Although a minor poet, William Shenstone was a significant presence in poetry during the last half of the eighteenth century. His much-respected burlesque The School-Mistress (1742) helped reawaken an interest in the style of Edmund Spenser....

In recent years, there have been repeated additions (see Jung, "Thomson" 411-13) to the poetical canon of William Shenstone (1721-69). Not long ago, a note was published that focused on Shenstone's early poem "Mediocrity," a work that was written during his university days...

No other eighteenth-century poet has posed so many editorial difficulties as William Shenstone. The variants of his poems have repeatedly been pointed out, and scholars are still at work to compare the different versions of A Pastoral Ballad and The School-Mistress (Jung, passim)....