Sunday, August 31, 2025

The Fugitives




Agib and Secander, from a 1798 edition of William Collins' Poetical Works


        E C L O G U E   T H E   F O U R T H

    A G I B and S E C A N D E R; or, the Fugitives.
              S C E N E, a Mountain in Circassia.
                         T I M E,  MIDNIGHT.

   In fair Circassia, where to Love inclin'd,
Each Swain was blest, for ev'ry Maid was kind!
At that still Hour, when awful Midnight reigns,
And none, but Wretches, haunt the twilight Plains;
What Time the Moon had hung her Lamp on high,
And past in Radiance, thro' the cloudless Sky:
Sad o’er the Dews, two Brother Shepherds fled,
Where wild'ring Fear and desp'rate Sorrow led.
Fast as they prest their Flight, behind them lay
Wide ravag'd Plains, and Valleys stole away.
Along the Mountain’s bending Sides they ran,
Till faint and weak Secander thus began.

                         SECANDER
O stay thee, Agib, for my Feet deny,
No longer friendly to my Life, to fly.
Friend of my Heart, O turn thee and survey,
Trace our sad Flight thro' all its length of Way!
And first review that long-extended Plain,
And yon wide Groves, already past with Pain!
Yon ragged Cliff, whose dang'rous Path we try'd,
And last this lofty Mountain’s weary Side!

                               AGIB
   Weak as thou art, yet hapless must thou know
The Toils of Flight, or some severer Woe!
Still as I haste, the Tartar shouts behind,
And Shrieks and Sorrows load the sad'ning Wind:
In rage of Heart, with Ruin in his Hand,
He blasts our Harvests, and deforms our Land.
Yon Citron Grove, whence first in Fear we came,
Droops its fair Honours to the conqu'ring Flame:
Far fly the Swains, like us, in deep Despair,
And leave to ruffian Bands their fleecy Care.

                          SECANDER
   Unhappy Land, whose Blessings tempt the Sword,
In vain, unheard, thou call’st thy Persian Lord!
In vain, thou court’st him, helpless to thine Aid,
To shield the Shepherd, and protect the Maid,
Far off, in thoughtless Indolence resign’d,
Soft Dreams of Love and Pleasure sooth his Mind:
’Midst fair Sultanas lost in idle Joy,
No Wars alarm him, and no Fears annoy.

                            AGIB
   Yet these green Hills, in Summer’s sultry Heat,
Have lent the Monarch oft a cool Retreat,
Sweet to the Sight is Zabran’s flow'ry Plain,
And once by Maids and Shepherds lov'd in vain!
No more the Virgins shall delight to rove
By Sargis’ Banks, or Irwan’s shady Grove:
On Tarkie’s Mountain catch the cooling Gale,
Or breathe the Sweets of Aly’s flow'ry Vale:
Fair Scenes! but, ah no more with Peace possest,
With Ease alluring, and with Plenty blest.
No more the Shepherds whit'ning Tents appear,
Nor the kind Products of a bounteous Year;
No more the Date with snowy Blossoms crown’d,
But Ruin spreads her baleful Fires around.

                        SECANDER
   In vain Circassia boasts her spicy Groves,
For ever fam'd for pure and happy Loves:
In vain she boasts her fairest of the Fair,
Their Eyes’ blue languish, and their golden Hair!
Those Eyes in Tears, their fruitless Grief must send,
Those Hairs the Tartar’s cruel Hand shall rend.

                            AGIB
Ye Georgian Swains that piteous learn from far
Circassia’s Ruin, and the Waste of War:
Some weightier Arms than Crooks and Staves prepare,
To shield your Harvests, and defend your Fair:
The Turk and Tartar like Designs pursue,
Fix’d to destroy, and stedfast to undo.
Wild as his Land, in native Deserts bred,
By Lust incited, or by Malice led,
The Villain-Arab, as he prowls for Prey,
Oft marks with Blood and wasting Flames the Way;
Yet none so cruel as the Tartar Foe,
To Death inur'd, and nurst in Scenes of Woe.

