Though it appears that the verses of Anne Collins have been spared extinction, it is problematic whether they will escape obscurity. Dr. Johnson and Warton did not mention them. Yet knowledgeable, if lesser, men found the _Songs and Meditacions_ worth reading. We may infer, for example, that Thomas Park, who was praised by Southey as the most distinguished authority on Old-English poetry, admired the _Songs_, for it seems probable that he recommended to Brydges the passages finally anthologized in _Restituta_. In any case, for their metrical variety, spiritual tone, and structural quaintness, Brydges found the _Songs and Meditacions_ to be of value. Allibone reprinted Brydges’ commentary, implying (at least) that he had no strong quarrel with it; and in our own century, I. A. Williams, having read the single poem in Dyce, described the “lilt and diction” of the language as “charming,” and called for a new edition of the work.[5] It may be that a wider knowledge of her writing would rescue Anne Collins only from oblivion into abuse. But if that is so, it is only fair to say that she wrote with a full awareness of her poetic limitations. Referring to herself as “unskilfull,” she claimed to have written only to occupy her mind, and then only that, in her lingering illness, she might not fall victim to Sloth. Anne Collins may not have been a Puritan,[6] but her verses are, in several respects, a form of the diary. To her, questions of aesthetics, at least as we would normally think of them, were quite irrelevant. She was convinced that the expression of a dedicated heart was of greater value than a polished line. Even if that expression were in the form of somewhat unsteady verses, it would not be without merit: “_Yet for theyr matter, I suppose they bee / Not worthlesse quite, whilst they with Truth agree._”