it cherishes, while to a common eye it appears

fixed

in stupid apathy. The Poet requires long intervals of ease and leisure; his imagination should be fed with novelty, and his ear soothed by praise. But it was not the fortune of COLLINS to meet with that notice which his productions have since obtained; and after he had published his beautiful Odes, indignant and disappointed at the slowness of the sale, he is said to have burnt the remaining copies with his own hands. His end was unhappy; his mind, abandoned to inaction, preyed upon itself, and he fell into that malady most humiliating to a being possessed of rational powers.

The Epistle to Sir THOMAS HANMER seems to have been the first of our author's productions. As the subject is historical, rather than fanciful, it has less of the peculiar manner of COLLINS than any other of his Poems. In a slight, but neatly executed sketch, he traces the state of the Drama through the writers of other countries; and with a partiality,

in which the other nations of Europe seem almost to acquiesce, gives the palm to the Englishman's idol, SHAKESPEAR, after whom,

"No second growth the western isle could bear, "At once exhausted with too rich a year."

It is probable that our Poet, who was then a student at the university, knew nothing at that time of MASSINGER; otherwise, when he distinguishes SHAKESPEAR from FLETCHER, by the strength and masculine turn of his Drama, he could not have omitted one who came so near him in those characteristic qualities. It is remarkable, that in this piece, the plan which has since been carried into execution through the spirit and liberality of Mr. BOYDELL, that of a gallery of paintings to illustrate the pieces of our great Dramatist, is here first proposed to the public. The subjects are particularly pointed out, Coriolanus reluctantly yielding to the intreaties of his wife and mother,

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Rage grasps the sword, while pity melts the eyes."

And, Antony, pronouncing the funeral oration over

the dead body of Julius Cæsar;

"Still as they press he calls on all around;

"Lifts the torn robe, and points the bleeding

"wound."

It were to be wished that all the scenes which have been transferred to the canvass had been selected with as much judgment. It is not every scene that may be found in SHAKESPEAR, which illustrates SHAKESPEAR.

In 1742, while COLLINS was still a student at Magdalen College, he published his ORIENTAL, or, as they were first intitled, PERSIAN ECLOGUES. Sensible of the triteness of common Pastoral, which had become almost proverbial, the author has endeavoured to throw interest and variety into this elegant species of composition, by introducing the manners, and especially the appropriate scenery of other countries. The attempt was laudable, and the effect happy. The Oriental Eclogues have not indeed attained equal popularity with the Delias and Stre

phons of the Arcadian school, but they have always stood high in the opinion of real judges, and have opened sources of new and striking imagery which succeeding Poets have often availed themselves of. The passions of men are uniform; but, modified by the influence of climate, government, manners, and local circumstance, and accompanied with the various tints which employ the pencil of a landscape painter, they present an inexhaustible variety, from the song of SOLOMON breathing of cassia, myrrh, and cinnamon, to the Gentle Shepherd of RAMSAY, whose damsels carry their milking pails through the frost and snows of their less genial, but not less pastoral country. The province of Pastoral may in this way be enlarged to take in all the beautiful and all the grand appearances of Nature, which observation or reading may have brought the Poet acquainted with; he may sport in the vast savannahs of America ;. he may regale his shepherds with the bread-fruit of Otaheite, or sadden them

with the prospect of an impending eruption of Mount

Vesuvius.

The Eclogues are four in number, corresponding to the four periods of morning, noon, evening, and midnight. SELIM, or the SHEPHERD'S MORAL, is the least interesting of the number. It has nothing dramatic in its structure, and the two similes with which it is adorned are more quaint than beautiful. It is, however, calculated to please by the purity and sweetness of its moral ideas, and serves, as it were, to prepare and put the mind in tune for virtuous sympathy with the feelings of shepherds. The personification of Chastity,

HASSAN, or the CAMEL-DRIVER, stands upon a ground of superior merit. There is a peculiar strength of painting in the opening of the Poem. The horror of a boundless desart, arid and sultry,