His best political poem is his _Epistle to Curio_ (1744), which contains some brilliant invective against Pulteney. His best-known book is _The Pleasures of the Imagination_ (1744), a long and rambling blank-verse poem. The style is somewhat Miltonic in its energy and its turn of phrase, but it is deficient in the Miltonic genius. The poem has some loud but rather fine descriptive passages, especially those dealing with his native Tyne, for the beauties of which he shows a laudable enthusiasm. =6. Christopher Smart (1722–71).= Smart was born in Kent, and was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated. He was a man of unbalanced mind, which, leading him into many extravagances, brought him finally to a madhouse and a miserable death in a debtor’s prison. The poem connected with his name is _The Song to David_ (1763), which is said to have been partly written on the walls of the madhouse in which he was confined. The poem, consisting of nearly a hundred six-line stanzas, is a wild, rhapsodical effusion, full of extravagance and incoherence, but in places containing bursts of tremendous poetic power. The following stanzas, the last in the poem, give an idea of these poetical bomb-shells: Glorious the sun in mid career; Glorious the assembled fires appear; Glorious the comet’s train: Glorious the trumpet and alarm; Glorious the Almighty’s stretched-out arm; Glorious the enraptured main: Glorious the northern lights astream; Glorious the song, when God’s the theme; Glorious the thunder’s roar: Glorious hosanna from the den; Glorious the catholic amen; Glorious the martyr’s gore: Glorious--more glorious is the crown Of Him that brought salvation down, By meekness called thy Son; Thou that stupendous truth believed, And now the matchless deed’s achieved, Determined, Dared, and Done. =7. William Shenstone (1714–63).= Born at the Leasowes, in Worcestershire, Shenstone was educated at Oxford. After leaving the university he retired to his estate, which he beautified in the fashion of the time. He was a man of an agreeable nature, but was shy and retiring, and spent nearly all his life in the country. His published works consist chiefly of odes, elegies, and what he called _Levities, or Pieces of Humour_ (often dreary enough), and _The Schoolmistress_ (1742). His poems are largely pastoral, but they are by no means the artificial pastoral of Pope. He studies nature himself, and does not derive his notions from books. In this matter he resembles Cowper. _The Schoolmistress_, which by a notable advance is written in the Spenserian stanza, deals in rather a sentimental fashion with the teacher in his first school; it is sympathetic in treatment, and in style is an interesting example of the transition.