ars without taking a degree. Those years appear to have been devoted
to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published a small volume anonymously. This
was followed by the _Judgment of Hercules_ (1741), and by the
_Schoolmistress_ (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point
his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to
wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such 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.'
On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and poetical
inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy precipice,' Shenstone
appears to have spent all his fortune. He led the life of a dilettante,
and died unmarried at the age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead,
and whatever vitality remains in his verse will be found in the
_Pastoral Ballad_ and the _Schoolmistress_.

The ballad written in anapaestic verse has an Arcadian grace, against
which even Johnson's robust intellect was not proof. For the following
lines he says, 'if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance
with love or nature':

'When forced the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought--but it might not be so--
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gazed as I slowly withdrew,
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.

The _Schoolmistress_, written in imitation of Spenser, has the merits of
simplicity and homely humour. The village dame is a life-like character,
and the urchins whom she is supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach
by chastisement, are cunningly portrayed.

From the verses _Written at an Inn in Henley_ three stanzas may be
quoted. The last will be already known to readers familiar with their
Boswell:

'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
I fly from falsehood's specious grin!
Freedom I love, and form I hate,
And choose my lodgings at an inn.

'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
It buys what courts have not in store,
It buys me freedom at an inn!

'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The war