It is probable, however, that the extensive use which Collins makes of the figure is the result in a large measure of his predilection for the ode—a form of verse very fashionable towards the middle of the century. As has already been noted, odes were being turned out in large numbers by the poetasters of the time, in which virtues and vices, emotions and passions were invoked, apostrophized, and dismissed with appropriate gestures, and it is probable that the majority of these turgid and ineffective compositions owed their appearance to the prevalent mania for personification. Young remarked with truth[222] that an ode is, or ought to be, “more spontaneous and more remote from prose” than any other kind of poetry; and doubtless it was some vague recognition of this fact, and in the hope of “elevating” their style, that led the mere versifiers to adopt the trick. But as they worked the mechanical personification to death, they quickly robbed it of any impressiveness it may ever have had. This might quite fairly be described as the state of affairs with regard to the use of personified abstraction when Collins was writing his “odes,” but while it is true that he indulges freely in personification, it is scarcely necessary to add that he does so with a difference; his Hellenic training and temperament naturally saved him from the inanities and otiosities of so much contemporary verse. To begin with, there are but few examples of the lifeless abstraction, and even in such cases there is usually present a happy epithet, or brief description that sets them on a higher level than those that swarm even in the odes of the Wartons. Thus in the “Ode on the Poetical Character,” “the shadowy tribes of mind,” which had been sadly overworked by Collins’s predecessors and contemporaries, are brought before us with a new and fresh beauty that wins instant acceptance for them: But near it sat ecstatic Wonder Listening the deep applauding thunder And truth in sunny vest arrayed By whom the tassel’s eyes were made All the shadowy tribes of mind In braided dance their murmurs joined. Instances of the mechanical type so much in favour are, however, not lacking, as in this stanza from the “Verses” written about bride-cake: Ambiguous looks that scorn and yet relent, Denial mild and firm unaltered truth, Reluctant pride and amorous faint consent And melting ardours and exulting youth.[223] The majority of Collins’s personified abstractions are, however, vague in outline, that is to say, they suggest, but do not define, and are therefore the more effective in that the resulting images are almost evanescent in their delicacy. Thus in the “Ode to Pity” the subject is presented to us in magic words: Long pity, let the nations view Thy sky-worn robes of tender blue And eyes of dewy light, whilst still another imaginative conception is that of “Mercy”: