3. Delicia Poetarum Gallorum, 6. vols 12. 3. Delicia Poetarum Italorum, a. vols 12. 4. Delicia Poetarum Belgarum, 3. vols 12. 4. Historio Augusto Scriptores, Fol.... cum notis Variorum, 2. vols 8. Leyden 1671.

5. Chronicon Chronicorum, 4. vols. 8.

6. Ciceronis Opera. Hamburg. 3. vols. fol. etc. etc.

his character made him more hated, than his works made him esteemed.

ALBERTUS HENRICUS SALLENGRUS, Counsellor of the Prince of Orange, was born in 1694. He died 27 July, 1723 æt. 30. His Thesaurus contains many things, which had escaped the researches of Grevius, aud were extremely rare.

SAMUEL PITISGUS, a learned Antiquarian, was born in Zutphen in 1636., was Rector of the College of this City; and afterwards of St. Jerome of Utrecht, where he finished his days, 1. Feb. 1727, at the age of 91.

His Lexicon Antiquitatum Romanarum, 1713, 2. vol. fol. is full of erudition.

Marchese GIOVANNI POLENI, an illustrious Mathemati cian and Antiquarian, was born in Venice, 18. Aug. 1683. He died 13. Nov. 1761. aged 78. His utriusque Thesauri Antiquitatum Romanarum Gracarumque nova Supplementa was published at Venice in 1737, 5. vcls Fol. See his life in Fabroni Vita Italorum, XII. 66.

In imitation of Gruter were published.

1. Delicia Poetaruns Germanorum,

2.

3.

6. vols

ARE. XXI. POETICAL CHARACTERS OF COLLINS

AND GRAY.

The materials for the life of COLLINS are very scanty. Johnson has given a sketch, in which the Biographer has exhibited a striking specimen of the strength and the defects of his own intellectual, literary, and moral character.

There exist two other characters, of which the writers had a personal acquaintance with our Poet. One is anonymous; the other by a name unknown in the literary world.

With the clues thus given us, we are still left to draw our principal ideas of the Bard from his own few, but exquisite writings.

WILLIAM COLLINS was born 25 Dec. 1720, the son

of an Hatter at Chichester .

At the age of 13

( 1733,) he was admitted a scholar of Winchester College, under Dr. Burton.

The visionary cast of the mental and moral character of Collins forms the most distinguishing trait of his Poems. Johnson has said that this was the character rather of his inclination, than of his genius." But this remark is surely made in the excess of that spirit of detraction and bad taste, which so often degrade the Critic. This creative power, this faculty of

was the intellectual gift, with which this poet was in a most extraordinary manner endowed. He no-whe

re betrays toil and effort in his productions on the contrary there is a felicitous perfection in his visionary personages, that gives them an unity, a life reality, in which the artifice of the workman is no where discernible.

a

That any factitious industry could have achieved this, will not be believed by any one, who has a clear and sound acquaintance with the operations of the human mind. It is true that these compositions could not have been executed without the aid of Industry but Industry was no more than the hand-Maid who brought them forth.

In almost all compositions we see the joinings; the sutures; the inlayings; the marks of the chisel; or the needle. Here the combination is so perfect; the amalgamation is so entire; that the whole scem the blended parts of one essence.

That this visionary turn made a part of Collins's private and persoral character cannot be doubted. He himself has said this with admirable force in a stanat the end of his Ode on the superstitions of the Highlands.

za,

In seenes like these which daring to depart

From sober truth are still to nature true,
And call forth fresh delight to Fancy's view,
Th' heroic Muse employ'd her Tasso's heart!
How have I trembled, when, at Fancy's stroke,
Its gushing blood the gaping cypress pour'd!

When each live plant with mortal accents spoke,
And the wild blast upheaved the vanish'd sword!
How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind,
To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung:
Prevailing Poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung !
Hence at each sound Imagination glows:
Hence at each picture vivid life starts here!
Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows:
Melting it fiows pure, murmuring, strong, and clear;
And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmonious

ear!"

With this turn he formed romantie expectations of life, of which the non-fulfilment combined with the sufferings of pecuniary embarrassment worked on his highly-sensitive spirit, till it brought maladies on his body, which re-acted ou his mind, and ended in insanity.

He who sacrifices all the ordinary enjoyments of life for the whistlings of a name ", when he finds that even that gratification is denied him, has no hope left. He looked for encouragement and reward in his porsuits, to supply him with the means of existence. He found that literary labour could only gain a recompence, when it followed, not led, the public taste But Genius cannot condescend to this: it must go its own way it must pursne out its own ideas; and toil only " con amore.

It has been objected, that Collins onght to have bent to circumstances that it betrayed an unsound

mind, to venture on the sea of life, on the mere reliance of his own strength, without the usual aids, or the payment of the usual prices which the conditions of human society require that he had no right to hope exemption from common rules.

:

If a man could come into the world with a clear knowledge of the chances against his success in life, which are in operation if he could see, in how few cases merit obtains its reward if he could be aware, that, after having raised his taste and his aims to the true points of glory, he is not the more certain that the taste and aims of those, on whose opinions his success must depend, have arrived at the he would faint at the very outset ;

same correctness:

and all generous adventure would die within him.

It is far from being out of the course of possibility, that Genius, unprovided with worldly wealth, should find that liberal protection, which may enable it to addict itself at leisure to its own voluntary operations!

A person gifted with the splendid powers of glowing Genius, which from his childhood he has been cultivating with industry, and hope, cannot but have a consciousness, seldom asleep, of the riches, that are within him! It is a natural delusion to think that others perceive, what we ourselves perceive! Collins came forward in the world, at the age of 24 elated with just confidence at the splendid endowments that Nature had conferred on him! His Fancy teemed with pictures of generous heroism. he had embodied to his eye the abstract qualities of the