The deeply interesting additions lately made in your pages to our
knowledge of General Wolfe, induces me to hope, if not quite to expect,
that something, however small, may be done in the same joint-stock
manner for the memory of the poet Collins. Sir Egerton Brydges asserts
that "new facts regarding Collins are not to be had," and I am deeply
sensible of the value of Mr. Dyce's labours, as well as of those of the
editor of Mr. Pickering's Aldine edition of his works. No pains,
trouble, or expense, have been spared in collecting and arranging the
"dulces exuviæ" of the highly gifted poet; and the memoir prefixed to
Pickering's edition reflects no small credit upon the good taste and
feeling of the editor.
Still may I not ask, through the medium of the "N. & Q.," whether some
further discoveries may not possibly be made? Cannot any one connected
with the town of Chichester, where Collins was born and died--any one
brought up at Winchester College, where he was educated, lend a helping
hand? Are there no additional traces of him as directly or indirectly
associated with the Wartons, Johnson, Quin, Garrick, Foote, and Thomson?
Cannot some of his letters be discovered? Some fragments of his poetry,
however disjointed? Some portions of his prose? There seems a mystery
about Collins himself, as strange as that about his own weird
compositions. Though beloved and admired by all, no one ever picked up
accurate information respecting him. He has been blamed for waywardness
and want of perseverance, as if these were not symptoms of the fearful
visitation that wrecked his noble mind; or as if perseverance and
concentration of energies in any pursuit were not natural gifts as much
as acquired, and gifts of a high and most valuable kind too. Collins did
not want perseverance whilst at school: he came off first on the roll of
which Joseph Warton was second; and his _Oriental Eclogues_, written
before his eighteenth year, are not unworthy of the boyhood of any of
our greatest poets. Besides, he was a highly accomplished classical
scholar, an accurate linguist, was well read in early English poetry and
black-letter books, was passionately fond of music; and some of his
poems, if nothing else, prove him to have viewed nature with a painter's
eye. In his own line of poetry, the personification of abstract
qualities, Collins stands unrivalled. Let us but compare him with all or
any of his numerous imitators, and we ever find him in the calm dignity
of genius,
"Sitting where they durst not soar."
Amidst such a number of book-learned correspondents as you have, surely
I may "lay the flattering unction to my soul" that some interesting
discoveries could be made.
Collins is well worthy of all that can be done for his memory, for if
his _Ode on the Passions_ and his _Ode to Evening_ be not true poetry, I
fear that the English language has not much poetry to produce.