as sitting in a reclining posture, during a
lucid interval of the afflicting malady to which he was subject, with a
calm and benign aspect, as if seeking refuge from his misfortunes in the
consolations of the gospel, which appears open on a table before him,
whilst his lyre and one of his best compositions lie neglected on the
ground. Upon the pediment of the table are placed two female ideal
figures in relief, representing love and pity, entwined each in the arms
of the other; the proper emblems of the genius of his poetry." It bears
the following epitaph from the pen of Hayley:

"Ye who the merits of the dead revere,
Who hold misfortune's sacred genius dear,
Regard this tomb, where Collins, hapless name,
Solicits kindness with a double claim.
Though nature gave him, and though science taught
The fire of fancy, and the reach of thought,
Severely doom'd to penury's extreme,
He pass'd in maddening pain life's feverish dream,
While rays of genius only served to show
The thickening horror, and exalt his woe.
Ye walls that echo'd to his frantic moan,
Guard the due records of this grateful stone;
Strangers to him, enamour'd of his lays,
This fond memorial to his talents raise.
For this the ashes of a bard require,
Who touch'd the tenderest notes of pity's lyre;
Who join'd pure faith to strong poetic powers;
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."

Collins's character has been portrayed by all his biographers in
very agreeable colours. He was amiable and virtuous, and was as much
courted for his popular manners as for the charms of his conversation.
The associate of Johnson, Armstrong, Hill, Garrick, Quin, Foote, the
two Wartons, and Thomson, and the friend of several of these eminent
men, he must have possessed many of the qualities by which they were
distinguished; for though an adviser may be chosen from a very
different class of persons, genius will only herd with genius.
Johnson has honoured him by saying, that "his morals were pure and
his opinions pious;" and though he hints that his habits were sometimes
at variance with these characteristics, he assigns the aberration to the
temptations of want, and the society into which poverty sometimes
drives the best disposed persons, adding, that he "preserved the
sources of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken,
that his