Lowestoft, on a visit to an intimate friend, Dr. Daniel, who was his medical adviser. On 12 September he met his death by drowning in a shallow dyke on a farm at Carlton Colville, in the neighbourhood. At the inquest the jury returned a verdict of accidental death. The evidence showed that Collins had been taking drugs to procure sleep, and while resting on a bank had fallen into the dyke in a somnolent condition. He was buried in Oulton churchyard. He married on 11 April 1878 Pauline Mary, daughter of Thomas Henry Strangways, by whom he had issue seven children, three sons and four daughters. A civil list pension of 100l. was awarded to Mrs. Churton Collins in 1909.
By way of a memorial, Collins's friends and pupils founded Churton Collins prizes for the encouragement of English and classical study among university extension students of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. A Churton Collins memorial prize for the same subjects was also founded in the University of Birmingham. A portrait in oils by Mr. Thomas W. Holgate was placed in the Bodleian Library, and a water-colour portrait head by Mr. George Phoenix in the upper library of Balliol College, Oxford, together with a brass memorial tablet with Latin inscription by Dr. T. H. Warren. A brass memorial tablet was set up in Oulton church.
Collins's genuine love and wide knowledge of literature showed to best advantage in his lectures and in private talk, where his vivacious powers of memory never flagged. His incisive style and wide reading gave real merit to some of his ‘Quarterly’ articles; but his learning was broad rather than deep, and he suffered his combative temper and personal resentments often to cloud his critical judgment. For most of his life he overworked in order to make an adequate income, and his long exclusion from professional posts at times embittered a kindly and generous nature. Yet his vehement denunciation by speech and pen of what he had convinced himself to be injustice or imposture was invariably sincere. Excessive toil strained his nerves and fostered some morbid mental traits.
An enthusiastic student of Shakespeare, he did service by fighting in lectures and essays some popular misconceptions, but he tended to exaggerate Shakespeare's debt to classical and more especially Greek writers. Although he dwelt with effect on the debt of English poetry to the classics, he was inclined to overstate his case.
He was not successful as a textual critic. An edition of the ‘Plays and Poems of Robert Greene’ (Clarendon Press, 1905), on which he was long engaged, brought together in the introduction and notes a mass of interesting information, but the text was severely censured for inaccuracy (cf. W. W. Greg in Modern Lang. Rev. 1906). Besides those cited, his works included: 1. ‘Studies in Shakespeare,’ 1904. 2. ‘Studies in Poetry and Criticism,’ 1905. 3. ‘Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in England,’ 1905 (partly based on ‘Quarterly’ articles, Oct. 1898 and April 1903); translated into French by Pierre Deseille, 1911. 4. ‘Greek Influence on English Poetry,’ ed. by Prof. Macmillan, posthumous, 1910. 5. ‘Posthumous Essays,’ ed. by his son, L. Churton Collins, including essays on Shakespeare, Johnson, Burke, Matthew Arnold, and Browning, 1912. He also edited for educational purposes numerous English classics as well as a series of English translations of Greek drama (Clarendon Press, 1906–7).
[Life and Memoirs of John Churton Collins by his son, L. C. Collins, 1911; Letters from Algernon Charles Swinburne to John Churton Collins, 1873–1886, privately printed, 1910; The Times, 16–18 Sept. 1908; William Watson's Poems, 1906, ii., a sonnet commending Collins's stimulating conversational powers; personal knowledge.]
COLLINS, RICHARD HENN, Lord Collins of Kensington (1842–1911), judge, born in Dublin on 1 January 1842, was third son of Stephen Collins, Q.C., of the Irish bar, by his wife Frances, daughter of William Henn, a master-in-chancery. Entering Trinity College, Dublin, in 1860, he was elected scholar in 1861, and passed his final examinations in 1863 with honours in classics and moral science. He left Dublin without graduating, receiving, however, the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1902. From Dublin he migrated in 1863 to Downing College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he was bracketed fourth in the classical tripos of 1865, and the same year was elected to a fellowship at Downing, becoming an honorary fellow in 1883. Having entered as a student at the Middle Temple on 8 May 1862, and after reading in the chambers of John Welch and R. C. Williams, he was called to the bar by that society on 18 Nov. 1867. Collins joined the northern circuit, then still undivided, and it was some little tune before he got into practice; his attainments were not showy, and to the end of his career at the bar he was less successful with juries than men who in all other respects were his inferiors; his strength lay in other directions. Gradually his industry together with his wide and
