Thomas Shenstone

“ Shenstone will give you all the help he can. And if it is but between you and heaven, he will show you the way to get at peace. Oh, my dear young lady! you need not be afraid to open your heart to one who knows so much about God's mercy and men's sins. You need not be afraid but that he will be as tender as he is wise; indeed, you need not fear him."
She spoke rapidly and earnestly; her whole manner of precision and composure seemed to be broken down and melted before some recollection that my trouble seemed to recall. ”

“ Shenstone without profit. He has made you already as philosophical as himself."
"If I could be near Mr. Shenstone," I said, with a sigh, "there would be some chance of my learning to control myself and be good. One can hardly help doing right, with his teaching." ”

“ His elegies and pastorals would have lain on the dustiest of book-shelves, and his Schoolmistress, by far the best of his productions, would hardly have retained vitality enough to make herself noticeable in the crowd of poetical characters. The Leasowes was the chief work of Shenstone's life, and it is the chief means of that portion of immortality which he possesses. Into every quarter of the kingdom the fame of this little domain has penetrated. Nature there formed the grand sub-stratum of his art, and nature is always beautiful. ”

“ Then, when we have all this delightful testimony as to Brentford’s dirt, comes Shenstone, the melancholy poet who ‘found his warmest welcome at an inn,’ to testify as to the character of its inhabitants. ‘No persons,’ says he, ‘more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. ”

“ Shenstone was early in life captivated by a young lady, whom Graves describes with all those mild and serene graces of pensive melancholy, touched by plaintive love-songs and elegies of woe, adapted not only to be the muse but the mistress of a poet. ”

“ His qualities were fancy, sublimity of conception, and no mean degree of pathos, as in the Eclogues, and the Dirge in Cymbeline.
375Dyer‘s Grongar Hill is a beautiful moral and descriptive effusion, with much elegance, and perfect ease of style and versification.
Shenstone was a writer inclined to feebleness and affectation: but when he could divest himself of sickly pretensions, he produces occasional excellence of a high degree. His School-mistress is the perfection of naïve description, and of that mixture of pathos and humour, than which nothing is more delightful or rare. ”

“ Recently Pindemonte 98 has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!
Amidst these rural elegancies which Shenstone was raising about him, his muse has pathetically sung his melancholy feelings—
The poet observes, that the wants of philosophy are contracted, satisfied with “cheap contentment,” but
An original image illustrates that fatal want of economy which conceals itself amidst the beautiful appearances of taste:—
He paints himself ”

“ Johnson had many rigid maxims concerning the necessity of continued softness and compliance of disposition: and when I once mentioned Shenstone’s idea that some little quarrel among lovers, relations, and friends was useful, and contributed to their general happiness upon the whole, by making the soul feel her elastic force, and return to the beloved object with renewed delight: “Why, what a pernicious maxim is this now,” cries Johnson, “all quarrels ought to be avoided studiously, particularly conjugal ones, as no one can possibly tell where they may end ”

“ Mr. Wallace said to Cyril, "and stay with me while I eat my meal. 'Tis a diversion to one's mind to turn for a moment from the one topic that all men are speaking of.
"Your name is Shenstone. I come from Norfolk. There was a family of that name formerly had estates near my native place. One Sir Aubrey Shenstone was at its head—a brave gentleman. I well remember seeing him when I was a boy, but he took the side of the King against the Parliament, and, as we heard, passed over with Charles to France when his cause was lost. ”

“ Not one penny is to go to my son. I may be carried off to-morrow by the Plague, or my son may renew his attempt with success. So I must will it away from him at once. For the moment, therefore, make a short will bequeathing the estate of Upmead to Sir Cyril Shenstone, all my other possessions to my wife for her lifetime, and at her death also to Sir Cyril Shenstone. ”

