Shenstone and Richard Graves's Columella

Abstract

In 1779 James Dodsley published a slight piece of fiction entitled Columella; Or, The Distressed Anchoret. The author of that work was the Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, who kept his name from the title page, preferring to figure there as “the author of The Spiritual Quixote,” a clever satire on the Methodists by which he had won attention six years before. This latter work went through four editions before 1800 and was deservedly revived in a handsome reprint for the modern reader in 1926, but the only edition of Columella was the first. Special interest attaches to Columella today, however, because of its connection with the poet, William Shenstone. Graves and Shenstone had been intimate friends. Their friendship began in 1732 when both were undergraduates of Pembroke College, Oxford, and endured with great warmth of affection until Shenstone's death in 1763, when Graves found himself an executor of his friend's will. During Graves's lifetime (he lived on until 1804, one of the few nonagenarians in the history of English literature) it was apparently known that the character of Columella had been created in the image of Shenstone, for the fact was mentioned in the obituary notice of Graves in the Gentleman's Magazine? That interesting point has been duly remarked by recent writers, but as yet nobody has demonstrated how startlingly close the portrait is. In a like manner identifications of minor characters in Columella have been mentioned, but the suggestions, unsupported by proof, have remained only good intuitions. I propose in the following paragraphs to discuss the origins of certain characters in Columella, devoting special attention to showing that Columella himself is a highly intimate portrait of Shenstone.