of Akenside's
Pleasures of Imagination, and Shenstone's Elegies. That Gray had
exquisite taste, and was a perfect scholar, no one can doubt.

Collins lived thirteen years after the publication of his Odes. It does
not appear that he produced any thing after this publication. How soon
his grand mental malady extinguished his literary powers, I do not
exactly know, nor is it recorded, whether any part of it arose from
bodily disorders. Medical men have never agreed regarding this most
deplorable of human afflictions. In Collins's case it probably arose
from the mind. On such an intellectual temperament the extinction of the
visions which Hope had painted to him seems to have been sufficient to
produce that derangement, which first enfeebled, and then perverted and
annihilated his faculties. The account given by Johnson is different
from that supplied by Mr. Ragdale and another anonymous communication.

He had, perhaps, lucid intervals in which he discovered nothing but
weakness and exhaustion. But he appears to have sometimes had fits of
violence and despair. It seems that he was an enthusiastic admirer of
Shakespeare, and a great reader of black letter books. It may be
inferred that his studies were not entirely given up during his malady;
but it is a subject of great wonder and regret that the Wartons, the
intimate friends both of his better and darker days, have left no
particular memorials of him. He had a sister, lately, if not still,
living, from whom, though of a very uncongenial nature, something might
surely have been gathered. But there is a familiarity which, by
destroying admiration, destroys the perception of what will interest
others. There are few of our poets of rare genius, of whose private life
and character much is known. Little is known of Spenser, Shakespeare,
and Milton: not much even of Thomson. More is known of Gray by the
medium of his beautiful letters; but when Southey, Wordsworth, and Scott
are gone, posterity will know every particular of them; and, even now,
know much which fills them with delight and admiration. But let us know
something in good time, also of the new candidates for poetical fame!

If the life of a poet is not in accordance with his song, it may be
suspected that the song itself is not genuine. Who can be a poet, and
yet be a worldling in his passions and habits? An artificial poet is a
disgusting dealer in trifles: nothing but the predominance of strong and
unstimulated f