Ah me! who knows, if then my fair,

From lovers never free,

Who knows, alas, sweet maid, if e'er
Thou then wilt think on me.

Oh! think upon my ardent love;
Think on this sad adieu;

Think, that thy beauty's power I prove,

And am for ever true;
That, though a prey to fell despair,
I still shall doat on thee;

Oh! think, but ah! who knows if e'er

Thou'lt deign to think on me.

THE CABINET, vol. iii. p. 229.

No. CLXXXVII.

Farewell Aruna !" Still," in Fancy's ear,
As in the evening wind thy murmurs swell,
Th' enthusiast of the lyre, who wander'd here,
Seems yet to strike his visionary shell,

Of power to call forth Pity's tenderest tear,
Or wake wild Frenzy, from her hideous cell!

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

son.

Sir,

HAUGHTON, Jan. 1, 1797.

AUTHENTIC anecdotes of men of genius and learning must always be acceptable to the friends of literature. The following letters contain several particulars relative to the life and writings of the admired Collins, not to be found in the narratives of Langhorne or JohnI have met with them among the papers of a much-respected and ingenious friend * deceased, who had intended to give to the public a complete edition of the works of Collins, and an improved and more satisfactory account of his life and writings than has hitherto appeared. He was prevented by the stroke of that ruthless power, which neither genius nor virtue can

* Collins.

William Hymers, A. B. of Queen's College, Oxford.

escape. I will thank you to give them circulation and permanency among your essays.

"I often saw Collins in

I am, &c.

W. B.

London in 1750.

He then told me

This was before his illness. of his intended history of the Revival of Learning, and proposed a scheme of a review, to be called the Clarendon Review, and to be printed at the University press, under the conduct and authority of the University. About Easter, the next' year, I was in London; when, being given over, and supposed to be dying, he desired to see me, that he might take his last leave of me: but he grew better, and in the summer he sent me a letter on some private business, which I haye now by me, dated Chichester, June 9, 1751, written in a fine hand, and without the least symptom of a disordered or debilitated understanding. In 1754, he came to Oxford for change of air and amusement, where he stayed a month; I saw him frequently, but he was so weak and low, that he could not bear conversation. Once he walked from his lodgings opposite Christ-church, to Trinity-college, but supported by his servant. The same year, in September, I and my brother visited him at

Chichester, where he lived in the cathedral cloisters, with his sister. The first day he was in high spirits at intervals, but exerted himself so much, that he could not see us the second. Here he shewed us an Ode to Mr. John Home, on his leaving England for Scotland, in the octave stanza, very long, and beginning,

Home, thou return'st from Thames!

"I remember there was a beautiful description of the spectre of a man drowned in the night, or in the language of the old Scotch superstitions-seized by the angry spirit of the waters, appearing to his wife with pale blue cheek, &c. Mr. Home has no copy of it. He also shewed us another ode, of two or three four-lined stanzas, called the Bell of Arragon; on a tradition that, anciently, just before a king of Spain died, the great bell of the cathedral of Sarragossa, in Arragon, tolled spontaneously. It began thus:

The bell of Arragon, they say,

Spontaneous speaks the fatal day, &c.

Soon afterwards were these lines:

Whatever dark aerial power,

Commission'd, haunts the gloomy tower.

"The last stanza consisted of a moral transition to his own death and knell, which he called "some simpler bell." I have seen all his Odes already published in his own hand-writing; they had the marks of repeated correction; he was perpetually changing his epithets. I had lately his first manuscript of the Ode on the Death of Colonel Ross, with many interlineations and alterations. The lady to whom this Ode is addressed was Miss Elizabeth Goddard, who then lived at or near Harting, in Sussex. In the first stanza, my manuscript has "sunk in grief," for "stained with blood." The fourth stanza stood thus:

Ev'n now, regardless of his doom,
Applauding honour haunts his tomb,
With shadowy trophies crown'd:
While freedom's form beside her roves,
Majestic, through the twilight groves,
And calls her heroes round.

The sixth stanza had "untaught" in the first line, instead of "unknown." The present seventh and eighth stanzas were not in the manuscript. In the present ninth stanza, instead of, "If weak to soothe so soft a heart," the reading was, "If drawn by all a lover's art." Many variations I have forgotten. Dr. Warton, my brother, has a few fragments of some other odes, but too