The dogmatism of Johnson, and the fastidiousness of Gray, the critic who
passed his days amidst "the busy hum of men," and the poet who mused in
cloistered solitude, have fatally injured a fine natural genius in
Shenstone. Mr. Campbell, with a brother's feeling, has (since the
present article was composed) sympathised with the endowments and the
pursuits of this poet; but the facts I had collected seemed to me to
open a more important view. I am aware how lightly the poetical
character of Shenstone is held by some great contemporaries--although
this very poet has left us at least one poem of unrivalled originality.
Mr. Campbell has regretted that Shenstone not only "affected that
arcadianism" which "gives a certain air of masquerade in his pastoral
character," adopted by our earlier poets, but also has "rather
incongruously blended together the rural swain with the disciple of
virtu." All this requires some explanation. It is not only as a poet,
possessing the characteristics of poetry, but as a creator in another
way, for which I claim the attention of the reader. I have formed a
picture of the domestic life of a poet, and the pursuits of a votary of
taste, both equally contracted in their endeavours, from the habits, the
emotions, and the events which occurred to Shenstone.
Four material circumstances influenced his character, and were
productive of all his unhappiness. The neglect he incurred in those
poetical studies to which he had devoted his hopes; his secret sorrows
in not having formed a domestic union, from prudential motives, with one
whom he loved; the ruinous state of his domestic affairs, arising from a
seducing passion for creating a new taste in landscape gardening and an
ornamented farm; and finally, his disappointment of that promised
patronage, which might have induced him to have become a political
writer; for which his inclinations, and, it is said, his talents in
early life, were alike adapted: with these points in view, we may trace
the different states of his mind, show what he did, and what he was
earnestly intent to have done.
Why have the "Elegies" of Shenstone, which forty years ago formed for
many of us the favourite poems of our youth, ceased to delight us in
mature life? It is perhaps that these Elegies, planned with peculiar
felicity, have little in their execution. They form a series of poetical
truths, devoid of poetical expression; truths,--for notwithstanding the
pastoral romance in which the poet has enveloped himself, the subjects
are real, and the feelings could not, therefore, be fictitious.
In a Preface, remarkable for its graceful simplicity, our poet tells us,
that "He entered on his subjects occasionally, as particular _incidents
in life_ suggested, or _dispositions of mind_ recommended them to his
choice." He shows that "He drew his pictures from the spot, and, he felt
very sensibly the affections he communicates." He avers that all those
attendants on rural scenery, and all those allusions to rural life, were
not the counterfeited scenes of a town poet, any more than the
sentiments, which were inspired by Nature. Shenstone's friend Graves,
who knew him in early life, and to his last days, informs us that these
Elegies were written when he had taken the Leasowes into his own
hands;[53] and though his _ferme ornee_ engaged his thoughts, he
occasionally wrote them, "partly," said Shenstone, "to divert my present
impatience, and partly, as it will be a picture of most that passes in
my own mind; a portrait which friends may value." This, then, is the
secret charm which acts so forcibly on the first emotions of our youth,
at a moment when, not too difficult to be pleased, the reflected
delineations of the habits and the affections, the hopes and the
delights, with all the domestic associations of this poet, always true
to Nature, reflect back that picture of ourselves which we instantly
recognise. 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.
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.
Elegy IV., the first which Shenstone composed, is entitled "Ophelia's
Urn," and it was no unreal one! It was erected by Graves in Mickleton
Church, to the memory of an extraordinary young woman, Utrecia Smith,
the literary daughter of a learned but poor clergyman. Utrecia had
formed so fine a taste for literature, and composed with such elegance
in verse and prose, that an excellent judge declared that "he did not
like to form his opinion of any author till he previously knew hers."
Graves had been long attached to her, but from motives of prudence broke
off an intercourse with this interesting woman, who sunk under this
severe disappointment. 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:--
Oh, lost Ophelia; smoothly flow'd the day
To feel his music with my flames agree;
To taste the beauties of his melting lay,
To taste, and fancy it was dear to thee!
How true is the feeling! how mean the poetical expression!
