William Shenstone

William Shenstone English poet and essayist, was one of the earliest practitoners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.

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• Oft has good nature been the fool's defence,
  And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
  • To a Lady (1736).

• Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
  Emblem right meet of decency does yield.
  • The Schoolmistress (1737-48), st. 6.

• Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round,
  Where'er his stages may have been,
  May sigh to think he still has found
  The warmest welcome, at an inn.
  • Written at an Inn at Henley (1758), st. 6. Compare: " From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,— Path, motive, guide, original, and end", Samuel Johnson, Motto to the Rambler, No. 7.

• Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.
  • On Writing and Books.

• A fool and his words are soon parted.
  • On Reserve.

• Love is a pleasing but a various clime.
  • Elegies, no. 5, st. 3.

• So sweetly she bade me adieu,
  I thought that she bade me return.
  • A Pastoral, part i.

• I have found out a gift for my fair;
  I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.
  • A Pastoral, part i.

• My banks they are furnish’d with bees,
  Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
  • A Pastoral, part ii, "Hope".

• For seldom shall she hear a tale
  So sad, so tender, and so true.
  • Jemmy Dawson (c. 1745), st. 20.

• Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
  Emblems right meet of decency does yield.
  • The Schoolmistress, stanza 6.

• Pun-provoking thyme.
  • The Schoolmistress, stanza 11.

• A little bench of heedless bishops here,
  And there a chancellor in embryo.
  • The Schoolmistress, stanza 28.

Essays on Men and Manners

• Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice: whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.

• Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are shewing you the grounds of it.

• There seem near as many people that want passion as want reason.

• A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.

• Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical.