Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/353

Collier 1719, 8vo. 39. 'A Further Defence, being an Answer to a Reply to the Vindication. . . ,' 1719. These tracts were published in a collected form without title-pages in 1736. 40. Possibly in conjunction with others 'A Communion Office, taken partly from Primitive Liturgies and partly from the First English Reformed Common Prayer-book,' 1718, 8vo. 41. 'Several [twelve] Discourses upon Practical Subjects, 1725, 8vo, some of these also published separately. 42. ' God not the Author of Evil, being an additional sermon. . . ,' 1726, 8vo.  COLLIER, JOEL (18th cent.), was the pseudonym of a musician named (not of J. L. Bicknell, as stated by Fetis), who was a tenor-player at the Italian Opera in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and who wrote a satire of Dr. Burney's 'Musical Tour,' entitled 'Musical Travels in England,' which enjoyed a wide popularity. The first edition appeared in 1774; the second was published in 1775, and contains an appendix consisting of a fictitious account of the last sickness and death of Joel Collier, by Nat Collier. Other editions appeared in 1776 and 1785, but all editions are rare, owing, says M. Fetis, to the suppression of the work by the Burney and Bicknell (?) families. In 1818 Veal followed his previous effort by a scathing satire of Jean-Baptiste Logier's system of pianoforte instruction, entitled 'Joel Collier Redivivus, an entirely new edition of that celebrated author's Musical Travels, dedicated to that great musical luminary of the musical world, J. B. L-g-r' (London, 1818, 8vo).

 COLLIER, JOHN,  (1708–1786), author and painter, son of the Rev. John Collier, minister of Stretford, near Manchester, 'a poor country curate whose stipend never amounted to 30l''. a year,' was born at Urmston on 16 Dec. 1708, and baptised at Flixton on 6 Jan. 1708-9. He was in all probability educated by his father, who intended to bring him up for the church. In his fourteenth year, however, he was apprenticed to a Dutch-loom weaver at Newton Moor, Mottram, but after little more than a year, having prevailed with his master to cancel the indentures, he became an itinerating schoolmaster. This roving occupation he continued until 1729, when he was appointed sub-master at the free school at Milnrow, near Rochdale, under the Rev. Robert Pearson, with whom he shared the annual salary of 201. On Pearson's death in 1739 Collier succeeded him as master, though he did not procure his license from the Bishop of Chester until 1742. He held the position up to his death in 1786, with the exception of an interval of some months in 1751, when he filled the situation of bookkeeper to a cloth manufacturer at Kebroyd in Yorkshire. His patron at Milnrow was Colonel Richard Townley of Belfield, who remained his friend to the end and wrote his biography after death. He began early to exercise his faculty for rhyming, and he acquired a knowledge of music, drawing, painting, modelling, and etching. Townley reports that his landscapes and portraits were drawn in good taste. At Shaw chapel and elsewhere there are some sacred figures by him; but serious painting he soon abandoned for caricature, and in the course of his career he produced large numbers of grotesque pictures of buffoons and hideous old women, painted in a style which is absolutely devoid of artistic merit. They found a ready sale in the north of England, and many specimens were until lately to be met with, chiefly in the drinking-rooms of old public-houses. He came to be styled the Lancashire Hogarth, but the designation is inappropriate. He turned his hand occasionally to carriage and sign painting, and to gravestone carving, as well as to land surveying, at which he was expert.

In 1739 he wrote ' The Blackbird,' a versified satire on Mr. Samuel Chetham of Castleton, and first used the signature of 'Tim Bobbin.'

From an early period Collier appears to have made a study of the Lancashire dialect. He was an acute observer of character, and for many years used to take note of every quaint and out-of-the-way term or phrase he heard in village alehouses and elsewhere. He had some acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon and early English literature, and possessed a good library for a man in his position. Among his books was a copy of Chaucer's ' Canterbury Tales,' printed by Caxton, which after- 