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,
A solemn, strange, and mingled air;
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild."
Langhorne's edition of Collins first appeared in 1765, accompanied by
observations which have been generally appended to subsequent editions.
These observations have commonly borne the character of feebleness and
affectation; they have a sort of pedantic prettiness, which is somewhat
repulsive, but they do not want ingenuity, or justness of criticism.
Part of them, at least, had previously appeared in the Monthly Review,
probably written by Langhorne. Langhorne was not deficient himself in
poetical genius, but is principally remembered by a single beautiful
stanza, "Cold on Canadian hills," &c. From the time of Langhorne's first
edition, Collins became a popular poet; a miniature edition appeared
soon after that of Langhorne; and as long as I can remember books, which
goes back at least to the year 1770, Collins's poems were almost
universally on the lips of readers of English poetry. That Cowper, in
1784, should speak of him as "a poet of no great fame," proves nothing,
since Cowper's long seclusion from the world had made him utterly
ignorant of contemporary literature. The negative inference, from the
omission of Beattie, is not of much weight. I cannot recollect the date
of the article in the Monthly Review; but, as it appears that Collins
survived till 1759, I suspect it was before Collins's death. It was in
September, 1754, that the Wartons visited him at Chichester: in that
year he paid a visit to Oxford, when it appears that he was suffering
under exhausture, not alienation, of mind.
The critics, and, among the rest, Mrs. Barbauld and Campbell, have
ascribed to him "frequent obscurity;" this is unjust,--his general
characteristic is lucidness and transparency: he is never obscure,
unless in the Ode to Liberty, and, perhaps, in a few passages of the Ode
on the Manners. Campbell's criticism is, otherwise, worthy of this
beautiful poet, whom he praises with congenial spirit. When Hazlitt
speaks of the "tinsel and splendid patchwork" of Collins, "mixed with
the solid, sterling ore of his genius," he speaks of a base material not
to be found there. In Collins there is no tinsel or patchwork, one of
his excellencies is, that the whole of every piece is of one web; there
are no joinings or meaner threads. There is no height to which Collins
might not have risen, had he lived long, had his mind continued sound,
and had he persevered in exercising his genius. Campbell remarks that,
at the same age, Milton had written nothing which could eclipse his
productions.
Of the two communications regarding Collins, to which I have already
alluded, one anonymous, the other by a Mr. John Ragsdale, I must say
something more. The first, signed V., appeared in the Gentleman's
Magazine, with the date of the 20th Jan. 1781. I well remember its
publication, and with what eagerness I read it. I suspect it was at the
very crisis of the appearance of the last portion of Johnson's Lives,
but possibly a year earlier. I perused it with a mixture of delight,
melancholy, and disgust; the first passage which struck me was this: "As
he brought with him [to Oxford], for so the whole tone of his
conversation discovered, too high an opinion of his school acquisitions
and a sovereign contempt for all academic studies and discipline, he
never looked with any complacency on his situation in the University,
but was always complaining of the dulness of a college life. In short,
he threw up his demyship, and going to London, commenced a man of the
town, spending his time in all the dissipation of Ranelagh, Vauxhall,
and the playhouses; and was romantic enough to suppose that his superior
abilities would draw the attention of the great world, by means of whom
he was to make his fortune," &c., &c.--"Thus was lost to the world this
unfortunate person, in the prime of life, without availing himself of
fine abilities, which, if properly improved, must have raised him to the
top of any profession, and have rendered him a blessing to his friends,
and an ornament to his country."
The vulgarity and narrow-mindedness of this last paragraph filled me
with indignation and contempt. In a selfish point of view Collins
might, unquestionably, have done better by binding himself to the
trammels of a profession; but would he have been more an honor to his
friends and an ornament to his country? Are the fruits of genius he has
left behind no ornament or use to his country? Professional men, for the
most part, live for themselves, and not for the world. Who now remembers
Lord Camden, Lord Thurlow, Lord Rosslyn, Lord Kenyon, Lord Ellenborough,
or a hundred episcopal or medical characters, all rich and famous in
their day?
The character of his person and habits we read with deep interest. "He
was passionately fond of music, good-natured, and affable, warm in his
friendships, and visionary in his pursuits; and, as long as I knew him,
very temperate in his eating and drinking. He was of a moderate stature,
of a light and clear complexion, with gray eyes, so very weak at times
as hardly to bear a candle in the room, and often raising within him
apprehensions of blindness."
