exalted, and his contemporaries evidently thought him, even in poetry, "a vain and empty thing." Gray's criticism has already been cited, and Dr. Jonnson, who remembered him "with kindness," thus spoke of his poetry: "His diction was often harsh, unskillfully labored, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose was certainly to write poetry. His lines are commonly of slow motion, clogged, and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure." Goldsmith also contributed his mite to this contemporary judgment when he said in his Inquiry of the Present State of Polite Learning: "The neglected author of the Persian Eclogues,' which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language, is still alive. Happy if insensible to our neglect, not raging at our ingratitude." This criticism seems to show a clear ignorance of Collins's best work, his "Odes," for who nowadays thinks of or reads his stilted Eclogues? Cowper's remark, made in 1784, is the most curious of all these delectable bits: "Of whom I did not know that he existed until I found him there," (i. e., in Johnson's Lives of the Poets.) No wonder Mr. Gosse spoke of such criticisms as characteristic expressions "of that wonderful eighteenth century through which poor Gray wandered in a life-long exile," and we might add "poor Collins," too!

6

It was left to our own century to revive Collins, and no one has better phrased current criticism of him than Mr. Gosse: "There are very few poets from whose wheat so little chaff has been winnowed as from that of Collins. His entire existing work does not extend to much more than fifteen hundred lines, at least two-thirds of which must live with the best poetry of the century." The reader naturally asks, If this be true, why did not Collins, who possessed such a wonderful gift of lyric power, write more? Matthew

Arnold has answered the same question for Gray,' and his answer will, in part, define Collins's position. Both of these poets fell on an age of prose, and, to quote Arnold's recurring phrase, they "never spoke out." But yet with this point of likeness, they differ in one essential particular: Gray's poetical inspiration failed him as he advanced in life, and during his last years he wrote comparatively little, and that was of no great consequence. With Collins the case was different. Up to the time of his madness his poems show that "his genius was advancing in precision and delicacy. His "Ode on the Popular Superstitions," though written when he was almost on the verge of madness, contains some of his best lines, and there is good reason to believe that, had his lucid moments been prolonged, he would have continued to produce more and better poetry. Still, the time in which he lived "froze the genial current of his soul." Nothing shows this better than a comparison of him with Keats, even if such comparisons are odious. Keats fell upon an age of freedom and inspiration, of intellectual conflict and reawakened energy, and though he died before he had reached the age of twenty-six, he had produced enough poetry and of such quality as to place him with English poets of the first rank. Collins, however, coming in a time indifferent to poetry, wrote but little, though his poetical life was longer than Keats's by several years.

Of all English poets Collins has possibly the narrowest range, and it is not hard to determine exactly the character and quality of his work. The three main characteristics of his poetry are beauty of form, a simple expression of natural pictures, and an exact delineation of certain allegorical emotions of the human mind. Of the three, he was truest to his age in the last, and that characteristic is the least pleasing element of his poetry. It was the fashion to put into nearly all the poetry of the time these allegorical rep

In his "English Romantic Movement" Dr. W. L. Phelps seems to have disposed of Arnold's famous phrase, though it applies as particularly to Collins, who was certainly "chilled by the public taste of the age."

resentations, and they tend to mar everything of which they are a part. Gray and Collins overload their canvas with this indistinct coloring, and it is only when they are free from such that they, are at their best. The "Elegy " and “The Bard”, Gray's best productions, are almost entirely free from allegorical machinery, and there is none to speak of in the "Ode to Evening ". As regards Collins's feeling for nature, much might be said. Nature, such as Chaucer and Milton depicted it, had been wanting in English poetry for many years before 1746, and we must give the honor to Collins for his anticipation of Wordsworth and the romantic school. But Collins was not like Chaucer — an enthusiastic poet of nature. We read his beautiful lines, but we miss. the "May morning" and "the daisy" of Chaucer. In fact, two poets could hardly be more unlike in writing of nature than Chaucer and Collins. Of course, their spheres are different Chaucer is essentially a narrative poet; Collins is essentially a lyric poet. Their descriptions of nature are therefore rather the ornaments than the basis to their verse. Chaucer loved nature for its own sake; Collins seems to have loved it for the inspiration it gave him. Chaucer bubbles over with enjoyment at his May morning; Collins looks at the landscape coolly and quietly. Chaucer particularizes; Collins generalizes. Chaucer is the exuberant poet; Collins is the scientific poet. In a word, Chaucer looks at nature from the point of view of a man; Collins looks at it from the point of view of an artist.

