COLLINS, WILLIAM English poet, was born on Dec. 25, 1721. He divides with Gray the glory of being the greatest English lyrist of the 18th century. After some childish studies in Chichester, of which his father, a rich hatter, was the mayor, he was sent, in Jan. 1733, to Winchester college, where Whitehead and Joseph Warton were his school-fellows.
In 1734 the young poet published his first verses, in a six penny pamphlet, on The Royal Nuptials, of which, however, no copy has come down to us; another poem, probably satiric, called The Battle of the Schoolbooks, was written about this time, and has also been lost. Fired by his poetic fellows to further feats in verse, Collins produced, in his 17th year, those Persian Eclogues which were the only writings of his that were valued by the world during his own lifetime. They were not printed for some years, and meanwhile Collins sent, in Oct. 1739, some verses to the Gentleman's Magazine, which attracted the notice and ad miration of Johnson, then still young and uninfluential. In March 174o he was admitted a commoner of Queen's college, Oxford, but did not go up to Oxford until July 1741, when he obtained a demyship at Magdalen college. At Oxford he continued his af fectionate intimacy with the Wartons, and gained the friend ship of Gilbert White. Early in 1742 the Persian Eclogues ap peared in London. They were four • in number, and formed a modest pamphlet of not more than 300 lines in all. In a later edition, of 1759, the title was changed to Oriental Eclogues.
A few days after taking his degree in 1743 Collins published his second work, Verses humbly addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer. This poem, written in heroic couplets, shows a great advance in individuality, and resembles, in its habit of personifying qual ities of the mind, the riper lyrics of its author. For the rest, it is an enthusiastic review of poetry, culminating in a laudation of Shakespeare. A second edition of it, differing considerably from the first, was published in the following year. To this edition was added the Song from Cymbeline in its original form, which was not strictly adhered to by the editor, Cave, when he published it in the Gentleman's Magazine for Oct. 1749. Collins's indolence, which had been no less marked at the university than his genius, combined with a fatal irresolution to make it extremely difficult to choose for him a path in life. The army and the church were successively suggested and rejected; and he finally arrived in London, bent on enjoying a small property as an independent man about town. He made the acquaintance of Johnson and others, and was urged by those friends to undertake various im portant writings—a History of the Revival of Learning, several tragedies and a version of Aristotle's Poetics, among others— all of which he began but lacked force of will to continue. He soon squandered his means, plunging, with most disastrous effects, into profligate excesses.
It was at this time, however, that he composed his matchless Odes-12 in number—which appeared on Dec. 12, 1746, dated 1747. Collins's little volume fell dead from the press, but it won him the admiration and friendship of the poet Thomson, with whom, until the death of the latter in 1748, he lived on terms of affectionate intimacy. In 1749 Collins was raised beyond the fear of poverty by the death of his uncle, Colonel Martyn, who left him about £ 2,000, and he left London to settle in his native city. He had hardly begun to taste the sweets of a life devoted to literature and quiet, before the weakness of his will began to develop in the direction of insanity, and he hurried abroad to attempt to dispel the gathering gloom by travel. In the interval he had published a short piece of consummate grace and beauty— the Elegy on Thomson, in 1749. In the beginning of 175o he composed the Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands, which was dedicated to the author of Douglas, and not printed till long after the death of Collins, and an Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre, which no longer exists. With this poem his lit erary career closes, although he lingered in great misery for nearly nine years. From Gilbert White, who jotted down some pages of invaluable recollections of Collins in 1781, and from other friends, we learn that his madness was occasionally violent, and that he was confined for a time in an asylum at Oxford. But for the most part he resided at Chichester, suffering from extreme debility of body when the mind was clear, and incapable of any regular occupation. In this miserable condition he passed out of sight of all his friends, and in 1756 it was supposed, even by John son, that he was dead; in point of fact, however, his sufferings did not cease until June 12, 1759. No journal or magazine recorded the death of the forgotten poet, though Goldsmith, only two months before, had begun the laudation which was soon to be come universal.
No English poet so great as Collins has left so small a bulk of writings. Not more than 1,5oo lines of his have been handed down to us. His odes are the most sculpturesque and faultless in the language. They lack fire, but in charm and precision of dic tion, exquisite propriety of form and lofty poetic suggestion, they stand unrivalled. The ode named The Passions is the most pop ular; that To Evening is the classical example of perfect un rhymed verse. In this, and the Ode to Simplicity, one seems to be handling an antique vase of matchless delicacy and elegance. In his descriptions of nature it is unquestionable that he owed something to the influence of Thomson. Distinction may be said to be the crowning grace of the style of Collins; its leading pecu liarity is the incessant personification of some quality of the character. In the Ode on Popular Superstitions he produced a still nobler work; this poem, the most considerable in size which has been preserved, contains passages which are beyond question unrivalled for rich melancholy fullness, in the literature between Milton and Keats.
See his life in Johnson's Lives of the Poets and the biography by M. Thomas (1853). There is a bibliography of his writings in Seven 28th Century Bibliographies by I. A. Williams (1924). (E. G.)