It has been stated that the French term Ferme Ornee was first used in England by Shenstone.  It exactly expressed the character of his grounds.  Mr. Repton said that he never strolled over the scenery of the Leasowes without lamenting the constant disappointment to which Shenstone exposed himself by a vain attempt to unite the incompatible objects of ornament and profit.  “Thus,” continued Mr. Repton, “the poet lived under the continual mortification of disappointed hope, and with a mind exquisitely sensible, he felt equally the sneer of the great man at the magnificence of his attempt and the ridicule of the farmer at the misapplication of his paternal acres.”  The “sneer of the great man.” is perhaps an allusion to what Dr. Johnson says of Lord Lyttelton:—­that he “looked with disdain” on “the petty State” of his neighbour.  “For a while,” says Dr. Johnson, “the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain.”  Mr. Graves, the zealous friend of Shenstone, indignantly denies that any of the Lyttelton family had evinced so ungenerous a feeling towards the proprietor of the Leasowes who though his “empire” was less “spacious and opulent” had probably a larger share of true taste than even the proprietor of Hagley, the Lyttelton domain—­though Hagley has been much, and I doubt not, deservedly, admired.[023]

Dr. Johnson states that Shenstone’s expenses were beyond his means,—­ that he spent his estate in adorning it—­that at last the clamours of creditors “overpowered the lamb’s bleat and the linnet’s song; and that his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies.”  But this is gross exaggeration.  Shenstone was occasionally, indeed, in slight pecuniary difficulties, but he could always have protected himself from the intrusion of the myrmidons of the law by raising money on his estate; for it appears that after the payment of all his debts, he left legacies to his friends and annuities to his servants.

Johnson himself is the most scornful of the critics upon Shenstone’s rural pursuits.  “The pleasure of Shenstone,” says the Doctor, “was all in his eye:  he valued what he valued merely for its looks.  Nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.”  Dr. Johnson would have seen no use in the loveliest piece of running water in the world if it had contained nothing that he could masticate!  Mrs. Piozzi says of him, “The truth is, he hated to hear about prospects and views, and laying out grounds and taste in gardening.”  “That was the best garden,” he said, “which produced