a
series of volumes from the fragments; but the "Britannia" of Camden,
the "London" of Stowe, and the "Chronicles" of Holinshed, are only a
few of those public works whose waters silently welled from the spring
of Leland's genius; and that nothing might be wanting to preserve some
relic of that fine imagination which was always working in his poetic
soul, his own description of his learned journey over the kingdom was
a spark, which, falling into the inflammable mind of a poet, produced
the singular and patriotic poem of the "Polyolbion" of Drayton. Thus
the genius of Leland has come to us diffused through a variety of
other men's; and what he intended to produce it has required many to
perform.

A singular inscription, in which Leland speaks of himself, in the
style he was accustomed to use, and which Weever tells us was affixed
to his monument, as he had heard by tradition, was probably a relic
snatched from his general wreck--for it could not with propriety have
been composed after his death.[125]

Quantum Rhenano debet Germania docto
Tantum debebit terra Britanna mihi.
Ille suae gentis ritus et nomina prisca
AEstivo fecit lucidiora die.
Ipse antiquarum rerum quoque magnus amator
Ornabo patriae lumina clara meae.
Quae cum prodierint niveis inscripta tabellis,
Tum testes nostrae sedulitatis erunt.

IMITATED.

What Germany to learn'd Rhenanus owes,
That for my Britain shall my toil unclose;
His volumes mark their customs, names, and climes,
And brighten, with a summer's light, old times.
I also, touch'd by the same love, will write,
To ornament my country's splendid light,
Which shall, inscribed on snowy tablets, be
Full many a witness of my industry.

Another example of literary disappointment disordering the intellect
may be contemplated in the fate of the poet COLLINS.

Several interesting incidents may be supplied to Johnson's narrative
of the short and obscure life of this poet, who, more than any other
of our martyrs to the lyre, has thrown over all his images and his
thoughts a tenderness of mind, and breathed a freshness over the
pictures of poetry, which the mighty Milton has not exceeded, and the
laborious Gray has not attained. But he immolated happiness, and at
length reason, to his imagination! The incidents most interesting in
the life of Collins would be those events which elude the ordinary
biographer; that invisible train of em