rofit, or both, which,
in most instances, is the result of his labours. Various motives deter
men from writing such a volume; for, though quacks and charlatans
readily become auto-biographers, and fill their prefaces with their
personal concerns, real merit shrinks from such disgusting egotism, and,
flying to the opposite extreme, leaves no authentic notice of their
struggles, its hopes, or its disappointments. Nor is the history of
writers to be expected from their contemporaries; because few will
venture to anticipate the judgment of posterity, and mankind are usually
so isolated in self, and so jealous of others, that neither time nor
inclination admits of their becoming the Boswells of all those whose
productions excite admiration.

If these remarks be true, surprise cannot be felt, though there is
abundance of cause for regret, that little is known of a poet whose
merits were not appreciated until after his decease: whose powers were
destroyed by a distressing malady at a period of life when literary
exertions begin to be rewarded and stimulated by popular applause.

For the facts contained in the following Memoir of Collins, the author
is indebted to the researches of others, as his own, which were very
extensive, were rewarded by trifling discoveries. Dr. Johnson's Life is
well known; but the praise of collecting every particular which industry
and zeal could glean belongs to the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the result of
whose inquiries may be found in his notes to Johnson's Memoir, prefixed
to an edition of Collins's works which he lately edited. Those notices
are now, for the first time, wove into a Memoir of Collins; and in
leaving it to another to erect a fabric out of the materials which he
has collected instead of being himself the architect, Mr. Dyce has
evinced a degree of modesty which those who know him must greatly
lament.

* * * * *

WILLIAM COLLINS was born at Chichester, on the 25th of December, 1721,
and was baptized in the parish church of St. Peter the Great, alias
Subdeanery in that city, on the first of the following January. He was
the son of William Collins, who was then the Mayor of Chichester, where
he exercised the trade of a hatter, and lived in a respectable manner.
His mother was Elizabeth, the sister of a Colonel Martyn, to whose
bounty the poet was deeply indebted.

Being destined for the church, young Collins was admitted a scholar of
Winchester College