“ One might alter Shenstone's well-known epitaph to suit such a case:—
Hen! quanto minus est cum to vivo versari Quam erit (vel esset) tui mortui reminisse! “Alas! how much less the delight of thy living presence Than will (or would) be that of remembering thee when thou hast left us!”
I want to stop here—I the Poet—and put in a few reflections of my own, suggested by what I have been giving the reader from the Master's Book, and in a similar vein.
—How few things there are that do not change their whole aspect in the course of a single generation! ”

“ O’Mara, to all intents and purposes, instead of myself. This afternoon he knows for the first time that I am Lady Ingleby of Shenstone. And, boys, the shock has been too much for him. He is such a splendid man; but a dear delightful cowboy sort of person. He has lived a great deal abroad, and been everything you can imagine that 218 bestrides a horse and does brave things. He finished up at your horrid little war, and got fever at Targai. You must have known him. He calls it ‘a muddle on the frontier,’ and now he is writing a book about it, and about other muddles, and how to avoid them. ”

“ It is only as we advance in life that we lose the relish of our early simplicity, and that we discover that Shenstone was not endowed with high imagination.
92
These Elegies, with some other poems, may be read with a new interest when we discover them to form the true Memoirs of Shenstone. Records of querulous but delightful feelings! whose subjects spontaneously offered themselves from passing incidents; they still perpetuate emotions which will interest the young poet and the young lover of taste. ”

“ To Gray the landscape was no longer a picture. It had sentiment, character, meaning, almost personality. Different weathers and different hours of the day lent it expressions subtler than the poets had hitherto recognized in the broad, general changes of storm and calm, light and darkness, and the successions of the seasons. He heard Nature when she whispered, as well as when she spoke out loud. Thomson could not have written thus, nor Shenstone, nor even, perhaps, Collins. But almost any man of cultivation and sensibility can write so now ”

“ They are very common in society. But a perfect example of a full and magnificent equivocation is Shenstone's incomparable epitaph on a justice of the peace, which, in its high-flown lapidary style, seems to speak of noble and sublime things, while under each of their conceptions something quite different is to be subsumed, which only appears in the very last word as the unexpected key to the whole, and the reader discovers with loud laughter that he has only read a very obscene equivocation. ”

“ Shenstone, who knew him well, thus mourns aver his departure in one of his letters:—"Our old friend Somerville is dead; I did not imagine I could have been so sorry as I find myself on this occasion. Sublatum quoerimus, I can now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age and to distressed circumstances. The last of these considerations wrings my very soul to think on; for a man of high spirit, conscious of having (at least in one production) generally pleased the world, to be plagued and threatened by wretches that are low in every sense ”

“ Doubts have been entertained as to the genuineness of the story which Shenstone has narrated with such simple tenderness and pathos, and a belief expressed that for some of the more tragic details he has had recourse to the poet's licence. But apart from the circumstance that the incident commemorated has been a tradition in each of the three branches of the Dawson family, and accepted as an unimpeachable fact, there is extant sufficient contemporary evidence to remove any misgivings as to its authenticity. "Seldom shall you hear a tale so sad, so tender, and," as the poet adds, "so true." ”

“ From what I hear, the poor man is not sensible of the nature of his own situation; for myself, I have succeeded in putting the matters perfectly out of my mind since I cannot help them, and have arrived at a flocci-pauci-nihili-pili-fication of money, and I thank Shenstone for inventing that long word. ”

“ Dan must be carefully dealt with. He has a strong will of his own, and if it comes into his mind that you or any one, except our mother, is trying to govern him, he’ll slip through our fingers some fine day.”
“You’ve been taking a leaf out of Angus Dhu’s book. There’s no fear of Dan,” said Shenac.
“There’s no fear of him as long as he thinks he’s pleasing himself, and that his sister is the best and the wisest girl to be found,” said Hamish. “But if it were to come to a trial of strength between you, Dan would be sure to win.” ”