   He said, when loud along the Vale was heard
A shriller Shriek, and nearer Fires appear’d:
Th' affrighted Shepherds thro' the Dews of Night
Wide o’er the Moon-light Hills, renew’d their Flight.


This is the fourth of the young William Collins' Persian Eclogues, published in 1742 when he was at Oxford. He probably wrote them in 1740, his last year at Winchester College (Joseph Warton says so), and I think the schoolboy poet tuned into something about the pastoral that felt new then but has become more obvious ever since. He saw that a pastoral world of shepherds and flocks and maids and natural beauty was defenceless, and was not something that powerful forces would leave alone, never mind actively protect, but something that in due course they would have a reason to ravage. A pastoral scene didn't signal stability, but instability. It was gold lying on the ground. It was intrinsically fugitive. 

The immediate inspiration for his Eclogues wasn't a poetic one. It was Thomas Salmon's Modern History, which was originally published monthly to fill 31 small volumes (1724-38), then reprinted as three massive ones (1739) -- specifically the section on The Present State of Persia (Volume I, pp. 305-382). 


Of course there's no requirement for the setting of a pastoral poem to have any kind of basis in fact, but this one kind of does. Collins' starting-point is Salmon's account (Vol I, pp. 318-319) of the fairly recent events leading to the downfall of Shah Sultan Hossein (=Shah Soltan Hoseyn), the indolent Persian ruler referred to in the poem. His chief opponent was "MEREWEYS" (=Mirwais Shah Hotak), who was disappointed not to have been put in charge of Kandahar province. Mirwais was "originally a Tartar" according to Salmon (actually he was a Pashtun) and he recruited "Tartar" support. He took Kandahar, styled himself Protector, and Persia was in turmoil for some years, during which Mirwais died and was replaced by his son Mahmood, and eventually the Sultan was toppled. Meanwhile "The Turk, and the Muscovite, did not fail to make their advantages of these distractions in Persia. The Muscovites surprized Derbent, and Tarki, which lay next them on the west side of the Caspian sea, and afterwards extended their arms into Gilan"....etc.  What Salmon was referring to here was the Persian Expedition of Peter the Great, in 1722-23. 

So Collins transmuted Peter the Great's expeditionary force of Russians (aka Muscovites) into his "ruffian Bands" of Tartars. (The latter term, though ultimately related to the Tatar people, was used with great vagueness by western geographers to refer, often pejoratively and fearfully, to the peoples of vast regions of central Asia about which they knew little.)



Map of the Caucasus region by Pieter van der Aa (Leyden, 1707)


[Image source: Wikipedia .]



As for the location where this all took place, Collins named it Circassia. Salmon had more correctly named it Shirvan, the northernmost Safavid province (also referred to as Daghestan). Yet Collins' usage 
can be explained by such a map as the one above, published by Pieter van der Aa in 1707, in which Circassia is shown, not just where it actually lies in the NW Caucasus bordering the Black Sea, but all the way across to the Caspian Sea in the east, including Derbent, etc. 

Some of the names mentioned in the poem are taken from Salmon (I, p. 306) and they are in Shirvan: the river "Sargis" (=Sargi), "Irwan" (=Erivan, Irvan) and "Tarkie" (=Tarku). I don't know where Collins picked up "Zabran", but it's apparently the medieval port of Shabran, to the south of Derbent. "Aly’s flow'ry Vale" might refer to the Alazani river (a name known to Strabo and Pliny) -- but perhaps I'm getting rather carried away. At any rate, he took more care than you might expect about his pastoral eclogue's geographical setting; you need to be thinking present-day Azerbaijan rather than Circassia. [Collins could have read about Circassia proper in Thomas Salmon's book (see I 406-407 on "Circassian Tartary"), but I'm not sure he did.]

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Yon Citron Grove

The Citron (Citrus medica) is a small evergreen tree, with knobbly fruit like huge rough lemons, much used in Persian cuisine. 

the Date with snowy Blossoms crown’d

The blossom of the Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is snowy, or at least creamy. The fronds of blossom look fluffy on the male trees, and like strings of small balls on the female trees. 


