William Collins
The Centre for the Arts possesses in its store a number of gravestones, but the sole decorated memorial plaque hangs on the south wall of the John Rank Gallery. Dating from the late eighteenth century, it was the only memorial preserved in situ at the time of the restoration in the 1970s and later of the former church of St Andrew-in-Oxmarket. The memorial records details of the Collins family.
Collins was to become a poet, one who bridged the gap between the earlier poets of the century, notably Alexander Pope who wrote satirical verse in heroic couplets, and the poets of the Romantic period – although Wordsworth was not born until 1770, well after Collins’ death, and Coleridge not until 1772.
That Collins was able to spend most of his short life as a poet was a consequence of his parentage. His father, also William, was a hatter, a business run from the dwelling that preceded the present Halifax building at 21 East Street – which was where Collins was born. The business enabled Collins senior to become Mayor of Chichester twice (1714 and 1721), trade being sufficiently prosperous for him to educate his son privately; the family (there were also two older sisters, Elizabeth and Anne) seem also to have been property owners, as records exist linking them with deeds in the Witterings (the home of Collins’ mother) and in Westgate. William was sent to Winchester and later Oxford, where he was awarded his BA degree in 1743 – the same time as Gilbert White of Selborne, who later made a notable contribution to Collins’ biography.
After Oxford, Collins lived for a while in Richmond, west London, where he continued to write important poems, but his health began to deteriorate (aggravated it is surmised by the mercury used in his father’s hat business - ‘mad as a hatter’, we say), and in 1754 he was brought back by his sister Anne from a madhouse in Chelsea to Chichester, where he died in 1759.
Collins’ output as a poet was small. There are just twenty poems and a similar number of fragments. But he holds an important position in our literary history, mainly because of the musicality of his verse, and his impartiality of opinion. For instance, both his sisters married lieutenants in the army, and an uncle was a military colonel, but when he came to write an elegiac poem in memory of fallen soldiers, he wrote it for all the fallen.
This is the poem:
ODE
Written in the Year,
M D ,C C X L V I
HOW sleep the brave, who fink to reft,
By all their country's wifhes bleft !
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck her hallow'd mold,
She there fhall drefs a fweeter fod,
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By Fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unfeen their dirge is fung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To blefs the turf that wraps their clay,
And Freedom fhall a-while repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there!
Collins was buried at St Andrews but his own stone memorial is a fine design by Flaxman situated on the south wall of the baptistery in the Cathedral. He has a long entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and a new volume of biography, poetry and criticism, marking the 250th anniversary of the poet’s death and edited by Paul Foster, William Collins – Poet 1721-59 (2009) has recently been published by the University of Chichester, and is available at the Cathedral Shop or from the Universitiy’s library counter at Bishop Otter Campus.
It is intended that the site of Collins’ birth be marked by a blue plaque, and, with support agreed by the City Council, it is hoped to have this in position during 2010.
WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-59)