I remember there was a beautiful description of the spectre of a man drowned in the night, or, in the language of the old Scotch superstitions-seized by the angry spirit of the waters, appearing to his wife with pale blue cheek, &c. Mr. Home has no copy of it. He also showed us another ode, of two or three four-lined stanzas, called the Bell of Arragon; on a tradition that, anciently, just before a king of Spain died, the great bell of the cathedral of Sarragossa, in Arragon, tolled spontaneously. It began thus: The bell of Arragon, they say, Spontaneous speaks the fatal day, &c. Soon afterwards were these lines: Whatever dark aerial power, Commission'd, haunts the gloomy tower. The last stanza consisted of a moral transition to his own death and knell, which he called 'some simpler bell.' I have seen all his odes already published in his own hand-writing: they had the marks of repeated correction he was perpetually changing his epithets. I had lately his first manuscript of the Ode on the Death of Colonel Ross, with many interlineations and alterations. The lady to whom this Ode is addressed was Miss Elizabeth Goddard, who then lived at or near Harting, in Sussex. In the first stanza, my manuscript has 'sunk in grief,' for 'stained with blood.' The fourth stanza stood thus: Ev'n now, regardful of his doom, While freedom's form beside her roves, The sixth stanza had 'untaught' in the first line, instead of 'unknown.' The present seventh and eighth stanzas were not in the manuscript. In the ninth stanza, instead of, 'If weak to soothe so soft a heart,' the reading was, 'If drawn with all a lover's art.' Many variations I have forgotten. Dr. Warton, my brother, has a few fragments of some other odes, but too loose and imperfect for publication, yet containing traces of high imagery. In the Ode to Pity, the idea of a Temple of Pity, of its situation, construction, and groups of painting with which its walls were decorated, was borrowed from a poem, now lost, entitled the Temple of Pity, written by my brother, while he and Collins were school-fellows at Winchester College. In illustration of what Dr. Johnson has related, that during his last malady he was a great reader of the Bible, I am favoured with the following anecdote from the Reverend Mr. Shenton, Vicar of St. Andrew's, at Chichester, by whom Collins was buried: 'Walking in my vicarial garden one Sunday evening, during Collins's last illness, I heard a female (the servant, I suppose) reading the Bible in his chamber. Mr. Collins had been accustomed to rave much, and to make great moanings; but while she was reading, or rather attempting to read, he was not only silent but attentive likewise, correcting her mistakes, which indeed were very frequent, through the whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis.' I have just been informed, from undoubted authority, that Collins had finished a Preliminary Dissertation to be prefixed to his History of the Restoration of Learning, and that it was written with great judgment, precision, and knowledge of the subject. T. W. INDEX OF FIRST LINES As once, if not with light Regard H- thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads long If ought of Oaten Stop, or Pastoral Song O Thou by Nature taught O Thou, the Friend of Man assign'd 29 O Thou, who bad'st thy Turtles bear When Music, Heav'nly Maid, was young While, lost to all his former Mirth While, own'd by You, with Smiles the Muse surveys Who shall awake the Spartan Fife Ye curious hands, that hid from vulgar eyes 53 41 31 65 57 1 48 21 42 74 Ye Persian Maids, attend your Poet's Lays |