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For European poets, Circassia was becoming a name to conjure with. William Collins was very keen on Fairfax's translation of Tasso, in which Argantes, the pagan adversary of Tancred, is frequently described as "the Circassian". Tasso, though his epic was supposedly about the First Crusade, was writing in full consciousness of the contemporary Ottoman threat, and in the Ottoman world there were prominent Circassians as well as Turks. 

And then there were Circassian girls, traded as sex slaves within the Ottoman and Persian empires, and sometimes attaining to the Sultan's seraglio. Of course they were rarely seen by Europeans, but it was inferred that the Circassians, both male and female, must be an exceptionally good-looking people. 

Twenty years before Collins wrote his Eclogues, Samuel Croxall anonymously published The Fair Circassian, A Dramatic Performance. This was designed as a sort of cantata-text based on The Song of Songs, and accompanied by other poems of an equally erotic nature. Croxall proposed that the heroine of Solomon's poem could not have been Pharoah's daughter, because she was patently a shepherdess. In fact, she was a favoured slave in one of Solomon's 62 seraglios, a Circassian with blue eyes named Saphira. I hope this isn't moving too fast for you! 


Somehow the idea had grown that the Ottomans' Circassian slaves must be as different as possible from the black slaves that many Europeans couldn't bear to think about except with kneejerk disgust (we demonize those we wrong, not those who wrong us). Surely (it was supposed) the Circassian girls weren't really slaves in the same way, and their whiteness was emphasized. Hence they were pictured with fair hair and blue eyes, as in Collins' poem. [It's not totally wrong: Circassian people usually do have pale skin, sometimes have fair or reddish hair, and sometimes have greenish eyes.]

"Circassian" was in fact becoming a glamour-word, and it would soon be used to market beauty products. You can read more about the bizarre history of the Circassian Beauty meme on Wikipedia: I'd recommend looking at the French article as well as the English one. 




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Peter the Great's Expedition in 1722-23 was an early foreshadowing of Russia's intention to expand its territory to the south. For a century from 1763 Russia was sporadically at war with the Circassians proper, and from 1810 the Russian strategy was proto-genocidal: the first to suffer were the Kabardian tribe of eastern Circassia. Some of the cleansing was directed by General Alexey Yermolov, hero of Borodino and other Napoleonic battles; more by General Grigory Zass in the 1830s, who didn't subscribe to any stereotypes about Circassian beauty. He had different stereotypes: the Circassians were "subhuman filth", a "lowly race". The atrocities he oversaw are hard to read about.

In 1857 General Dmitry Milyutin argued that the Circassians should be eliminated (expelled or exterminated); he became Minister of War in 1861. General Count Nikolay Yevdokimov saw to it that extermination was the preferred option. The conflict continued until the final collapse of Circassian resistance in 1864, and then came what might be called the great Circassian genocide. Perhaps two million people were killed in situ, and the Ottoman Empire recorded a million migrants, half of whom died on the journey. Only 150,000 Circassians were left in the Caucasus, and it's still the case today that 90% of Circassians live in other countries. 
Unhappy Land, whose Blessings tempt the Sword!
Collins was right about that. But it wasn't the "Tartars" or the "villain-Arabs" who were to be dreaded. It was the Christians. 

The Capture of Aul Gimry, 17th October 1832. 1891 painting by Franz Roubaud.


The Mountaineers leave the Aul. 1872 painting by Pyotr Nikolayevich Gruzinsky.

[Image source: Wikipedia . The artist was a Georgian working in Russia.]


Crossing the Ford. 1890 painting by Rudolf Otto von Ottenfeld.


[Image source: Wikipedia .]

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The Circassian genocide was followed by (and to a certain extent provoked) the Armenian and Assyrian genocides of WW1. These ethnic groups -- mountain villagers again -- were Christians, wooed by Russia and distrusted by the Ottomans.

To this sorry history can be added the Soviet mass deportations of Chechens, Kalmyks, etc in the 1940s. They were moved to Central Asia and Siberia; about a quarter died on the journey. 


