Collins published only a handful of poems before insanity clouded the remainder of his brief life. In 1754 he was confined to an asylum, having suffered from mental illness since 1751. His odes and lyrics, often difficult for the casual reader to grasp, have come to be regarded by some eminent critics as masterworks and touchstones of political taste. The young Coleridge wrote that Collins's Ode on the Poetical Character (1747) had moved him as much as anything in Shakespeare. Two of his other best-known works are Ode to Evening and Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746.
