Shenstone was so anxious for his literary character, that he contemplated on the posthumous fame which he might derive from the publication of his letters: see Letter lxxix., _On hearing his letters to Mr. Whistler were destroyed_; the act of a merchant, his brother, who being a _very sensible_ man, as Graves describes, yet with the _stupidity_ of a Goth, destroyed _the whole correspondence of Shenstone, for "its sentimental intercourse_."--Shenstone bitterly regrets the loss, and says, "I would have given more money for the letters than it is allowable for me to mention with decency. I look upon my letters as some of my _chefs-d'oeuvre_--they are the history of my mind for these twenty years past." This, with the loss of Cowley's correspondence, should have been preserved in the article, "of Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manuscripts." Towards the close of life, when his spirits were exhausted, and "the silly clue of hopes and expectations," as he termed them, was undone, the notice of some persons of rank began to reach him. Shenstone, however, deeply colours the variable state of his own mind--"Recovering from a nervous fever, as I have since discovered by many concurrent symptoms, I seem to anticipate a little of that 'vernal delight' which Milton mentions and thinks ----able to chase All sadness but despair-- at least I begin to resume my silly clue of hopes and expectations." In a former letter he had, however, given them up: "I begin to wean myself from all hopes and expectations whatever. I feed my wild-ducks, and I water my carnations. Happy enough if I could extinguish my ambition quite, to indulge the desire of being something more beneficial in my sphere.--Perhaps some few other circumstances would want also to be adjusted." What were these "hopes and expectations," from which sometimes he weans himself, and which are perpetually revived, and are attributed to "an ambition he cannot extinguish"? This article has been written in vain, if the reader has not already perceived, that they had haunted him in early life; sickening his spirit after the possession of a poetical celebrity, unattainable by his genius; some expectations too he might have cherished from the talent he possessed for political studies, in which Graves confidently says, that "he would have made no inconsiderable figure, if he had had a sufficient motive for applying his mind to them." Shenstone has left several proofs of this talent.[61] But his master-passion for literary fame had produced little more than anxieties and disappointments; and when he indulged his pastoral fancy in a beautiful creation on his grounds, it consumed the estate which it adorned. Johnson forcibly expressed his situation: "His death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said, that if he had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension." FOOTNOTES: