Collins

“ Among those who made vigorous protest against the precise and dreary formalism of the age were Collins and Gray, whose names are commonly associated in poetry, as are the names of Addison and Steele in prose. They had the same tastes, the same gentle melancholy, the same freedom from the bondage of literary fashion. Of the two, William Collins (1721-1759) was perhaps the more gifted poet. His exquisite "Ode to Evening" is without a rival in its own field, and his brief elegy beginning, "How sleep the brave," is a worthy commemoration of a soldier's death and a nation's gratitude. ”

“ Mr. Collins was not only in capital health and spirits, but he rejoiced in that delicious titillation of expectancy which is the chief compensation of the journalist’s life. His mission was secret, and this in itself gave flavour to his errand; and, moreover, it promised adventures of a kind that were greatly to his liking.
As the woodland closed in about him and the curving spur carried him farther from the main right of way, he ceased whistling, and his steps became more guarded. ”

“ At night he seemed to revel in a world of his own creation; he would sit for hours in one position, chanting low airs, his spirits kept alive by opium and worse stimulus. I never could discover the least mark of intoxication in Mr. Collins, as every body called him. His person was scrupulously neat, his dress always adjusted with the nicest regard to fashion and elegance. His language was at all times proper, and his sentiments refined. ”

“ Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. ”

“ As a novelist of indignation Collins is pathetic rather than blameworthy. He had the usual fanaticisms of the invalid intellectual—hatred of athleticism, of sport, of legal injustice, of religious intrigue, of social insincerity; and his propaganda novels give expression to his passionate dislikes with a petulant but rather impressive sincerity. Fortunately for the modern reader of books which by their very nature are now out of date, Collins did not fail, even in his tilting at windmills, to regulate his movements with practised skill. ”

“ Mr. Collins was a man who never repeated a mistake; so that when he caught sight of Martin he gave him precedence over the business people who were waiting in the outer office, and showed him at once into Mr. Statham's sanctum.
Humphrey was not at his desk; he had pulled his arm-chair in front of the fire and was reclining in it, his feet stretched out on the fender, his hands plunged in his trousers-pockets. So deep in rumination was he that he did not look up at the opening of the door, but thinking it was merely Collins with some business question, waited to be spoken to. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Collins thought for a moment.
“Well, you probably don’t know, but it is quite close to Sir James Watson’s place—in fact, it is the station for it.”
“Really?” said Sinclair. “Then of course you know it well?”
“If you are really going there I will run you down in my car. You might like to see Sir James’ place.”
The men looked at each other.
“I would like to see inside your head, and find out what there is there,” said Sinclair. “You’ve something concealed.”
Collins laughed. “That’s just what I was thinking. What are you after? Well, we will each keep his own counsel.” ”

“ Collins went to the old servant with a quick movement and took his hand.
“Now listen to me, John. I will tell you exactly what happened. You have been allowing yourself to brood over your old master’s death, and it has got on your nerves. You were probably thinking of him because the house was quiet, and when you came into the dining-room, the sun was shining right on to the portrait of Sir James, and you imagined he was standing on the rug. It is really quite a common thing. It’s what we call hallucination. You must not let it worry you. ”

“ No English poet so great as Collins has left behind him so small a bulk of writings. Not more than 1500 lines of his have been handed down to us, but among these not one is slovenly, and few are poor. His odes are the most sculpturesque and faultless in the language. They lack fire, but in charm and precision of diction, exquisite propriety of form, and lofty poetic suggestion they stand unrivalled. The ode named The Passions is the most popular; that To Evening is the classical example of perfect unrhymed verse. ”

“ But I think I am tired just now of Luinis and Bellinis and of the sort of spirit in a young man that clothes the walls of his room with them, each in some elaborately simple frame, and am not at all sure that the frank fleshliness of a Collins does not please me best. You see, one longs so much sometimes to get down to the soil, down to plain instincts, to rude nature, to, if you like, elemental savagery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dan Collins was a strong man, and through dealing for many years with blacks, he had come to hide his thoughts behind an unyielding expression of face, though many a man knew how kind a heart beat in his big rough body. ”

“ Collins "was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of color into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of the generation into all the labors of their lives." [26] Collins, like Gray, was a Greek scholar, and had projected a history of the revival letters. There is a classical quality in his verse—not classical in the eighteenth-century sense—but truly Hellenic; a union, as in Keats, of Attic form with romantic sensibility ”

“ Collins pursued undaunted his crusade for the recognition of English literature at Oxford. He collected the views of leading public men, and published them in the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ (Dec. 1886) . He re-stated his case in a ‘Quarterly’ article, ‘A School of English Literature’ (January 1887) , in an essay in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ (Nov. 1887) on ‘Can English Literature be taught?’ and in a volume ‘The Study of English Literature’ (1891) . While his strenuous temper excited much hostility, Collins won his point. ”

“ Good-night, Possum."
"I say, Collins—don't split!"
"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"
"Second Kings," whispered the poor necromancer, in eager fellowship, and displaying a knowledge of the Bible rare amongst his sect. "God bless you, Collins! may we meet in a better world!" ”