The letter from Mr. John Ragsdale is addressed to Mr. William Hymers,
Queen's College, Oxford, dated "Hill Street, Richmond, in Surrey, July,
1783." He appears to have been a tradesman in Bond Street; and he
surveyed the character of Collins (with whom he was familiar) with a
tradesman's eye. He reproached the poet with idleness, not because he
was lingering and losing his time on the road to fame, but because he
omitted to get money by his pen. "To raise a present subsistence," says
Ragsdale, "he set about writing his Odes; and having a general
invitation to my house, he frequently passed whole days there, which he
employed in writing them, and as frequently burning what he had written
after he had read them to me: many of them, which pleased me, I
struggled to preserve, but without effect; for, pretending he would
alter them, he got them from me, and thrust them into the fire." That he
wrote the Odes to gain a present subsistence is but the tradesman's
mistaken comment.
Gray was about four years older than Collins, and he survived him twelve
years; he appears to have spent these years in gloominess and spleen;
but we know not what intense pleasures he received from his solitary
studies, from the improvement of his mind, from that exquisite taste and
increasing erudition of which every day added to the stores. The
enthusiasm of Collins was more active and adventurous, and his erudition
probably more acute. Timidity and fastidiousness were great defects in
Gray; they kept down his invention, and made him resort to the wealth of
others, when he could better have relied upon himself. But as to
borrowing expressions and simple materials, no genius ever did
otherwise; it is the new and happy combination in which lies the
invention. It may be doubted which are now most popular, the Odes of
Collins or of Gray. On the one hand, what is most abstract is least
calculated for the general reader; on the other hand, the variety of
learned allusions in Gray renders the style and thoughts of his most
celebrated Odes less simple, less direct, and less easily comprehended
at once; but then his deep morality, the touching strokes which go
immediately to the heart, his sensibility to the common sorrows of human
life, his powerful reflection of the sentiments which "come home to
every one's business and bosom," form an attraction which perhaps turns
the scale in his favour. Of both these sublime poets the correctness of
composition renders the writings a national good.
The French Revolution, which affected and partly reversed the minds of
all Europe, produced a new era in our literature. There was good as well
as evil in the new force thus infused into the human intellect. Our
poetry had generally become tame and trite; a sort of languid mechanism
had brought it into contempt; it was very little read, and still less
esteemed. This might be not merely the effect, but also the cause of a
deficiency of striking genius in the candidates for the laurel. Collins
and Gray were dead; Mason had hung up the lyre; and Thomas Warton was
then thought too laboured and quaint; Hayley had succeeded beyond
expectation by a return to moral and didactic poetry at a moment when
the public was satiated by vile imitations of lyrical and descriptive
composition; but Cowper gave a new impulse to the curiosity of poetical
readers, by a natural train of thought and the unlaboured effusions of
genuine feeling. There is no doubt that a fearful regard to models
stifles all force and preeminent merit. The burst of the French
Revolution set the faculties of all young persons free. It was dangerous
to secondary talents, and only led them into extravagances and
absurdities. To Wordsworth, Southey, Scott, it was the removal of a
weight, which would have hid the fire of their genius. But the
exuberance of their inexhaustible minds in no degree lessens the value
of the more reserved models of excellence of a tamer age. The contrast
of their varied attractions supplies the reader with opposite kinds of
merit, which delight and improve the more by this very opposition.
Authors seldom estimate each other rightly in their lifetimes. The race
of poets, of whom the last died with the century, had little friendship,
or even acquaintance among themselves; or rather, they broke into little
sets of two and three, which narrowed their opinions and their hearts;
Gray and Mason, Johnson and the two Wartons, Cowper and Hayley, Darwin
and Miss Seward; but Shenstone, Beattie, Akenside, Burns, Mrs. Carter,
Mrs. Smith, &c. stood alone. This is not desirable. Innumerable
advantages spring from frank and generous communication. Collins and
Gray had not the most remote personal knowledge of each other. Gray
never mentions Dr. Sneyd Davies, a poet and an Etonian, nearly
contemporary; nor Nicholas Hardinge, a scholar and a poet also. Mundy,
the author of Needwood Forest, passed a long life in the country,
totally removed from poets and literati, except the small coterie of
Miss Seward, at Litchfield. The lives of poets would be the most amusing
of all biography, if the materials were less scanty: it is strange that
so few of them have left any ample records of themselves; of many not
even a letter or fragment of memorials is preserved. None of Cowley's
letters, a mode of composition in which he is said to have eminently
excelled, have come down to us. Of Prior, Tickell, Thomson, Young, Dyer,
Akenside, the Wartons, there are few of any importance known to be in
existence. Those of Hayley, which Dr. J. Johnson has brought forward,
are not of the interest which might have been expected. Mrs. Carter's
are excellent, and many of Beattie's amusing and amiable: it had been
well for Miss Seward if most of hers had been consigned to the flames.
