COLLINS. William Collins was born at Chichester, the son of a hatter, in 1720. He received education at Winchester school, and at Queen's College, Oxford. About the year 1744, according to Dr Johnson, he came up to London, "with many projects in his head and very little money in his pocket," which indeed was very much Dr Johnson's own equipment on his first appearance in the metropolis. For some years he led a life of hardships and necessities. "He published proposals for a History of the Revival of Learning;" he designed several tragedies; he undertook to translate, with a commentary, Aristotle's Poetics; but with all these strings to his bow he shot nothing. Like many another litterateur of his time he lived often in fear of the debtor's prison. Johnson speaks of visiting him one day, "when he was immured by a bailiff that was prowling in the street." At last he was freed from his pecuniary difficulties by a legacy from an uncle of some £2000-“ a sum which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust." Freed from poverty, sti direr evils fell upon him-disease, and insanity. After a vain struggle with a terrible despondency which gradually overwhelmed him, he was confined for a time in a lunatic asylum, and shortly afterwards died in his sister's house in his native city. Like Gray, Collins produced but little; but concerning him, as concerning Gray, there can be no doubt that he had in him a genuine poetical spirit. His Ode How sleep the brave is one of the most exquisite gems of our lyrical literature. Strength does not so much characterize him as a certain fine delicacy and sweetness. His powers of expression were scarcely adequate for his ideas and sympathies; for certainly he lived mostly in the poet's land; his mind was ever there revelling in the fair visions of it. Spenser, "the poet's poet," was his great delight. When the bailiffs were besetting his earthly lodgings, he was often far away in Faerie. He felt and enjoyed more than he could write. In what little he did write, with all its imperfections, it is easy to see how refined and spiritual was his nature. THE PASSIONS. INTRODUCTION. Collins, like Spenser, has but little dramatic power; for his fine imagination abstractions were themselves real and substantial enough; he does not feel any necessity for clothing them with flesh and blood. Hence in his poems, as in Spenser's, abstractions abound unbodied, as Peace, Evening, Mercy, Simplicity, and the Passions in the following poem. He introduces "airy nothings" in all their airiness; for him they are the real existences. Despair is as forcible a figure in his eyes as the desperate man; the concrete has no advantage over the abstract. Poets of this type are never, and are not likely ever to be, so popular as the dramatic poets. The general taste prefers creations more tangible and solid; it cannot be satisfied with spiritual visions; it wearies of pure airinesses; nor can this preference be justly censured. Collins can only hope. like another greater master of the same poetic order, for "fit audience, though few." 75. 2. yet. See note to Il Penser., 30. 3. shell. See note on Dryden's Song for St Cecilia's Day, 17. 8. disturb'd. Comp. in Coleridge's exquisite lyric Love: "but when I reach'd That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp 10. [What is the meaning of rapt here?] 11. myrtles. See Lycid. 2. 14. forceful. Shaks. Winter's Tale, II. i. 161-3: "Why, what need we Commune with you of this, but rather follow Our forceful instigation?" So in Collins' Manners: "Each forceful thought." Comp. in Ode to Simplicity: "forceless numbers." 16. [What is meant by expressive power?] See Collins' Ode to Fear. 25. See Spenser's picture of Despair and his cave, F. Q. I. ix. 33-54. 26. [What part of the sentence is low sullen sounds?] 76. 32. [What part of the sentence is at distance?} 35. So the Lady in Comus; see her invocation of Echo. 36. [Explain where here.] 37. close. See note in Hymn on the Nativity, 100. 41. See Dickens' Great Expectations. This passage is perhaps somewhat theatrical, and not altogether to be rescued from that novelist's ridicule. 46. See Revelations viii-x., of the Seven Angels, to whom were given seven trumpets," how they "sound." 47. [What is meant by the doubling drum?] 49. See Collins' Ode to Pity. 55. veering. "To veer. Fr. virer, to veer, turn round, wheel or whirl about. Cot. It. virare, to turn. Rouchi, virler, to roll. In all probability from the same root with E whirl, whether it directly descends from Lat. gyrare or not." (Wedgwood.) [Is the force of diff'ring precisely the same as that of different?] 57. with eyes uprais'd. Comp. Il Penseroso, 39. 59. sequester'd. See Gray's Elegy, 75. 63. runnel. This diminutival form is used by Fairfax, &c. We now prefer runlet. 65. haunted stream. See L'Alleg., 130. 77. 69. [What noun is represented by its? Paraphrase this line.] alter'd is here used loosely for other, or different, = Lat. alius, as in Sall. Cat. 52; Longe alia mihi mens est," and Plaut. Pan. prol. 125; "alius nunc fieri volo." 71. See Virgil's picture of Venus disguised as a huntress to meet her forlorn sea-beaten son. En. i. 318: "humeris de more habilem suspenderat arcum Venatrix." 