WILLIAM, an admired English poet, the eldest son of a plain country gentleman, who farmed his own estate in Shropshire, was born at Leasowes in Novem- ber 1714. He learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem of the Schoolmistress has delivered to posterity; and he soon received such delight from books, that he was always calling for new entertainment, and expected that, when any of the family went to market, a new book should be brought him. As he grew older, he went for a while to the grammar-school in Hales-Owen, and was placed after- wards with an eminent schoolmaster at Solihull, where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress. From school he was sent, in 1732, to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he continued his name for ten years, though he took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian's gown, but without showing any inten- tion to engage in the profession. At Oxford he applied to English poetry, and in 1737 published a small Miscellany, without his name. He published, in 1741, his Judgment of Hercules, addressed to Mr Lyttleton, whose interest he supported with great warmth at an election. This was afterwards followed by the Schoolmistress in 1742, unquestionably Shenstone's best poem. Gray said of it, in a letter to Walpole, that it was "excellent of its kind, and masterly." Now began his delight in rural pleasures, and his passion for rural elegance; but in time his expenses occasioned clamours that overpowered the bleat of the lamb and the song of the linnet, and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns or fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. It is said, that if he had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension. He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, on the 11th of February 1763.

In his private opinions Shenstone adhered to no particular sect, and hated all religious disputes. Tenderness, in every sense of the word, was his peculiar characteristic; and his friends, domestics, and poor neighbours, daily experienced the effects of his benevolence. This virtue he carried to an excess that seemed to border upon weakness; yet if any of his friends treated him ungenerously, he was not easily reconciled. On such occasions, however, he used to say, "I never will be a revengeful enemy; but I cannot, it is not in my nature, to be half a friend." If we consider the perfect paradise into which he had converted his estate, the hospitality with which he lived, his charities to the indigent, and all out of an estate that did not exceed L300 a-year, one should rather wonder that he left anything behind him, than blame his want of economy. He yet left more than sufficient to pay all his debts, and by his will appropriated his whole estate to that purpose, Shenstone never married. His works have been published by Dodsley, in three volumes 8vo. The first volume contains his poetical works, which are particularly distinguished by an amiable elegance and beautiful simplicity; the second volume contains his prose works; the third his letters and other pieces. His life has been written by Johnson in his Lives of the Poets. (See Cunningham's Edition, 1854.) There is likewise an edition of his poetical works, published in Edinburgh in 1854, with a biography.