William Collins (poet)
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William Collins (25 December 1721 – 12 June 1759) was an
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
. Second in influence only to
Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classics, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country ...
, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century. His lyrical odes mark a progression from the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope's generation and towards the imaginative ideal of the Romantic era.


Biography

Born in
Chichester Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only ci ...
,
Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
, the son of a hatmaker and former mayor of the town, Collins was educated at
The Prebendal School The Word of God is the Fountain of Wisdom , established = , type = PreparatoryIndependent , religious_affiliation = Church of England , head_label = Head , head = Louise Salmond Smith , chair_label = Chair of G ...
,
Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...
and
Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...
. While still at the university, he published the ''Persian Eclogues'', which he had begun at school. After graduating in 1743 he was undecided about his future. Failing to obtain a university fellowship, being judged by a military uncle as 'too indolent even for the army', and having rejected the idea of becoming a clergyman, he settled for a literary career and was supported in London by a small allowance from his cousin, George Payne. There he was befriended by James Thomson and Dr Johnson as well as the actors
David Garrick David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Sa ...
and
Samuel Foote Samuel Foote (January 1720 – 21 October 1777) was a British dramatist, actor and theatre manager. He was known for his comedic acting and writing, and for turning the loss of a leg in a riding accident in 1766 to comedic opportunity. Early l ...
. Following the failure of his collection of odes in 1747, Collins’ discouragement, aggravated by drunkenness, so unsettled his mind that he eventually sank into insanity and by 1754 was confined to McDonald's Madhouse in Chelsea. From there he moved to the care of an elder sister in Chichester, who lived with her clergyman husband within the cathedral precincts. There Collins continued to stay, with periods of lucidity during which he was visited by the Warton brothers. On his death in 1759, he was buried in
St Andrew-in-the-Oxmarket Church St Andrew-in-the-Oxmarket Church (later known as the Chichester Centre of Arts and the Oxmarket Centre of Arts) is a former Anglican church in the centre of the cathedral city of Chichester in West Sussex, England. The building has existed sin ...
.


Poems


Eclogues

The
pastoral A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
eclogue An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics. Overview The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , whi ...
had been a recognised genre in English poetry for the two centuries before Collins wrote his, but in the 18th century there was a disposition to renew its subject matter.
Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...
,
John Gay John Gay (30 June 1685 – 4 December 1732) was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for ''The Beggar's Opera'' (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peac ...
and Mary Wortley Montagu had all transposed rural preoccupations to life in London in a series of "town eclogues"; at the same period William Diaper had substituted marine divinities for shepherds in his ''Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues'' (1712). Collins' ''Persian Eclogues'' (1742) also fell within this movement of renewal. Though written in heroic couplets, their Oriental settings are explained by the pretence that they are translations. Their action takes place in "a valley near Bagdat" (1), at midday in the desert (2), and within sight of the
Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
mountains in Georgia (3) and war-torn Circassia (4). The poems were sufficiently successful for a revised version to be published in 1757, retitled as ''Oriental Eclogues''. In the following decades they were frequently republished and on the Continent were twice translated into German in 1767 and 1770. They were also an influence on later eclogues that were given exotic locations. The three dating from 1770 by
Thomas Chatterton Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Althoug ...
had purely imaginary African settings and their versification was distinguished by "crude imaginative force and incoherent, almost
Ossian Ossian (; Irish Gaelic/Scottish Gaelic: ''Oisean'') is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, originally as ''Fingal'' (1761) and ''Temora'' (1763), and later combined under t ...
ic, fervor". By contrast, the ''Oriental Eclogues'' of Scott of Amwell (1782) can stand "favourable comparison" with Collins' and their background details are supported by contemporary scholarship. In addition, Scott's introductory "Advertisement" justifies his poems as both a homage to and variation upon the work of Collins. The Oriental Eclogues of the elder poet, he says, "have such excellence, that it may be supposed they must preclude the appearance of any subsequent Work with the same title. This consideration did not escape the Author of the following Poems; but, as the scenery and sentiment of his Predecessor were totally different from his own, he thought it matter of little consequence." Scott's poems are set in Asian areas well beyond Persia's former dominions: in Arabia in his first, Bengal in his second and
Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
China in the time of
Li Po Li Bai (, 701–762), also pronounced as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai (), was a Chinese poet, acclaimed from his own time to the present as a brilliant and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights. He and his friend Du Fu ...
in his third.


