Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team a-field! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; But knowledge to their eyes her ample page Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem, of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The applause of listening senates to command, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife They keep the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse, And many a holy text around she strews, For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, On some fond breast the parting soul relies, For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead, Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. One morn I missed him on the 'customed hill, Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, not at the wood was he. The next, with dirges due in sad array, Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne; Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown; Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Misery all he had, a tear, He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God. Gray's letters are easy, flowing, and beautiful; and his descriptions of the lake scenery of Cumberland, and of the mountain scenery of Scotland and Wales, are highly graphic: they do not, however, call for farther notice. WILLIAM COLLINS, whose history is brief but painful, and whose poems are as limited in number, and finished in execution, as those of Gray, was the son of a respectable hatter, in Chichester, and was born on Christmas day, 1720. When in the thirteenth year of his age he entered Winchester school, and thence passed to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he greatly distinguished himself for his scholarship, and took his bachelor's degree. While at college he published his Oriental Eclogues, which, to the disgrace of the university, and the literary public, were entirely neglected. He soon after quitted Oxford, and repaired to London, as a literary adventurer. He arrived in London, in 1744, and two years afterwards published his Odes, which, for some unaccountable reason, failed to attract public attention. Though Collins's learning was extensive, yet he wanted steadiness of purpose and business application; and he therefore allowed himself to sink under this disappointment, and to become more indolent and dissipated than ever. The fine promise of his youth, his mental ardor and his ambition, all melted away under this baneful and depressing influence. The death of Thomson, whom he seems to have known and loved, occurred just at this critical period in Collins's life, and once again he strung his lyre with poetical enthusiasm. The following Ode, which the occasion elicited, is unquestionably one of the finest elegiac poems in the language. The scene is supposed to lie on the Thames, near Richmond :— In yonder grave a Druid lies, Where slowly winds the stealing wave! In yon deep bed of whispering reeds To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell. Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, To bid his gentle spirit rest! And oft as ease and health retire To breezy lawn, or forest deep, The friend shall view yon whitening spire, But thou, who own'st that earthly bed, That mourn beneath the gliding sail! Yet lives there one, whose heedless eye Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near? But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide And see, the fairy valleys fade, Dun night has vailed the solemn view! The genial meads, assigned to bless Long, long thy stone and pointed clay When reduced in circumstances to the last extremity, Collins, by the death of his uncle, Colonel Martin, came into possession of two thousand pounds-'a sum,' says Dr. Johnson, which he could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust.' He had just before, in order to relieve himself under a pressing emergency, engaged to translate, for Miller, the bookseller, Aristotle's Poetics, and had received his pay in advance; but he now returned the money, and being relieved from the necessity of exertion, he became still more irregular in his habits, and soon sank into a state of nervous imbecility. Dr. Johnson, on one occasion, met him carrying with him, as he travelled, an English Testament. 'I have but one book,' said Collins, but it is the best!' He passed his latter days under the care of his sister at Chichester; but it was necessary at one time to confine him in a lunatic asylum. He used, when at liberty, to wander day and night among the aisles and cloisters of Chichester cathedral, ac companying the music with loud sobs and moans. Death at length came to his relief, and in 1756, just ten years after the publication of his immortal works, his troubled and melancholy career was terminated. เ Collins's life affords one of the most touching examples of accomplished youth and genius, linked to personal humiliation and calamity, that throws its lights and shades over English literature. Conscious of the purity and elevation of his poetic strains, he yet had the mortification to see his finest productions fall lifeless from the press; and it was this that broke his heart, and sent him to a premature grave. Southey remarks that though utterly neglected on their first appearance, the Odes of Collins, in the course of one generation, without any adventitious aid to bring them into notice, were acknowledged to be the best of their kind in the language. Silently and imperceptibly they had risen by their own buoyancy, and their power was felt by every reader who had any true poetic feeling.' The following dirge assimilates the genius of Collins so nearly to that of Shakspeare, that we can scarcely realize the immortal bard of Avon did not himself write it : DIRGE IN CYMBELINE. To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring No wailing ghost shall dare appear To vex with shrieks this quiet grove, But shepherd lads assemble here And melting virgins own their love. No withered witch shall here be seen, The red-breast oft at evening hours To deck the ground where thou art laid. When howling winds, and beating rain, In tempests shake thy sylvan cell, Or midst the chase on every plain, The tender thought on thee shall dwell. Each lonely scene shall thee restore, And mourned till pity's self be dead. To this dirge we add the 'Ode on the Passions,' which should, perhaps, be regarded as the author's sublimest and most elevated strain : |