that he was the John Collins, aged three years, who sailed for New England in the Abigail on 30 June 1635, with the rest of the family of Henry Collins, starch-maker, whose conformity was certified by the minister of Stepney parish. His father became a deacon of the congregational church at Cambridge, Mass. John graduated at Harvard in 1649, and became a fellow. In 1659 he was acting as chaplain to General Monk, whom he accompanied from Scotland to London. Monk dismissed his independent chaplains in March 1660, when he turned to the presbyterians. Collins held no preferment at the date of the Uniformity Act of 1662, but is included by Calamy among the silenced ministers. Subsequently he succeeded Thomas Mallory (ejected from the lectureship of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane) as pastor of a congregational church in Lime Street. He was also one of the Pinners' Hall lecturers. He is described as a good preacher, and a man of catholic spirit. He died on 3 Dec. 1687. His son Thomas (educated at Utrecht) was elected copastor at Lime Street in 1697. According to Calamy, Collins published no separate work, but furnished a sermon to the London 'Farewell Sermons' (1663), 8vo; and another (anonymous) to the third volume (1676) of 'Morning Exercise at Cripplegate,' edited by Samuel Annesley, D.D. [q. v.] In conjunction with James Baron, B.D., he wrote a prefatory epistle to Ralph Venning's 'Remains, or Christ's School,' &c. (1675), 8vo; he also wrote an epistle prefixed to a 'Discourse of the Glory to which God hath called Believers' (1677), 12mo, by Jonathan Mitchel, a New England divine.
[Cotton Mather's Hist. New Eng. (1702), pt. iv. 136, 200; Calamy's Account (1713), p. 837; Continuation (1727), p. 962; Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial (1802), ii. 4, (1803) iii. 511; Hist. Acct. of my own Life, 2nd ed. (1830), i. 142; Neal's Hist. Puritans (Dublin, 1759), iv. 203; Original Lists of Emigrants to America (1874), p. 97.]
COLLINS, JOHN (1725?–1759?), landscape painter, was from an early age patronised by the aristocracy. At the expense of the Duke of Ancaster, the Marquis of Exeter, and others, he travelled in Italy and studied his art there. On his return to England he painted scenes for one of the principal theatres in London. He died of an infectious fever at a silversmith's in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, about 1758 or 1759. He was aged between thirty and forty, and left a wife and two children. The best known of his works are a set of landscape views from Tasso's 'Gerusalemme Liberata.' They are painted in a truly romantic style, and have a fine scenic effect. They were engraved by Paul Sandby, E. Rooker, P. C. Canot, and others, and published by his widow.
[Gent. Mag. liv. (1784), 741; Redgrave's Dict. of English Artists.]
COLLINS, JOHN (1741–1797), Shakespearean scholar, only son of the Rev. Edward Collins, vicar of St. Erth in Cornwall,who married Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Kendall, canon of Exeter and archdeacon of Totnes, was born, presumably at St. Erth, on 28 Sept. 1741, and was educated at Eton, being in the same remove with George Hardinge, his friend in youth and his generous benefactor in after life. From Eton he proceeded to Queen's College, Oxford, and became on 3 March 1766 a grand-compounder for the degree of B.C.L. Having taken orders in the church of England, he was placed in charge of the parish of Ledbury in Herefordshire. He was endowed with a good person and a clear voice, his manners were cheerful, and his scholarship was praised by his friends, and he could probably have obtained higher preferment; but he had inherited the strong prejudices and keen sensibilities of his father. In 1769 he married his cousin, Mary Kendall, only daughter of Walter Kendall of Pelyn in Lanlivery, who died on 8 Nov. 1781, aged 36, when his health broke down, and the rest of his life was passed in mental anxiety and pecuniary pressure. His old schoolfellow Hardinge, who revived their friendship on a chance visit to Ledbury, befriended him zealously, and Jacob Bryant was another of the old friends who came forward to help him. After many years of trouble Collins died at Penryn in Cornwall in March 1797. The names of his wife and himself, and of four out of the six children who were alive in 1791, are recorded on a monument in Lanlivery church.
Edward Capell [q. v.], the Shakespearean commentator, was a stranger to Collins; but when the cynical George Steevens, in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, published some characteristic remarks in depreciation of the labours of his rival commentator, an anonymous letter in refutation of the criticisms was published in 1777 by Collins, with the assistance of Hardinge. At this act Capell was highly gratified, and on his death he left Collins, who attended him in his last illness, one of his executors, adding to this recognition of his friendship the gift of a large sum of money, with some of his books and manuscripts. The dying man gave as his reason : 'I am led to this by several considerations, but principally of a promise obtained from him, the discharge of which I leave to his honour and (I am proud to say) his friend-
