one of the finest of his poems. Not long after, he was attacked by a
disease of the brain, from which he suffered, at intervals, during the remainder of his short life. He died at Chichester in 1759, at the age of thirty-eight.
[20.] Collins’s best poem is the Ode to Evening; his most elaborate, the Ode on the Passions; and his best known, the Ode beginning—
“How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blessed!”
His latest and best critic says of his poems: “His range of flight was perhaps the narrowest, but assuredly the highest, of his generation. He could not be taught singing like a finch, but he struck straight upward for the sun like a lark.... The direct sincerity and purity of their positive and straightforward inspiration will always keep his poems fresh and sweet in the senses of all men. He was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of colour into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the labours of their lives.”
[ CHAPTER VII.]
THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
[1.] Prose-Writers.—The four greatest prose-writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century are Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and Gibbon. Dr Johnson was the most prominent literary figure in London at this period; and filled in his own time much the same position that Carlyle lately held in literary circles. He wrote on many subjects—but chiefly on literature and morals; and hence he was called “The Great Moralist.” Goldsmith stands out clearly as the writer of the most pleasant and easy prose; his pen was ready for any subject; and it has been said of him with perfect truth, that he touched nothing that he did not adorn. Burke was the most eloquent writer of his time, and by far the greatest political thinker that England has ever produced. He is known by an essay he wrote when a very young man—on “The Sublime and Beautiful”; but it is to his speeches and political writings that we must look for his noblest thoughts and most eloquent language. Gibbon is one of the greatest historians and most powerful writers the world has ever seen.
[2.] Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the great essayist and lexicographer, was born at Lichfield in the year 1709. His father was a bookseller; and it was in his father’s shop that Johnson acquired his habit of omnivorous reading, or rather devouring of books. The mistress of the dame’s school, to which he first went, declared him