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Poetry of Invocation : a Study of the Poems of William Collins and Their

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Poetry of Invocation : a Study of the Poems of William Collins and Their A POETRY OF INVOCATION: A STUDY OF THE POEMS OF WILLIAM COLLINS AND THEIR TRADITION By PHILIP D. MARION A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1976 FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER who taught me to love books and beauty ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To all the friends and mentors who gave generously of their time, patience, learning and encouragement to assist me in the completion of this study, I extend my heartfelt thanks. They never doubted (a.? I often did) that the end would come. In particular I am grateful to Professor Ben Pickard, who suffered my anguish gracefully during weekly tennis matches; to Professors Douglas Bonneville and Richard Brantley, who read the dissertation on rather short notice and who gave me the benefit of their kind yet unsparing suggestions in the final oral; and especially to Professor Ira Clark, who taught me to read Milton, who painstakingly read the manuscript chapter by chapter, and whose detailed, perceptive comments helped shape the final version of each. I am especially indebted as wall to Professor Aubrey Williams, who first taught me the pleasures and rewards of the historical method, whose kindness to me has been unfailing, and whose straightforward counsel has always been gladly given and gratefully received. His suggestions for the improvement of my master's thesis contributed significantly to the strength of the final argument of the dissertation. I thank him too for reading and commenting on the dissertation, and for participating in the final defense. To my wife, Joanne, I owe thanks which a lifetime cannot repay; she has supported and encouraged me without complaint during each of the seven years which culminate in this study, while watching me iii chase a star that always seemed to be fading in the west. Finally, my deepest debt is to Professor Melvyn New, the director of this dissertation from its earliest stages as a master's thesis. He found my writing chaos, and left it with whatever grace it new possesses. Since my first quarter in graduate school his energy and discipline as both scholar and teacher have served as my guide, his courage and wit as my example. He has shown me the path in ways too numerous to count. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT vi I. INTRODUCTION 1 NOTES 14 II. THE INVOCATIVE TRADITION: SPENSER AND MILTON 20 NOTES 54 III. COLLINS: THE EARLY POEMS 61 NOTES 105 IV. THE DILEMMA: ODES ON SEVERAL DESCRIPTIVE AND ALLEGORIC SUBJECTS (1746) 113 NOTES 161 V. ODES (CONTINUED) AND FINAL ATTEMPTS 166 NOTES 220 VI. COLLINS AND KEATS: THE MUTUAL DILEMMA 227 NOTES 263 APPENDIX: TWO POEMS OF DOUBTFUL ATTRIBUTION 267 NOTES 2 73 LIST OF WORKS CITED 274 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 285 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council of the Requirements of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy COLLINS A POETRY OF INVOCATION: A STUDY OF THE POEMS OF WILLIAM AND THEIR TRADITION By Philip D. Marion December, 1976 Chairman: Melvyn New Major Department: English has Despite the disrepute into which the label "pre- romantic" to gradually fallen in recent years, and despite consequent attempts eighteenth provide more precise readings of English poets of the mid fostered by the century in their ovm terms, the distortion and neglect of their "pre-romanr.ic" approach continue to dominate critical treatment the work of no important poet work. And, as I demonstrate in chapter I, than that cf William of the period has been more consistently misread Collins' Collins. With too few (and usually only partial) exceptions, judged poetic theory and practice have been analyzed piecemeal or Moreover, arbitrarily according to narrow "pre- romantic" standards. just as arbitrarily attempts to correct this view invariably conclude Augustan theory that Collins should be seen either as a last gasp of traditions. and practice, or in formalist isolation from all poetic to heed the All such notions have in common a steadfast refusal Collins himself clear signposts to an understanding of his work which more accurately, provides in his poems. If we are to apprehend his work vi then, we must begin not with romantic or Augustan criteria, but with the standards Collins consistently imposes upon himself— standards which are the abiding concerns of his poetry. My aim in this study, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Collins canon in which I avoid the arbitrary impositions of the past by following his own signposts faithfully. Only after having done so can one begin to reassess his relationship to the Romantics. To follow Collins' lead is to become aware of several closely interrelated elements in his work which form the basis of his theory of poetry