Such the gay splendour, the luxurious state
Of caliphs old, who on the Tigris' shore,
In mighty Bagdad, populous and great,

Held their bright court, where was of ladies store;1
And verse, love, music, still the garland wore;
When sleep was coy, the bard in waiting there
Cheered the lone midnight with the muse's lore;
Composing music bade his dreams be fair,

And music lent new gladness to the morning air.

Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran
Soft-tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell,
And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft began
(So worked the wizard) wintry storms to swell,
Às heaven and earth they would together mell;2
At doors and windows threatening seemed to call
The demons of the tempest, growling fell,

Yet the least entrance found they none at all;
Whence sweeter grew our sleep, secure in massy hall.

COLLINS.

PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF HIS LIFE.-William Collins was born in 1721, at Chichester. His early education at Winchester school, under Dr. Burton, prepared him for the collegiate course which he commenced in 1740, at Oxford. In 1743 or 1744 he came to London, "a literary adventurer," says Dr. Johnson, "with many projects in his head, and very little money in his pocket." Indolence and irresolution paralysed his eminent powers, and often reduced him to a pitiable state of helplessness and want. He was, moreover, disappointed in the reception given by the public to the works which he did finish and send forth, and morbidly judged that he had “fallen on evil tongues and evil times." The result of these combined causes was his relapse into a state of imbecility, occasionally interrupted by paroxysms of frenzy, which lasted until his death, in 1756, at his native town.

(1) Of ladies store-An expression borrowed from Milton. See p. 309. (2) Mell or mall-from the Latin malleus, a hammer-to bruise, crash.

PRINCIPAL WORKS-Collins' poems are all of moderate compass and of the lyrical form. The most admired are the odes entitled, "To Fear," "On the Poetical Character," "To Liberty," "To Evening," "The Passions," "On the Death of Thomson," and "On the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland.”

CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE.—“ Collins had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens."1

"A cloud of obscurity sometimes rests on his highest conceptions, arising from the fineness of his associations, and the daring sweep of his allusions; but the shadow is transitory, and interferes very little with the light of his imagery, or the warmth of his feeling. The absence of even this speck of mysticism from his 'Ode on the Passions' is perhaps the happy circumstance that secured its unbounded popularity.

"His genius loved to breathe rather in the preternatural and ideal element of poetry, than in the atmosphere of imitation, which lies closest to real life: and his notions of poetical excellence, whatever vows he might address to the manners, were still tending to the vast, the undefinable, and the abstract. Certainly, however, he carried sensibility and tenderness into the highest regions of abstracted thought: his enthusiasm spreads a glow even amongst the shadowy tribes of mind,' and his allegory is as sensible to the heart as it is visible to the fancy."2

(1) Dr. Johnson. "Lives of the Poets.'
(2) Campbell. "Specimens," &c., p. 429.

ODE TO FEAR.1

THOU, to whom the world unknown,2
With all its shadowy shapes is shown;
Who seest, appalled, the unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between;
Ah Fear! ah, frantic Fear!

I see, I see thee near.

I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start; like thee disordered fly.
For, lo! what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould

4

What mortal eye can fixed behold?
Who stalks his round, a hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm;
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose-hanging rock to sleep:
And with him thousand phantoms joined,
Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind:
And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds and wrecks preside;
Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare;
On whom that ravening brood of Fate,
Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait:
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?

(1) Pity and Fear are represented by Aristotle as the two great engines by whose "purging or purifying operation on the mind, the moral effects of the drama are to be produced." The various phenomena of Fear, especially as a dramatic agent, are allegorically represented in this fine ode.

(2) Thou to whom, &c.-In allusion to the influence of supernatural horrors on the mind, as displayed by Imagination (here incorrectly called Fancy), who lifts the veil between the actual and the ideal world.

(3) Ah Fear, &c.-The abruptness of these lines represents to us the painter of the passion so absorbed by its influence, that he becomes its victim.

(4) Danger, &c.-This bold personification is considered one of the most striking of its class in our literature. Every word is significant-the "limbs of giant mould," and the "hideous form," indicate that fear magnifies and exaggerates the reality; and what can be more happily conceived than his sleeping "on the ridgy steep of some loose-hanging rock?"

EPODE.

IN earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice,
The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue;
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice,
Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.

Yet he, the bard who first invoked thy name,
Disdained in Marathon its power to feel:
For not alone he nursed the poet's flame,
But reached from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.

But who is he, whom later garlands grace,
Who left awhile o'er Hybla's dews to rove,3
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove?

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous queen*
Sighed the sad call her son and husband heard,
When once alone it broke the silent scene,

And he the wretch of Thebes no more appeared.

O Fear! I know thee by my throbbing heart;
Thy withering power inspired each mournful line;
Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,

Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine!

(1) Epode-The three main divisions of the ancient Greek choral songs, in which lyric poetry originated, were called the strophe (or turning), the antistrophe (or opposite turning), and the epode (or after-song). These terms refer to the union of dancing, music, and poetry, which characterised the performance; thus the strophe denoted the turn from right to left, the antistrophe, that from left to right, and the epode, the cessation from dancing, while the singing was still going on in front of the spectators. These terms were subsequently retained, when their original meaning was lost, nearly in the sense of the word stanza, the strophe and antistrophe denoting the same kind of measure, and the epode a different one.

(2) The bard-Eschylus, who was a warrior as well as a poet.

(3) He, &c.-Sophocles, who "left awhile," or ceased awhile to indulge in the softer themes which were congenial to him, and took in hand the terrible and revolting miseries of Edipus, the "son and husband" referred to in the text. (4 Queen-Jocasta, Queen of Thebes.

ANTISTROPHE.

THOU who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad nymph! at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell,
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell ?
Or in some hollowed seat,

'Gainst which the big waves beat,

Hear drowning seaman's cries, in tempests brought?
Dark Power! with shuddering, meek, submitted thought,
Be mine to read the visions old

Which thy awakening bards have told :
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'er-awed,
In that thrice-hallowed eve2 abroad,
When ghosts, as cottage maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave;
And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!

O thou, whose spirit3 most possest
The sacred seat of Shakspere's breast!
By all that from thy prophet broke,
In thy divine emotions spoke; *
Hither again thy fury deal,

Teach me but once like him to feel:
His cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!

(1) And lest, &c.—i, e. and that I may not incur thy severe displeasure. The entire force of the line is in the word "blasted," without which the sense would contradict what follows.

(2) Thrice-hallowed eve-All-Hallows eve-the 31st of October-a season consecrated of old, and even now in the rural districts, to superstitious observances and fears.

(3) Whose spirit, &c.—In allusion to Shakspere's power in exciting the emotion of fear.

(4) In thy divine, &c.-i. e. and by all that was spoken by him when powerfully moved by thee.