Thomas Collins (poet)

Thomas Collins was an English poet of the Jacobean era, known for religious and pastoral verse. Little is known of his life beyond the two surviving poems published under his name, both of which are now extremely rare.

''The Penitent Publican'' (1610)

Collins's first known work, The Penitent Publican, his Confession of Mouth, Contrition of Heart, unfained Repentance. And feruent Prayer unto God for Mercie and Forgiuenesse, was published in London by Arthur Johnson in quarto format in 1610. The poem is a devotional work written entirely in seven-line stanzas and displays strong Puritan religious sentiment.
The dedicatory epistle, dated 6 July 1610, is addressed to Katherine Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, whom Collins praises as "Right Honourable, Graue and Vertuous". The Countess, a sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and close friend of Queen Elizabeth, was known for her Protestant piety and patronage of education.

''The Teares of Loue'' (1615)

Collins's second work, The Teares of Loue, or Cupid's Progresse, was printed by George Purslowe in London in 1615. The full title describes it as "Together with the complaint of the sorrowfull Shepheardesse fayre Candida, deploring the death of her deare-lou'd Corauin, a late liuing Shepheard. In a passionate pastorall Elegie."
The poem is a pastoral elegy lamenting the death of a poet referred to as "Coravin", whose identity has never been established. The work contains numerous conceits typical of the period and concludes with tributes to Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and Michael Drayton, with an allusion to Thomas Lodge.
Samuel Rowlands and a writer signing himself "Jo. B." contributed prefatory verses to the volume. Rowlands describes Collins as "his affected friend", indicating a personal acquaintance between the two poets.

Lost work

In his prefatory verses to The Teares of Loue, "Jo. B." refers to a third poem by Collins on "Newport's bloudy battell … with Yaxley's death". This appears to commemorate the Battle of Nieuwpoort, a major engagement of the Eighty Years' War in which English forces under Sir Francis Vere fought alongside Dutch troops against the Spanish. No copy of this poem is known to survive, and nothing further is recorded about the Yaxley mentioned in the title.

Survival and bibliography

Both of Collins's known poems were in the library of Sir Francis Freeling, the postal administrator and book collector. By the late nineteenth century, only unique copies of each work were believed to be extant. Modern facsimile reprints have since been produced.