and which, in turn, rigidly control the structure of nearly ail his poems: his choice of Spenser and Milton as his chief poetic idols; a crippling self-doubt caused by the dilemma in which that choice traps him; and most important, the invocative stance by which he attempts to surmount his doubt. Collins' determination to emulate Spenser and Milton causes him to believe, I argue, that he must first attain the same divine inspiration they claimed as central to their poetic vision and achievement. At the same time, Collins finds himself unable to believe that such inspiration remains available in his increasingly secular era. This inspiratory dilemma is the key to the structure of Collins' work: with very few exceptions his poems are frustrated invocations to which the Muse gives no answer. For Collins the in- vocation becomes, in effect, the poem, rather than a necessary prelude to it as it was for Spenser and Milton. The invocative stance is therefore, I maintain, central not only to our understanding of Collins' own work, but to our perception of his relationship to his predecessors, contemporaries and successors as well. Accordingly in chapter II, after a brief survey of the invocative vii tradition they inherited, I examine the invocative stances of Spenser and Milton— stances I show to be virtually identical. In chapters III through V I offer a close reading of the full Collins canon. And finally in chapter VI, with the invocative tradition and Collins' place in it in view, I inaugurate a reassessment of his relationship to the Romantics by focusing on the invocative dilemma in Keats—who, I conclude, both shares the Collins anguish and, significantly, is able to transcend it by transforming his stance fitfully in his later work. Because Collins' work occupies such a critical place in the decline of the traditional invocative stance and the visionary poetry it makes possible, it continues to warrant our careful attention. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION When Wordsworth wrote a brief commemorative poem for William Collins in 1789 entitled "Remembrance of Collins Composed upon the Thames Near Richmond," in which he treated his predecessor reverently as a kindred spirit, he unknowingly presaged what was to become the prevailing critical approach, to the poetry of Collins and most of his contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century: the "pre- rcmantic." That approach, obviously, grew out of the attempt to trace the origins of romantic poetry to the middle and later years of the eighteenth century, as well as out of the larger, concomitant desire to understand the transition in the premises of taste which was then 2 taking place. As Walter Jackson Bate has persuasively argued, perhaps no similar change in aesthetic theory "has been more fundamental and 3 pervasive." And in our own century few literary matters have received more critical attention than the various aspects of this change, usually considered under what Bate has accurately called the "arbitrary headings 4 of 'classicism' and 'romanticism'." Such labels and their attendant assumptions are admittedly always difficult to overturn or replace, if only because they become so convenient. This is particularly true when the period in question is indeed one of sweeping and complex changes, not only in aesthetics but in every realm, from religion and philosophy to economics and politics. -1- -2- Some oversimplification is bound to occur in order to make the discus- sion of these changes manageable, and it is therefore not surprising that the terms "classic," "Augustan" and "romantic" are still regularly employed today in spite of widespread complaints about their accuracy. What is difficult to understand is why the fallacies and distortions inherent in the most pernicious (and least useful) of these labels, "pre-rcmantic," persisted unquestioned for as long as they did. For under its aegis nearly the whole body of English poetry written in the middle years of the eighteenth century was relegated a priori to the status, in effect, of nonentity. As Northrop Frye has said, the term "has the peculiar demerit of committing us to anachronism before we start, and imposing a false teleology on everything we study." When the poems of the period were read at all, they were forced to support whatever preconceived thesis a critic wished to defend. The poets were thus seen almost exclusively as either poor imitators of the now gener- ally rehabilitated Augustans, or, most often, as writers who haltingly prepared the way for the coming of the Great Romantics. Their works have either evidenced "romantic" qualities to the critic seeking to show the rise of the romantic imagination, or they have provided exam- ples of the last gasps of Augustan poetics to the critic seeking to propound the values of the Augustan imagination. The result has been that few of these poets have been respected or studied as significant in their own right.
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