What Germany to learn'd Rhenanus owes,
That for my Britain shall my toil unclose;
His volumes mark their customs, names, and climes,
And brighten, with a summer's light, old times.
I also, touch'd by the same love, will write,
To ornament my country's splendid light,
Which shall, inscribed on snowy tablets, be
Full many a witness of my industry.
Another example of literary disappointment disordering the intellect
may be contemplated in the fate of the poet COLLINS.
Several interesting incidents may be supplied to Johnson's narrative
of the short and obscure life of this poet, who, more than any other
of our martyrs to the lyre, has thrown over all his images and his
thoughts a tenderness of mind, and breathed a freshness over the
pictures of poetry, which the mighty Milton has not exceeded, and the
laborious Gray has not attained. But he immolated happiness, and at
length reason, to his imagination! The incidents most interesting in
the life of Collins would be those events which elude the ordinary
biographer; that invisible train of emotions which were gradually
passing in his mind; those passions which first moulded his genius,
and which afterwards broke it! But who could record the vacillations
of a poetic temper, its early hope and its late despair, its wild
gaiety and its settled frenzy, but the poet himself? Yet Collins has
left behind no memorial of the wanderings of his alienated mind but
the errors of his life!
At college he published his "Persian Eclogues," as they were first
called, to which, when he thought they were not distinctly Persian, he
gave the more general title of "Oriental." The publication was
attended with no success; but the first misfortune a poet meets will
rarely deter him from incurring more. He suddenly quitted the
university, and has been censured for not having consulted his friends
when he rashly resolved to live by the pen. But he had no friends! His
father had died in embarrassed circumstances; and Collins was residing
at the university on the stipend allowed him by his uncle, Colonel
Martin, who was abroad. He was indignant at a repulse he met with at
college; and alive to the name of author and poet, the ardent and
simple youth imagined that a nobler field of action opened on him in
the metropolis than was presented by the flat uniformity of a
collegiate life. To whatever spot the youthful poet flies, that spot
seems Parnassus, as applause seems patronage. He hurried to town, and
presented himself before the cousin who paid his small allowance from
his uncle in a fashionable dress with a feather in his hat. The graver
gentleman did not succeed in his attempt at sending him back, with all
the terror of his information, that Collins had not a single guinea of
his own, and was dressed in a coat he could never pay for. The young
bard turned from his obdurate cousin as "a dull fellow;" a usual
phrase with him to describe those who did not think as he would have
them.
That moment was now come, so much desired, and scarcely yet dreaded,
which was to produce those effusions of fancy and learning, for which
Collins had prepared himself by previous studies. About this time
Johnson[126] has given a finer picture of the intellectual powers and
the literary attainments of Collins than in the life he afterwards
composed. "Collins was acquainted not only with the learned tongues,
but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages; full of hopes and
full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong
in retention." Such was the language of Johnson, when, warmed by his
own imagination, he could write like Longinus; at that after-period,
when assuming the austerity of critical discussion for the lives of
poets, even in the coldness of his recollections, he describes Collins
as "a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties."
A chasm of several years remains to be filled. He was projecting works
of labour, and creating productions of taste; and he has been
reproached for irresolution, and even for indolence. Let us catch his
feelings from the facts as they rise together, and learn whether
Collins must endure censure or excite sympathy.
When he was living loosely about town, he occasionally wrote many
short poems in the house of a friend, who witnesses that he burned as
rapidly as he composed. His odes were purchased by Millar, yet though
but a slight pamphlet, all the interest of that great bookseller could
never introduce them into notice. Not an idle compliment is recorded
to have been sent to the poet. When we now consider that among these
odes was one the most popular in the language, with some of the most
exquisitely poetical, it reminds us of the difficulty a young writer
without connexions experiences in obtaining the public ear; and of the
languor of poetical connoisseurs who sometimes suffer poems, that have
not yet grown up to authority, to be buried on the shelf. What the
outraged feelings of the poet were, appeared when some time afterwards
he became rich enough to express them. Having obtained some fortune by
the death of his uncle, he made good to the publisher the deficiency
of the unsold odes, and, in his haughty resentment at the public
taste, consigned the impression to the flames!
Who shall now paint the feverish and delicate feelings of a young poet
such as Collins, who had twice addressed the public, and twice had
been repulsed? He whose poetic temper Johnson has finely painted, at
the happy moment when he felt its influence, as "delighting to rove
through the meadows of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of
golden palaces, and repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens!"
It cannot be doubted, and the recorded facts will demonstrate it, that
the poetical disappointments of Collins were secretly preying on his
spirit, and repressing his firmest exertions. With a mind richly
stored with literature, and a soul alive to the impulses of nature and
study, he projected a "History of the Revival of Learning," and a
translation of "Aristotle's Poetics," to be illustrated by a large
commentary.
