Уильям Шенстоун: Ағылшын ақыны және ландшафт бағбаны

18th century English poet and gardener

William Shenstone (18 November 171411 February 1763) was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.

Shenstone's poems of nature were written in praise of its most artificial aspects, but the emotions they express were obviously genuine. His Schoolmistress was admired by Oliver Goldsmith, with whom Shenstone had much in common, and his Elegies written at various times and to some extent biographical in character won the praise of Robert Burns who, in the preface to Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), called him that celebrated poet whose divine elegies do honour to our language, our nation and our species. The best example of purely technical skill in his works is perhaps his success in the management of the anapaestic trimeter in his Pastoral Ballad in Four Parts (written in 1743), but first printed in Dodsley's Collection of Poems (vol. iv., 1755). Arthur Schopenhauer mentioned Shenstone in his discussion of equivocation. "[C]oncepts", Schopenhauer asserted, "which in and by themselves contain nothing improper, yet the actual case brought under them leads to an improper conception" are called equivocations. He continued:

One of the five houses of Solihull School is named after him. One of the four houses of The Earls High School (formerly Halesowen Grammar School) is named after him. Solihull School's annual publication is named after him – The Shenstonian. Louis René Girardin built a memorial in the French town of Ermenonville. A prominent public house (pub) in Halesowen (Queensway) is named "The William Shenstone". The walls are adorned with engravings of The Leasowes in Shenstone's time. Two roads in the area near to his home in the Leasowes Park are named in his honour: Shenstone Valley Road and Shenstone Avenue. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted named Shenstone Road in Riverside, Illinois after him.