Curiosities of Literature Volume Iii Part 9

These Elegies, with some other poems, may be read with a new interest when we discover them to form the true Memoirs of Shenstone. Records of querulous but delightful feelings! whose subjects spontaneously offered themselves from pa.s.sing incidents; they still perpetuate emotions which will interest the young poet and the young lover of taste.

Elegy IV., the first which Shenstone composed, is ent.i.tled "Ophelia's Urn," and it was no unreal one! It was erected by Graves in Mickleton Church, to the memory of an extraordinary young woman, Utrecia Smith, the literary daughter of a learned but poor clergyman. Utrecia had formed so fine a taste for literature, and composed with such elegance in verse and prose, that an excellent judge declared that "he did not like to form his opinion of any author till he previously knew hers."

Graves had been long attached to her, but from motives of prudence broke off an intercourse with this interesting woman, who sunk under this severe disappointment. When her prudent lover, Graves, inscribed the urn, her friend Shenstone, perhaps more feelingly, commemorated her virtues and her tastes. Such, indeed, was the friendly intercourse between Shenstone and Utrecia, that in Elegy XVIII., written long after her death, she still lingered in his reminiscences. Composing this Elegy on the calamitous close of Somerville's life, a brother bard, and victim to narrow circ.u.mstances, and which he probably contemplated as an image of his own, Shenstone tenderly recollects that he used to read Somerville's poems to Utrecia:--

Oh, lost Ophelia; smoothly flow'd the day To feel his music with my flames agree; To taste the beauties of his melting lay, To taste, and fancy it was dear to thee!

How true is the feeling! how mean the poetical expression!

The Seventh Elegy describes a vision, where the shadow of Wolsey breaks upon the author:

A graceful form appear'd, White were his locks, with awful scarlet crown'd.

Even this fanciful subject was not chosen capriciously, but sprung from an incident. Once, on his way to Cheltenham, Shenstone missed his road, and wandered till late at night among the Cotswold Hills on this occasion he appears to have made a moral reflection, which we find in his "Essays." "How melancholy is it to travel late upon any ambitious project on a winter's night, and observe the light of cottages, where all the unambitious people are warm and happy, or at rest in their beds." While the benighted poet, lost among the lonely hills, was meditating on "ambitious projects," the character of Wolsey arose before him; the visionary cardinal crossed his path, and busied his imagination. "Thou," exclaims the poet,

Like a meteor's fire, Shot'st blazing forth, disdaining dull degrees.

_Elegy_ vii.

And the bard, after discovering all the miseries of unhappy grandeur, and murmuring at this delay to the house of his friend, exclaims--

Oh if these ills the price of power advance, Check not my speed where social joys invite!

The silent departure of the poetical spectre is fine:

The troubled vision cast a mournful glance, And sighing, vanish'd in the shades of night.

And to prove that the subject of this elegy thus arose to the poet's fancy, he has himself commemorated the incident that gave occasion to it, in the opening:--

On distant heaths, beneath autumnal skies, Pensive I saw the circling shades descend; Weary and faint, I heard the storm arise, While the sun vanish'd like a faithless friend.

_Elegy_ vii.

The Fifteenth Elegy, composed "in memory of a private family in Worcesters.h.i.+re," is on the extinction of the ancient family of the Penns in the male line.[54] Shenstone's mother was a Penn; and the poet was now the inhabitant of their ancient mansion, an old timber-built house of the age of Elizabeth. The local description was a real scene--"the shaded pool"--"the group of ancient elms"--"the flocking rooks," and the picture of the simple manners of his own ancestors, were realities; the emotions they excited were therefore genuine, and not one of those "mockeries" of amplification from the crowd of verse-writers.

The Tenth Elegy, "To Fortune, suggesting his Motive for repining at her Dispensations," with his celebrated "Pastoral Ballad, in four parts."

were alike produced by what one of the great minstrels of our own times has so finely indicated when he sung--

The secret woes the world has never known; While on the weary night dawn'd wearier day, And bitterer was the grief devour'd alone.

In this Elegy Shenstone repines at the dispensations of Fortune, not for having denied him her higher gifts, nor that she compels him to

Check the fond LOVE OF ART that fired my veins;

nor that some "dull dotard with boundless wealth" finds his "grating reed" preferred to the bard's, but that the "tawdry shepherdess" of this dull dotard, by her "pride," makes "the rural thane" despise the poet's Delia.

Must Delia's softness, elegance, and ease, Submit to Marian's dress? to Marian's gold?

Must Marian's robe from distant India please?

The simple fleece my Delia's limbs infold!

Ah! what is native worth esteemed of clowns?

'Tis thy false glare, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sage in one of his letters. "Love, as it regularly tends to matrimony, requires certain favours from fortune and circ.u.mstances to render it proper to be indulged in." There are perpetual allusions to these "secret woes" in his correspondence; for, although he had the fort.i.tude 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 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 t.i.tle, 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 quant.i.ty 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 const.i.tutes a claim on the grat.i.tude 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 name of Shenstone does not appear in the Essay on Gardening by Lord Orford: even the supercilious Gray only bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the offices of the landscape designer, adds, that "he will not inquire whether they demand any great powers of mind." Johnson, however, conveys to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the character of a "sullen and surly speculator." The anxious life of Shenstone would, indeed, have been remunerated, could he have read the enchanting eulogium of Wheatley on the Leasowes; which, said he, "is a perfect picture of his mind--simple, elegant, and amiable; and will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs." Yes! Shenstone would have been delighted, could he have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his "Chateau gothique, mais orne de bois charmans, dont j'ai pris l'idee en Angleterre;" and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had been proud to have witnessed a n.o.ble foreigner, amidst memorials dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to Shenstone himself for having displayed in his writings "a mind natural,"

and in his Leasowes "laid Arcadian greens rural." Recently Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!

Amidst these rural elegancies which Shenstone was raising about him, his muse has pathetically sung his melancholy feelings--

But did the Muses haunt his cell, Or in his dome did Venus dwell?-- When all the structures shone complete, Ah, me! 'twas Damon's own confession, Came Poverty, and took possession.

_The Progress of Taste._

The poet observes, that the wants of philosophy are contracted, satisfied with "cheap contentment," but

Taste alone requires Entire profusion! days and nights, and hours Thy voice, hydropic Fancy! calls aloud For costly draughts.----

_Economy._

An original image ill.u.s.trates that fatal want of economy which conceals itself amidst the beautiful appearances of taste:--

Some graceless mark, Some symptom ill-conceal'd, shall soon or late Burst like a pimple from the vicious tide Of acid blood, proclaiming want's disease Amidst the bloom of show.

_Economy._

He paints himself:--

Observe Florelio's mien; Why treads my friend with melancholy step That beauteous lawn? Why pensive strays his eye O'er statues, grottos, urns, by critic art Proportion'd fair? or from his lofty dome Returns his eye unpleased, disconsolate?

The cause is, "criminal expense," and he exclaims--

Sweet interchange Of river, valley, mountain, woods, and plains, How gladsome once he ranged your native turf, Your simple scenes how raptured! ere EXPENSE Had lavish'd thousand ornaments, and taught Convenience to perplex him, Art to pall, Pomp to deject, and Beauty to displease.