What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his Letters,
was this:--

"I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone's Letters. Poor
man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other
distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against
his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned,
but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and
commend it. His correspondence is about nothing else but this place
and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who
wrote verses too."

His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies,
and moral pieces. His conception of an Elegy he has in his Preface
very judiciously and discriminately explained. It is, according to
his account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes
plaintive, and always serious, and therefore superior to the glitter
of slight ornaments. His compositions suit not ill to this
description. His topics of praise are the domestic virtues, and his
thoughts are pure and simple, but wanting combination; they want
variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and
the unenvied security of an humble station, can fill but a few
pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon
described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of
each other. The lines are sometimes, such as Elegy requires, smooth
and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction
is often harsh, improper, and affected, his words ill-coined or ill-
chosen, and his phrase unskilfully inverted.

The Lyric Poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as