The Seventh Elegy describes a vision, where the shadow of Wolsey breaks
upon the author:
A graceful form appear'd,
White were his locks, with awful scarlet crown'd.
Even this fanciful subject was not chosen capriciously, but sprung from
an incident. Once, on his way to Cheltenham, Shenstone missed his road,
and wandered till late at night among the Cotswold Hills on this
occasion he appears to have made a moral reflection, which we find in
his "Essays." "How melancholy is it to travel late upon any ambitious
project on a winter's night, and observe the light of cottages, where
all the unambitious people are warm and happy, or at rest in their
beds." While the benighted poet, lost among the lonely hills, was
meditating on "ambitious projects," the character of Wolsey arose before
him; the visionary cardinal crossed his path, and busied his
imagination. "Thou," exclaims the poet,
Like a meteor's fire,
Shot'st blazing forth, disdaining dull degrees.
_Elegy_ vii.
And the bard, after discovering all the miseries of unhappy grandeur,
and murmuring at this delay to the house of his friend, exclaims--
Oh if these ills the price of power advance,
Check not my speed where social joys invite!
The silent departure of the poetical spectre is fine:
The troubled vision cast a mournful glance,
And sighing, vanish'd in the shades of night.
And to prove that the subject of this elegy thus arose to the poet's
fancy, he has himself commemorated the incident that gave occasion to
it, in the opening:--
On distant heaths, beneath autumnal skies,
Pensive I saw the circling shades descend;
Weary and faint, I heard the storm arise,
While the sun vanish'd like a faithless friend.
_Elegy_ vii.
The Fifteenth Elegy, composed "in memory of a private family in
Worcestershire," is on the extinction of the ancient family of the Penns
in the male line.[54] Shenstone's mother was a Penn; and the poet was
now the inhabitant of their ancient mansion, an old timber-built house
of the age of Elizabeth. The local description was a real scene--"the
shaded pool"--"the group of ancient elms"--"the flocking rooks," and the
picture of the simple manners of his own ancestors, were realities; the
emotions they excited were therefore genuine, and not one of those
"mockeries" of amplification from the crowd of verse-writers.
The Tenth Elegy, "To Fortune, suggesting his Motive for repining at her
Dispensations," with his celebrated "Pastoral Ballad, in four parts."
were alike produced by what one of the great minstrels of our own times
has so finely indicated when he sung--
The secret woes the world has never known;
While on the weary night dawn'd wearier day,
And bitterer was the grief devour'd alone.
In this Elegy Shenstone repines at the dispensations of Fortune, not for
having denied him her higher gifts, nor that she compels him to
Check the fond LOVE OF ART that fired my veins;
nor that some "dull dotard with boundless wealth" finds his "grating
reed" preferred to the bard's, but that the "tawdry shepherdess" of this
dull dotard, by her "pride," makes "the rural thane" despise the poet's
Delia.
Must Delia's softness, elegance, and ease,
Submit to Marian's dress? to Marian's gold?
Must Marian's robe from distant India please?
The simple fleece my Delia's limbs infold!
Ah! what is native worth esteemed of clowns?
'Tis thy false glare, O Fortune! thine they see;
Tis for my Delia's sake I dread thy frowns,
And my last gasp shall curses breathe on thee!
The Delia of our poet was not an "Iris en air." 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. The sensibility of this passion took entire
possession of his heart for some years, and it was in parting from her
that he first sketched his exquisite "Pastoral Ballad." As he retreated
more and more into solitude, his passion felt no diminution. Dr. Nash
informs us that Shenstone acknowledged that it was his own fault that he
did not accept the hand of the lady whom he so tenderly loved; but his
spirit could not endure to be a perpetual witness of her degradation in
the rank of society, by an inconsiderate union with poetry and poverty.
That such was his motive, we may infer from a passage in one of his
letters. "Love, as it regularly tends to matrimony, requires certain
favours from fortune and circumstances to render it proper to be
indulged in." There are perpetual allusions to these "secret woes" in
his correspondence; for, although he had the fortitude to refuse
marriage, he had not the stoicism to contract his own heart in cold and
sullen celibacy. He thus alludes to this subject, which so often excited
far other emotions than those of humour:--"It is long since I have
considered myself as _undone_. The world will not, perhaps, consider me
in that light entirely till I have married my maid!"
