Collins, Arthur

, a laborious antiquary, whose name is familiar as the compiler of peerages and baronetages, was born in 1682. He was the son of William Collins, esq. gentleman to queen Catherine in 1669, but, as he himself informs us, the son of misfortune, his father having run through more than 30,000l. He received, however, a liberal education, and from a very early age culti­% T ated that branch of antiquities, to which he dedicated the remainder of a laborious life. The first edition of his Peerage was published as early as 1708, and we have seen | another edition of 1715, 4 vols. 8vo. It afterwards by various additions, and under other editors, was extended to seven volumes, and with a supplement to nine. The last and most improved of all was published in 1812, under the care of sir Egerton Brydges, whose attention to the errors of the preceding editions cannot be too highly praised, and the additional articles more immediately from his pen are marked by elegance of style and sentiment and a just discrimination of character. Mr. Collins’s “Baronetage” was first published in 1720 in two volumes, extended in 1741 to five volumes, since when there has been no continuation under his name, but the loss is amply supplied by Mr. Betham’s very enlarged work. Mr. Collins’s other publications are, 1. “The Life of Cecil, Lord Burleigh,” 1732, 8vo. 2. “Life of Edward the Black Prince,” 1740, 8vo. 3. “Letters and Memorials of State, collected by Sir Henry Sidney and others,” 1746, 2 vols. folio. 4. “Historical Collections of the Noble Families of Cavendish, Holies, Vere, Harley, and Ogle,” 1752, folio. We know little of Mr. Collins’s private life, unless what is painful to re.cord, that he seldom received any substantial encouragement from the noble families on whose history he employed his time, that he frequently laboured under pecuniary embarrassments, and as frequently experienced the nullity of promises from his patrons among the great, until at length his majesty George II. granted him a pension of 400l. a year, which, however, he enjoyed but a few years. He died March 16, 1760, at Battersea, where he was buried on the 24th, He was father of major-general Arthur Tooker Collins, who died Jan. 4, 1793, leaving issue David Collins, esq. the subject of the next article. ¹