Those of Charlotte Smith it has not been thought prudent to give to the
public. The greater part of those of Lord Byron, which Moore has
hitherto put forth, had better have been spared: they are written in
false taste, and are under a factitious character: in general, the prose
style of poets is admirable;--it was not Lord Byron's excellence. We
have no specimens of the prose of Collins: it is grievous that he did
not execute his project of The History of the Revival of Literature, or
of the Lives for the Biographia Britannica, which he undertook. Poets of
research are, of all authors, best qualified to write biography with
sagacity and eloquence; they see into the human heart, and detect its
most secret movements; and if there be a class of literature more
amusing and more instructive than another, it is well written
biography.
We have a few poets who have not possessed erudition; for genius will
overcome all deficiencies of art and labour, such as Shakespeare,
Chatterton, Burns, and Bloomfield: but it cannot be questioned that
erudition is a mighty aid. Milton could never have been what he was
without profound and laborious erudition. Another necessary knowledge is
the knowledge of the human heart, which no industry and learning will
give. It is an intuitive gift, which mainly depends on an acute and
correct imagination, and a sympathetic sensibility of the human
passions. Among the innumerable rich endowments of Shakespeare this was
the first; it was the predominant brilliance of his knowledge which
gave him correctness of description, sentiment, and observation, and
clearness, force, and eloquence of language.
Collins had only reached the age of twenty-six when his Odes were
published: what inconceivable power would the maturity of age have given
him? It is lamentable that he had no familiar friend and companion from
that period capable of apprehending and remembering his conversations.
In his lucid intervals he must have said many wise, many learned, and
many brilliant things; perhaps his very disease, in its vacillation
between light and darkness, may have struck out many unexpected and
surprising beauties, which common attendants were utterly incapable of
appreciating. The flushes of the mind under the unnatural impulses of
malady are sometimes inimitably splendid. His reason, at times, was
sound, for his reason was fervid to the last. But it is said that his
shrieks sometimes resounded through the cathedral cloisters of
Chichester till the horror of those who heard him was insupportable.
All these speculations may appear tedious to those whose curiosity is
confined to facts: but new facts regarding Collins are not to be had:
and what are facts unless they are accompanied by reflections,
conclusions, and sentiments? The use of facts is to teach us to think,
to judge, and to feel: and facts, regarding men of genius, are valuable
in enabling us to contemplate how far the gifts of high intellect
contribute to our happiness, or afford guides for the rest of mankind;
in what respects they have the possessors upon an equality with the herd
of the people; and where they expose them to temptations from which
others are free. For these purposes the ill fated Collins is a
melancholy illustration: the Muse had touched the lips of his infancy,
and infused her spirit into him; she had given him a piercing
understanding, and an amiable disposition and temper; she enabled him to
come forth with poetry of the first class, in the earliest bloom of
youth; and to deserve, if not to win, the envied laurel, which millions
have reached at in vain! What seeming glories and blessings were these!
Yet to how few was so much misery dispensed as to this once envied
being! May we not hope that his spirit now has its mighty reward?
Let it not be denied that there is high virtue in the culture of the
mind, when directed to pure and elevated objects, and accustoming itself
to travel in lofty paths! The mind cannot attain the necessary
refinement, nor have its sight cleared of the film of earthly grossness,
unless the heart throws off the dregs of coarser feeling, and keeps its
wings afloat on a lighter and airier atmosphere. It may be said, that
there have been bad men who have been great poets: but this position
remains to be proved. The dissolute men who have written verses have not
been great poets. Were Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Spenser, Shakespeare,
Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Burns, bad men? We know that Milton's character
was great and holy, whatever were his politics: and who could be more
virtuous than Gray, Beattie, Cowper, and Kirke White? And have we not
virtuous poets among the living,--men whose native splendour and
intellectual culture have almost purified them into spirits? Let us
never cease to meditate on the dejected inspiration, which could pour
forth such strains as these:
"With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sat retired;
And from her wild sequester'd seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul:
And, dashing soft from rocks around,
Bubbling runnels join'd the sound;
Through glades and glooms the mingled measures stole,
Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay
Round a holy calm diffusing,
Love of peace and lonely musing,
In hollow murmurs died away."
There are those who will think the praises thus bestowed upon Collins
extravagant. It is now sixty years since I became familiar with him;
and I still think of him with unabated admiration. When the calm
judgment of age confirms the passion of youth and boyhood, we cannot be
much mistaken in the merit we ascribe to him who is the object of it.
S. E. B.
ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.
WRITTEN ORIGINALLY FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT OF THE LADIES OF TAURIS.
AND NOW TRANSLATED.
----Ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis.
VIRG.
The First Edition was entitled, "Persian Eclogues, written originally
for the Entertainment of the Ladies of Tauris. And now first translated,
&c.
Quod si non hic tantus fructus ostenderetur, et si ex his studiis
delectatio sola peteretur; tamen, ut opinor, hanc animi
remissionem humanissimam ac liberalissimam judicaretis.
