to the Bishop of Hereford, to the President of Magdalen College, to H.
Gabell, Esq., and to I. Sanden, Esq., of Chichester, for the desire
which they were so good as to manifest that this account of Collins
might be more satisfactory than it is; and if his admirers consider that
his present biographer has not done sufficient justice to his memory, an
antidote to the injury will be found in the fervent and unqualified
admiration which Sir Egerton Brydges has evinced for his genius.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 21st March, 1740.
[2] Afterwards republished with the title of "Oriental Eclogues."
[3] D'Israeli, in his "Calamities of Authors," vol. ii. p. 201.
[4] June 7th, 1746.
[5] Mr. Joseph Warton, now Dr. Warton, head master of Winton school,
was at the same time second upon roll; and Mr. Mulso, now [1781]
prebendary of the church of Winton, third upon roll.
[6] Hampton, the translator of Polybius.
[7] Dallaway's Sussex, vol. i. p. 185--The arms of the family of
Collins are there said to have been, "Azure a griffin segreant
or;" but in Sir William Burrell's MS. Collections for a History
of Sussex, in the British Museum, the field is described as being
vert. From those manuscripts which are marked "Additional MSS."
Nos. 5697 to 5699, the following notices of the Poet's family
have been extracted.
REGISTER OF ST. ANDREW'S, CHICHESTER.
BAPTISM.
Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. George Collins, 8th October, 1763.
BURIALS.
Mrs. Elizabeth Collins [the poet's mother], 6th July, 1744.
William Collins, Gent. [the Poet], 15th June, 1759.
REGISTER OF ST. PETER THE GREAT, CHICHESTER.
BAPTISMS.
Charles, son of Roger Collins, 8th February, 1645.
George, son of Mr. George Collins, 28th December, 1647.
Humphrey, son of Mr. Richard Collins, 20th Dec. 1648.
George, son of Mr. George Collins, 7th September, 1651.
Christian, daughter of Mr. Richard Collins, 1st Sept. 1652.
John, son of Mr. Richard Collins, senior, 13th Dec. 1652.
Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Richard Collins, sen. 16th May, 1656.
Joan, daughter of Mr. Richard Collins, jun. 12th Dec. 1656.
Judith, daughter of Mr. Collins, Vicar Choral, 17th April, 1667.
Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. William Collins, 6th March, 1704.
MARRIAGES.
Mr. Charles Collins and Mrs. Elizabeth Cardiff, 14th April, 1696.
BURIALS.
---- wife of Mr. William Collins, 10th December, 1650.
Susan, wife of Mr. Richard Collins, 3rd December, 1657.
Mr. George Collins, 10th January, 1669.
Mrs. Collins of St. Olave's Parish, 19th July, 1696.
There are monumental inscriptions in St. Andrew's Church,
Chichester, to the Poet's father, mother, maternal uncle, Colonel
Martyn, and sister, Mrs. Durnford.
[8] So much of the will of Colonel Edmund Martyn as relates to the Poet
and his sister has been already cited, but the testator's
situation in life and the respectability of his family are best
shown by other parts of that document. He describes himself as a
lieutenant-colonel in his Majesty's service, lying sick in the
city of Chichester. To his niece Elizabeth, the wife of Thomas
Napper, of Itchenor in Sussex, he bequeathed 100_l._ His copyhold
estates of the manors of Selsey, and Somerly, in that county, to
his nephew, Abraham Martyn, the youngest son of his late only
brother, Henry Martyn, and to his servant, John Hipp, he gave his
wearing apparel and ten pounds.
[9] Dyce's edition of Collins, 1827, p. 39.
AN ESSAY ON THE GENIUS AND POEMS OF COLLINS.
BY SIR EGERTON BRYDGES,
BART.