“ If it had been me who was taken instead of Lewis.”
“Hamish,” said Shenac gravely, “it is not saying it to me that is wrong, but thinking it. And why should you have nothing to look forward to? We are young. A year seems a long time; but it will pass, and when Allister comes home, and we are prosperous again, it will be with you as it would have been if my father had lived. You will get to your books again, and learn and grow a wise man; and what will it signify that you are little and lame, when you have all the honour that wisdom wins? ”

“ You should have seen them the night Angus Dhu came to speak to my mother about the letter that came from Evan. Our Shenac was as proud of you as a hen is of one chicken, though she did not let the old man see it; and Shenac Dhu was as bad, and said over and over again to her father, ‘I told you, father, that Allister was good and true. He’ll never leave Evan; don’t be afraid.’ I doubt Evan was a wild lad out yonder, Allister.”
“Not wilder than many another,” said Allister gravely. “But it is a bad place for young men, Dan. Evan was like a brother to me always.” ”

“ He had made up his mind about the world and the people in it, and could tell his mind too.
“Our Allister is a man!” said Shenac, as she sat in the kitchen one night with Shenac Dhu and the rest. The words were made to mean a great deal by the way in which they were spoken, and they all laughed. But her cousin answered the words merely, and not the manner:—
“That is not saying much. Men are poor creatures enough, sometimes.”
“But our Allister is not one of that kind,” said Dan, before his sister had time to answer. “He is a man. He is made to rule. His will must be law wherever he is.” ”

“ They are spoken of differently, either with exaggerated applause or contempt, as the reader’s disposition is either turned to mirth or melancholy.
SATIRE I.
Young’s Satires were in higher reputation when published, than they stand in at present. He seems fonder of dazzling than pleasing; of raising our admiration for his wit, than our dislike of the follies he ridicules.
A PASTORAL BALLAD.
These ballads of Mr. Shenstone are chiefly commended for the natural simplicity of the thoughts and the harmony of the versification. However, they are not excellent in either. ”

“ Who is to work it?”
“You and I and the little lads,” cried Shenac. “There is no fear. God will help us,” she added reverently—“the widow and orphan’s God. Hamish, don’t you mind?”
Hamish had no voice with which to answer for a moment; but in a little while he said with some difficulty,—
“It is easy for you to say what you will do, Shenac—you who are strong and well; but look at me! I am not getting stronger, as we always hoped. What could I do at the plough? I had better go to some town, as Angus Dhu advised my mother, and learn to make shoes.” ”

“ But, Hamish, if you think I’m going down on my knees to Angus Dhu to tell him so, you’re mistaken. He may not be a thief and a robber, but he’s a dour carle, though he is of our own kin, and as different from our father as the dark is different from the day. And I can say nothing else of him, even for your sake, Hamish.”
“It is not for my sake that I am speaking, Shenac, but for your own. You are doing yourself a great wrong, cherishing this bitterness in your heart.” ”

“ They missed the peace-maker. Oh, how Shenac missed him in all things where Dan was concerned! She had not realised before how great had been the influence of Hamish over his brother, or, indeed, over them all. A laughing remark from Hamish would do more to put Dan right than any amount of angry expostulation or silent forbearance from her. Oh, how she missed him! How were they to get through harvest-time without him?
“Mother,” said Dan, as he came in to his dinner one day, “have you any message to The Sixteenth? I am going over to McLay’s raising to-morrow.” ”

“ When her prudent lover, Graves, inscribed the urn, her friend Shenstone, perhaps more feelingly, commemorated her virtues and her tastes. Such, indeed, was the friendly intercourse between Shenstone and Utrecia, that in Elegy XVIII., written long after her death, she still lingered in his reminiscences. Composing this Elegy on the calamitous close of Somerville’s life, a brother bard, and victim to narrow circumstances, and which he probably contemplated as an image of his own, Shenstone tenderly recollects that he used to read Somerville’s poems to Utrecia:—
How true is the feeling! ”