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inspiration.-BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1831? An Essay on the Genius and Poems of Collins.

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That he should never before have heard of Collins, shows how little Collins has been heard of in his life-time; and that Cowper, in his knowledge of contemporary literature, was now awakening, as it were, from a sleep of twenty years. the course of those years Collins's Odes, which were utterly neglected on their first appearance, had obtained their due estimation. It should also be remembered, that in the course of one generation these poems, without any adventitious aid to bring them into notice, were acknowledged to be the best of their kind in the language. Silently and imperceptibly they had risen by their own buoyancy, and their power was felt by every reader who had any true poetic feeling.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, p. 321.

If we admire the genius and skill which have compressed into the few pages of Gray's collected poems so many noble images, so many exquisite movements of harmony, and so much splendour and propriety of diction, we shall find that an intense susceptibility for beauty has concentrated into the yet smaller compass of Collins's productions a quantity and depth of loveliness of a kind even more permanently attractive to the reader. If Gray was the more accomplished artist, Collins was the more born poet. In Collins the first thing we remark is the inimitable felicity of his expression. Gray's lovely and majestic pictures are careful, genial, artistic paintings of nature; those of Collins are the images of nature in the camera obscura. Gray is the light of day; Collins is the Italian moonlight-as bright almost, but tenderer, more pensive, more spiritual,

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"Dusk, yet clear; Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen.' -SHAW, THOMAS B., 1847, Outlines of English Literature, p. 298.

The Odes of Collins are fuller of the fine and spontaneous enthusiasm of genius, than any other poems ever written by one who wrote so little. We close this tiny volume with the same disappointed surprise, which overcomes us when a harmonious piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished. His range of tones is very

wide: it extends from the warmest rapture of self-entranced imagination, to a tenderness which makes some of his verses sound like gentle weeping. The delicacy of gradation with which he passes from thought to thought, has an indescribable charm, though not always unattended by obscurity; and there is a marvellous power of suggestion in his clouds of allegoric imagery, so beautiful in outline, and coloured by a fancy so purely and ideally refined. His most popular poem, "The Passions," can hardly be allowed to be his best of some of his most deeply marked characteristics it conveys no adequate idea. Readers who do not shrink from having their attention put to the stretch, and who can relish the finest and most recondite analogies, will delight in his Ode entitled "The Manners," and in that, still nobler and more imaginative, "On the Poetical Character." Every one, surely, can understand and feel the beauty of such pieces as the Odes "To Pity, "To Simplicity," "To Mercy." Nor does it require much reflection to fit us for appreciating the spirited lyric “To Liberty;" or for being entranced by the finelywoven harmonies and the sweetly romantic pictures, which, in the "Ode to Evening," remind us of the youthful poems of A Milton.-SPALDING, WILLIAM, 1852-82, 4 History of English Literature, p. 341.

With some occasional exaggeration and over-luxuriance, this author's language is for the most part exquisitely musical and refined. ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1868-75, Chaucer to Wordsworth, p. 357.

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There belong to Collins a new intensity of emotion, a vividness of personification, a broader sweep of imagination, which decidedly distinguish his composition from that of his cotemporaries, and impart to the reader a sense of larger, freer, gladder motion. As a vigorous bird proportions his curves of flight to his power of muscle, so Collins adopts a more varied and continuous rhythm. His successive impulses gather up and weave together more lines, and we are borne on the strong wing of a single image through a series of varying melodies, that will not fall apart into brief, measured stanzas.BASCOM, JOHN, 1874, Philosophy of English Literature, p. 216

What a notion it gives us of the power of poetry that this poor mad-house patient

is able at the distance of more than a hundred years to so possess our minds with his own emotion, that we never cease to see amid the skirts of these dim woodlands his retreating figure!-NADAL, E. S., 1876, Two Poems of Collins, Scribner's Monthly, vol. 12, p. 220.

Without making odious comparisons, it may be fair to say that Collins's odes are more liked than Gray's. They have less the air of artificiality, and they have less the form of a mosaic, which is naturally suggested to us by Gray's borrowing from his predecessors. Where there are traces of labored elegance in Gray, we have often in Collins the apparently swift choice of the right epithet, for he certainly conceals his 'art. Collins, however, mastered his instrument, and his odes survive to show that, even in a dreary period of literary history, the man may arise who proves that the poetical tradition, though obscured, is not wholly lost. PERRY, THOMAS S., 1880, Gray, Collins and Beattie, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 46, p. 815.