72. buskins. See latter part of the note to Il Pens. 102. Add Virg. Æn. i. 336, 7, where Venus explains her costume thus: And Ecl. vii. 32. 'Virginibus Tyriis mos est gestare pharetram, 73. [What is the force of that here?] 75. the oak-crowned sisters formed Diana's train. " = the virginal sisterhood, garlanded with forest leaves, that their chaste-eyed queen. See Ben Jonson's noble Hymn to her: "Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair," &c. 77. alleys. The Spirit in Comus sings of " cedar'n alleys" (1. 991). See also "Yonder alleys green" in Par. Lost, iv. 626. peeping from forth. One might say "peeping from out," and so "from forth:" but more commonly perhaps one would say peeping forth from." xiii. 66 80. [Explain the phrase Joy's ecstatic trial.] 81. viny. Phineas Fletcher speaks of the "viny Rhene" in his Piscatory Eclogues, II. 83. viol. See note on Ode for St. Cec. Day, 37. 88. to. See note on Lycidas, 13. 90. a gay fantastic round. See L'Alleg. 34. 91. He makes Mirth feminine. Comp. Spenser's Phædria, F. Q. II. vi. Horace's corresponding deity is Focus (Od. I. ii. 34). her zone unbound. Hor. Od. I. xxx. 5, to Venus: "Fervidus tecum Puer et solutis Gratiæ zonis, &c." 92. [Who is meant by he?] 94. Comp. Par. Lost, v. 285-7. See note on Il Penser. 146. 95. sphere-descended. See note in Hymn Nat. 125. 99. that lov'd Athenian bower what he calls above Music's Magic Cell. 100. Observe the use of both thy and you in this passage. It would be in vain to look for any such distinctive force as certainly marks the use of these forms in Shakspere and the older writers. (See Abbot's Shakesp. Gr. §§ 231—5.) 104. devote. See London, 38. 108. [Who is this Sister? What stones does he refer to ?] 110. reed. See note to Lycid. 33. III. rage is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 17th century, and in the 18th century writers, for inspiration, enthusiasm. Thus Cowley: "Who brought green poesy to her perfect age And made that art which was a rage." 78. 112. Handel's Messiah, which came out in 1741, was not received at first with any great favour. He died in 1759. 113 and 114. He means the organ. Marvell speaks of 'the organ's city': see his lines Music's Empire. See notes on Dryden's Alexander's Feast, &c. The humblest musical instrument in the ancient days, he says, was more effective than that great combination of all musical instruments-the organ-is in these days. 116. Collins, as also Gray, had a genuine admiration for Greek art and literature-was a sincere if not a very profound Hellenist. The age in which he lived, as that which preceded it, adored rather what was Latin. Classical, or Classicistic, is too broad a title for what it worshipped. THOMAS GRAY. Gray's father, a money-scrivener, is said to have shamefully neglected his duties as the head of a family, being a thorough profligate. His mother, to support herself, assisted by her sister, opened a milliner's shop in Cornhill, London; and there the future poet was born in 1716, on Dec. 26th (so Mitford; Dr Johnson says Nov. 26th, inaccurately--would that it was the only inaccuracy in his Life of Gray!) The attachment between Gray and his mother was thus especially close and tender, and so continued to the end of her honoured life. No doubt it was made the more so by the fact that of twelve children Thomas was the only one that survived infancy. Through the help of his mother's brother, then an Assistant-Master at Eton, Gray had the advantage of being educated at that school, and in due course, in 1734, proceeding to Cambridge, to Peter-House, or St Peter's College, about the same time his school-fellows Horace Walpole and West went up, the former to King's College, the latter to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1738 (the year of Johnson's London) Gray quitted the University with the intention of studying Law at the Inner Temple; but no such special career was to be his. His income presently receiving additions from private sources, he found himself possessed of a life-long competency. Thus placed above the fear of penury, he was enabled to devote himself altogether to self-culture. He travelled in France and Italy, amongst the English Lakes, in Wales, in Scotland; he studied Architecture, Botany, the Classics of Greece and Italy and England, besides other literatures, Music, Painting, Zoology, History, Heraldry; in all ways he cultivated and refined his mind. He produced a few finished poems; he wrote delightful letters; he formed many worthy literary schemes. Such was Gray's life. He resided mainly at Cambridge. In 1768 he was appointed Professor of Modern History there, but he never delivered any lectures. There he died, July 20th, 1771. He was buried in Stoke Pogis churchyard, by the side of his mother, whom he had had "the misfortune to survive" (to use his own sad words inscribed on her tombstone) some eighteen years. It might have been happy for Gray, had he felt some of those sharp goads which perpetually impelled his contemporary Johnson to action. He was certainly the most accomplished man of his time, and he was something much more than accomplished. His learning was not only wide but deep; his taste, if perhaps too fastidious, was pure and thorough; his genius was