COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON (1848-1908).—­Writer on literature and critic, b. in Gloucestershire, and ed. at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and Oxf., became in 1894 Prof. of English Literature at Birmingham.  He wrote books on Sir J. Reynolds (1874), Voltaire in England (1886), Illustrations of Tennyson (1891), and also on Swift and Shakespeare, various collections of essays, Essays and Studies (1895), and Studies in Poetry and Criticism (1905), etc., and he issued ed. of the works of C. Tourneur, Greene, Dryden, Herbert of Cherbury, etc.

COLLINS, MORTIMER (1827-1876).—­Novelist, s. of a solicitor at Plymouth, was for a time a teacher of mathematics in Guernsey.  Settling in Berkshire he adopted a literary life, and was a prolific author, writing largely for periodicals.  He also wrote a good deal of occasional and humorous verse, and several novels, including Sweet Anne Page (1868), Two Plunges for a Pearl (1872), Mr. Carrington (1873), under the name of “R.T.  Cotton,” and A Fight with Fortune (1876).

COLLINS, WILLIAM (1721-1759).—­Poet, s. of a respectable hatter at Chichester, where he was b. He was ed. at Chichester, Winchester, and Oxf.  His is 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, d. a physical and mental wreck.  Posterity has signally reversed the judgment of his contemporaries, and has placed him at the head of the lyrists of his age.  He did not write much, but all that he wrote is precious.  His first publication was a small vol. of poems, including the Persian (afterwards called Oriental) Eclogues (1742); but his principal work was his Odes (1747), including those to Evening and The Passions, which will live as long as the language.  When Thomson died in 1748 C., who had been his friend, commemorated him in a beautiful ode.  Another—­left unfinished—­that on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, was for many years lost sight of, but was discovered by Dr. Alex.  Carlyle (q.v.).  C.’s poetry is distinguished by its high imaginative quality, and by exquisitely felicitous descriptive phrases.

Memoirs prefixed to Dyce’s ed. of Poems (1827), Aldine ed., Moy Thomas, 1892.

COLLINS, WILLIAM WILKIE (1824-1889).—­Novelist, s. of William C., R.A., entered Lincoln’s Inn, and was called to the Bar 1851, but soon relinquished law for literature.  His first novel was Antonina (1850), a historical romance.  He found his true field, however, in the novel of modern life, in which his power lies chiefly in the construction of a skilful plot, which holds the attention of the reader and baffles his curiosity to the last.  In Count Fosco, however, he has contributed an original character to English fiction.  Among his numerous novels two, The Woman in White (1860), and The Moonstone (1868), stand out pre-eminent.  Others are The Dead Secret (1857), Armadale (1866), No Name (1862), After Dark, “I say No," etc.  He collaborated with Dickens in No Thoroughfare.