burnt the remaining copies with his own hands.

ALLEGORICAL and abstracted poetry was above the taste of those times, as much, or more than it is of the present. It is in the lower walks, the plain and practical paths of the mufes only that the generality of men can be entertained. The higher efforts of imagination are above their capacity; and it is no wonder therefore, if the Odes defcriptive and allegorical met with few admirers.

UNDER these circumftances, fo mortifying to every juft expectation, when neither his wants were relieved, nor his reputation extended, he found fome confolation in changing the fcene, and

vifiting

vifiting his uncle, colonel MARTIN, who was, at that time, with our army in Flanders. Soon after his arrival, the colonel died, and left him a confiderable fortune.

HERE, then, we should hope to behold him happy; poffeffed of independence, and removed from every scene, and every monument of his former misery. But, fortune had delayed her favours till they were not worth receiving. His faculties had been fo long harraffed by anxiety, diffipation, and diftress, that he fell into a nervous diforder, which brought with it an unconquerable depreffion of fpirits, and at length reduced the finest understanding to the most deplorable childishness. In the first fta

ges

ges of his diforder he attempted to relieve himself by travel, and paffed into France; but the growing malady obliged him to return; and having continued, with short intervals*, in this pitiable state till the year 1756, he died in the arms of a fifter at Colchester.

4

MR. Collins was, in ftature, fomewhat above the middle fize; of a brown complexion, keen, expreffive eyes, and a fixed, fedate aspect, which from intenfe thinking, had contracted an habitual frown. His proficiency in letters was greater than could have been ex

It feems to have been in one of thefe intervals, that he was vifited by an ingenious friend, who tells us, he found him with a book in his hand, and being afked what it was, he answered, that he had but one book, but that was the beft." It was the New Teftament in English. pected

pected from his years. He was fkilled in the learned languages, and acquainted with the Italian, French and Spanish.It is obfervable that none of his poems bear the marks of an amorous difpofition, and that he is one of thofe few poets, who have failed to Delphi, without touching at Cythera. The allufions of this kind that appear in his Oriental Eclogues were indispensable in that species of poetry; and it is very remarkable that in his Paffions, an ode for mufic, love is omitted, though it should have made a principal figure there.