to contribute to Household Words, where After Dark (1856) and The Dead Secret (1857) ran serially. His great success was achieved in 1860 with the publication of The Woman in White, which was first printed in All the Year Round. From that time he enjoyed as much popularity as any novelist of his day, No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone, a capital detective story (1868), being among his most successful books. After The New Magdalen (1873) his ingenuity became gradually exhausted, and his later stories were little more than faint echoes of earlier successes. He died in Wimpole Street, London, on the 23rd of September 1889. Collins’s gift was of the melodramatic order, and while many of his stories made excellent plays, several of them were actually reconstructed from pieces designed originally for stage production. But if his colours were occasionally crude and his methods violent, he was at least a master of situation and effect. His trick of telling a story through the mouths of different characters is sometimes irritatingly disconnected; but it had the merit of giving an air of actual evidence and reality to the elucidation of a mystery. He possessed in the highest degree the gift of absorbing interest; the turns and complexities of his plots are surprisingly ingenious, and many of his characters are not only real, but uncommon. Count Fosco in The Woman in White is perhaps his masterpiece; the character has been imitated again and again, but no imitation has ever attained to the subtlety and humour of the original.
COLLODION (from the Gr. κόλλα, glue), a colourless, viscid
fluid, made by dissolving gun-cotton and the other varieties of
pyroxylin in a mixture of alcohol and ether. It was discovered
in 1846 by Louis Nicolas Ménard in Paris, and independently in
1848 by Dr J. Parkers Maynard in Boston. The quality of
collodion differs according to the proportions of alcohol and ether
and the nature of the pyroxylin it contains. Collodion in which
there is a great excess of ether gives by its evaporation a very
tough film; the film left by collodion containing a large quantity
of alcohol is soft and easily torn; but in hot climates the presence
of an excess of alcohol is an advantage, as it prevents the rapid
evaporation of the ether. Under the microscope, the film
produced by collodion of good quality appears translucent and
colourless. To preserve collodion it should be kept cool and out
of the action of the light; iodized collodion that has been discoloured
by the development of free iodine may be purified by
the immersion in it of a strip of silver foil. For the iodizing
of collodion, ammonium bromide and iodide, and the iodides
of calcium and cadmium are the agents employed (see Photography).
Collodion is used in surgery since, when painted
on the skin, it rapidly dries and covers the skin with a thin
film which contracts as it dries and therefore affords both
pressure and protection. Flexible collodion, containing Canada
balsam and castor oil, does not crack, but, on the other hand,
does not contract. It is therefore of less value. Collodion is
applied to small aseptic wounds, to small-pox pustules, and
occasionally to the end of the urethra in boys in order to prevent
nocturnal incontinence. Collodion and crystals of carbolic acid,
taken in equal parts, are useful in relieving toothache due to
the presence of a carious cavity. Vesicating or Blistering
Collodion contains cantharidin as one of its constituents. The
styptic colloid of Richardson is a strong solution of tannin in
gun-cotton collodion. Similarly collodion may be impregnated
with salicylic acid, carbolic acid, iodine and other substances.
Small balloons are manufactured from collodion by coating the
interior of glass globes with the liquid; the film when dry is
removed from the glass by applying suction to the mouth of the
vessel. M. E. Gripon found (Compt. rend., 1875) that collodion
membranes, like glass, reflect light and polarize it both by
refraction and reflection; they also transmit a very much larger
proportion of radiant heat, for the study of which they are
preferable to mica.
COLLOT D’HERBOIS, JEAN MARIE (1750–1796), French
revolutionist, was a Parisian by birth and an actor by profession.
After figuring for some years at the principal provincial theatres
of France and Holland, he became director of the playhouse at
Geneva. He had from the first a share in the revolutionary
tumult; but it was not until 1791 that he became a figure of
importance. Then, however, by the publication of L’Almanach du Père Gérard,[1] a little book setting forth, in homely style, the
advantages of a constitutional monarchy, he suddenly acquired
great popularity. His renown was soon increased by his active
interference on behalf of the Swiss of the Château-Vieux Regiment,
condemned to the galleys for mutiny at Nancy. His
efforts resulted in their liberation; he went himself to Brest in
search of them; and a civic feast was decreed on his behalf
and theirs, which gave occasion for one of the few poems published
during his life by André Chénier. But his opinions became
more and more radical. He was a member of the Commune of
Paris on the 10th of August 1792, and was elected deputy for
Paris to the Convention, where he was the first to demand the
abolition of royalty (on the 21st of September 1792), and he
voted the death of Louis XVI. “sans sursis.” In the struggle
between the Mountain and the Girondists he displayed great
energy; and after the coup d’état of the 31st of May 1793 he
made himself conspicuous by his pitiless pursuit of the defeated
party. In June he was made president of the Convention; and
in September he was admitted to the Committee of Public
Safety, on which he was very active. After having entrusted
him with several missions, the Convention sent him, on the
30th of October 1793, to Lyons to punish the revolt of that city.
There he introduced the Terror in its most terrible form.
In May 1794 an attempt was made to assassinate Collot; but it only increased his popularity, and this won him the hatred of Robespierre, against whom he took sides on the 9th Thermidor, when he presided over the Convention during a part of the session. During the Thermidorian reaction he was one of the first to be accused of complicity with the fallen leader, but was acquitted. Denounced a second time, he defended himself by pleading that he had acted for the cause of the Revolution, but was condemned with Barère and Billaud-Varenne to transportation to Cayenne (March 1795), where he died early in 1796.
Collot d’Herbois wrote and adapted from the English and Spanish many plays, one of which, Le Paysan magistrat, kept the stage for several years. L’Almanach du Père Gérard was reprinted under the title of Étrennes aux amis de la Constitution française, ou entretiens du Père Gérard avec ses concitoyens (Paris, 1792).
See F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention (Paris, 1885–1886), t. ii. pp. 501-512. The principal documents relative to the trial of Collot d’Herbois, Barère and Billaud-Varenne are indicated in Aulard, Recueil des actes du comité de salut public, t. i. pp. 5 and 6.
COLLUSION (from Lat. colludere, strictly, to play with), a secret agreement or compact for some improper purpose. In judicial proceedings, and particularly in matrimonial causes (see Divorce), collusion is a deceitful agreement between two or more persons, or between one of them and a third party, to bring an action against the other in order to obtain a judicial decision, or some remedy which would not have been obtained unless the parties had combined for the purpose or suppressed material facts or otherwise.
COLLYER, ROBERT (1823– ), American Unitarian clergyman, was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, England, on the 8th of December 1823. At the age of eight he was compelled to leave school and support himself by work in a linen factory. He was naturally studious, however, and supplemented his scant schooling by night study. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and for several years worked at this trade at Ilkley. In 1849 he became a local Methodist minister, and in the following year emigrated to the United States, where he obtained employment as a hammer maker at Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. Here he soon began to preach on Sundays while still employed in the factory on week-days. His earnest, rugged, simple style of oratory made him extremely popular, and at once secured for him a wide reputation. His advocacy of anti-slavery principles, then frowned upon by the Methodist authorities, aroused opposition, and eventually resulted in his trial for heresy and the revocation of his licence. He continued, however, as an
