ce it is in consequence of your own request, Sir, that I write
this long farrago, I expect you will overlook all inaccuracies. I
am, Sir,

"Your very humble servant,
"JOHN RAGSDALE.

"Mr. William Hymers, Queen's College, Oxford."

The following communication, by Thomas Warton, was also found among the
papers of Mr. Hymers. A few passages, concerning various readings, are
omitted.

"I often saw Collins in London in 1750. This was before his
illness. He then told me of his intended History of the Revival of
Learning, and proposed a scheme of a review, to be called the
Clarendon Review, and to be printed at the university press, under
the conduct and authority of the university. About Easter, the
next year, I was in London; when, being given over, and supposed
to be dying, he desired to see me, that he might take his last
leave of me; but he grew better; and in the summer he sent me a
letter on some private business, which I have now by me, dated
Chichester, June 9, 1751, written in a fine hand, and without the
least symptom of a disordered or debilitated understanding. In
1754, he came to Oxford for change of air and amusement, where he
stayed a month; I saw him frequently, but he was so weak and low,
that he could not bear conversation. Once he walked from his
lodgings, opposite Christ Church, to Trinity College, but
supported by his servant. The same year, in September, I and my
brother visited him at Chichester, where he lived, in the
cathedral cloisters, with his sister. The first day he was in high
spirits at intervals, but exerted himself so much that he could
not see us the second. Here he showed us an Ode to Mr. John Home,
on his leaving England for Scotland, in the octave stanza, very
long, and beginning,

Home, thou return'st from Thames.

I remember there was a beautiful description of the spectre of a
man drowned in the night, or, in the language of the old Scotch
superstitions, seized by the angry spirit of the waters, appearing
to his wife with pale blue cheek, &c. Mr. Home has no copy of it.
He also showed us another ode, of two or three four-lined stanzas,
called the Bell of Arragon; on a tradition that, anciently, just
before the king of Spain died, the great bell of the cathedral of
Sarragossa, in Arragon, tolled spontaneously. It began thus:

The bell of Arragon, they say,
Spontaneous speaks the fatal day.