_CIC. pro Arch. Poeta._"
PREFACE.
It is with the writings of mankind, in some measure, as with their
complexions or their dress; each nation hath a peculiarity in all these,
to distinguish it from the rest of the world.
The gravity of the Spaniard, and the levity of the Frenchman, are as
evident in all their productions as in their persons themselves; and the
style of my countrymen is as naturally strong and nervous, as that of an
Arabian or Persian is rich and figurative.
There is an elegancy and wildness of thought which recommends all
their compositions; and our geniuses are as much too cold for the
entertainment of such sentiments, as our climate is for their fruits
and spices. If any of these beauties are to be found in the following
Eclogues, I hope my reader will consider them as an argument of their
being original. I received them at the hands of a merchant, who had
made it his business to enrich himself with the learning, as well as the
silks and carpets of the Persians. The little information I could
gather concerning their author, was, that his name was Abdallah, and
that he was a native of Tauris.
It was in that city that he died of a distemper fatal in those parts,
whilst he was engaged in celebrating the victories of his favourite
monarch, the great Abbas.[10] As to the Eclogues themselves, they give a
very just view of the miseries and inconveniences, as well as the
felicities, that attend one of the finest countries in the East.
The time of writing them was probably in the beginning of Sha Sultan
Hosseyn's reign, the successor of Sefi or Solyman the Second.
Whatever defects, as, I doubt not, there will be many, fall under the
reader's observation, I hope his candour will incline him to make the
following reflection:
That the works of Orientals contain many peculiarities, and that,
through defect of language, few European translators can do them
justice.
ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.
ECLOGUE I.
SELIM; OR, THE SHEPHERD'S MORAL.
SCENE, A valley near Bagdat.
TIME, The morning.
'Ye Persian maids, attend your poet's lays,
And hear how shepherds pass their golden days.
Not all are blest, whom fortune's hand sustains
With wealth in courts, nor all that haunt the plains:
Well may your hearts believe the truths I tell; 5
'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.'
Thus Selim sung, by sacred Truth inspired;
Nor praise, but such as Truth bestow'd, desired:
Wise in himself, his meaning songs convey'd
Informing morals to the shepherd maid; 10
Or taught the swains that surest bliss to find,
What groves nor streams bestow, a virtuous mind.
When sweet and blushing, like a virgin bride,
The radiant morn resumed her orient pride;
When wanton gales along the valleys play, 15
Breathe on each flower, and bear their sweets away;
By Tigris' wandering waves he sat, and sung
This useful lesson for the fair and young.
'Ye Persian dames,' he said, 'to you belong--
Well may they please--the morals of my song: 20
No fairer maids, I trust, than you are found,
Graced with soft arts, the peopled world around!
The morn that lights you, to your loves supplies
Each gentler ray delicious to your eyes:
For you those flowers her fragrant hands bestow; 25
And yours the love that kings delight to know.
Yet think not these, all beauteous as they are,
The best kind blessings heaven can grant the fair!
Who trust alone in beauty's feeble ray
Boast but the worth[11] Balsora's pearls display: 30
Drawn from the deep we own their surface bright,
But, dark within, they drink no lustrous light:
Such are the maids, and such the charms they boast,
By sense unaided, or to virtue lost.
Self-flattering sex! your hearts believe in vain 35
That love shall blind, when once he fires, the swain;
Or hope a lover by your faults to win,
As spots on ermine beautify the skin:
Who seeks secure to rule, be first her care
Each softer virtue that adorns the fair; 40
Each tender passion man delights to find,
The loved perfections of a female mind!
'Blest were the days when Wisdom held her reign,
And shepherds sought her on the silent plain!
With Truth she wedded in the secret grove, 45
Immortal Truth, and daughters bless'd their love.
O haste, fair maids! ye Virtues, come away!
Sweet Peace and Plenty lead you on your way!
The balmy shrub, for you shall love our shore,
By Ind excell'd, or Araby, no more. 50
'Lost to our fields, for so the fates ordain,
The dear deserters shall return again.
Come thou, whose thoughts as limpid springs are clear,
To lead the train, sweet Modesty, appear:
Here make thy court amidst our rural scene, 55
And shepherd girls shall own thee for their queen:
With thee be Chastity, of all afraid,
Distrusting all, a wise suspicious maid,
But man the most:--not more the mountain doe
Holds the swift falcon for her deadly foe. 60
Cold is her breast, like flowers that drink the dew;
A silken veil conceals her from the view.
No wild desires amidst thy train be known;
But Faith, whose heart is fix'd on one alone:
Desponding Meekness, with her downcast eyes, 65
And friendly Pity, full of tender sighs;
And Love the last: by these your hearts approve;
These are the virtues that must lead to love.'