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Another post on William Collins:



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Tuesday, September 08, 2020

the bright uncounted Pow'rs





I've become rather obsessed recently with the poetry of William Collins (1721 - 1759). It began with seeing this epigraph to Chapter III of Scott's Anne of Geierstein (1829):


Cursed be the gold and silver, which persuade
Weak man to follow far fatiguing trade.
The lily, peace, outshines the silver store,
And life is dearer than the golden ore.
Yet money tempts us o'er the desert brown,
To every distant mart and wealthy town.
                                                  Hassan, or the Camel-driver.


This comes from the second of Collins' early Persian Eclogues. The poem starts out like this:


SCENE, the Desart. TIME, MID-DAY.

In silent Horror o'er the Desart-Waste
The Driver Hassan with his Camels past.
One Cruise of Water on his Back he bore,
And his light Scrip contain'd a scanty Store:
A Fan of painted Feathers in his Hand,
To guard his shaded Face from scorching Sand.
The sultry Sun had gain'd the middle Sky,
And not a Tree, and not an Herb was nigh.
The Beasts, with Pain, their dusty Way pursue,
Shrill roar'd the Winds, and dreary was the View!
With desp'rate Sorrow wild th' affrighted Man
Thrice sigh'd, thrice strook his Breast, and thus began:
Sad was the Hour, and luckless was the Day,
When first from Schiraz' Walls I bent my Way.


William Collins was born in Chichester, the son of a hatter. He is said to have written the four Persian Eclogues while still at Winchester College, but they were not published until 1742 when he was at Oxford. The idea of transplanting the classical eclogue into exotic settings was a novel one, and these simple attractive poems would become popular (mainly after his death, e.g. with Langhorne's 1765 edition).

What followed, in Collins' brief active career as a poet, made significantly more radical demands on the reader. 


II
The Band, as Fairy Legends say,
Was wove on that creating Day,
When He, who call'd with Thought to Birth
Yon tented Sky, this laughing Earth,
And drest with Springs and Forests tall,
And pour'd the Main engirting all,
Long by the lov'd Enthusiast woo'd,
Himself in some Diviner Mood,
Retiring, sate with her alone,
And plac'd her on his Saphire Throne,
The whiles, the vaulted Shrine around,
Seraphic Wires were heard to sound,
Now sublimest Triumph swelling,
Now on Love and Mercy dwelling;
And she, from out the veiling Cloud,
Breath'd her magic Notes aloud:
And Thou, Thou rich-hair'd Youth of Morn,
And all thy subject Life was born!
The dang'rous Passions kept aloof,
Far from the sainted growing Woof:
But near it sat Ecstatic Wonder,
List'ning the deep applauding Thunder:
And Truth, in sunny Vest array'd,
By whose the Tarsel's Eyes were made;
All the shad'wy Tribes of Mind
In braided Dance their Murmurs join'd,
And all the bright uncounted Pow'rs,
Who feed on Heav'n's ambrosial Flow'rs.
Where is the Bard, whose Soul can now
Its high presuming Hopes avow?
Where He who thinks, with Rapture blind,
This hallow'd Work for Him design'd?


(the Epode, or strictly Mesode, the second of the three sections making up Collins' Ode on the Poetical Character)

Collins' poetic world is an extreme one. His idea of the poet is not so much a maker or an artist with a social dimension, as a rare visionary concerned with heaven. Milton is his model. 

But the manner of the poetry is Collins' own: the incessant imagery and allegory, the allusions, inversions and condensations that often leave us wondering who and where and what we're talking about, but euphoric with the elevation and feeling like a new door of perception has been opened, even unhinged. (This is where the obsessional bit comes in.) 

Band, Woof: Compared to Florimel's girdle of chastity (Faerie Queene IV.5), this is Fancy's "Cest", bestowed by her on the true poet. This section describes its creation. 
He: God.
The lov'd Enthusiast, her, she: Fancy, the image-making power.
Saphire Throne: Compare Milton's At a Solemn Music: where the sisters Voice and Verse present "That undisturbèd Song of pure content, / Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne / To Him that sits theron" (I can't avoid hearing the strains of Parry's 1887 choral version). Milton's poem is a principal foundation for Collins' poem, but Milton might have been horrified by Collins' assertion that God places Fancy herself on the sapphire throne. (The ultimate source of the image is Ezekiel 1:26, and cf. Exodus 24:10. Is it too obvious to add that we're talking about the blue sky?) 
Thou rich-hair'd Youth of Morn: the sun, hence Apollo, hence the divinely inspired Poet.
Tarsel: Strictly any male falcon, but perhaps meaning an eagle (traditionally supposed to be able to gaze directly at the sun). 


