ed to Joseph Warton:

"March 8, 1754.

"But how little can we venture to exult in any intellectual
powers or literary attainments, when we consider the condition
of poor Collins. I knew him a few years ago, full of hopes and
full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and
strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under
the government of those who lately would not have been able to
comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs. What do
you hear of him? are there hopes of his recovery? or is he to
pass the remainder of his life in misery and degradation?
perhaps with complete consciousness of his calamity."

"December 24, 1754.

"Poor dear Collins! Let me know whether you think it would give
him pleasure if I should write to him. I have often been near his
state, and therefore have it in great commiseration."

"April 15, 1756.

"What becomes of poor dear Collins? I wrote him a letter which he
never answered. I suppose writing is very troublesome to him. That
man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty
of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty; but it is yet more
dreadful to consider that the powers of the mind are equally
liable to change, that understanding may make its appearance and
depart, that it may blaze and expire."

In this state of mental darkness did Collins pass the last six or seven
years of his existence, in the house now occupied by Mr. Mason, a
bookseller in Chichester. His malady is described by Johnson as being,
not so much an alienation of mind as a general laxity and feebleness of
his vital, rather than his intellectual, powers; but his disorder seems,
from other authorities, to have been of a more violent nature. As he was
never married, he was indebted for protection and kindness to his
youngest sister; and death, the only hope of the afflicted, came to his
relief on the 12th of June, 1759, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, a
period of life when the fervour of imagination is generally chastened
without being subdued, and when all the mental powers are in their
fullest vigour. He was buried in the church of St. Andrew, at
Chichester, on the 15th of June; and the admiration of the public for
his genius has been manifested by the erection of a monument by Flaxman,
to his memory, in the Cathedral, which is thus described by Mr.
Dallaway, the historian of Sussex:

"Collins is represented