William Collins (poet)

The pastoral eclogue had been a recognised genre in English poetry for the two centuries before Collins wrote his, but in the 18th century there was a disposition to renew its subject matter. Jonathan Swift, John Gay and Mary Wortley Montagu had all transposed rural preoccupations to life in London in a series of "town eclogues"; at the same period William Diaper had substituted marine divinities for shepherds in his Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues (1712).[4] Collins' Persian Eclogues (1742) also fell within this movement of renewal. Though written in heroic couplets, their Oriental settings are explained by the pretence that they are translations. Their action takes place in "a valley near Bagdat" (1), at midday in the desert (2), and within sight of the Caucasus mountains in Georgia (3) and war-torn Circassia (4).[5]

The poems were sufficiently successful for a revised version to be published in 1757, retitled as Oriental Eclogues.[6] In the following decades they were frequently republished and on the Continent were twice translated into German in 1767 and 1770.[7] They were also an influence on later eclogues that were given exotic locations. The three dating from 1770 by Thomas Chatterton had purely imaginary African settings and their versification was distinguished by "crude imaginative force and incoherent, almost Ossianic, fervor".[8] By contrast, the Oriental Eclogues of Scott of Amwell (1782) can stand "favourable comparison" with Collins' and their background details are supported by contemporary scholarship.[9]

In addition, Scott's introductory "Advertisement" justifies his poems as both a homage to and variation upon the work of Collins. The Oriental Eclogues of the elder poet, he says, "have such excellence, that it may be supposed they must preclude the appearance of any subsequent Work with the same title. This consideration did not escape the Author of the following Poems; but, as the scenery and sentiment of his Predecessor were totally different from his own, he thought it matter of little consequence."[10] Scott's poems are set in Asian areas well beyond Persia's former dominions: in Arabia in his first, Bengal in his second and Tang dynasty China in the time of Li Po in his third.[11]

Collins' Odes also fit within the context of a movement towards the renewal of the genre, although in this case it was largely formal and showed in his preference for pindarics and occasionally dispensing with rhyme. Here he was in the company of Thomas Gray, Mark Akenside, and his Winchester schoolfellow Joseph Warton.[12] At first Collins intended his Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1747) to be jointly published with Warton's Odes on Various Subjects (1746) until Warton's publisher refused the proposal. Following their appearance, Gray commented in a letter that each poet "is the half of a considerable Man, & one the Counter-part of the other. [Warton] has but little Invention, very poetical choice of Expression, & a very good Ear; [Collins] a fine Fancy, model'd upon the Antique, a bad Ear, a great variety of Words & Images, with no Choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not."[13] Moreover, their new manner and stylistic excess lent themselves to burlesque parody, and one soon followed from a university miscellany in the shape of an "Ode to Horror: In the Allegoric Descriptive, Alliterative, Epithetical, Fantastic, Hyperbolical, and Diabolical Style".[14] Rumour had it even then that the culprit was Warton's brother Thomas, and his name was coupled with it in later reprintings.

As Gray had forecast, little favourable notice was taken at the time of poems so at odds with the Augustan spirit of the age, characterised as they were by strong emotional descriptions and the personal relationship to the subject allowed by the ode form. Another factor was dependence on the poetic example of Edmund Spenser and John Milton, where Collins' choice of evocative word and phrase, and his departures from prose order in his syntax, contributed to his reputation for artificiality.[15][16] Warton was content to refuse later republication of the products of his youthful enthusiasm, but Collins was less resilient. Although he had many projects in his head in the years that followed, few came to fruition. Republication of his eclogues apart, his closest approach to success was when the composer William Hayes set "The Passions" as an oratorio that was received with some acclaim.[17]

Collins' only other completed poem afterwards was the "Ode written on the death of Mr Thomson" (1749), but his unfinished works suggest that he was moving away from the contrived abstraction of the Odes and seeking inspiration in an idealised time uncorrupted by the modern age. Collins had showed the Wartons an "Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry", an incomplete copy of which was discovered in Scotland in 1788. Unfortunately, a spuriously completed version, published in London the same year as the Scottish discovery, was passed off as genuine in all collections of Collins until the end of the 19th century.[18][19] The former text was then restored in scholarly editions and confirmed by the rediscovery of the original manuscript in 1967.[20] The poem appealed to bardic subject matter "whose power had charm’d a Spenser’s ear" to the imaginative rehabilitation of true poetry.

Another indication of the new direction his work was taking was the "Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre" that Collins proposed sending to Hayes in 1750. There, he asserted, "I have, I hope, Naturally introduc’d the Various Characters with which the Chorus was concern’d, As Oedopus, Medea, Electra, Orestes, &c &c. The Composition too is probably more correct, as I have chosen the ancient Tragedies as my Models."[21] But all that has remained to substantiate this large claim is an 18-line fragment titled "Recitative Accompanied" and beginning "When Glorious Ptolomy by Merit rais'd".[22]