ar.

_William Collins_, 1720-1756: this unfortunate poet, who died at the early
age of thirty-six, deserves particular mention for the delicacy of his
fancy and the beauty of his diction. His _Ode on the Passions_ is
universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the
bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair
to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the
sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His _Ode on the Death of Thomson_
is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the _Dirge on Cymbeline_.
Everybody knows and admires the short ode beginning

How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!

His _Oriental Eclogues_ please by the simplicity of the colloquies, the
choice figures of speech, and the fine descriptions of nature. But of all
his poems, the most finished and charming is the _Ode to Evening_. It
contains thirteen four-lined stanzas of varied metre, and in blank verse
so full of harmony that rhyme would spoil it. It presents a series of
soft, dissolving views, and stands alone in English poetry, with claims
sufficient to immortalize the poet, had he written nothing else. The
latter part of his life was clouded by mental disorders, not unsuggested
to the reader by the pathos of many of his poems. Like Gray, he wrote
little, but every line is of great merit.

_Henry Kirke White_, 1785-1806: the son of a butcher, this gifted youth
displayed, in his brief life, such devotion to study, and such powers of
mind, that his friends could not but predict a brilliant future for him,
had he lived. Nothing that he produced is of the highest order of poetic
merit, but everything was full of promise. Of a weak constitution, he
could not bear the rigorous study which he prescribed to himself, and
which hastened his death. With the kind assistance of Mr. Capel Lofft and
the poet Southey, he was enabled to leave the trade to which he had been
apprenticed and go to Cambridge. His poems have most of them a strongly
devotional cast. Among them are _Gondoline_, _Clifton Grove_, and the
_Christiad_, in the last of which, like the swan, he chants his own
death-song. His memory has been kept green by Southey's edition of his
_Remains_, and by the beautiful allusion of Byron to his genius and his
fate in _The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. His sacred piece called
_The Star of Bethlehem_ has been a special favorite:

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