Living both in the age and after an age of critical poetry, Collins, always alien alike from the better and from the worse influences of his day, has shown at least as plentiful a lack of any slightest critical instinct or training as ever did any poet on record, in his epistle to Hanmer on that worthy knight's "inqualifiable" edition of Shakespeare. But his couplets, though incomparably inferior to Gray's, are generally spirited and competent as well as fluent and smooth. The direct sincerity and purity of their positive and straightforward inspiration will always keep his poems fresh and sweet to the senses of all men. He was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of colour into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the labours of their lives. And the sweet name and the lucid memory of his genius could only pass away with all relics and all records of lyric poetry in England. - SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 282.

There are very few poets from whose wheat so little chaff has been win*Richmond Churchyard.

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nowed as from that of Collins. His entire existing work does not extend to much more than fifteen hundred lines, at least two-thirds of which must live with the best poetry of the century. Collins has the touch of a sculptor; his verse is clearly-cut and direct; it is marble-pure, but also marble-cold. Each phrase is a wonder of felicitous workmanship, without emphasis, without sense of strain. His best strophes possess an extraordinary quiet melody, a soft harmonious smoothness as of some divine and aerial creature singing in artless, perfect, numbers for its own delight. The intellectual quality of Collins is not so strongly marked as his pure and polished art; but he had sympathy with fine things unpopular in his own lifetime. He was a republican and a Hellenist and a collector of black-letter poetry, in an age that equally despised what was Greek and what was Gothic. It may perhaps be allowed to be an almost infallible criterion of a man's taste for the highest forms of poetic art to inquire whether he has or has not a genuine love for the verses of William Collins.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, pp. 233, 235.

There is the chink of true and rare poetic metal in his verse, and it is fused by an imagination capable of intense heat and wonderful flame.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands Letters and Kings, Queen Anne and the Georges, p. 161.

Men like Thomas Gray and William Collins attempted to "revive the just designs of Greece," not only in fitness of language, but in perfection of form. They are commonly placed together, but the genius of each was essentially different. What they had in common belonged to the age in which they lived, and one of these elements was a certain artificial phrasing from which they found it difficult to escape. Both sought beauty more than their fellows, but Collins found it more than Gray. He had the greater grace and the sweeter simplicity, and his "Ode to Simplicity" tells us the direction in which poetry was going. His best work, like "The Ode to Evening," is near to Keats, and recalls that poet's imaginative way. His inferior work is often rude and his style sometimes obscure, but when he

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is touched by joy in "ecstatic trial," or when he sits with Melancholy in love of peace and gentle musing, he is indeed inspired by truth and loveliness.—BROOKE, STOPFORD A., 1896, English Literature, p. 214.

Johnson, a good and true friend of Collins, and though an untrustworthy critic of purely romantic poetry, likely to be conciliated rather than revolted by the classical form of the odes, broke the truth bluntly when he said that Collins's inversion of phrase savoured of the mistake that "if you do not write prose you will write poetry." In no true poet known to me, not in Rossetti, not in Donne, is the drawback of artificial poetic diction so obnoxious as in Collins. And the reason is clear. He was a true poet, a poet of the truest, who, unluckily for him, was singing in the spirit of one age with the tongue

of another. He is trying to say Shibboleth, but he cannot; and though he says Sibboleth with exquisite grace, it is Sibboleth still. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1896, Social England, ed. Traill, vol. v, p. 263.

The landscape of Collins was apparently much influenced by Greek poetry. His work reminds us of the great, rugged, sublime, choral songs, of the audacious metaphors of Eschylus. — PALGRAVE, FRANCIS TURNER, 1896, Landscape in Poetry, p. 173.

Collins is among the choicest of English lyrical poets. There is a flute-like music in his best odes-such as the one "To Evening," and the one written in 1746— "How sleep the brave," which are sweeter, more natural, and more spontaneous than Gray's. - BEERS, HENRY A., 1898, A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, p. 168.

