lins, 3rd December, 1657.
Mr. George Collins, 10th January, 1669.
Mrs. Collins of St. Olave's Parish, 19th July, 1696.

There are monumental inscriptions in St. Andrew's Church,
Chichester, to the Poet's father, mother, maternal uncle, Colonel
Martyn, and sister, Mrs. Durnford.

[8] So much of the will of Colonel Edmund Martyn as relates to the Poet
and his sister has been already cited, but the testator's
situation in life and the respectability of his family are best
shown by other parts of that document. He describes himself as a
lieutenant-colonel in his Majesty's service, lying sick in the
city of Chichester. To his niece Elizabeth, the wife of Thomas
Napper, of Itchenor in Sussex, he bequeathed 100_l._ His copyhold
estates of the manors of Selsey, and Somerly, in that county, to
his nephew, Abraham Martyn, the youngest son of his late only
brother, Henry Martyn, and to his servant, John Hipp, he gave his
wearing apparel and ten pounds.

[9] Dyce's edition of Collins, 1827, p. 39.

AN ESSAY ON THE GENIUS AND POEMS OF COLLINS.

BY SIR EGERTON BRYDGES,
BART.

Collins is the founder of a new school of poetry, of a high class. It is
true that, unless Buckhurst and Spenser had gone before him, he could
not have written as he has done; yet he is an inventor very distinct
from both. He calls his odes descriptive and allegorical; and this
characterises them truly, but too generally. The personification of
abstract qualities had never been so happily executed before; the pure
spirituality of the conception, the elegance and force of the language,
the harmony and variety of the numbers, were all executed with a
felicity which none before or since have reached. That these poems did
not at once captivate the public attention cannot be accounted for by
any cause hitherto assigned. We may not wonder that the multitude did
not at once perceive their full beauties; but that, among readers of
taste and learning, there should not have been found a sufficient number
to set the example of admiration, is very extraordinary. In addition to
all their other high merits, the mere novelty of thought and manner were
sufficient to excite immediate notice. Nor was there any thing in
Collins's station or character to create prejudices against the
probability that beautiful effusions of genius might be struck out