OBSERVATIONS, &c. HE genius of Collins was capable of THE every degree of excellence in lyric poetry, and perfectly qualified for that high province of the mufe. Poffeffed of a native ear for all the varieties of harmony and modulation, fufceptible of the finest feelings of tenderness and humanity, but, above all, carried away by that high enthufiafm, which gives to imagination its strongest colouring, he was, at once, capable of foothing the ear with the melody of his numbers, of influencing the paffions by the force of his Pathos, and of gratifying the fancy by the luxury of his description, IN IN confequence of these powers, but more particularly, in confideration of the last, he chofe fuch fubjects for his lyric effays as were most favourable for the indulgence of description and allegory; where he could exercise his powers in moral and perfonal painting; where he could exert his invention in conferring attributes on images or objects already known, and described, by a determinate number of characteristics; where he might give an uncommon eclat to his figures, by placing them in happier attitudes, or in more advantageous lights, and introduce new forms from the moral and intellectual world into the fociety of imperfonated beings. SUCH, no doubt, were the privileges which the poet expected, and such were the advantages he derived from the defcriptive and allegorical nature of his themes. IT IT seems to have been the whole induftry of our author (and it is, at the fame time, almost all the claim to moral excellence his writings can boast) to promote the influence of the focial virtues, by painting them in the fairest and happiest lights. Melior fieri tuendo, would be no improper motto to his poems in general, but of his lyric poems it seems to be the whole moral tendency and effect. If, therefore, it should appear to fome readers that he has been more industrious to cultivate description than fentiment; it may be obferved, that his descriptions themselves are fentimental, and anfwer the whole end of that species of writing, by embellishing every feature of virtue, and by conveying, through the effects of the pencil, the finest moral leffons to the mind. HORACE |