Collins is the founder of a new school of poetry, of a high class. It is
true that, unless Buckhurst and Spenser had gone before him, he could
not have written as he has done; yet he is an inventor very distinct
from both. He calls his odes descriptive and allegorical; and this
characterises them truly, but too generally. The personification of
abstract qualities had never been so happily executed before; the pure
spirituality of the conception, the elegance and force of the language,
the harmony and variety of the numbers, were all executed with a
felicity which none before or since have reached. That these poems did
not at once captivate the public attention cannot be accounted for by
any cause hitherto assigned. We may not wonder that the multitude did
not at once perceive their full beauties; but that, among readers of
taste and learning, there should not have been found a sufficient number
to set the example of admiration, is very extraordinary. In addition to
all their other high merits, the mere novelty of thought and manner were
sufficient to excite immediate notice. Nor was there any thing in
Collins's station or character to create prejudices against the
probability that beautiful effusions of genius might be struck out by
his hand. His education at the college of Winchester, his fame at
Oxford, his associates in London, all were fair preludes to the
production of beautiful poetry. Indeed, he had already produced
beautiful poetry in his Oriental Eclogues, four years before his Odes
appeared. These were, it is admitted, of a different cast from his Odes,
and of a gentleness and chastity of thought and diction, which he
himself was conscious, some years afterwards, did not very well
represent the gorgeousness of eastern composition.
It was a crisis when there was a fair opening for new candidates for the
laurel. The uniformity of Pope's style began already to pall upon the
public ear. Thomson was indolent, and Young eccentric; Gray had not yet
appeared on the stage; and Akenside's metaphysical subject and diffuse
style were not calculated to engross the general taste. Johnson had
taken possession of the field of satire, but there are too many readers
of enthusiastic mind to be satisfied with satire. The pedantry and
uncouthness of Walter Harte had precluded him from ever being a
favourite with the public; Shenstone had not yet risen into fame; and
Lyttelton was engrossed by politics. When, therefore, Collins's Odes
appeared, all speculation would have anticipated that they must have
been successful. But we must recollect that they did not excite the
admiration of Johnson; and that Gray did not read them with that
unqualified approval which his native taste would have inspired. This
singularity must be accounted for by other causes than their want of
merit.
The disappointment of Collins was so keen and deep, that he not only
burned the unsold copies with his own hand, but soon fell into a
melancholy which ended in insanity. Many persons have affected to
comment on this result with an unfeeling ignorance of human nature, and,
more especially, of fervid genius. It is, undoubtedly, highly dangerous
to give the entire reins to imagination; the discipline of a constant
exercise of reason is not only salutary, but necessary. But one can
easily conceive how the indulgence of that state of mind which produced
Collins's Odes could end in an entire overthrow of the intellect, when
embittered by a defect of the principal objects of his worldly ambition.
He is said to have been puffed up by a vanity which prompted him to
expect that all eyes would be upon him, and all voices lifted in his
praise. Such was the conception of a vulgar observer of the human
character. Why should it have been vanity that prompted this hope? It
was a consciousness of merit, of those brilliant powers which produced
the Ode to the Passions! was ever a voice content which sung to those
who would not hear, which was condemned
"To waste its sweetness on the desert air?"
Spenser's power of personification is copious beyond example; but it is
seldom sufficiently select; rich as it is in imagination, it too
commonly wants taste and delicacy; it has the fault of coarseness, which
Burke's images in prose two centuries afterwards, sometimes fell into.
But Collins's images are as pure, and of as exquisite delicacy, as they
are spiritual. They are not human beings invested with some of the
attributes of angels, but the whole figure is purely angelic, and of a
higher order of creation; in this they are distinct even from the
admirable personifications of Gray, because they are less earthly. The
Ode to the Passions is, by universal consent, the noblest of Collins's
productions, because it exhibits a much more extended invention, not of
one passion only, but of all the passions combined, acting, according to
the powers of each, to one end. The execution, also, is the happiest,
each particular passion is drawn with inimitable force and compression.
Let us take only FEAR and DESPAIR, each dashed out in four lines, of
which every word is like inspiration. Beautiful as Spenser is, and
sometimes sublime, yet he redoubles his touches too much, and often
introduces some coarse feature or expression, which destroys the spell.
Spenser, indeed, has other merits of splendid and inexhaustible
invention, which render it impossible to put Collins on a par with him:
but we must not estimate merit by mere quantity: if a poet produces but
one short piece, which is perfect, he must be placed according to its
quality. And surely there is not a single figure in Collins's Ode to the
Passions which is not perfect, both in conception and language. He has
had many imitators, but no one has ever approached him in his own
department.
