ly made out in
another place.

"Now I am come home from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient
to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life which I
foresee I shall lead. I am angry and envious, and dejected and frantic,
and disregard all present things, just as becomes a madman to do. I am
infinitely pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of
Dr. Swift's complaint, 'that he is forced to die in a rage, like a
poisoned rat in a hole.' My soul is no more fitted to the figure I make,
than a cable rope to a cambric needle; I cannot bear to see the
advantages alienated, which I think I could deserve and relish so much
more than those that have them."

There are other testimonies in his entire correspondence. Whenever
forsaken by his company he describes the horrors around him, delivered
up "to winter, silence, and reflection;" ever foreseeing himself
"returning to the same series of melancholy hours." His frame shattered
by the whole train of hypochondriacal symptoms, there was nothing to
cheer the querulous author, who with half the consciousness of genius,
lived neglected and unpatronised. His elegant mind had not the force, by
his productions, to draw the celebrity he sighed after, to his
hermitage.

Shenstone was so anxious for his literary character, that he
contemplated on the posthumous fame which he might derive from the
publication of his letters: see Letter lxxix., _On hearing his letters
to Mr. Whistler were destroyed_; the act of a merchant, his brother, who
being a _very sensible_ man, as Graves describes, yet with the
_stupidity_ of a Goth, destroyed _the whole correspondence of Shenstone,
for "its sentimental intercourse_."--Shenstone bitterly regrets the
loss, and says, "I would have given more money for the letters than it
is allowable for me to mention with decency. I look upon my letters as
some of my _chefs-d'oeuvre_--they are the history of my mind for these
twenty years past." This, with the loss of Cowley's correspondence,
should have been preserved in the article, "of Suppressors and
Dilapidators of Manuscripts."

Towards the close of life, when his spirits were exhausted, and "the
silly clue of hopes and expectations," as he termed them, was undone,
the notice of some persons of rank began to reach him. Shenstone,
however, deeply colours the variable state of his own mind--"Recovering