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and afterwards purchased that of the Leasowes. He had two sons, Joseph and Thomas. To the elder of these he assigned over the farm and lands of Ylley; although he still continued to reside there, together with his youngest son, Thomas. But Joseph, being now independent and master, treated his father with great disregard, and by his ungrateful behaviour forced him at length to leave the house. The old gentleman returned to the Leasowes, with his son Thomas, which they jointly managed, chiefly as a grazing farm. Here Mr. Thomas Shenstone married, and had two sons; William, the poet, and Joseph; which latter was bred an attorney, at Bridgenorth, but never practised, and died, unmarried, at his brother's house, in 1751. Dr. Nash adds, that it was under their mother's care, who superintended the farm till her death, 1732, that the brothers were left. For some time afterwards the farm was occupied by Mr. John Shenstone of Perry-Hill, in this parish, a distant relation, who with his sons, John and Thomas Shenstone, rented it as tenants.

In 1737, æt. 23, our author first published his poems, with this title, "Poems upon various Occasions. Written for the Entertainment of a few Friends, prejudiced in his Favour. By William Shenstone, Gent. Spes et Fortuna valete! Oxford: printed for Leon. Lichfield, near East Gate, 1737."d

The late Mr. Graves of Claverton published, in 1788, “A Recollection of some particulars in Shen

d See an account of it in "Cens. Lit." i. 238.

stone's Life," from which it appears that our poet, on the Sunday preceding his death, (Feb. 1763,) returned from a visit to his friend Lord Stamford, at Envile Hall; and the weather being severe, complained much that day of the cold.

Graves says, "he wore a blue coat with a red waistcoat, with broad gold lace, winter and summer.” Lady Luxborough's "Letters to Shenstone," were published by Dodsley, 1775, 8vo.

These Letters of SHENSTONE are not of the first order. They not only want vigour; but too much approach to insipidity. The mind from which they flow appears neither full, nor active. To interest the cultivated reader, it should be vivid with fancy and feeling, or energetic in the operations of the understanding.

Did the whispers of his trees, and the murmurs of his waters lull him into indolence? There are heads, perhaps, which want the impulse and collision of society, to rouse them up to the due degree of activity.

Johnson remarks, that SHENSTONE's talents were not sufficiently enlarged by knowledge; and it is not improbable that the movement within a narrow sphere

• A MS. note of Isaac Reed says, "I cannot account for the abrupt manner in which this correspondence so ardently begun seems to have ended. It appears to have ceased near twelve months before Lady Luxborough's death; and her last card is cold and formal.”----“ Lady Luxborough," says Shenstone, in an unpublished MS. "was in all respects (as far as my opportunities gave me room to conjecture) a female Lord Bolinbroke. Mr. Somervile, it seems, before I was acquainted in that neighbourhood, had made an observation somewhat to the same effect."

of life might shut from him those excitements to diversified thought which keep all the faculties in health, and strengthen them by perpetual exercise. Ease is bought by labour; enjoyment by contrasted difficulties; and power by repeated effort.

"And yet the langour of inglorious ease,

Not equally oppressive is to all."

There are some to whom solitude and silence and leisure are but the nurses of the noblest creations of intellectual genius. But SHENSTONE had more of cultivated elegance than native and unborrowed strength. He was not a plant that could do without watering, and propping, and pruning; without "the fostering dew of praise" to his roots, and the genial breezes of worldly fame to expand his leaves.

Still he was a man of virtue; of an amiable heart; of a refined and accomplished understanding; and, above all, of a genuine poetical genius, pure and elegant, if not nervous and comprehensive and lofty.

A real and unaffected taste for SHENSTONE'S Poems indicates a refinement highly honourable to the possessor. If tenuity is If tenuity is among their characteristics, it is a tenuity so chaste and graceful, as to touch the nicer perception of excellence with that peculiar pleasure which arises from the success of felicitous and polished art. A plaintive, and perhaps even somewhat querulous tone will not detract from their interest over the bosom of sensibility.

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Ir cannot be far from the truth to assert, that one of the most virtuous and brilliant characters in English History is SIR THOMAS MORE, the magnanimous Chancellor of King Henry VIII. His Life has often been written lately, as well as formerly; and the public attention has been more especially revived, (if such a word be applicable to that which was never extinguished), by Mr. Dibdin's beautiful reprint of the "Utopia," in 1808. I cannot hope, particularly in the short limits of this paper, to add any thing new to the subject. But in an hasty survey of the original Memoirs of this great man, I am not satisfied as to the identity of one of the authors. Though bibliography is not the prime object of The Sylvan Wanderer, I shall not utterly exclude from its pages inquiries which may illustrate it. In the shades of retirement, a pursuit so quiet and innocent may be advantageously indulged.

I shall transcribe the title-pages from the volumes now lying before me.

I. "Guilielmi Roperi Vita D. Thoma Mori Equitis Aurati, lingua Anglicana contexta. Accedunt Mori Epistola de Scholasticis quibusdam Trojanos sese appellantibus; Academic Oxoniensis Epistolæ et Orationes aliquam-multæ; Anonymi Chronicon Godstovianum; et Fenestrarum depictarum Ecclesiæ Parochialis de Fairford in Agro Glocestriensi Explicatio. E codicibus vetustis descripsit ediditque Tho. Hearnius, A. M. Oxoniensis, qui et notas subjecit. Oxon. Veneunt apud Editorem, 1716." 8vo. Only 148 copies were printed.

II. "The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, Knt. Lord High Chancellor of England, in the Reign of King Henry the Eighth. Written by William Rooper, Esq. Prothonotary of the King's Bench. To which are added from Sir Thomas's English Works some Letters of his, &c. referred to in the Account of his Life. London, printed for Thomas Page and William Mount on Tower Hill; John Osborn and Thomas Longman in Paternoster Row, 1729." 8vo. This was edited by that very learned antiquary, the Rev. John Lewis of Margate.

III. "The Life of Sir Thomas More, Kt. Lord High Chancellour of England under King Henry the Eighth. And His Majesty's Embassadour to the Courts of France and Germany. By his great grandson Thomas More, Esq. London, printed for James Woodman and David Lyon in Russell Street, Covent Garden, 1726." 8vo. This Thomas More was fifth but only surviving son of Thomas, who was eldest

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