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 n