Shenstone, WILLIAM, son of Thomas Shenstone of the Leasowes, Hales Owen, Worcestershire, was born there 18th October 1714. In 1732 he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, and whilst there devoted himself much to the study of English poetry. In 1737 he published anonymously a small volume of Poems upon Various Occasions; in 1741 The Judgment of Hercules; and next year The School-mistress, the work by which he is chiefly remembered. In 1745 he succeeded his father in the estate of the Leasowes, where he thenceforth busied himself with landscape-gardening. Such was his success in beautifying his little domain that it attracted visitors from all quarters, and brought him more fame than his poetry, but at the same time involved him in serious pecuniary embarrassments. He died 11th February 1763. The School-mistress, which has secured for the 'water-gruel bard' (as Horace Walpole dubbed him) a permanent if humble place among English poets, is written in the Spenserian stanza; and in the contrast between the stateliness of the vehicle and the familiar and homely quality of the subject, with the graphic truth of its treatment, there is a singular source of charm. Shenstone's other works are for the most part quite insignificant; but his Pastoral Ballad has touches of exquisite tenderness and truth of sentiment expressed in a simple and appropriate melody.
See Life by Dr Johnson prefixed to the pithy Essays on Men and Manners (new ed. 1868) and that by George Gilfillan to an edition of his Poems (Edin. 1854).