the room. Those, I trust, were the offences.' _Piozzi
MS._ CROKER.

[1243] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 409) thus writes of Shenstone and the
Leasowes:--'He began 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. .... For awhile the inhabitants of Hagley
affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying
to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced
themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which
they could not suppress by conducting their visitants perversely to
inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a
walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily
complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where there
is vanity there will be folly. The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his
eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his
indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.' See
_ante_, p. 345.

[1244] See _ante_, iii. 187, and v. 429.

[1245] 'He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably
hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing.
It is said that if he had lived a little longer he would have been
assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more
properly bestowed.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 410. His friend, Mr.
Graves, the author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, in a note on this passage
says that, if he was sometimes distressed for money, yet he was able to
leave legacies and two small annuities.

[1246] Mr. Duppa--without however giving his authority--says that this
was Dr. Wheeler, mentioned _ante_, iii. 366. The _Birmingham Directory_
for the year 1770 shews that there were two tradesmen in the town of
that name, one having the same Christian name, Benjamin, as Dr. Wheeler.

[1247] Boswell visited these works in 1776. _Ante_, ii. 459.

[1248] Burke in the House of Commons on Jan. 25, 1771, in a debate on
Falkland's Island, said of the Spanish Declaration:--'It was made, I
admit, on the true principles of trade and manufacture. It puts me in
mind of a Birmingham button which has passed through an hundred hands,
and after all is not worth three-halfpence a doze