Benjamin Hoadly

1676-1761

Born at Westerham, Kent, in 1697 became a fellow of Catherine Hall, Cambridge, in 1701 lecturer of St. Mildred in the Poultry, and in 1703 rector of St. Peter-le-Poer. Hoadly figures amongst the principal controversial writers of the 18th century, defending the cause of civil and religious liberty against both crown and clergy, and carrying on a controversy with Dr. Atterbury on the obedience due to the civil power by ecclesiastics. In 1710 he was presented to the rectory of Streatham, and in 1715 was made Bishop of Bangor. In 1717 he preached before the king a sermon on "My kingdom is not of this world," in which he sought to show that Christ had not delegated His powers to any ecclesiastical authorities. This originated the Bangorian Controversy, which branched off into such a multiplicity of side-issues that the main question became lost. The dispute had, however, one important consequence-the indefinite prorogation of Convocation. In 1721 Hoadly was translated to Hereford, in 1723 to Salisbury, and in 1734 to Winchester. His son published his "Collected Works" in 1773, with Life.-PATRICK AND GROOME, eds., 1897, Chambers's Biographical Dictionary, p. 492.

PERSONAL

Calling at Bull's on Ludgate Hill, he forced me to his house at Hampstead to dinner among a great deal of ill company; - among the rest Mr. Hoadly, the Whig clergyman, so famous for acting the contrary part to Sacheverell.-SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1710, Journal to Stella, Sept. 13.

O nurse of Freedom, Albion, say,
Thou tamer of despotic sway,
What man, among thy sons around,
Thus heir to glory hast thou found?
What page, in all thy annals bright,

Hast thou with purer joy survey'd
Than that where truth, by Hoadly's aid,
Shines through imposture's solemn shade,
Through kingly and through sacerdotal night?

We attend thy reverend length of days
With benediction and with praise,
And hail thee in our public ways
Like some great spirit famed in ages old.
-AKENSIDE, MARK, 1754, To the Right
Rev. Benjamin Lord Bishop of Winchester.

Benjamin Hoadly was probably the best hated clergyman of the century amongst his own order. His titles to the antipathy of his brethren were many and indisputable. A clergyman who opposes sacerdotal privileges is naturally the object of a sentiment such as would be provoked by a trades-unionist who should defend the masters, or a country squire who should protect poachers. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, p. 152.

As a preacher, where the subject was not one of a purely argumentative character, Hoadly was not successful. He said of his lectureship in the City, which he held between 1694 and 1704, that he preached it down to 30£ a year and then resigned. To stir the soul and warm the feelings was quite beyond his reach; and though, in his calm, dispassionate manner, he could reason with force upon the blessing of a life of Christian principle, this of itself can never sway the heart of a great congregation. Moreover, his style, though frequently rising into impressive dignity, was often diffuse and involved.

In private life he possessed a genial and happy temperament. Easy in manner and not wanting in humour, he was fond of society, but never so content as in the midst of his own family. Milner speaks of the "incongruous association of emblems" on his tomb at Winchester the pastoral crosier and the democratic pike and cap-the Scriptures and Magna Charta. The pike, if it is indeed there, is incongruous enough; and the pastoral staff is suggestive of Hoadly's grossest defect. But the rest may well represent those elements in the bishop's character which make up for much that was wanting in it-his love of liberty, his love of justice, his reverence- -exclusive to a fault-for the authority of Holy Writ. -ABBEY, CHARLES J., 1887, The English Church and Its Bishops, 1700-1800, vol. II, pp. 3, 19.

GENERAL

Mr. Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, has, in the Sermon for which he is so illtreated, done like an Apostle, and asserted the true dominion established by our Blessed Saviour.-STEELE, RICHARD, 1717, Letter to Lady Steele, June 21.

Verily Benjamin, thou hast done well in that thou hast openly declared the iniquity of those who have armed themselves with unlawful power, and have exercised tyranny over their brethren, saying, ye must join with us, otherwise ye shall go to prison; or otherwise you shall have no honour, or part or lot among us: Whereas King Jesus never left any such commandment. But it remaineth as a difficulty, or doubt unto us who are Friends, how thou canst lay a confederacy with these men! Verily, Benjamin, if thou come not out from among them, thou wilt give

occasion to wicked men to say of thee, that thou hast said that in thy teaching office which thou wilt not put in practice in thy person. Wherefore, friend Benjamin, as I know that the truth hath been spoken by thee, I warn thee for thy good, that thou come out speedily from among them; lay down thy painted vestments and profane trinkets, the ensigns of that usurpation upon thy Lord and Master's kingdom, which thou hast so faithfully borne thy testimony against.-Blessed art thou, O Benjamin, in that thou hast borne thy testimony against these things. Wherefore I know, that leaving behind thee all these wicked and erroneous opinions, and bearing witness to the truth, thou will at length join thyself unto us, and I rejoice over thee in this, that thou art enlightened to know the truth. Friend Timothy greeteth thee in like manner; as also James the aged, a lover of those who forsake the errors of the wicked. In a word, all Friends greet thee, and speak well of thee. Fare thee well.DEFOE, DANIEL, 1717, A Declaration of Truth to Benjamin Hoadly.

