Author Collins William

William Collins (25 December 1721 – 12 June 1759) was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century. His lyrical odes mark a turn away from the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope's generation and towards the romantic era which would soon follow. Born in Chichester, the son of a hatmaker, he was educated at Winchester and Oxford. He moved to London in the 1740s and spent the last years of his life back in Chichester. His was a melancholy career. Disappointed with the reception of his poems, especially his Odes, he sank into despondency, fell into habits of intemperance, and after fits of melancholy, deepening into insanity, died a physical and mental wreck. He later came to be regarded as one of the foremost lyricists of his age, though his output was small. His first publication was a small volume of poems, including the Persian (afterwards called Oriental) Eclogues (1742); but his principal work was his Odes