[I was helped by these essays:

Patricia Meyer Spacks, "Collins' Imagery" (Studies in Philology, 1965)


Gerald A. Kirk, "Collins' Love Poem: 'Ode on the Poetical Character'" (South Central Review, 1984)


Casey Finch, "Immediacy in the Odes of William Collins" (Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1987)



Highly recommended!

Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (2019), Ch 5, "The Sublime as Romance: Two Texts from Collins":


 (The texts in question are the "Ode to Fear" and the "Ode on the Poetical Character"). 

 ]

William Collins' Poetical Works (1865) on Project Gutenberg:


(It includes the splendid appreciation by Sir Egerton Brydges, and John Langhorne's influential Observations on the Eclogues and Odes.)


An 1815 edition of William Collins' Poetical Works:


It also includes Samuel Johnson's brief and moving "Life of Collins":

. . . . His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties. 
     His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform.  There is a degree of want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity.  That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation.
    The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness.  He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it.  These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellect he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned.  He was for some time confined in a house of lunatics, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chichester, where death, in 1756, came to his relief.
    After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had directed to meet him.  There was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school.  When his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, ‘I have but one book,’ said Collins, ‘but that is the best.’”


Collins' last major poem was An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry. 

Here he argues for the intrinsic worth of traditional legends and superstitions as material for the poet; though they aren't true in the narrow sense, yet rehearsing them releases images that invoke a deeper truth. This is a more concrete and moderate elaboration of the high-pitched ideas about Fancy in the Ode on the Poetical Character (and see also the Ode to Fear). Here's the second stanza:


There must thou wake perforce thy Doric quill,
'Tis Fancy's land to which thou sett'st thy feet;
Where still, 'tis said, the fairy people meet
Beneath each birken shade on mead or hill.
There each trim lass that skims the milky store,
To the swart tribes their creamy bowl allots;
By night they sip it round the cottage-door,
While airy minstrels warble jocund notes.
There every herd, by sad experience, knows
How, wing'd with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly;
When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes,
Or, stretch'd on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie.
Such airy beings awe th' untutor'd swain:
Nor thou, though learn'd, his homelier thoughts neglect;
Let thy sweet muse the rural faith sustain:
These are the themes of simple, sure effect,
That add new conquests to her boundless reign,
And fill, with double force, her heart-commanding strain.

swart tribes: brownies. Traditionally each house or farm had only a single brownie. Compare the lines in Milton's L'Allegro about the "drudging goblin". Collins seems to reduce the household spirits in size and to enjoy the picture of them sipping communally from a single dish. 


And here's the twelfth stanza:


In scenes like these, which, daring to depart
From sober truth, are still to nature true,
And call forth fresh delight to Fancy's view,
Th' heroic muse employ'd her TASSO'S art!
How have I trembled, when at TANCRED'S stroke,
In gushing blood the gaping cypress pour'd;
When each live plant with mortal accents spoke,
And the wild blast upheav'd the vanish'd sword!
How have I sat, when pip'd the pensive wind,
To hear his harp by British FAIRFAX strung.
Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind
Believ'd the magic wonders which he sung!
Hence at each sound imagination glows;
Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows;
Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong and clear,
And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmonious ear.

Fairfax: Edward Fairfax, translator of Tasso. 


Johnson mentioned the poem as lost, but this jogged the memory of Alexander Carlyle, who rediscovered the manuscript among the papers of a friend of John Home (the poem's dedicatee). The poem was read at the Literary Club of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1784. The manuscript contains several lacunae.