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I see no reason for such a prodigious outcry upon the "Plain Account." really think it a very good book, as orthodox as Archbishop Tillotson. His prayers are very long, but in my opinion some of the best compositions of the sort that. ever I read; and if I could bring my mind to that steady frame of thinking with regard to the Deity that is presented by him, I believe I should be so far as happy as my nature is, perhaps, capable of being. -HERRING, THOMAS, 1735, Letter to Duncombe, Nov. 17.

The object of Whig Idolatry and Tory abhorrence; and at every weapon of attack and defence, the Nonjuror, on the ground which is common to both, approves himself at least equal to the Prelate.*—GIBBON, EDWARD, 1793, Autobiography, Memoirs of my Life and Writings.

The style of Hoadly's controversial treatises is strong and logical, but without any of the graces of composition; and hence they have fallen into comparative oblivion. There can be no doubt, however, that the independent and liberal position that he maintained, aided by his station in the church, tended materially to stem the torrent of slavish submission *Berkeley.

which, at that time, prevailed in the Church of England.-MILLS, ABRAHAM, 1851, The Literature and the Literary Men of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II, p. 275.

His style is in general vigorous and caustic; he seems careless of elegance, and his dry sarcasms have lost their interest. MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 398.

Was a prelate of great controversial ability, who threw the weight of his talents and learning into the scale of Whig politics, at that time fiercely attacked by the Tory and Jacobite parties.

There can be no doubt that the independent and liberal mind of Hoadly, aided by his station in the church, tended materially to stem the torrent of slavish submission which then prevailed in the church of England. -CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers.

His style is the style of a bore; he is slovenly, awkward, intensely pertinacious, often indistinct, and, apparently at least, evasive; and occasionally (I am thinking especially of his arguments with his old enemy Atterbury) not free from a tinge of personal rancour. He preached his first lectureship down to 30l. a year, as he candidly reports, and then thought it time to resign. A perusal of his writings renders the statement easily credible. The three huge folios which contain his ponderous wranglings are a dreary wilderness of now profitless discussion. We owe, however, a vast debt of gratitude to the bores who have defended good causes, and in his pachydermatous fashion Hoadly did some service, by helping to trample down certain relics of the old spirit of bigotry. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, p. 153.

This very able man, who possessed all the moral and intellectual qualities of a consummate controversialist, had for some years been rapidly acquiring the position which Burnet had before held in the Low Church ranks. His latitudinarianism, however, was of a more extreme and emphatic character, and he greatly surpassed Burnet in the incisive brilliancy of his controversial writing, though he was far inferior to him in learning and versatility, in depth and beauty of character, and in the discharge of his episcopal duties,

LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1877, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, p. 270.

As a writer, he is both furious and tiresome, and almost the only purely literary interest we have in him centres around his friendship for Steele.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 196.

Hoadly, so dexterous as a controversialist, does not shine as a teacher of positive theology. There is a coldness and heaviness about his utterances, and his style is sometimes so involved that we can appreciate Pope's satirical description of "Hoadly with his periods of a mile." His dogmatic theological writings have no great merit. His political essays are clear and forcible, but they are disfigured by frequent adulation of the king and royal family. The letters to Lady Sundon show that he was well able to flatter influential personages in the state.PERRY, G. G., 1891, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXVII, p. 20.

His sermons are well-constructed and lucid. There is in them no tedious splitting of texts nor minute casuistry. He expounds the general principles of religion forcibly and earnestly, without dwelling on doctrinal minutiæ. They are clear, vigorous, and brief. Without being rhetorical or brilliant they are pleasant reading; calm, well-sustained and logical. He attacks the Church of Rome with severity, but without asperity, recognising her as the acme of the ecclesiasticism against which he was constantly at war. In controversy he is temperate, controlled, and dignified. He never stoops to petty personalities, but holds to the point at issue without flinching. Bishop Hoadly is not a star of the first magnitude. His writings are not among the classics of English literature. He does not rank with Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and Baxter. Nevertheless he deserves an honourable place among English men of letters. Possibly had he been a high churchman like Warburton he would have enjoyed his literary deserts and more. As it is, he suffers like others of his school of theological thought, and finds himself passed over for inferior writers who better adapted themselves to the dominant views.-FITZROY, A. I., 1894, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. III, p. 548.

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