e Fleece," which never became popular, and is now universally
neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention.
The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that
an attempt to bring them together is to COUPLE THE SERPENT WITH THE
FOWL. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has 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 a while 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