move heavily, and do not seem to me to rise much above mediocrity in the expression. The subject was attractive, and might have afforded space for the wild excursions of Collins's creative powers. As to the edition of Bell, in which it is pretended that the lost stanzas have been recovered, I have no more doubt that they are spurious than that I did not write them myself: I will not dwell upon this subject, but only mention that it is quite impossible Collins could write "Fate gave the fatal blow," and "bowing to Freedom's yoke ;" and such a line as "In the first year of the first George's reign," &c. There is not one line among these interpolated stanzas which it is possible that Collins could have written. Mr. Ragdale relates that Collins was in the habit of writing numerous fragments, and then throwing them into the flames. Jackson, of Exeter, says the same of John Bampfylde. A sensitive mind is scarce ever satisfied with the reception it meets, when, in first heat of composition, it hopes to delight some listener, to which it first communicates its new effusions. It almost always considers itself to be "damn'd by faint praise." I have known fervid authors who, if they read or communicated a piece before it was finished, never went on with it. They thought it became blown upon, and turned from it with coldness, disgust, and despair. Yet the hearer is commonly not in fault; who can satisfy the warm hopes of aspiring and restless genius? The Wartons have expressed themselves with praise and affection of Collins, but not, I think, with the entire admiration which was due to him. Joseph Warton was a good-natured and generousminded man, but something of rivalry lurked in his bosom; and the fraternal partiality of Thomas Warton had the same effect. The younger brother seems to have thought that Joseph's genius was equal to that of Collins. Gray had the critical acumen to discern the difference; but still he in no degree does justice to Collins. He accuses him of want of taste and selection, which is a surprising charge; and the more so, because Gray did not disdain to borrow from him. Gray's fault was an affected fastidiousness, as appears by the slighting manner in which he speaks of Thomson's Castle of Indolence on its first appearance, as well as of Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, and Shenstone's Elegies. That Gray had exquisite taste, and was a perfect scholar, no one can doubt. Collins lived thirteen years after the publication of his Odes. It does not appear that he produced any thing after this publication. How soon his grand mental malady extinguished his literary powers, I do not exactly know, nor is it recorded, whether any part of it arose from bodily disorders. Medical men have never agreed regarding this most deplorable of human afflictions. In Collins's case it probably arose from the mind. On such an intellectual temperament the extinction of the visions which Hope had painted to him seems to have been sufficient to produce that derangement, which first enfeebled, and then perverted and annihilated his faculties. The account given by Johnson is different from that supplied by Mr. Ragdale and another anonymous communication. He had, perhaps, lucid intervals, in which he discovered nothing but weakness and exhaustion. But he appears to have sometimes had fits of violence and despair. It seems that he was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, and a great reader of black letter books. It may be inferred that his studies were not entirely given up during his malady; but it is a subject of great wonder and regret that the Wartons, the intimate friends both of his better and darker days, have left no particular memorials of him. He had a sister, lately, if not still, living, from whom, though of a very uncongenial nature, something might surely have been gathered. But there is a familiarity which, by destroying admiration, destroys the perception of what will interest others. There are few of our poets of rare genius, of whose private life and character much is known. Little is known of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton : not much even of Thomson. More is known of Gray by the medium of his beautiful letters; but when Southey, Wordsworth, and Scott are gone, posterity will know every particular of them; and, even now, know much which fills them with delight and admiration. But let us know something in good time, also of the new candidates for poetical fame! If the life of a poet is not in accordance with his song, it may be suspected that the song itself is not genuine. Who can be a poet, and yet be a worldling in his passions and habits? An artificial poet is a disgusting dealer in trifles: nothing but the predominance of strong and unstimulated feeling will give that inspiration without which it is worse than an empty sound. When the passion is factitious, the excitement has always an immoral tendency; but the delineation of real and amiable sentiments calls up a sympathy in other bosoms which thus confirms and fixes them where they would otherwise die away. The memory may preserve what is artificial, but, when it becomes stale, it turns to offensiveness, and thus breeds an alienation from literature itself. That Collins has continued to increase in fame as years have passed away, is the most decisive of all proofs that his poems have the pure and sterling merit which began to be ascribed to them soon after his death. M. Bonstetten tells me that Gray died without a suspicion of the high rank he was thereafter to hold in the annals of British genius? What did poor Collins think when he submitted his sublime odes to the flames? He must have had fits of confidence, even then, in himself; but intermixed with gloom and despair, and curses of the wretched doom of his birth! Is it sufficient that a man should wrap himself up in himself, and be content if the poetry creates itself and expires in his own heart? We strike the lyre to excite sympathy, and, if no one will hear, will any one not feel that he strikes in vain; and that the talent given us is useless, and even painful? But who can be assured that he has the talent if no one acknowledges it? To have it, and not to be assured that we have it, is a restless fire that burns to consume us. Let no one envy the endowments, if he looks at the fate, of poets. Let him contemplate Spenser, Denham, Rochester, Otway, Collins, Chatterton, Burns, Kirke White, Bloomfield, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, besides those of foreign countries! Perhaps Collins was the most unhappy of all; as he was assuredly one of the most inspired and most amiable. "In woful measures wan Despair Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled, f |