But "his great fault," says Johnson, "was his _irresolution_; or the
frequent calls of _immediate necessity_ broke his schemes, and
suffered him to pursue no settled purpose." 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 Britannica;" 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 of romantic
fancy and tenderness of emotion, which has staked its happiness on its
imagination; for such neglect is felt as ordinary men would feel the
sensation of being let down into a sepulchre, and buried alive. The
mind of Tasso, a brother in fancy to Collins, became disordered by the
opposition of the critics, but perpetual neglect injures it not less.
The 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.
The oblivion which covered our poet's works appeared to him eternal,
as those works now seem to us immortal. He had created HOPE with deep
and enthusiastic feeling!--
With eyes so fair--
Whispering promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail;
And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair!
The few years Collins passed in the metropolis he was subsisting with
or upon his friends; and, being a pleasing companion, he obtained many
literary acquaintances. It was at this period that Johnson knew him,
and thus describes him:--"His appearance was decent, and his
knowledge considerable; his views extensive, and his conversation
elegant." He was a constant frequenter at the literary resorts of the
Bedford and Slaughter's; and Armstrong, Hill, Garrick, and Foote,
frequently consulted him on their pieces before they appeared in
public. From his intimacy with Garrick he obtained a free admission
into the green-room; and probably it was at this period, among his
other projects, that he planned several tragedies, which, however, as
Johnson observes, "he only planned." There is a feature in Collins's
character which requires attention. He is represented as a man of
cheerful dispositions; and it has been my study to detect only a
melancholy, which was preying on the very source of life itself.
Collins was, indeed, born to charm his friends; for fancy and elegance
were never absent from his susceptible mind, rich in its stores, and
versatile in its emotions. He himself indicates his own character, in
his address to "Home:"--
Go! nor, regardless while these numbers boast
My short-lived bliss, forget my social name.
Johnson has told us of his cheerful dispositions; and one who knew him
well observes, that "in the green-room he made diverting observations
on the vanity and false consequence of that class of people, and his
manner of relating them to his particular friends was extremely
entertaining:" but the same friend acknowledges that "some letters
which he received from Collins, though chiefly on business, have in
them some flights which strongly mark his character, and for which
reason I have preserved them." We cannot decide of the temper of a man
viewed only in a circle of friends, who listen to the ebullitions of
wit or fancy; the social warmth for a moment throws into forgetfulness
his secret sorrow. The most melancholy man is frequently the most
delightful companion, and peculiarly endowed with the talent of
satirical playfulness and vivacity of humour.[127] But what was the
true life of Collins, separated from its adventitious circumstances?
It was a life of want, never chequered by hope, that was striving to
elude its own observation by hurrying into some temporary dissipation.
But the hours of melancholy and solitude were sure to return; these
were marked on the dial of his life, and, when they struck, the gay
and lively Collins, like one of his own enchanted beings, as surely
relapsed into his natural shape. To the perpetual recollection of his
poetical disappointments are we to attribute this unsettled state of
his mind, and the perplexity of his studies. To these he was
perpetually reverting, which he showed when after a lapse of several
years, he could not rest till he had burned his ill-fated odes. And
what was the result of his literary life? He returned to his native
city of Chichester in a state almost of nakedness, destitute,
diseased, and wild in despair, to hide himself in the arms of a
sister.
The cloud had long been gathering over his convulsed intellect; and
the fortune he acquired on the death of his uncle served only for
personal indulgences, which rather accelerated his disorder. There
were, at times, some awful pauses in the alienation of his mind--but
he had withdrawn it from study. It was in one of these intervals that
Thomas Warton told Johnson that when he met Collins travelling, he
took up a book the poet carried with him, from curiosity, to see what
companion a man of letters had chosen--it was an English Testament. "I
have but one book," said Collins, "but that is the best." This
circumstance is recorded on his tomb.
He join'd pure faith to strong poetic powers,
And in reviving reason's lucid hours,
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest,
And rightly deem'd the book of God the best.
At Chichester, tradition has preserved some striking and affecting
occurrences of his last days; he would haunt the aisles and cloisters
of the cathedral, roving days and nights together, loving their
Dim religious light.
And, when the choristers chanted their anthem, the listening and
bewildered poet, carried out of himself by the solemn strains, and his
own too susceptible imagination, moaned and shrieked, and awoke a
sadness and a terror most affecting amid religious emotions; their
friend, their kinsman, and their poet, was before them, an awful image
of human misery and ruined genius!