He was bred up to the business of a staymaker, but an occupation of that nature ill accorded with his disposition, and he very early in life made his appearance on the Bath stage, and filled many parts there, extending to 'tragedy, genteel comedy, low comedy, and old men and country boys in farces and operas,' a range of character which could not have been uniformly successful.

[1] In October 1764, he appeared at the theatre in Smock Alley, Dublin, as young Mirabel in the 'Inconstant,' and 'proved a very respectable acquisition to the Irish stage.'

79-85, that Collins played Captain Plume at Covent Garden Theatre 'many years ago,' but that a severe cold prevented him from obtaining the success which his talents deserved, and drove him from the London stage into the country.

At a later period he returned to London 'with a very entertaining evening's amusement called "The Brush," composed of pleasant old theatrical stories well told, with humorous songs well written by him-self.'

[1] In January 1793, he was amusing Birmingham audiences by his recitations, and in that year he was so far settled in that town as to occupy a house in Great Brook Street, Ashted.

By these performances he obtained a 'well-earned easy competency,' and it must have been with some portion of his gains that he acquired an interest with a Mr. Swinney in a newspaper called The Birmingham Chronicle.

Many of the poetic effusions of Collins were inspired by local events, and many of them were published in his paper, from the pages of which, as he complains, they were reproduced without acknowledgment.

[1] The best-known of the poems of Collins, most of which are of unusual excellence for the date of their composition, are 'To-morrow,' 'The Golden Days of good Queen Bess,' 'Date obolum Belisario,' and ' Ben Block,' the last of which was printed in 'Notes and Queries' for 17 April 1886, p. 310; and the chief merit of his performances lay in the feeling with which he sang his lyric compositions, the 'rare perfection ' of his musical expression being universally acknowledged.

The original manuscript of 'The Brush,' formerly in the possession of Thomas Bell and William Pinkerton, is now the property of Mr. Samuel Timmins of Birmingham.