Thomas Warton in his "History of English Poetry" (1774) made retrospective amends for his youthful lampoon by speaking there of "My late lamented friend Mr William Collins, whose Odes will be remembered while any taste for true poetry remains". Nevertheless, it was not until a few years after the poet's death that his work was collected in the edition of John Langhorne in 1765, after which it slowly gained more recognition, although never without criticism. While Dr Johnson wrote a sympathetic account of his former friend in "Lives of the Poets" (1781), he echoed Gray in dismissing the poetry as contrived and poorly executed. At a much later date, Charles Dickens was dismissive for other reasons in his novel "Great Expectations". There Pip describes his youthful admiration for a recitation of Collins' "The Passions" and commented ruefully, "I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stain'd Sword in Thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing Trumpet with a withering Look. It was not with me then as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of both gentlemen".