very negligent of his cloaths, and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner, for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form. 17 His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated 1. 18 His life was unstained by any crime; the Elegy on Fessy2, which has been supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his own, was known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of Miss Godfrey in Richardson's Pamela. 19 What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his Letters, was this : 'I have read too an octavo volume of Shenstone's Letters. Poor man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement 3, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it: his correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote verses too 4.' scribes him in 1758 as 'a large heavy fat man, dressed in white clothes and silver lace, with his gray hairs tied behind and much powdered, which, added to his shyness and reserve, was not at first prepossessing. His reserve and melancholy abated, and he became good company.' For Johnson wearing his own hair in early life see Boswell's Johnson, i. 94. I Gray wrote of him in 1758:'There is Mr. Shenstone, who trusts to nature and simple sentiment, why does he do no better? He goes hopping along his own gravel walks, and never deviates from the beaten paths for fear of being lost.' Letters, ed. Tovey, ii. 25. Elegy El xxvi. 3 Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended to live to himself, and the other really did SO. Shenstone affected privacy that he might be sought out by the world.' HAZLITT, Table Talk, 1869, i. 130. ... 'I do not think,' writes Graves, 'any consideration would have bribed Shenstone to live away from the Leasowes.' Recollections, p. 136. * Mitford's Gray, v. 93. Horace Walpole wrote of these Letters on June 14, 1769:-'I felt great pity for the narrow circumstances of the author, and the passion for fame that he was tormented with; and yet he had much more fame than his talents entitled him to. Poor man! he wanted to have all the world talk of him for the pretty place he had made.' Walpole's Letters, v. 169. On Jan. 24, 1778, Walpole wrote:'I have got two more volumes of Shenstone's Correspondence, and they are like all the rest, insipidity itself.' Ib. vii. 24. 'Johnson agreed with Shenstone that it was wrong in the brother of one of his correspondents to burn his letters; "for (said he) Shenstone was a man whose correspondence was an honour."" Boswell's Johnson, v. 268. His letters to Whistler were burnt. Works, iii. 234. His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous 20 sallies, and moral pieces. His conception of an elegy he has in his Preface very judiciously 21 and discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and therefore superior to the glitter of slight ornaments 1. His compositions suit not ill to this description. His topicks of praise are the domestick virtues, and his thoughts are pure and simple, but wanting combination they want variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station can fill but a few pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon described. His Elegies have therefore too much resemblance of each other 2. The lines are sometimes, such as elegy requires, smooth and 22 easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant: his diction is often harsh3, improper, and affected; his words ill-coined or ill-chosen, and his phrase unskilfully inverted 6. The Lyrick Poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, 23 such as trip lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any This is an abstract of Shenstone's words. Eng. Poets, lix. 5-13. Burns, in the Preface to the first edition of his Poems, writes:-'It is an observation of Shenstone, whose divine Elegies do honour to our language, our nation and our species, that "Humility has depressed many a genius to [into] a hermit, but never raised one to fame [but never yet raised one into a poet of eminence. Shenstone's Works, ii. 13]."' 2 E. FitzGerald wrote to Frederic Tennyson on Dec. 10, 1843:-' In the garden I see the heads of the snowdrops and crocuses just out of the earth. Another year with its same flowers and topics to open upon us. Shenstone somewhere sings:"Tedious again to mark the drizzling day, Again to trace the same sad tracts of snow; Or, lull'd by vernal airs, again The selfsame hawthorn bud, and FitzGerald's Letters, 1894, i. 146. 'Tedious again to curse the drizzling day, Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow; Or, sooth'd by vernal airs, again survey The selfsame hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.' Elegy xi, Eng. Poets, lix. 36. 