k such performances rather the sport than
the business of human reason. But it must be at least confessed that to
embellish the form of Nature is an innocent amusement, and some praise
must be allowed, by the most supercilious observer, to him who does best
what such multitudes are contending to do well.

This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes of
felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements. Lyttelton was his
neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked
with disdain on the PETTY STATE that APPEARED BEHIND IT. For a while 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. His house was mean, and he did not
improve it; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his
walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken
roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expenses
brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the
linnet's song, and his groves were haunted by beings very different from
fauns and fairies. 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; but that it was ever asked is not certain; it is
too certain that it never was enjoyed. He died at Leasowes, of a putrid
fever, about five on Friday morning, February 11, 1763, and was buried
by the side of his brother in the churchyard of Hales-Owen.

He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever
she was, to whom his "Pastoral Ballad" was addressed. He is represented
by his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and gene