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See also: English poet, son of See also: Thomas
See also: Shenstone and See also: Anne, daughter of See also: William Penn of Harborough
See also: Hall, Hagley, was
See also: born at the Leasowes, a See also: property in the parish of See also: Halesowen, now in See also: Worcestershire, but then included in the county of See also: Shropshire
.
At school he began a See also: life-long friendship with See also: Richard See also: Jago, and at Pembroke See also: College, See also: Oxford, where he matriculated in 1732, he made another See also: firm friend in Richard See also: Graves, the author of The Spiritual Quixote
.
He took no degree, but, while still at Oxford, he published for private circulation Poems on various occasions, written for the entertainment of the author (r737)
.
This edition, containing the first draft of " The Schoolmistress," Shenstone tried hard to suppress, but in 1742 he published anonymously a revised See also: form of The Schoolmistress, a Poem in imitation of Spenser
...
. The See also: original was Sarah Lloyd, teacher of the See also: village school where Shenstone received his first See also: education
.
Isaac D'Israeli pointed out that it should not be classed, as it was by Robert See also: Dodsley, as a moral poem, but that it was intended as a burlesque, to which Shenstone appended in the first instance a " ludicrous See also: index." In 1741 he published The See also: Judgment of Hercules
.
He inherited the Leasowes estate, and retired there in 1745 to undertake what proved the chief See also: work of his life, the beautifying of his property
.
He embarked on elaborate schemes of landscape gardening which gave the Leasowes a wide celebrity, but sadly impoverished the owner
.
Shenstone was not a contented recluse
.
He desired See also: constant admiration of his gardens, and he never ceased to lament his lack of fame as a poet
.
Shenstone's poems of nature were written in praise of her most artificial aspects, but the emotions they express were obviously genuine
.
His Schoolmistress was admired by Goldsmith, with whom Shenstone had much in See also: common, and his `•` Elegies" written at various times and to some extent See also: biographical in character won the praise of Robert Burns who, in the preface to Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), called him " that celebrated poet whose divine elegies do honour to our language, our nation and our See also: species." The best example of purely technical skill in his See also: works is perhaps his success in the management of the anapaestic trimeter in his "Pastoral Ballad in Four Parts " (written in 1743), but first printed in Dodsley's Collection of Poems (vol. iv., 1755)
.
Shenstone died unmarried on the rrth of See also: February 1763
.
His works were first published by his friend Robert Dodsley (3 vols., 1764-1769)
.
The second See also: volume contains Dodsley's description of the Leasowes
.
The last, consisting of See also: correspondence with Graves, Jago and others, appeared after Dodsley's See also: death
.
Other letters of Shenstone's are included in Select Letters (ed
.
Thomas Hill1778)
.
The letters of Lady Luxborough (nee Henrietta St See also: John) to Shenstone were printed by T
.
Dodsley in 1775; much additional correspondence is preserved in the
See also: British Museum—letters to Lady Luxborough (Add
.
MS
.
28958), Dodsley's letters to Shenstone (Add
.
MS
.
28959), and correspondence between Shenstone and See also: Bishop Percy from 1757 to 1763—the last being of especial See also: interest
.
To Shenstone was due the original See also: suggestion of Percy's Reliques, a service which would alone entitle him to a place among the precursors of the romantic See also: movement in English literature
.
See also Richard Graves, Recollections of some particulars in the Life of the See also: Late William Shenstone (1788); H
.
See also: Sydney Grazebrook, The See also: Family of Shenstone the Poet (189o) ; Lennox Morison, " Shenstone," in the Gentleman's See also: Magazine (vol
.
289, 1900, pp
.
196-205) ; A
.
See also: Chalmers, English Poets (1810, vol. xiii.), with ' Life " by See also: Samuel See also: Johnson; his Poetical Works (
See also: Edinburgh, 1854), with " Life " by G
.
See also: Gilfillan; T
.
D'Israeli, " The Domestic Life of a Poet—Shenstone vindicated," in Curiosities of Literature; and " Burns and Shenstone," in See also: Furth in See also: Field (1894), by " Hugh Haliburton " (J
.
L
.
See also: Robertson)
.
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