ster in a state almost of nakedness, destitute,
diseased, and wild in despair, to hide himself in the arms of a
sister.

The cloud had long been gathering over his convulsed intellect; and
the fortune he acquired on the death of his uncle served only for
personal indulgences, which rather accelerated his disorder. There
were, at times, some awful pauses in the alienation of his mind--but
he had withdrawn it from study. It was in one of these intervals that
Thomas Warton told Johnson that when he met Collins travelling, he
took up a book the poet carried with him, from curiosity, to see what
companion a man of letters had chosen--it was an English Testament. "I
have but one book," said Collins, "but that is the best." This
circumstance is recorded on his tomb.

He join'd pure faith to strong poetic powers,
And in reviving reason's lucid hours,
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest,
And rightly deem'd the book of God the best.

At Chichester, tradition has preserved some striking and affecting
occurrences of his last days; he would haunt the aisles and cloisters
of the cathedral, roving days and nights together, loving their

Dim religious light.

And, when the choristers chanted their anthem, the listening and
bewildered poet, carried out of himself by the solemn strains, and his
own too susceptible imagination, moaned and shrieked, and awoke a
sadness and a terror most affecting amid religious emotions; their
friend, their kinsman, and their poet, was before them, an awful image
of human misery and ruined genius!

This interesting circumstance is thus alluded to on his monument:--

Ye walls that echoed to his frantic moan,
Guard the due record of this grateful stone:
Strangers to him, enamour'd of his lays,
This fond memorial of his talents raise.

A voluntary subscription raised the monument to Collins. The genius of
Flaxman has thrown out on the eloquent marble all that fancy would
consecrate; the tomb is itself a poem.

There Collins is represented as sitting in a reclining posture, during
a lucid interval of his afflicting malady, with a calm and benign
aspect, as if seeking refuge from his misfortunes in the consolations
of the Gospel, which lie open before him, whilst his lyre, and "The
Ode on the Passions," as a scroll, are thrown together neglected on
the ground. Upon the pediment on the tablet are placed in relief two
female figures of LOVE and PITY, entwined each in the ar