COLLINS’ INSANITY.
Much has been said of the state of insanity to which the author of the Ode to the Passions was ultimately reduced; or rather, as Dr. Johnson happily describes it, “a depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right, without the power of pursuing it.” What Johnson has further said on this melancholy subject, shows perhaps more nature and feeling than anything he ever wrote; and yet it is remarkable that among the causes to which the poet’s malady was ascribed, he never hints at the most exciting of the whole. He tells us how Collins “loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters;” how he “delighted to roam through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.” But never does he seem to have imagined how natural it was for a mind of such a temperament to give an Eve to the Paradise of his Creation. Johnson, in truth, though, as he tells us, he gained the confidence of Collins, was not just the man into whose ear a lover would choose to pour his secrets. The fact was, Collins was greatly attached to a young lady who did not return his passion; and there seems to be little doubt, that to the consequent disappointment, preying on his mind, was due much of that abandonment of soul which marked the close of his career. The object of his passion was born the day before him; and to this circumstance, in one of his brighter moments, he made a most happy allusion. A friend remarking to the luckless lover, that his was a hard case, Collins replied, “It is so, indeed; for I came into the world a day after the fair.”