Shenstone, if he was not a poetical old bachelor, was little better than a poetical dangler. He was not formed to captivate: his person was clumsy, his manners disagreeable, and his temper feeble and vacillating. The Delia who is introduced into his elegies, and the Phillis of his pastoral ballad, was Charlotte Graves, sister to the Graves who wrote the Spiritual Quixotte. There was nothing warm or earnest in his admiration, and all his gallantry is as vapid as his character. He never gave the lady who was supposed, and supposed herself, to be the object of his serious pursuit, an opportunity of accepting or rejecting him; and his conduct has been blamed as ambiguous and unmanly. His querulous declamations against women in general, had neither cause nor excuse; and his complaints of infidelity and coldness are equally without foundation. He died unmarried. When we look at a picture of Thomson, we wonder how a man with that heavy, pampered countenance, and awkward mien, could ever have written the "Seasons," or have been in love. I think it is Barry Cornwall, who says strikingly, that Thomson's figure "was a personification of the Castle of Indolence, without its romance." Yet Thomson, though he has not given any popularity or interest to the name of a woman, is said to have been twice in love, after his own _lack-a-daisical_ fashion. He was first attached to Miss Stanley, who died young, and upon whom he wrote the little elegy,-- Tell me, thou soul of her I love! &c. He alludes to her also in Summer, in the passage beginning,-- And art thou, Stanley, of the sacred band, &c. His second love was long, quiet, and constant; but whether the lady's coldness, or want of fortune, prevented a union, is not clear: probably the latter. The object of this attachment was a Miss Young, who resided at Richmond; and his attentions to her were continued through a long series of years, and even till within a short time before his death, in his forty-eighth year. She was his Amanda; and if she at all answered the description of her in his Spring, she must have been a lovely and amiable woman. And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song! Form'd by the Graces, loveliness itself! Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet, Those looks demure, that deeply pierce the soul, Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mix'd, Shines lively fancy and the feeling heart: Oh, come! and while the rosy-footed May Steals blushing on, together let us tread The morning dews, and gather in their prime Fresh-blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair. And if his attachment to her suggested that beautiful description of domestic happiness with which his Spring concludes,-- But happy they, the happiest of their kind, Whom gentler stars unite, &c. who would not grieve at the destiny which denied to Thomson pleasures he could so eloquently describe, and so feelingly appreciate?