The Ode to Evening is, perhaps, the next in point of merit. It is quite
of a different cast; it is descriptive of natural scenery; and such a
scene of enchanting repose was never exhibited by Claude, or any other
among the happiest of painters. Though a mere verbal description can
never rival a fine picture in a mere address to the material part of our
nature, yet it far eclipses it with those who have the endowment of a
brilliant fancy, because it gratifies their taste, selection, and
sentiment. Delightful, therefore, as it is to look upon a Claude, it is
more delightful to look upon this description. It is vain to attempt to
analyse the charm of this Ode; it is so subtle, that it escapes
analysis. Its harmony is so perfect, that it requires no rhyme: the
objects are so happily chosen, and the simple epithets convey ideas and
feelings so congenial to each other, as to throw the reader into the
very mood over which the personified being so beautifully designed
presides. No other poem on the same subject has the same magic. It
assuredly suggested some images and a tone of expression to Gray in his
Elegy.
The Ode on the Poetical Character is here and there a little involved
and obscure; but its general conception is magnificent, and beaming that
spirit of inventive enthusiasm, which alone can cherish the poet's
powers, and bring forth the due fruits. Collins never touched the lyre
but he was borne away by the inspiration under which he laboured. The
Dirge in Cymbeline, the lines on Thomson, and the Ode on Colonel Ross
breathe such a beautiful simplicity of pathos, and yet are so highly
poetical and graceful in every thought and tone, that, exquisitely
polished as they are, and without one superfluous or one prosaic word,
they never once betray the artifices of composition. The extreme
transparency of the words and thoughts would induce a vulgar reader to
consider them trite, while they are the expression of a genius so
refined as to be all essence of spirit. In Gray, excellent as he is, we
continually encounter the marks of labour and effort, and occasional
crudeness, which shows that effort had not always succeeded, such as
"iron hand and torturing hour;" but nothing of this kind occurs in the
principal poems of Collins. There is a fire of mind which supersedes
labour, and produces what labour cannot. It has been said that Collins
is neither sublime nor pathetic; but only ingenious and fanciful. The
truth is, that he was cast in the very mould of sublimity and pathos. He
lived in an atmosphere above the earth, and breathed only in a visionary
world. He was conversant with nothing else, and this must have been the
secret by which he produced compositions so entirely spiritual. He who
has daily intercourse with the world, and feels the vulgar human
passions, cannot be in a humour to write poems which do not partake of
earthly coarseness.
It may be asked, _cui bono?_ what is the moral use of such poems as
these? Whatever refines the intellect improves the heart; whatever
augments and fortifies the spiritual part of our nature raises us in the
rank of created beings. And what poems are more calculated to refine our
intellect, and increase our spirituality, than the poems of Collins? To
embody, in a brilliant manner, the most beautiful abstractions, to put
them into action, and to add to them splendour, harmony, strength, and
purity of language, is to complete a task as admirable for its use and
its delight, as it is difficult to be executed. No one can receive the
intellectual gratification which such works are capable of producing
without being the better for it. The understanding was never yet roused
to the conception of such pure and abstract thinking without an
elevation of the whole nature of the being so roused. The expression of
subtle and evanescent ideas, carried to its perfection, is among the
very noblest and most exalted studies with which the human mind can be
conversant.
It has been the fashion of our own age to beat out works into twentyfold
and fiftyfold the size of those of Collins. I do not quarrel with that
fashion; each fashion has its use: and my own taste induces me to
perceive the value and many attractions of long narrative poems, full of
human passions and practical wisdom. The matter is more desirable than
the workmanship; and much of occasional carelessness in the language may
be forgiven, for fertility of natural and just thought and interest of
story. But this in no degree diminishes the value of those gems, which,
though of the smallest size, comprehend perfections of every kind. It is
easier to work upon a large field than a small one,--one where is
"Ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace."
But these diffuse productions are not calculated to give the same sort
of pleasure as the gems. How difficult was the path chosen by Collins
is sufficiently proved by the want of success of all who have entered
the same walk: Gray's was not the same, as I shall endeavour presently
to show. In the miscellany of Dodsley and other collectors will be found
numerous attempts at Allegorical Odes: they are almost all nauseous
failures--without originality or distinctness of conception; bald in
their language, lame in their numbers, and repulsive from their
insipidity of ideas.