“ Collins is not unprincipled or unconscientious, but his patroness engrosses his small, mean mind, and usurps the rights of his other parishioners; until, to give satisfaction at the great house—to come in there as an acknowledged, privileged dependent—to carve a joint—to help to make up the card-table—to amuse the old and the young—to pass away a dull hour—to take upon himself any troublesome task he can appropriate, are looked upon by him as at once among his chief duties and greatest advantages. ”

“ William Collins, 1720-1756: this unfortunate poet, who died at the early age of thirty-six, deserves particular mention for the delicacy of his fancy and the beauty of his diction. His Ode on the Passions is universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His Ode on the Death of Thomson is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the Dirge on Cymbeline. ”

“ It is not difficult to make due allowance for Johnson when he speaks of Collins’s diction as “harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudicially selected”; we deplore the classical bias, and are content enough to recognize and enjoy for ourselves the matchless beauty and charm of Collins’s diction at its best. Yet much of the language of his earlier work betrays him as more or less a poetaster of the eighteenth century. The early “Oriental Eclogues” abound in the usual descriptive details, just as if the poet had picked out his words and phrases from the approved lists. ”

“ Collins drew Sinclair aside.
“Let her go,” he said, “and have her watched. It may be useful.”
“Very good,” said he. To Mrs. Simmons, he said, “You can go, but you must give us your address, you will be wanted as a witness at the inquest. Don’t talk about the affair at all. Do you understand?”
“Thank you, sir, I will go and pack,” said she gratefully.
Collins watched her go.
“What do you make of her?” he said.
“She seemed quite straightforward; I think she’s told us the truth.”
Collins gave a laugh. “Yes,” he said. “The truth, but not the whole truth. She’s a clever old woman.” ”

“ From the coincidence between Collins’s love of, and addresses to, Music, his residence at Oxford, and from internal evidence, Some Verses on Our Late Taste in Music, which appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1740, and there said to be “by a Gentleman of Oxford,” are printed in this edition of Collins’s works, not, however, as positively his, but as being so likely to be written by him, as to justify their being brought to the notice of his readers.
A poet, and not to have felt the tender passion, would be a creature which the world has never yet seen. ”

“ As we have seen in so many other instances, it was left for posterity to do Collins justice. In the course of a single generation, without any adventitious aid to bring them into notice, his poems have come to rank among the best of their kind in the language. Poor Collins! unfortunate in love, threatened with blindness, and harassed by bailiffs half his life, his career was one of unrest, [172] unhappiness, and despair; death, the comforter of him whom time cannot console, gave the poet an early grave. [135]
Small was the portion of happiness that fell to the share of these men of genius ”

“ On the 1st of October he wrote Collins on his rapid decay, "But this, I believe, he will assure you, that my infirmities prevail so fast on me, that unless you make haste hither, I may lose the satisfaction of ever seeing again a man that I value in the first rank of those I leave behind me." ”

“ A man had shut her up—and that man was Sir Percival Glyde.
The scream had reached other ears than mine. On one side I heard the door of the sexton's cottage open; on the other I heard the voice of her companion, the woman in the shawl, the woman whom she had spoken of as Mrs. Clements.
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" cried the voice from behind the clump of dwarf trees.
In a moment more Mrs. Clements hurried into view.
"Who are you?" she cried, facing me resolutely as she set her foot on the stile. "How dare you frighten a poor helpless woman like that?" ”

“ Moy Thomas's edition of his works.
Johnson's affection for Collins is shown in the life. Collins's amiability, and the charm of a conversation enlivened by wide knowledge of French, Spanish, and Italian, as well as the learned languages, are gratefully commemorated by the biographer, whose prejudices prevented any cordial appreciation of the poetical merits of his friend. Collins belonged to the new school, represented in criticism and history by his friends the Wartons, who showed the love of the romantic element in literature which was afterwards to become fashionable. ”

“ Collins. The ass is exasperating to persons of normal brains. So is Mr. Collins. The ass is lazy in regard to work, and obstinate. So is Mr. Collins. The ass is totally indifferent to study. So is Mr. Collins. The ass has never heard of Goethe. Neither has Mr. Collins. The ass is useful to the poor. So is Mr. Collins. The ass, indeed, is the poor man's most precious possession. So, emphatically, is Mr. Collins.'
'Oh really,' said Frau von Lindeberg again.
'Is there anything more you wish to know?' Papa inquired politely, for she seemed unable immediately to go on. ”

“ Collins gazed in astonishment.
"Come to the side table, Nelly," at length exclaimed Frank, breaking the awkward pause which ensued. "Let's play a game of checkers. I know just how you feel," he added, in a low voice, when they had arranged the board.
She started, and blushed violently.
"I mean when Mary asked you if you had taken her paper. Our master at school missed his gold pencil from his desk, and a pretty piece of work he made of it. When the school were all seated for prayers, he spoke out in a solemn tone and told us what he had lost, and asked whether any of the scholars had seen it. ”