It is probable that our poet had an intention of marrying his maid. I
discovered a pleasing anecdote among the late Mr. Bindley's collections,
which I transcribed from the original. On the back of a picture of
Shenstone himself, of which Dodsley published a print in 1780, the
following energetic inscription was written by the poet on his
new-year's gift:--
"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William
Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her native genius,
her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.
"W. S."
"The Progress of Taste; or the Fate of Delicacy," is a poem on the
temper and studies of the author; and "Economy; a Rhapsody addressed to
Young Poets," abounds with self-touches. If Shenstone created little
from the imagination, he was at least perpetually under the influence of
real emotions. This is the reason why his truths so strongly operate on
the juvenile mind, not yet matured: and thus we have sufficiently
ascertained the fact, as the poet himself has expressed it, "that he
drew his pictures from the spot, and he felt very sensibly the
affections he communicates."
All the anxieties of a poetical life were early experienced by
Shenstone. He first published some juvenile productions, under a very
odd title, indicative of modesty, perhaps too of pride.[55] And his
motto of _Contentus paucis lectoribus_, even Horace himself might have
smiled at, for it only conceals the desire of every poet who pants to
deserve many! But when he tried at a more elaborate poetical labour,
"The Judgment of Hercules," it failed to attract notice. He hastened to
town, and he beat about literary coffee-houses; and returned to the
country from the chase of Fame, wearied without having started it.
A breath revived him--but a breath o'erthrew.
Even "The Judgment of Hercules" between Indolence and Industry, or
Pleasure and Virtue, was a picture of his own feelings; an argument
drawn from his own reasonings; indicating the uncertainty of the poet's
dubious disposition; who finally by siding with Indolence, lost that
triumph which his hero obtained by a directly opposite course.
In the following year begins that melancholy strain in his
correspondence which marks the disappointment of the man who had staked
too great a quantity of his happiness on the poetical die. This is the
critical moment of life when our character is formed by habit, and our
fate is decided by choice. Was Shenstone to become an active or
contemplative being? He yielded to nature![56]
It was now that he entered into another species of poetry, working with
too costly materials, in the magical composition of plants, water, and
earth; with these he created those emotions which his more strictly
poetical ones failed to excite. He planned a paradise amidst his
solitude. When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine
pastoral ideas in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for
landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this
itself constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity.[57] Thus the
private pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a
whole people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far
less notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in
the Essay on Gardening by Lord Orford: even the supercilious Gray only
bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his
friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by
nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the
offices of the landscape designer, adds, that "he will not inquire
whether they demand any great powers of mind." Johnson, however, conveys
to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the
character of a "sullen and surly speculator." The anxious life of
Shenstone would, indeed, have been remunerated, could he have read the
enchanting eulogium of Wheatley on the Leasowes; which, said he, "is a
perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant, and amiable; and will
always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether
in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images
which abound in his songs." Yes! Shenstone would have been delighted,
could he have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his
"Chateau gothique, mais orne de bois charmans, dont j'ai pris l'idee en
Angleterre;" and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had
been proud to have witnessed a noble foreigner, amidst memorials
dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in
his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to
Shenstone himself for having displayed in his writings "a mind natural,"
and in his Leasowes "laid Arcadian greens rural." Recently Pindemonte
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--
But did the Muses haunt his cell,
Or in his dome did Venus dwell?--
When all the structures shone complete,
Ah, me! 'twas Damon's own confession,
Came Poverty, and took possession.
_The Progress of Taste._
The poet observes, that the wants of philosophy are contracted,
satisfied with "cheap contentment," but
Taste alone requires
Entire profusion! days and nights, and hours
Thy voice, hydropic Fancy! calls aloud
For costly draughts.----
_Economy._
An original image illustrates that fatal want of economy which conceals
itself amidst the beautiful appearances of taste:--
Some graceless mark,
Some symptom ill-conceal'd, shall soon or late
Burst like a pimple from the vicious tide
Of acid blood, proclaiming want's disease
Amidst the bloom of show.
_Economy._