Odes

Collins' ''Odes'' also fit within the context of a movement towards the renewal of the genre, although in this case it was largely formal and showed in his preference for pindarics and occasionally dispensing with rhyme. Here he was in the company of
Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classics, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country ...
, Mark Akenside, and his Winchester schoolfellow
Joseph Warton Joseph Warton (April 1722 – 23 February 1800) was an English academic and literary critic. He was born in Dunsfold, Surrey, England, but his family soon moved to Hampshire, where his father, the Reverend Thomas Warton, became vicar of B ...
. At first Collins intended his ''Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects'' (1747) to be jointly published with Warton's ''Odes on Various Subjects'' (1746) until Warton’s publisher refused the proposal. Following their appearance, Gray commented in a letter that each poet "is the half of a considerable Man, & one the Counter-part of the other.
arton Arton may refer to: People ;Given name *Arton Zekaj, Serbian footballer of Kosovo Albanian descent ;Surname *Anthony Bourne-Arton, British Conservative Party politician *Oliver Rendell Arton Places * ''Arton Mill'', Belgium; a protected place, s ...
has but little Invention, very poetical choice of Expression, & a very good Ear; ollinsa fine Fancy, model'd upon the Antique, a bad Ear, a great variety of Words & Images, with no Choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not." Moreover, their new manner and stylistic excess lent themselves to burlesque parody, and one soon followed from a university miscellany in the shape of an "Ode to Horror: In the Allegoric Descriptive, Alliterative, Epithetical, Fantastic, Hyperbolical, and Diabolical Style". Rumour had it even then that the culprit was Warton’s brother
Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the Ap ...
, and his name was coupled with it in later reprintings. As Gray had forecast, little favourable notice was taken at the time of poems so at odds with the Augustan spirit of the age, characterised as they were by strong emotional descriptions and the personal relationship to the subject allowed by the ode form. Another factor was dependence on the poetic example of
Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for ''The Faerie Queene'', an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of ...
and
John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
, where Collins' choice of evocative word and phrase, and his departures from prose order in his syntax, contributed to his reputation for artificiality. Warton was content to refuse later republication of the products of his youthful enthusiasm, but Collins was less resilient. Although he had many projects in his head in the years that followed, few came to fruition. Republication of his eclogues apart, his closest approach to success was when the composer
William Hayes William Hayes may refer to: In politics *William Hayes (Irish politician), Irish Sinn Féin politician *William Hayes (Canadian politician) (1879–1939), member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta * William P. Hayes (1866–1940), American la ...
set "The Passions" as an oratorio that was received with some acclaim. Collins' only other completed poem afterwards was the "Ode written on the death of Mr Thomson" (1749), but his unfinished works suggest that he was moving away from the contrived abstraction of the ''Odes'' and seeking inspiration in an idealised time uncorrupted by the modern age. Collins had showed the Wartons an "Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry", an incomplete copy of which was discovered in Scotland in 1788. Unfortunately, a spuriously completed version, published in London the same year as the Scottish discovery, was passed off as genuine in all collections of Collins until the end of the 19th century. The former text was then restored in scholarly editions and confirmed by the rediscovery of the original manuscript in 1967. The poem appealed to bardic subject matter "whose power had charm’d a Spenser’s ear" to the imaginative rehabilitation of true poetry. Another indication of the new direction his work was taking was the "Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre" that Collins proposed sending to Hayes in 1750. There, he asserted, "I have, I hope, Naturally introduc’d the Various Characters with which the Chorus was concern’d, As Oedopus, Medea, Electra, Orestes, &c &c. The Composition too is probably more correct, as I have chosen the ancient Tragedies as my Models." But all that has remained to substantiate this large claim is an 18-line fragment titled "Recitative Accompanied" and beginning "When Glorious Ptolomy by Merit rais'd".