Despite Collins's moderation and calmness, he grows. eloquent in passages, but this eloquence appeals to the intellect by the force of imagery, not to the heart by the force of emotion. He never rises into bombast, he never sinks into bathos. His poetry is always measured, temperate,. and well-ordered. He has no sustained flights, and a long poem with him would doubtless have been a failure. perior to Gray in spontaneous outburst of lyric melody, inferior to him in the organic development and evolution of the ode, Collins is by Gray's side "a vain and empty thing

Su

indeed", when the touchstone of our materialistic age is applied to him-"What use"? In the immortal "Elegy " Gray strikes a chord that finds a response in the breast of every man, and in those familiar lines he voices sentiments that are the experiences of humanity. Has Collins added such an element to our spiritual life? Has he taught us any new lessons of life and of morality? Candor compels us to answer, no; for he has chiselled out his poetical material into a beautiful statue that must be looked on and admired, but whose polish and finish are its chief characteristics. "It is marble-pure, but also marble-cold."

The limitations of Collins's genius are thus easily recognized. While a finished setting was granted him, he was deprived of that wide and deep expression of thought and feeling that belongs only to the greatest poets. His verse has a warmth of coloring unusual to the poetry of his time; but his thought lacks warmth of feeling. It impresses, but it fails to move one. Collins was a genius in the truest sense of the word, and we can see how narrowly he missed the highest success. He was cramped by the cold, exact, and uncritical standards of his day, and he evidently had no incentive but the love of beauty to urge him to write. He had no immediate followers, and, with the more fortunate but less gifted Gray, he stands as an innovator in the transition from classicism to naturalism. His life is a sad story, but his poetry, scant and limited as it is, has that element of beauty whose "loveliness will never pass into nothingness." This poetry may never become popular; but it will be permanent. It is true that it appeals to a limited class, "the intellectual few," but its finish and melody will never lack admirers and students. As Mr. Gosse fittingly says, "It may, perhaps, be allowed to be an almost infallible criterion of a man's taste for the highest forms of poetic art to inquire whether he has or has not a genuine love for the verses of William Collins."

CHARLES HUNTER ROSss.

AMERICUS VESPUCIUS AND THE NAMING OF AMERICA.1

The name of America, as applied to this continent, may be considered as irrevocably fixed, but for a very long period, and up to the present time, a certain amount of obloquy has attached to the name of Americus Vespucius, as though he had fraudulently and surreptitiously robbed another greater and better man of the honor and fame to which he was legitimately entitled.

With the recognized claim of Columbus as the first discoverer of America in 1492, and with the fullest knowledge of all the details of his voyages spread broadcast throughout Europe at the time, it has always seemed a mystery to many how the name of Americus Vespucius should at first have been given, and have become permanently attached to the whole of the great continent of which clearly he was not the discoverer.

Many writers have not hesitated to ascribe to intrigue, falsification, and gross mendacity, a circumstance for which they could find no other theory, although so far as contemporary evidence exists, there seems no cause for regarding Americus Vespucius as other than an intelligent and honorable man, and there is certainly nothing to show that he himself had any part in affixing his name to America other than his having wrttten to a friend an interesting account of his own voyages. It is quite important and interesting, therefore, to ascertain as far as possible how America came to be thus named, and to relieve the memory of the Florentine navigator of the opprobrium which has so long rested upon his name. This we think has been practically done by the valuable work of Mr. John Fiske upon the Discovery of America (already reviewed in these pages ;). but mistaken notions upon the subject are so widespread

Discovery of America, by John Fiske; 2 vols. Boston, 1892.