progress, and after eminent writers have appeared in every species of composition. The endeavor to please by novelty leads men wide of simplicity and nature, and fills their writings with affectation and conceit. It was thus the Asiatic eloquence degenerated so much from the Attic. It was thus the age of Claudius and Nero became so much inferior to that of Augustus in taste and genius. And perhaps there are at present some symptoms of a like degeneracy of taste in France as well as in England. WILLIAM SHENSTONE 1714-1763 66 William Shenstone was born at Leasowes, in the parish of Hales Owen, Shropshire, in November, 1714. He was taught to read at what is termed a dame-school, and his venerable preceptress has been immortalized by his poem of the Schoolmistress.' In the year 1732 he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he remained four years. In 1745 the paternal estate fell to his own care and management, and he began from this time, as Johnson characteristically describes it," to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers." Descriptions of the Leasowes have been written by Dodsley and Goldsmith. The property was altogether not worth more than £300 per annum, and Shenstone had devoted so much of his means to external embellishment that he was compelled to live in a dilapidated house, not fit, as he acknowledges, to receive "polite friends." An unfortunate attachment to a young lady, and disappointed ambitionfor he aimed at political as well as poetical celebrity-conspired, with his passion for gardening and improvement, to fix him in his solitary situation. He became querulous and dejected, and pined at the unequal gifts of fortune. Yet Shenstone was essentially kind and benevolent, and he must at times have experienced exquisite pleasure in his romantic retreat, to which every year would give fresh beauty, and develop more distinctly the creations of his taste and labor. This advantage he possessed with the additional charm of a love of literature; but Shenstone sighed for more than inward peace and satisfaction. He built his happiness on the applause of others, and died in solitude a votary of the world. His death took place at the Leasowes, February 11, 1763. The works of Shenstone were collected and published after his death by his friend Dodsley, in three volumes. The first contains his poems, the second his prose essays, and the third his letters and other pieces. Gray remarks of his correspondence, that it is "about nothing else but the Leasowes, and his writings with two or three neighboring clergymen who wrote verses too." The essays are good, displaying an ease and grace of style united to judgment and discrimination. They have not the mellow ripeness of thought and learning of Cowley's essays, but they resemble them more closely than any others we possess. In poetry, Shenstone tried different styles: his elegies barely reach mediocrity; his levities, or pieces of humor, are dull and spiritless. His highest effort is the Schoolmistress," published in 1742, but said to be written at college, 1736.” It was altered and enlarged after its first publication. This poem is a descriptive sketch in imitation of Spenser, so delightfully quaint and ludicrous, yet true to nature, that it has all the force and vividness of a painting by Teniers or Wilkie. His "Pastoral Ballad," in four parts, is also the finest English poem of that order. The four essays given here are among the best of his prose writings. A HUMORIST O form an estimate of the proportion which one man's happiness bears to another's, we are to consider the T° mind that is allotted him with as much attention as the circumstances. It were superfluous to evince that the same. objects which one despises are frequently to another the substantial source of admiration. The man of business and the man of pleasure are to each other mutually contemptible; and a blue garter has less charms for some than they can discover in a butterfly. The more candid and sage observer condemns neither for his pursuits; but for the derision he so profusely lavishes upon the disposition of his neighbor. He concludes that schemes infinitely various were at first intended for our pursuit and pleasures, and that some find their account in heading a cry of hounds, as much as others in the dignity of Lord Chief Justice. Having premised thus much, I proceed to give some account of a character which came within the sphere of my own observation. Not the entrance of a cathedral, not the sound of a passing bell, not the furs of a magistrate, nor the sables of a funeral, were fraught with half the solemnity of face! Nay, so wonderfully serious was he observed to be on all occasions, that it was found hardly possible to be otherwise in his company. He quashed the loudest tempest of laughter, whenever he entered the room; and men's features, though ever so much roughened, were sure to grow smooth at his approach. The man had nothing vicious, or even ill-natured in his character; yet he was the dread of all jovial conversation; the young, the gay, found their spirits fly before him. Even the kitten and the puppy, as it were by instinct, would forego their frolics, and be still. The depression he occasioned was like |