brave the wasting tides, Fair nature's daughter, virtue, yet abides. Go! just, as they, their blameless manners trace! Then to my ear transmit some gentle song, Of those whose lives are yet sincere and plain, Their bounded walks the rugged cliffs along, And all their prospect but the wintry main. With sparing temperance, at the needful time, They drain the scented spring; or, hunger-prest, Along the Atlantic rock, undreading climb, And of its eggs despoil the solan's nest. Thus, blest in primal innocence, they live Sufficed, and happy with that frugal fare Which tasteful toil and hourly danger give. Hard is their shallow soil, and bleak and bare; Nor ever vernal bee was heard to murmur there! See the memoir of Collins by Dyce in his edition of the Works (1827); and that prefixed by W. Moy Thomas to the Aldine edition (1858; new ed. 1892). Mark Akenside (1721-70), author of The Pleasures of Imagination, was the son of a respectable butcher at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and in boyhood the fall of one of his father's cleavers on his foot rendered him lame for life. At the Newcastle schools he showed precocity and promise, and was already writing verse. The Society of Dissenters advanced a sum to educate him for the ministry, but after a session of theology at Edinburgh he changed his views, and, returning the money, entered himself as a student of medicine. His (far from brilliant) Hymn to Science was apparently written about this time. He took his degree of M.D. at Leyden in 1744, and in the same year he had issued anonymously his Pleasures of Imagination. The price demanded for the copyright was £120; and Pope advised Dodsley not to make a niggardly offer, 'for this is no every day writer.' The success of the work justified poet, critic, and publisher— though Gray dissented and Warburton condemned. The same year, after having in a poetical epistle attacked Pulteney under the name of Curio, Akenside commenced physician at Northampton, but did not succeed. He then (1746) engaged to contribute to Dodsley's Museum, began to practise in London as a physician, and published several medical treatises. At Edinburgh and at Leyden he had formed an intimacy with a young Englishman of fortune, Jeremiah Dyson, which ripened into an enthusiastic friendship; and Mr Dyson-afterwards Clerk of the House of Commons and a Lord of the Treasury was free-handed enough to allow his poet-friend £300 a year. After writing a few Odes and attempting a reconstruction of his great poem, Akenside made no further efforts in literature, save a few occasional poems and some medical works. In 1757 appeared the expanded and altered form of the First Book of what was now called, by way of distinction, The Pleasures of the Imagination; of the Second Book in 1765; and a fragment of an intended Fourth Book was published after his death. He became distinguished as a physician; his society was courted for his taste, knowledge, and eloquence; but his solemn sententiousness of manner, his romantic ideas of liberty, and his unbounded admiration of the ancients exposed him occasionally to ridicule. The physician in Peregrine Pickle, who gives a feast in the manner of the ancients, was universally understood to be a caricature of Akenside. He irritated the Whigs by becoming a Tory after he was appointed queen's physician; and as doctor to one of the London hospitals obtained an unpleasant repute for carelessness towards poor patients. In his later days Akenside reverted with delight to his native landscape on the banks of the Tyne. In his fragment of a Fourth Book of his Imagination, written in the last year of his life, there is one striking passage: O ye dales Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands; where |