as done his utmost, by
interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interspersing rural
imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great
words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally
adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and
manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust
which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an
unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be
pleased.

Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight
of censure. I have been told, that Akenside, who, upon a poetical
question, has a right to be heard, said, "That he would regulate his
opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's Fleece; for if that
were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to
expect fame from excellence."

SHENSTONE.

William Shenstone, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in
November, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those insulated
districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was appended, for some
reason, not now discoverable, to a distant county; and which, though
surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire, belongs to Shropshire,
though, perhaps, thirty miles distant from any other part of it.

He learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem of the Schoolmistress
has delivered to posterity; and soon received such delight from books,
that he was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that,
when any of the family went to market, a new book should be brought him,
which, when it came, was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him. It
is said, that, when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapped
up a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night.

As he grew older, he went for awhile to the grammar-school in
Hales-Owen, and was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent
schoolmaster at Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness
of his progress.

When he was young, June, 1724, he was deprived of his father, and soon
after, August, 1726, of his grandfather; and was, with his brother, who
died afterwards unmarried, left to the care of his grandmother, who
managed the estate.

From school he was sent, in 1732, to Pembroke college, in Oxford, a
society which, for half a century, has been eminent for English poetry
and elegant literature. Here it appears