From the commencement of his career, Collins was, however, an object for sympathy instead of censure; and though few refuse their compassion to the confirmed lunatic, it is rare that the dreadful state of irresolution and misery, which sometimes exist for years before the fatal catastrophe, receives either pity or indulgence.
In 1747, Collins published his Odes, to the unrivaled splendour of a few of which he is alone indebted for his fame; but neither fame nor profit was the immediate result; and the author of the Ode on the Passions had little reason to expect, from its reception by the public, that it was destined to live as long as the passions themselves animate or distract the world.
It is uncertain at what time he undertook to publish a volume of Odes in conjunction with Joseph Warton, but the intention is placed beyond dispute by the following letter, from Warton to his brother. It is without a date, but it must have been written before the publication of Collins's Odes in 1747, and before the appearance of Dodsley's Museum, as it is evident the Ode to a Lady on the Death of Colonel Ross, which was inserted in that work, was not then in print.
