Henderson Esqvire

Grate Exposition

Parc of Hide

at London.

JAMES T. HAMMACK.

Wearing Gloves in Presence of Royalty (Vol. i., p. 366.; Vol. ii., pp.165. 467.).

—Hull, in his History of the Glove Trade, says that Charles IV., King of Spain, was so much under the influence of any lady who wore white kid gloves, that the use of them at Court was strictly prohibited. He refers the reader to the Mémoires de la Duchesse d'Abrantès, tome viii. p. 35.

PHILIP S. KING.

Errors of Poets.

—In Vol. iv., p. 150., amongst the "Errors of Painters" a picture is noticed, in which "the five wise and five foolish virgins have increased into two sevens." A similar mistake is made by Longfellow in his last poem, The Golden Legend, p. 219., where one of the characters says:

H. C. DE ST. CROIX.

Queries.

THE POET COLLINS.

The deeply interesting additions lately made in your pages to our knowledge of General Wolfe, induces me to hope, if not quite to expect, that something, however small, may be done in the same joint-stock manner for the memory of the poet Collins. Sir Egerton Brydges asserts that "new facts regarding Collins are not to be had," and I am deeply sensible of the value of Mr. Dyce's labours, as well as of those of the editor of Mr. Pickering's Aldine edition of his works. No pains, trouble, or expense, have been spared in collecting and arranging the "dulces exuviæ" of the highly gifted poet; and the memoir prefixed to Pickering's edition reflects no small credit upon the good taste and feeling of the editor.

Still may I not ask, through the medium of the "N. & Q.," whether some further discoveries may not possibly be made? Cannot any one connected with the town of Chichester, where Collins was born and died—any one brought up at Winchester College, where he was educated, lend a helping hand? Are there no additional traces of him as directly or indirectly associated with the Wartons, Johnson, Quin, Garrick, Foote, and Thomson? Cannot some of his letters be discovered? Some fragments of his poetry, however disjointed? Some portions of his prose? There seems a mystery about Collins himself, as strange as that about his own weird compositions. Though beloved and admired by all, no one ever picked up accurate information respecting him. He has been blamed for waywardness and want of perseverance, as if these were not symptoms of the fearful visitation that wrecked his noble mind; or as if perseverance and concentration of energies in any pursuit were not natural gifts as much as acquired, and gifts of a high and most valuable kind too. Collins did not want perseverance whilst at school: he came off first on the roll of which Joseph Warton was second; and his Oriental Eclogues, written before his eighteenth year, are not unworthy of the boyhood of any of our greatest poets. Besides, he was a highly accomplished classical scholar, an accurate linguist, was well read in early English poetry and black-letter books, was passionately fond of music; and some of his poems, if nothing else, prove him to have viewed nature with a painter's eye. In his own line of poetry, the personification of abstract qualities, Collins stands unrivalled. Let us but compare him with all or any of his numerous imitators, and we ever find him in the calm dignity of genius,