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Among such works may be placed the exiled Bolingbroke's "Reflections upon Exile;" the retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude;" the imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy;" the oppressed Pierius Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities;" the deformed Hay's Essay on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the liberal Shenstone's Poem on "Economy."

My reading was enlarged with the very important edition of Thomson's and Shenstone's Works; I had seen human nature in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly.

Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner, Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds."

And when they parted, he realized that he had never known more of her than an outer self, which offered but little clue to the self within. Rachel walked back to the farm with Miss Shenstone's note in her pocket.

See post, p. 158, note 4. Johnson has here expressed a sentiment similar to that contained in one of Shenstone's stanzas, to which, in his life of that poet, he has given high praise: She was his god-daughter. See post, May 10, 1784. 'Dr. Johnson gave a very droll account of the children of Mr.

Thomas Warton published in 1753 his Observations on the Faerie Queene. Beattie's Minstrel, Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and William Shenstone's Schoolmistress were all written in the Spenserian stanza. Shenstone gave a partly humorous effect to his poem by imitating Spenser's archaisms, and Thomson reproduced in many passages the copious harmony and luxuriant imagery of the Faerie Queene.

"They put me in mind somehow of Shenstone's pastorals. How humanizing a pastoral life is, to be sure! On the whole, I admire their way of not shearing their sheep alive. It isn't stupidity, but goodness of heart. A most amiable people!" "Jest so," assented Glover. "How it must go ag'in the grain with 'em to take a skelp when it comes in the way of dooty!

How sweet to think of him as he will be to us after we have outlived him ten or a dozen years! Then we can recall him in his best moments, bid him stay with us as long as we want his company, and send him away when we wish to be alone again. One might alter Shenstone's well-known epitaph to suit such a case: Hen! quanto minus est cum to vivo versari

"Yes," replied Johnson, "if it were necessary to jostle him down." The pair proceeded by post-chaise past Blenheim, and dined at a good inn at Chapelhouse. Johnston boasted of the superiority, long since vanished if it ever existed, of English to French inns, and quoted with great emotion Shenstone's lines

I can only quote Shenstone's delightful verses on Oxford, in his Ode to Memory, verses which I have quoted a hundred times: And sketch with care the Muses' bow'r, Where Isis rolls her silver tide, Nor yet omit one reed or flow'r That shines on Cherwell's verdant side, If so thou may'st those hours prolong When polish'd Lycon join'd my song.