pounds;
a sum which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did
not live to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid, and the translation
neglected. But man is not born for happiness. Collins, who, while he
studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study than
his life was assailed by more dreadful calamities--disease and insanity.

Having formerly written his character, while perhaps it was yet more
distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.

"Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous
faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with
the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind
chiefly on works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging
some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those
flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the
mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions.
He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove
through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of
golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens. This
was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius;
the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always
desired by him, but not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never
wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity,
they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour. This
idea which he had formed of excellence led him to Oriental fictions and
allegorical imagery, and, perhaps, while he was intent upon description,
he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His poems are the
productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with
knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its
progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.

"His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of
poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any
character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of want by which
the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with
fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and
abate the fervour of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous as he
was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be
prejudice and temerity to