Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/406

 Dr. T. H. Warren, and Canon Rawnsley, and they delighted in his spirited talk and in his capacious memory, which enabled him to recite with a rare facility and enthusiasm long extracts from great prose as well as from great poetry in Latin, Greek, and English. This faculty he retained through life. From his undergraduate days he cherished an abiding affection for his university. Through life he spent most of his vacations in literary work at Oxford.

His comparative failure in the Oxford schools and an unwillingness to entertain the clerical profession disappointed his uncle, and Collins had thenceforth to depend solely on his own efforts for a livelihood. A period of struggle followed. For three years he divided his time between coaching in classics at Oxford and writing for the press in London. From 1872 he contributed miscellaneous articles, many on Old London, to the ‘Globe’ newspaper. In the autumn of 1873, when his resources were low, he accepted the offer of W. Baptiste Scoones, the proprietor of a London coaching establishment, to prepare candidates for the public service in classics and English literature, and this occupation was long the mainstay of his income. But he was always ambitious of literary fame, and in the same year (1873) he designed an edition of the plays of Cyril Tourneur, the Elizabethan dramatist.

Swinburne had recently published a high commendation of Tourneur's work, and Collins, an ardent admirer of Swinburne's genius, wrote to him of his scheme. The result was a close intimacy with the poet, which lasted thirteen years. Swinburne was fascinated by his new acquaintance's literary zeal, frequently entertained him, read to him unpublished poems, and showed confidence in his literary judgment. Subsequently Collins sought with a youthful naiveté introductions to other prominent men of letters. He met and corresponded with Mark Pattison. He had long interviews with Carlyle, Robert Browning (1886), and Froude, confiding to his full diaries records of these experiences.

Although Collins's edition of Tourneur's writings did not appear till 1878, he made in the interval progress as an author. His earliest volume, ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds as a Portrait Painter’ (1874), was mere letterpress for illustrations. An edition of the ‘Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’ (1881) was eagerly welcomed by Swinburne. At the same time his literary connections extended. He edited Milton's ‘Samson Agonistes’ for the Clarendon Press (1883), the first volume in a long series of school editions of English classical poetry. (Sir) Leslie Stephen, then editor of the ‘Cornhill,’ accepted an article on Aulus Gellius (March 1878). In three subsequent articles in the ‘Cornhill’ called ‘A New Study of Tennyson’ (Jan., July 1880 and July 1881) Collins directed attention to parallels between Tennyson's poetry and that of earlier poets with an emphasis which, while displeasing the poet, provoked curiosity. In Oct. 1878, to Collins's intense satisfaction, an essay by him on Dryden appeared in the ‘Quarterly Review.’ Regular relations with the ‘Quarterly’ were thus established and increased his repute. Three articles there on Lord Bolingbroke (Jan. 1880 and Jan. and April 1881), together with another essay on ‘Voltaire in England’ (from the ‘Cornhill,’ Oct. and Dec. 1882), were collected into a volume in 1886; while in 1893 two articles on Swift were similarly reissued from the ‘Quarterly’ of April 1882 and July 1883. Collins's contributions to the ‘Quarterly’ reached a total of sixteen, and all showed a faculty for research and were marked by a trenchancy of style which recalled Macaulay.

In 1880 Collins inaugurated an additional occupation in which he won great success. He then lectured for the first time for the London University Extension Society, delivering a course on English literature in the Lent term at Brixton. He pursued this work, with missionary fervour, for twenty-seven years, lecturing for the Oxford Extension Society as well as for the London society in all parts of England. His extension lectures owed much of their effect to his powers of memory, and they stirred in his hearers something of his own literary enthusiasm. He also lectured with like result at many ladies' schools in or near London; gave an extension course to the English community at Hamburg; early in 1894 lectured in Philadelphia for the American University Extension Society, also addressing audiences in New York and many towns in New England; and thrice—in 1897, 1901 and 1905—delivered short literary courses at the Royal Institution in London.

From an early stage of his career as a lecturer he sought to bring home to his university the need of repairing the neglect which English literature suffered in the academic curriculum. He argued that the conjoint study of classical and English literature was essential to an efficient education. Ambitious to give effect to