Chapter Coleridge to Collins of C by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Coleridge to Collins

Coleridge, Sara (1802-1852).—Miscellaneous writer, the only daughter of the above, married her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge She translated Dobrizhöffer’s Account of the Abipones, and The Joyous and Pleasant History…of the Chevalier Bayard. Her original works are Pretty Lessons in Verse, etc. (1834), which was very popular, and a fairy tale, Phantasmion. She also edited her father’s works, to which she added an essay on Rationalism.

Colet, John (1467-1519).—Scholar and theologian, was born in London, the son of a wealthy citizen, who was twice Lord Mayor. The only survivor of a family of 22, he went to Oxford and Paris, and thence to Italy, where he learned Greek. He entered the Church, and held many preferments, including the Deanery of St. Paul’s. He continued to follow out his studies, devoting himself chiefly to St. Paul’s epistles. He was outspoken against the corruptions of the Church, and would have been called to account but for the protection of Archbishop Warham. He devoted his great fortune to founding and endowing St. Paul’s School. Among his works are a treatise on the Sacraments and various devotional writings. It is rather for his learning and his attitude to the advancement of knowledge than for his own writings that he has a place in the history of English literature.

Collier, Jeremy (1650-1726).—Church historian and controversialist, born at Stow, Cambridgeshire, educated at Ipswich and Cambridge, entered the Church, and became Rector of Ampton, Suffolk, lecturer of Gray’s Inn, London, and ultimately a nonjuring bishop. He was a man of war from his youth, and was engaged in controversies almost until his death. His first important one was with Gilbert Burnet, and led to his being imprisoned in Newgate. He was, however, a man of real learning. His chief writings are his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1708-1714), and especially his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1699), on account of which he was attacked by Congreve and Farquhar, for whom, however, he showed himself more than a match. The work materially helped towards the subsequent purification of the stage.

Collins, John (died 1808).—Actor and writer, was a staymaker, but took to the stage, on which he was fairly successful. He also gave humorous entertainments and published Scripscrapologia, a book of verses. He is worthy of mention for the little piece, Tomorrow, beginning “In the downhill of life when I find I’m declining,” characterised by Palgrave as “a truly noble poem.”

Collins, John Churton (1848-1908).—w riter on literature and critic, born in Gloucestershire, and educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and Oxford, became in 1894 Professor of English Literature at Birmingham. He wrote books on Sir J. Reynolds (1874), Voltaire in England (1886), Illustrations of Tennyson (1891), and also on Swift and Shakespeare, various collections of essays, Essays and Studies (1895), and Studies in Poetry and Criticism (1905), etc., and he issued edition of the works of C. Tourneur, Greene, Dryden, Herbert of Cherbury, etc.

Collins, Mortimer (1827-1876).—Novelist, son of a solicitor at Plymouth, was for a time a teacher of mathematics in Guernsey. Settling in Berkshire he adopted a literary life, and was a prolific author, writing largely for periodicals. He also wrote a good deal of occasional and humorous verse, and several novels, including Sweet Anne Page (1868), Two Plunges for a Pearl (1872), Mr. Carrington (1873), under the name of “R. T. Cotton,” and A Fight with Fortune (1876).

Collins, William (1721-1759).—Poet, son of a respectable hatter at Chichester, where he was born He was educated at Chichester, Winchester, and Oxford His is a melancholy career. Disappointed with the reception of his poems, especially his Odes, he sank into despondency, fell into habits of intemperance, and after fits of melancholy, deepening into insanity, died a physical and mental wreck. Posterity has signally reversed the judgment of his contemporaries, and has placed him at the head of the lyrists of his age. He did not write much, but all that he wrote is precious. His first publication was a small vol. of poems, including the Persian (afterwards called Oriental) Eclogues (1742); but his principal work was his Odes (1747), including those to Evening and The Passions, which will live as long as the language. When Thomson died in 1748 Collins, who had been his friend, commemorated him in a beautiful ode. Another—left unfinished—that on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, was for many years