tention." Such was the language of Johnson, when, warmed by his
own imagination, he could write like Longinus; at that after-period,
when assuming the austerity of critical discussion for the lives of
poets, even in the coldness of his recollections, he describes Collins
as "a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties."

A chasm of several years remains to be filled. He was projecting works
of labour, and creating productions of taste; and he has been
reproached for irresolution, and even for indolence. Let us catch his
feelings from the facts as they rise together, and learn whether
Collins must endure censure or excite sympathy.

When he was living loosely about town, he occasionally wrote many
short poems in the house of a friend, who witnesses that he burned as
rapidly as he composed. His odes were purchased by Millar, yet though
but a slight pamphlet, all the interest of that great bookseller could
never introduce them into notice. Not an idle compliment is recorded
to have been sent to the poet. When we now consider that among these
odes was one the most popular in the language, with some of the most
exquisitely poetical, it reminds us of the difficulty a young writer
without connexions experiences in obtaining the public ear; and of the
languor of poetical connoisseurs who sometimes suffer poems, that have
not yet grown up to authority, to be buried on the shelf. What the
outraged feelings of the poet were, appeared when some time afterwards
he became rich enough to express them. Having obtained some fortune by
the death of his uncle, he made good to the publisher the deficiency
of the unsold odes, and, in his haughty resentment at the public
taste, consigned the impression to the flames!

Who shall now paint the feverish and delicate feelings of a young poet
such as Collins, who had twice addressed the public, and twice had
been repulsed? He whose poetic temper Johnson has finely painted, at
the happy moment when he felt its influence, as "delighting to rove
through the meadows of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of
golden palaces, and repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens!"

It cannot be doubted, and the recorded facts will demonstrate it, that
the poetical disappointments of Collins were secretly preying on his
spirit, and repressing his firmest exertions. With a mind richly
stored with literature, and a soul alive to the impulses of nature and
study, he projected a "History of th