eeling will give that inspiration without which it is
worse than an empty sound. When the passion is factitious, the
excitement has always an immoral tendency; but the delineation of real
and amiable sentiments calls up a sympathy in other bosoms which thus
confirms and fixes them where they would otherwise die away. The memory
may preserve what is artificial, but, when it becomes stale, it turns to
offensiveness, and thus breeds an alienation from literature itself.

That Collins has continued to increase in fame as years have passed
away, is the most decisive of all proofs that his poems have the pure
and sterling merit which began to be ascribed to them soon after his
death. M. Bonstetten tells me that Gray died without a suspicion of the
high rank he was thereafter to hold in the annals of British genius?
What did poor Collins think when he submitted his sublime odes to the
flames? He must have had fits of confidence, even then, in himself; but
intermixed with gloom and despair, and curses of the wretched doom of
his birth! Is it sufficient that a man should wrap himself up in
himself, and be content if the poetry creates itself and expires in his
own heart? We strike the lyre to excite sympathy, and, if no one will
hear, will any one not feel that he strikes in vain; and that the talent
given us is useless, and even painful? But who can be assured that he
has the talent if no one acknowledges it? To have it, and not to be
assured that we have it, is a restless fire that burns to consume us.

Let no one envy the endowments, if he looks at the fate, of poets. Let
him contemplate Spenser, Denham, Rochester, Otway, Collins, Chatterton,
Burns, Kirke White, Bloomfield, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, besides those
of foreign countries! Perhaps Collins was the most unhappy of all; as he
was assuredly one of the most inspired and most amiable.

"In woful measures wan Despair--
Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled,
A solemn, strange, and mingled air;
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild."

Langhorne's edition of Collins first appeared in 1765, accompanied by
observations which have been generally appended to subsequent editions.
These observations have commonly borne the character of feebleness and
affectation; they have a sort of pedantic prettiness, which is somewhat
repulsive, but they do not want ingenuity, or justness of criticism.
Part of them, at least, had previously appeared in the Monthly Review,
pro