1756, he had a son and three daughters living. His ecclefiaftical provision was a long time but flender. His first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp in Leicestershire of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years, and then exchanged it for Belchford in Lincolnshire of seventy-five. His condition now began to mend. In 1751, Sir John Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred and forty pounds a year; and in 1755 the Chancellor added Kirkby, of one hundred and ten. He complains that the repair of the house at Coningsby, and other expences, took away the profit. In 1757 he published the Fleece, his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it to a critical visiter, with more expectation of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the author's age was asked; and being represented as advanced in life, He will, said the critick, be buried in woollen. He He did not indeed long survive that publication, nor long enjoy the increase of his - preferments; for in 1758 he died. Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity suf ficient to require an elaborate criticifm. Grongar Hill is the happiest of his productions: it is not indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so confonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again. The idea of the Ruins of Rome strikes more but pleases less, and the title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the neighbourhood of dilapidating Edifices, he says, -At dead of night The hermit oft, 'midst his orisons, hears, Of The Fleece, which never became popular, and is now universally neglected, I VOL. IV. Y cản can say little that is likely to recall it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me fuch difcordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the ferpent 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 cloathing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delufion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, fink him under insuperable oppression ; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, fuperadds to an unpleasing subject, foon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased. Let me however honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight of cenfure. I have been told that Akenfide, who, upon a poetical question, has a right to be heard, faid, "That he would regulate his opinion " of the reigning tafte by the fate of Dyer's 66 Fleece; for, if that were ill received, he " should not think it any longer reasonable SHEN 2 . SHENSTON E. WILLIAMSHENSTONE, the fon of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in November 1714, at the Leafowes 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 furrounded 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 School-mistress has delivered to pofterity; and soon received fuch delight from Y 2 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 fame 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 school-master 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 foon 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 fent in 1732 to Pembroke-College in Oxford, a society which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry |