46. Odes | On Several | Deſcriptive and Allegoric | Subjects. | By William Collins. | [Quotation, Vignette] London: | Printed for A. Millar, in the Strand. | M.DCC.XLVII. | (Price One Shilling.)
Collins and his friend Joseph Warton, the critic, both at the time unknown, proposed to issue a volume of poems together: "Collins met me in Surrey, at Guildford races, when I wrote out for him my odes, and he likewise communicated some of his to me; and being both in very high spirits, we took courage, and resolved to join our forces, and to publish them immediately." The plan, however, fell through and they finally published separately, though almost simultaneously. This work, though dated 1747, really appeared in December, 1746. Warton's Odes on various Subjects, London, 1746, reached a second edition, but Collins's book was not a success, and it is said that, in disgust, he burned the larger part of the unsold edition.
"Each," wrote Gray, "is the half of a considerable man, and one the counterpart of the other. The first [i.e. Warton] has but little invention, very poetical choice of expression, and a good ear. The second [i.e. Collins] a fine fancy, modelled upon the antique, a bad ear, great variety of words, and images with no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not." Time has set Collins right.
The vignette on the title-page, representing a pan-pipe and harp surrounded by a wreath of fruit, laurel, oak, and palm, with heads of Pan and Apollo at the top, is by Gerard (?) Van der Gucht. Thin woodcut head-bands at the beginning of some of the odes, and a tail-piece after the first one, furnish all the ornament for this pathetic volume.
Octavo.
Collation: 2 ll., 52 pp.