Legacy

Thomas Warton in his ''History of English Poetry'' (1774) made retrospective amends for his youthful lampoon by speaking there of "My late lamented friend Mr William Collins, whose Odes will be remembered while any taste for true poetry remains". Nevertheless, it was not until a few years after the poet's death that his work was collected in the edition of John Langhorne in 1765, after which it slowly gained more recognition, although never without criticism. While Dr Johnson wrote a sympathetic account of his former friend in ''
Lives of the Poets ''Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets'' (1779–81), alternatively known by the shorter title ''Lives of the Poets'', is a work by Samuel Johnson comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during th ...
'' (1781), he echoed Gray in dismissing the poetry as contrived and poorly executed. At a much later date,
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
was dismissive for other reasons in his novel ''
Great Expectations ''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (Great Expectations), Pip (the book is a ''bildungsroman''; a coming-of-age story). It ...
''. There Pip describes his youthful admiration for a recitation of Collins' ''The Passions'' and commented ruefully, "I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stain'd Sword in Thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing Trumpet with a withering Look. It was not with me then as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of both gentlemen". But among the posthumous enthusiasts for Collins' poetry had been Scott of Amwell whose "Stanzas written at Medhurst, in Sussex, on the Author's return from Chichester, where he had attempted in vain to find the Burial-place of Collins" was published in 1782. This charged that while the tombs of the unworthy were "by Flatt'ry's pen inscrib'd with purchas'd praise", those possessing genius and learning were "Alive neglected, and when dead forgot". That state of affairs was remedied by the commissioning of a monument to Collins in Chichester Cathedral in 1795, which brought a later tribute from the Wesleyan preacher Elijah Waring in "Lines, composed on paying a visit to the tomb of Collins, in Chichester Cathedral". This, after initially noting the subject matter of the ''Odes'', soon turned to a celebration of the poet's faith in religion and his exemplary death. The poem is a response to
John Flaxman John Flaxman (6 July 1755 – 7 December 1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman, and a leading figure in British and European Neoclassicism. Early in his career, he worked as a modeller for Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. He spent several yea ...
's design for the memorial, which depicted Collins seated at a table and studying the New Testament. This in turn was based on the anecdote perpetuated by Johnson in his life of the poet that he "travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school. When his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, 'I have but one book,' said Collins, 'but that is the best.'" Flaxman's monument to the poet was funded by public subscription. As well as showing the poet in pious contemplation, it depicts a lyre left upon the floor, accompanied by a scrolled copy titled "The Passions: an ode", representing his abandonment of poetry. On the ridge over the memorial tablet, the female figures of love and piety are lying with arms about each other. Beneath is an epitaph by
William Hayley William Hayley (9 November 174512 November 1820) was an English writer, best known as the biographer of his friend William Cowper. Biography Born at Chichester, he was sent to Eton College, Eton in 1757, and to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 176 ...
which also makes reference to Johnson's anecdote of the poet "Who 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." St Andrews, the church where Collins was buried, was converted to an arts centre in the 1970s, but the poet is now commemorated by a window on the south side drawing on the Flaxman memorial and showing him at his reading. There is also a
blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
placed on the Halifax building in East Street on the site of his birthplace.


Works


''Persian Eclogues''
(1742); these were revised as ''Oriental Eclogues'' in 1759.

(1743); republished in a revised edition in 1744, in whic
"A Song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline"
was included. *

' *
Ode on the Death of Thomson'' (1749)''Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands''
(written 1750, unpublished until later editions)


Editions

*''Poetical works of William Collins'', ed. John Langhorne, originally published in 1765; several editions followed, to which Dr Johnson's life of Collins was added.Internet Archive
/ref> * A scholarly edition was published in ''The Poetical Works of Gray and Collins'' (ed. Austin Poole) by Oxford University Press in 1926; from the same press there followed the definitive edition of ''The Works of William Collins'' (ed. Wendorf & Ryskamp) in 1979.


References


External links


William Collins
at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, William People from Chichester People educated at The Prebendal School 1721 births 1759 deaths People educated at Winchester College Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford English male poets