PASTORAL BALLAD. Since Phyllis vouchsafed me a look, I prized every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleas'd me before; But now they are past, and I sigh; And I grieve that I prized them no more. But why do I languish in vain; Why wander thus pensively here? The pride of that valley, is flown; When forced the fair nymph to forego, My path I could hardly discern; I thought that she bade me return. The pilgrim that journeys all day Is happy, nor heard to repine. Soft Hope is the relique I bear And my solace wherever I go. THE DYING KID. A tear bedews my Delia's eye, To think yon playful kid must die; Erewhile in sportive circles round She saw him wheel, and frisk, and bound; Pleased on his various freaks to dwell She tells with what delight he stood She tells me how with eager speed His every frolic light as air But knows my Delia, timely wise, Soon would the vine his wounds deplore, No more those bowers might Strephon see, Each wayward passion soon would tear Then mourn not the decrees of Fate MUCH TASTE AND SMALL ESTATE See yonder hill, so green, so round, That crown a poet's vast desire. Then, near it, scoop the vaulted cell (For Wisdom flies from vulgar eyes :) But did the Muses haunt his cell? WILLIAM COLLINS. [WILLIAM COLLINS was born at Chichester on Christmas Day, 1721. It is believed that he went for a time to the Prebendal School of that city; and in 1733 he entered Winchester College, then under Dr. Burton. Before he left school he had written the Persian Eclogues (which in their later editions are called Oriental Eclogues); and he had printed a so-called sonnet in the Gentleman's Magazine. In 1740 he entered as commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, there being no vacancy at New College; and next year he obtained a demyship at Magdalen. The Persian Eclogues were published in 1742; next year came the Epistle to Sir T. Hanmer; and in 1744 he seems to have left Oxford for London, where he found a true friend in Johnson. His Odes, which he once meant to have published jointly with those of his old schoolfellow Joseph Warton, appeared alone in 1747. After this he went to live at Richmond, where he saw much of Thomson, Armstrong, and others of that company. In 1749 he wrote the Ode on the death of Thomson, and the Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands. Soon afterwards he was attacked by the brain-disease from which, with certain intervals of partial recovery. he suffered for the rest of his life. His last years were spent at Chichester under the care of his sister Mrs. Sempill. He died in 1759.] In the reaction against that sweeping violence of indiscriminative depreciation with which the school of poets and critics usually registered as Wordsworthian, but actually founded at midnight by William Blake and fortified at sunrise by William Wordsworth, was wont for some half a century to overwhelm the poetry and criticism of the century preceding, the name which of all properly belonging to that period has incomparably the most valid and solid claim to the especial and essential praise that denotes a poet from among other men of genius has hardly yet taken by general consent the place which is unquestionably its due. Even in his own age it was the fatally foolish and uncritical fashion to couple the name of Collins with that of Gray, as though they were poets |