Background
William Collins was born on Dec. 25, 1721, in Chichester.
His father was a prosperous merchant who was twice elected mayor.
William Collins was born on Dec. 25, 1721, in Chichester.
His father was a prosperous merchant who was twice elected mayor.
Collins graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1743, but in his inveterate indolence and irresolution he was never able to choose a profession, despite the favorable comment excited by his Persian Eclogues (1742), which he had written at the age of 16.
When he had been nine months at the school, Pope paid Winchester a visit and proposed a subject for a prize poem; In 1734 the young poet published his first verses, in a sixpenny pamphlet on The Royal Nuptials, of which, however, no copy has come down to us; another poem, probably satiric, called The Battle of the Schoolbooks, was written about this time, and has also been lost.
They were not printed for some years, and meanwhile Collins sent, in January and October 1739, some verses to the Gentleman's Magazine, which attracted the notice and admiration of Johnson, then still young and uninfluential.
At Oxford he continued his affectionate intimacy with the Wartons, and gained the friendship of Gilbert White.
Early in 1742 the Persian Eclogues appeared in London.
They were four in number, and formed a modest pamphlet of not more than 300 lines in all.
In a later edition, of 1759, the title was changed to Oriental Eclogues.
Considered with regard to the time at which they were produced, they are more than meritorious, even brilliant, and one at least-the second- can be read with enjoyment at the present day.
For the rest, it is an enthusiastic review of poetry, culminating in a laudation of Shakespeare.
He soon squandered his means, plunged, with most disastrous effects, into profligate excesses, and sowed the seed of his untimely misfortune. It was at this time, however, that he composed his matchless Odes-twelve in number-which appeared on the 12 th of December 1746, dated 1747.
The original project was to have combined them with the odes of Joseph Warton, but the latter proved at that time to be the more marketable article.
From Gilbert White, who jotted down some pages of invaluable recollections of Collins in 1781, and from other friends, we learn that his madness was occasionally violent, and that he was confined for a time in an asylum at Oxford.
But for the most part he resided at Chichester, suffering from extreme debility of body when the mind was clear, and incapable of any regular occupation.
Music affected him in a singular manner, and it is recorded that he was wont to slip out into the cathedral cloisters during the services, and moan and howl in horrible accordance with the choir.
Not more than 1500 lines of his have been handed down to us, but among these not one is slovenly, and few are poor.
The army and the church were successively suggested and rejected; and he finally arrived in London, bent on enjoying a small property as an independent man about town.
He had the lofty forehead, the brisk dark eyes and gracious oval of the childish face, as we know it in the only portrait existing of Collins.