Gray's personifications can scarcely be called allegorical, they have so
much of humanity about them. He dealt in all the noble and melancholy
feelings of the human heart: he never for one moment forgot to be a
moralist: he was constantly under the influence of powerful sympathy for
the miseries of man's life; and wrote from the overflow of his bosom
rather than of his imagination. It is true that his imagination
presented the pictures to him; but it was his heart which impelled him
to speak. Take the Ode on the Prospect of Eton College; there is not one
word which did not break from the bottom of his heart. The multitude
cannot enter into the visionary world of Collins: all who have a spark
of virtuous human feelings can sympathize with Gray. It is impossible to
deny that of these two beautiful poets Gray is the most instructive as a
moralist; but Gray is not so original as Collins, not so inventive, not
so perfect in his language, and has not so much the fire and flow of
inspiration.
When Collins is spoken of as one of the _minor_ poets, it is a sad
misapplication of the term. Unless he be minor because the number and
size of his poems is small, no one is less a minor poet. In him every
word is poetry, and poetry either sublime or pathetic. He does not rise
to the sublimity of Milton or Dante, or reach the graceful tenderness of
Petrarch; but he has a visionary invention of his own, to which there is
no rival. As long as the language lasts, every richly gifted and richly
cultivated mind will read him with intense and wondering rapture; and
will not cease to entertain the conviction, from his example, if from no
other, that true poetry of the higher orders is real inspiration.
It will occur to many readers, on perusing these passages of exalted
praise, that Johnson has spoken of Collins in a very different manner.
Almost fifty years have elapsed since Johnson's final criticism on him
appeared in his Lives of the Poets. It disgusted me so much at the time,
and the disgust continued so violent, that for a long period it blinded
me to all his stupendous merits, because it evinced not only bad taste
but unamiable feelings. I cannot yet either justify it, or account for
it. He speaks of Collins having sought for splendour without attaining
it--of clogging his lines with consonants, and of mistaking inversion of
language for poetry. Not one of these faults belongs to Collins. In
almost all his poems the words follow their natural order, and are
mellifluous beyond those of almost any other verse writer. If the
Passions are not described with splendour, there is no such thing as
splendour. If the beauties which he sought and attained are unnatural
and extravagant, then the tests of correctness and good taste which have
been hitherto set up must be abandoned.
This severe criticism is the more extraordinary because Johnson
professed a warm personal friendship for Collins; he professes
admiration of his talents, learning, and taste, as well as of his
disposition and heart, and speaks of his afflicting ill health with a
passionate tenderness which has seldom been equalled in beauty, pathos,
and force of language. That he could love him personally with such
fondness, but be blind to his splendid and unrivaled genius, is utterly
beyond my power to account for. Who can say that Johnson wanted taste
when we read his sublime and acute criticisms on Milton, Dryden, and
Pope? Was it that he roused all the faculties of his judgment when he
spoke of these great men of past times; yet, that when he descended to
his contemporaries, he indulged his feelings rather than his intellect,
and suffered himself to be overcome by the evil passions of envy and
contempt? His natural taste was, probably, not the best; when his
criticisms were perfect he had tasked his intellect rather than his
feelings. He was a man of general wisdom and undoubted genius, but not a
very nice scholar, and he prided himself upon his every-day sense, his
practical knowledge, rather than those visionary musings which he
thought a dangerous indulgence of imagination. He could not put the
compositions of Collins among the mere curiosities of literature, but he
permitted himself to depreciate habits of mental excursion which he had
not himself cultivated.
It was not till more than twenty years after Collins's death that his
Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands was recovered. The two Wartons
had seen it, and spoke highly of it to Johnson and others. About 1781,
or 1782, a copy was found among the papers of Dr. Carlysle, with a chasm
of two or three stanzas. The public deemed it equal to the expectations
which had been raised of it; for my part I will confess that I was
always deeply disappointed at it. There are in it occasional traces of
Collins's genius and several good lines--but none grand--none of that
felicitous flow and inspired vigour which mark the Ode to the Passions
and other of his lyrics--none of that happy personification of abstract
conceptions which is the characteristic of his genius. The majority of
the lines lag and 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 generous-minded 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!