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 (d. 1808).—Actor and writer, was a staymaker, but took to the stage, on which he was fairly successful. He also gave humorous entertainments and pub. 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).—Writer on literature and critic, b. in Gloucestershire, and ed. at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Oxf., became in 1894 Prof. 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 ed. of the works of C. Tourneur, Greene, Dryden, Herbert of Cherbury, etc.
Collins, Mortimer (1827-1876).—Novelist, s. 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, s. of a respectable hatter at Chichester, where he was b. He was ed. at Chichester, Winchester, and Oxf. 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, d. 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 C., 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 lost sight of, but was discovered by Dr. Alex.
