Specially-bound sets of works by Professor Collins have been presented to the University of Leeds, King Edward's School, Birmingham, where Professor Collins was educated when a boy, and the Wolverhampton Literary Club, of which Professor Collins was the first President. A Brass Memorial Tablet is placed in Oulton Church, with the following inscription: The balance of the money subscribed has been presented to the Curators of the Bodleian Library for the purchase of some work of special value or interest. VII MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF JOHN CHURTON COLLINS From an unpublished work [They number in all four hundred and twentyfive, which he wrote down during his life as each occurred to him.] 1. The people are like women, they are as often in the right as they are in the wrong, but they are as often in the right for the wrong reason, as they are in the wrong for the right reason. 40. The secret of success in life is known only to those who have not succeeded. 55. One of the chief uses in life is to bring man nearer to God in two respects, patience and toleration. 59. To ask advice is in nine cases out of ten to tout for flattery. 65. It is not a difference in degree but a difference almost in kind which separates poets of the first order from poets of the second. Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, these have four points in common. They all appeal as directly and powerfully to the spiritual and moral nature of man as they do to the senses and to the imagination: they all contribute to the solution of man's three great problems-what is he to do, what can he know, for what may he hope? They all suggest infinitely more than they express, and they are all in the most comprehensive sense of the term harmonious, not as men, Who have strange gifts from Nature, but no Soul Infused quite through to make them of a piece, which is almost universally the case with poets of the secondary order. 90. If men were as unselfish as women, APPENDICES 317 women would very soon become more selfish than men. 109. The difference between the courtesy of a man who is a real gentleman and of a man who is not, is that the courtesy of the one is instinctive, the other impulsive. 111. We are no more responsible for the evil thoughts that pass through our minds, than a scarecrow for the birds which fly over the seedplot he has to guard, the sole responsibility in each case is to prevent them from settling. 280. Suicide is the worst form of murder, because it leaves no opportunity for repentance. 421. What water is to a mill-wheel, life is to men. They ascend to sink and sink to ascenddreary round, but all the while God's corn is a-grinding. |