Fair Science frownea not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

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. 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!
The year's best sweets shall duteous rise,
To deck its poet's sylvan grave!

In yon deep bed of whispering reeds
His airy harp shall now be laid,
That he, whose heart in sorrow bleeds,
May love through life the soothing shade.

The maids and youths shall linger here,
And, while its sounds at distance swell,
Shall sadly seem in pity's ear

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell.

The

Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest;
And oft suspend the dashing oar,

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,
And 'mid the varied landscape weep.

But thou, who own'st that earthly bed,
Ah! what will every dirge avail?
Or tears, which love and pity shed,

That mourn beneath the gliding sail!

Yet lives there one, whose heedless eye
Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near?
With him, sweet bard, may fancy die,
And joy desert the blooming year.

But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide
No sedge-crowned sisters now attend,
Now waft me from the green hill's side,
Whose cold turf hides the buried friend!

And see, the fairy valleys fade,

Dun night has vailed the solemn view!
Yet once again, dear parted shade,

Meek nature's child, again adieu!

The genial meads, assigned to bless

Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom!
Their hinds and shepherd girls shall dress
With simple hands thy rural tomb.

Long, long thy stone and pointed clay

Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes:
O! vales, and wild woods, shall he say,
In yonder grave your Druid lies!

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.

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
Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing spring.

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,
No goblins lead their mighty crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew.

The red-breast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gathered flowers,

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,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Beloved till life can charm no more;

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 :—

ODE ON THE PASSIONS.

When Music, heavenly maid! was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell;
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the muse's painting;
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined;
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round,
They snatched her instruments of sound;
And as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each, for madness ruled the hour,
Would prove his own expressive power.

First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords, bewildered laid;
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
Even at the sound himself had made.

Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire
In lightnings owned his secret stings;
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,
And swept with hurried hands the strings.
With woful measures wan Despair,
Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled;
A solemn, strange, and mingled air;
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.

But thou, oh Hope! with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail.
Still would her touch the strain prolong;
And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,
She called on Echo still through all the song;
And where her sweetest theme she chose,

A soft responsive voice was heard at every close;
And Hope enchanted smiled, and waived her golden hair:
And longer had she sung, but with a frown
Revenge impatient arose;

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,

And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,

And blew a blast so loud and dread,

Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of wo;

And ever and anon he beat

The double drum with furious heat;

And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,

Dejected Pity at his side

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

Yet still he kept his wild, unaltered mien,

While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed;

Sad proof of thy distressful state;

Of differing themes the veering song was mixed, And now it courted Love, now raving called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sat retired,

And from her wild sequestered seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul;
And clashing soft from rocks around,
Bubbling runnels joined the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole:
Or o'er some haunted streams with fond delay,
Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away.

But oh! how altered was its sprightly tone,
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,
Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call, to Fawn and Dryad known;
The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen,
Satyrs and sylvan boys, were seen

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:
He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed;
But soon he saw the brisk, awakening viol,
Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.

They would have thought who heard the strain
They saw, in Tempe 's vale, her native maids,
Amidst the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing:
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings
Love framed with Mirth, a gay, fantastic round,
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound:
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

Oh Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid,
Why, Goddess! why to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside?