e human
character. Why should it have been vanity that prompted this hope? It
was a consciousness of merit, of those brilliant powers which produced
the Ode to the Passions! was ever a voice content which sung to those
who would not hear, which was condemned

"To waste its sweetness on the desert air?"

Spenser's power of personification is copious beyond example; but it is
seldom sufficiently select; rich as it is in imagination, it too
commonly wants taste and delicacy; it has the fault of coarseness, which
Burke's images in prose two centuries afterwards, sometimes fell into.
But Collins's images are as pure, and of as exquisite delicacy, as they
are spiritual. They are not human beings invested with some of the
attributes of angels, but the whole figure is purely angelic, and of a
higher order of creation; in this they are distinct even from the
admirable personifications of Gray, because they are less earthly. The
Ode to the Passions is, by universal consent, the noblest of Collins's
productions, because it exhibits a much more extended invention, not of
one passion only, but of all the passions combined, acting, according to
the powers of each, to one end. The execution, also, is the happiest,
each particular passion is drawn with inimitable force and compression.
Let us take only FEAR and DESPAIR, each dashed out in four lines, of
which every word is like inspiration. Beautiful as Spenser is, and
sometimes sublime, yet he redoubles his touches too much, and often
introduces some coarse feature or expression, which destroys the spell.
Spenser, indeed, has other merits of splendid and inexhaustible
invention, which render it impossible to put Collins on a par with him:
but we must not estimate merit by mere quantity: if a poet produces but
one short piece, which is perfect, he must be placed according to its
quality. And surely there is not a single figure in Collins's Ode to the
Passions which is not perfect, both in conception and language. He has
had many imitators, but no one has ever approached him in his own
department.

The Ode to Evening is, perhaps, the next in point of merit. It is quite
of a different cast; it is descriptive of natural scenery; and such a
scene of enchanting repose was never exhibited by Claude, or any other
among the happiest of painters. Though a mere verbal description can
never rival a fine picture in a mere address to the material part of our
nature, yet it far eclipses it with