of no mean degree or order; his affections were of the truest and sincerest. What he wanted was productive impulse; his mind was insatiable in acquiring, it was tardy in creating. In this respect his cloistered life was seriously harmful. He liked neither the place nor its inhabitants, nor professed to like them, says Dr Johnson of his residence at Cambridge. Assuredly neither the place nor its inhabitants gave him that stimulus he needed. The picture his letters paint of the University of his day is dreary and dismal beyond words. So he for the most part spent his days in strenuous idleness so far as production went, his one object self-culture. He heaped up riches; in his own life he distributed but slightly, and his wealth was not of a kind that could be bequeathed. Perhaps few men of such high attainments and of such great powers have achieved so little. His career was one of unfulfilled promise. Perhaps of all our poets Milton and he were of the highest culture. In genius they differ vastly; but in this respect they are alike. The studies of Milton at Horton and in Italy from 1631 to 1639 remind one of Gray at a similar period of his life. Happily for Milton and for us the likeness ends there. Milton turned those studies, so ardently pursued, to noble political and poetical uses. Fervently as he recognized the duty of self-culture, he acknowledged it but as a means, not as an end: "All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-master's eye." See also that most noble passage in his Reason for Church Government, where he describes with what reluctance he resigned for a time, he could not say how long it might be, the darling purpose for his life for unwelcome controversies. "But were it the meanest underservice, if God by his Secretary Conscience enjoin it, it were sad for me if I should draw back." Compare what is said of Gray: "He could not bear to be thought a professed man of letters, but wished to be regarded as a private gentleman who read for his amusement." But, while it is to be lamented that Gray did not do more for his own day and for posterity, let us be grateful for what he did do. That life was not lived in vain that gave us the Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. Besides this he produced some seven Odes, two Translations from the Norse, and a few other pieces of a miscellaneous sort. His fine critical taste as expressed in his letters, exercised and may exercise a beneficial influence, though the area over which it acted and acts was and is something confined. His Poems are works of refinement rather than of passion: but yet they are inspired with genuine sentiment. They are no doubt extremely artificial in form; the weight of the author's reading somewhat depresses their originality; he can with difficulty escape from his books to himself; but yet there is in him a genuine poetical spirit. His poetry, however elaborated, is sincere and truthful. If the exterior is often what Horace might have called over-filed and polished, the thought is mostly of the simplest and naturalest. When he sees the school of his youth in the distance, his eyes fill with real feeling, whatever carefully chosen phrases are on his tongue. His soul was always simple, and true, and tender, and catholic, however exquisitively select and uncommon the dialect that represents it. And even in this dialect it must be allowed that there are many felicities. It is not always cold and scholastic. It is often of finished beauty. It is sometimes itself tremulous with emotion. THE ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. I. This famous poem was begun in the year 1742, and finished in 1749. It found its way into print in this latter year, to Gray's annoyance, who thereupon published it himself in 1750. Some stanzas, written originally as part of it but afterwards rejected by the author's severe self-criticism, are given below in the course of the notes. As to the churchyard, where it was written or meditated, there is controversy; Stoke Pogis near Slough, where Gray's mother and aunt resided after his father's death, and Madingley some four miles from Cambridge, competing for the honour-Stoke Pogis perhaps with the better claims; but there is little in the poem to localize it. 2. The Elegy is perhaps the most widely known poem in our language. Many phrases and lines from it have become "household words." The reason of this extensive popularity is perhaps to be sought in the fact, that it expresses in an exquisite manner feelings and thoughts that are universal. In the current of ideas in the Elegy, there is perhaps nothing that is rare, or exceptional, or out of the common way. The musings are of the most natural and obvious character possible; it is difficult to conceive of any one musing under similar circumstances who should not muse so; but they are not the less deep and moving on this account. There are some feelings and thoughts that cannot grow old and hackneyed. The mystery of life does not become clearer, or less solemnizing and awful, for any amount of contemplation. Such inevitable, such everlasting questions as rise on the mind when one lingers in the precincts of Death can never lose their freshness, never cease to fascinate |