Text, preserving the lacunae: 

An anonymous pamphlet of 1788 claimed to contain Collins' complete and final revision of the poem. This is the text that appeared in most nineteenth-century editions, including the 1815 and 1865 editions linked above. Happy nineteenth-century readers, able to enjoy what they supposed was the authentic and complete text of one of Collins' best poems! 

Walter C. Bronson's 1898 edition, laying out the detailed arguments for regarding the Anonymous Edition as fraudulent (see p. 121 - 132):




The Anonymous Edition is most interesting for its interpolated Stanza Five:

To monarchs dear, some hundred miles astray,
Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow!
The Seer, in Sky, shriek'd as the blood did flow,
When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay!
As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth,
In the first year of the first George's reign,
And battles rag'd in welkin of the North,
They mourn'd in air, fell Rebellion, slain!
And as, of late, they joy'd in Preston's fight,
Saw at sad Falkirk, all their hopes near crown'd!
They rav'd! divining, thro' their Second Sight,
Pale, red Culloden, where these hopes were drown'd!
Illustrious William! Britain's guardian name!
One William sav'd us from a tyrant's stroke;
He, for a sceptre, gain'd heroic fame,
But thou, more glorious, Slavery's chain hast broke,
To reign a private man, and bow to Freedom's yoke!


Aurora: On 6 March 1716 there was a spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) in southern England. This is an unusual sight so far south. Observers described the display as armies fighting in the sky. It occurred at a time when political tensions were high. Many were horrified by the public execution of Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure, two leaders of the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, at Tower Hill on 24 February 1716.  Whig authors like Defoe and Addison claimed (perhaps falsely) that Tory Jacobite sympathizers were indulging in "Highland" babble about the aurora and its dire prognostications; they, on the other hand, insisted that celestial phenomena had natural causes. (E.g. the predictable recurrence of Halley's comet. Sir Edmund Halley took great interest in the 1716 aurora, and was dismissive of "battles in the air".) 

Some earlier editions of Collins' poems absurdly state that the aurora borealis (northern lights) were never mentioned prior to 1716, so cannot have existed. But between 1621 (Galileo) and 1716 (Halley) there do indeed seem to be remarkably few reports of auroral sightings, compared with the centuries before and after. Doubtless there was still some high-latitude auroral activity. But lower-latitude aurorae usually occur after geomagnetic storms, which in turn are caused by sunspots, so the Maunder Minimum (a period of very low sunspot activity in 1645-1715) could reasonably account for the lack of reports. This was also the period of the "Little Ice Age" (1650 onwards), but that may be unconnected. (The currently predominant hypothesis is that the Little Ice Age was caused by volcanic activity.) 

This is a complicated subject. I found these articles useful:

Lord Derwentwater's Lights: Prediction and the Aurora Polaris (Patricia Fara, 1996)
Maunder Minimum (Wikipedia)
Auroral Observations in Finland-Visual Sightings during the 18th and 19th Centuries
(Heikki Nevanlinna, 1995)


Illustrious William: William, Duke of Cumberland (1721 - 1765), youngest son of George II. The victor of Culloden, also known as "Butcher Cumberland" for the harshness of his reprisals. The victory was widely celebrated in England. Compared in subsequent lines to William III (1650 - 1702).

This may all be the fraudulent 1788 version, but it reminds us that when Collins wrote his Highlands Ode in 1749, it would have had a political dimension. It was only four years since the 1745 rebellion. And the topic of highland superstition would recall the auroral controversies that followed the 1715 rebellion.

Though this stanza is spurious, Collins had himself written in praise of the Duke of Cumberland, in Ode, to a Lady on the Death of Colonel Ross in the Action of Fontenoy. When he published his Odes (Dec 1746) he added stanzas 7-8, not in the original publication (June 1746), envisioning William's return to the scene of his defeat with "sated sword"; perhaps that referred to his triumph at Culloden (April 1746) or to his mooted return to the Schelde. As it turned out William did return, and was defeated again at Laffaelt (1747); and perhaps it was Collins who withdrew the two new stanzas from the ode's subsequent appearance in Dodsley's Collection (1748).

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Another post on William Collins:




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