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