Note 115 — Chapter III · THE ENGLISH PRECURSORS.

ii. 172; ii. 167. The first of these has been echoed, perhaps unconsciously, by more than one great Romantic writer. For the second, compare Regnier’s regret pensif et confus, D’avoir été et n'être plus. Shenstone’s Letters (as is implied in the very terms of Gray’s sneer) deal with literary subjects freely enough; but their criticism is rarely important, though I have noted a good many places. Some of the most interesting (p. 58 sq., ed. cit.) concern Spenser, and Shenstone’s gradual conversion “from trifling and laughing to being really in love with him.” From another (lxii. p. 175) we learn that at any rate when writing, S. was still in the dark about “the distance of the rhymes” in Lycidas. There is seen in Letter xc., viii. sq., on “Fables,” an intimation (c. iii. p. 321) of the ballad plan with Percy; praise of The Rambler; a defence of light poetry as being still poetry, &c. &c. It is almost all interesting as an example of Critical Education.