3 In Elegy iii he says of the Muse : 'She tempts patricians from the fatal doors Of vice's brothel forth to virtue's fane.' In Elegy v within three lines he has reliev'st, cheer'st, and deserv'st. * Of the ancient Britons he says (El. xv) :'They ting'd their bodies, but unmask'd their mind.' 5 'The boastive rill, El. x; 'distreams a tear,' El. xix; 'we drain the mine's embowell'd gold,' El. xx. ''O teach them you to spread the 6 sacred base.' El. ii. "Twas on those Downs, by Roman weighty meaning1. From these, however, Rural Elegance 2 has some right to be excepted. I once heard it praised by a very learned lady3; and though the lines are irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, yet it cannot be denied to contain both philosophical argument and poetical spirit 4. 24 Of the rest I cannot think any excellent; The Skylark pleases me best, which has, however, more of the epigram than of the odes. 25 But the four parts of his Pastoral Ballad demand particular notice. I cannot but regret that it is pastoral'; an intelligent reader acquainted with the scenes of real life sickens at the mention of the crook, the pipe, the sheep, and the kids, which it is not necessary to bring forward to notice, for the poet's art is selection, and he ought to shew the beauties without the grossness of the country life. His stanza seems to have been chosen in imitation of Rowe's Despairing Shepherd 8. 26 In the first part are two passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance with love or nature: 'I priz'd every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleas'd me before; 'She gaz'd, as I slowly withdrew; I thought that she bade me return1.' In the second this passage has its prettiness, though it be not 27 equal to the former: 'I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed : She will say 'twas a barbarous deed : 'For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd, In the third he mentions the common-places of amorous poetry 28 with some address: ''Tis his with mock passion to glow; 'How the nightingales labour the strain, In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain of 29 Hope: 'Alas! from the day that we met, What hope of an end to my woes? His Levities are by their title exempted from the severities of 30 Eng. Poets, lix. 155. Boswell recorded in 1773:-'We talked of Shenstone. Dr. Johnson said he was a good layer-out of land, but would not allow him to approach excellence as a poet. He said he believed he had tried to read all his Love Pastorals, but did not get through them. I re peated the stanza, She gaz'd, as I slowly withdrew," &c. He said, "That seems to be pretty."" Boswell's Johnson, v. 267. 2 Eng. Poets, lix. 157. 3 1b. p. 160. * Ib. p. 162. criticism; yet it may be remarked in a few words that his humour is sometimes gross, and seldom spritely1. 31 Of the Moral Poems the first is the Choice of Hercules3, from Xenophon. The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but something of vigour perhaps is still to be wished, which it might have had by brevity and compression. His Fate of Delicacy has an air of gaiety, but not a very pointed general moral. His blank verses, those that can read them may probably find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. Love and Honour is derived from the old ballad Did you not hear of a Spanish Lady-I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme. 32 The School-mistress, of which I know not what claim it has to stand among the Moral Works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone's performances. The adoption of a particular style in light and short compositions contributes much to the increase taken a cool leave.' Recollections, p. 151. Edge Hill is full twenty miles from Henley. Probably he finished the poem next day at the inn. E. FitzGerald (Letters, ii. 184) writes:-' Carlyle had the use of a phaeton and pony, which latter he calls "Shenstone" from a partiality to stopping at every inn door.' * Moral Pieces. Eng. Poets, lix. then repeated, with great emotion, 199 The Judgement of Hercules. Ante, : "Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull Boswell's Johnson, ii. 452. For the lines see Eng. Poets, lix. 185; and for an earlier and fuller version see Dodsley's Collection, v. 51; John. Misc. ii. 253. 'Life's dull round' Shenstone may have borrowed from Johnson's Adventurer, No. 108. 'He grew weary of the same dull round of life.' Graves says that this stanza was written in a summer-house at Edge Hill, on the evening of a day which he had passed travelling homewards from his friend Whistler's house in South Oxfordshire, of whom he had SHENSTONE, 8. 'Mr. Shenstone had the satisfaction at a coffee-house to hear some young people come to a resolution that it must certainly be either Pope's or Mr. Dodsley's.' Graves, p. 93. [Memorabilia, ii. 1.] 5 The Progress of Taste, or The Fate of Delicacy. Eng. Poets, lix. 217. 6 Ante, MILTON, 274. 1 Eng. Poets, lix. 275. 8 Will you hear a Spanish Lady, Percy's Reliques, Bookv. 23. 'If Shenstone had done nothing more than suggest to Percy the scheme of publishing the Reliques he would have been a great benefactor to the literature of his country.' SOUTHEY, Specimens, ii. 306. For the suggestion see John. Letters, i. 89 n. Ante, SHENSTONE, 2, 8. |