ode possesses the true fire of lyric poetry. Gray spoke of it as follows: "Mason's ode was the enly entertainment that had any tolerable elegance; and for my own part, I think, with some little abatement, uncommonly well on such an occasion."

A little after the death of his father, our poet went into orders. His father died, in 1753, of an infectious fever, which at the same time carried off a most intimate friend, with whom Mason had been brought up from infancy, Dr. Marmaduke Pricket, a young physician.

Mason felt this affliction severely, for his heart was formed for domestic endearments. Gray, in a letter on this occasion to Mason, speaks in this strong manner: "I have seen the place you describe, and know how dreadful it is. I know, too, I am the better for it. We are all idle and thoughtless things, and have no sense, no use in the world, any longer than that sad impression lasts: the deeper it is engraved the better."

Our author went into orders in 1754, and found a patron in the earl of Holderness. Through his influence he was advanced to be a chaplain to the living of Aston, which was of considerable value. Much chastity and elegance characterize Mason's sonnet, addressed to the earl of Holderness,

D'Arcy, to thee, whate'er of happier vein, Smit with the love of song, my youth essay'd, This verse devotes from Aston's secret shade, Where letter'd ease, thy gift, endears the scene.‡ An observation should be here made.

Notwithstanding Mason and Gray have addressed odes to two or three noble characters, they are not to be confounded with the tribes of poetical flatterers. They possessed a conscious sense of talents, with a dignified superiority to fulsome adulation. The sonnet addressed to lord Holderness is penned with the greatest delicacy and modesty, and evidently flows from the heart." The installation ode was written at the solicitation of the vice-chancellor.

Pindar, § Horace, and afterwards poor Dryden, were extravagant admirers of greatness. But Mason, and more particularly Gray, carried their spirit the opposite way; and, in the judgment of many, to a degree of fastidiousness and affectation: they not only despised artificial greatness; but indeed, on most occasions, Gray, as may be seen throughout his memoirs, takes an opportunity of sneering at it.

Beneath the good how far, but far above the great. GRAY'S Progress of Poesy.

This pride of language, however, (for in Gray more particularly it must be called by this name,) arose rather from a consciousness of talents, than a well-principled and philosophical dislike of hereditary rank. "I love men of distinction," says Gray, speaking of Cartismandua's sons, in Caractacus;

they were men before, whom nobody knew; one could not have made them a bow, if one had met them at a public place!" But superior minds sometimes throw out important truths, when they are little aware of it.

In 1756 our author published four odes, all of them excellent. It would be difficult to say which is the most to be admired, whether the structure of the verse, the vividness of the conception, or the spirit of liberty and the ardent love of independence throughout. The address to Milton, in his Ode to Memory, and to Andrew Marvel, in that to Independence, cannot be too much admired. In his fine lines to Melancholy, his fondness for alliteration is too observable.

These and other odes of Mason's, together with Gray's, gave birth to two odes to Obscurity and Oblivion, written by Colman and Lloyd, as parodies on Gray's and Mason's. Dr. Anderson, ever ready to bestow on each poet his appropriate praise, justly calls them admirable parodies; and even Gray

could not but acknowledge their humour. "He (Colman) makes tolerable fun enough where I understand him, which is not always."-But it is

time to return to Aston.

The vicarage of Aston was peculiarly agreeable to our poet. It brought him to reside in his native country, and placed him in a genteel independence; it, moreover, found him employment agreeable to his disposition. He was fond of the pastoral office, and, as a preacher, generally admired: among his parishioners he was much esteemed; and, though he displayed a sufficient degree of elegance and hospitality among his more intimate friends, he overlooked not the poor. When appointed precentor of York, he composed a book on church music, which was of use also to his parishioners, whom he presented with an organ. In short, as a country clergyman he maintained a very respectable character.

That he was a believer in Christianity cannot be doubted, whatever may be said of Gray. His poems, however, never manifest the violence of a bigot, or the wrangler for metaphysical niceties; a circumstance which, poetically considered, shows the solidity of his judgment; for such a spirit gives littleness to poetry, though great poets have fallen into it.

This agreeable retreat was favourable to our author's genius for poetry, and his love of picturesque scenery, on which, from his early youth, he was accustomed to exercise his imagination. This love, at length, displayed itself at large in his English Garden, and was the foundation of his long and lasting friendship with Gilpin.

Our author was fortunate in his matrimonial connection; truly fortunate, if personal charms and moral excellence could have rendered him so; but truly unfortunate, in being deprived of them so immaturely. He was married, in 1765, to a most amiable woman, whose health was but indifferent at the time of their marriage; she fell at length into a rapid consumption, when Mason went with her to the last retreat of hopeless decline, Bristol Hot-wells, where she died in 1767. Gray's letter to Mason, while at that place, is full of eloquence; upon which the latter observes, "I opened it almast at the precise moment when it would be necessarily most affecting."

We must now speak a word or two concerning his two dramatic works, Elfrida and Caractacus.

It may perhaps be agreeable to the reader to receive Mason's own account of his object in the dramas, as explained in a letter to a friend.

"Had I intended to give an exact copy of the ancient drama, your objections to the present poem would be unanswerable. But my design was much less confined; I meant only to pursue the ancient method, so far as it is probable a Greek poet, were he alive, would now do, in order to adapt himself to the genius of our times, and the character of our tragedy. According to this notion, every thing was to be allowed to the present taste, which nature and Aristotle could possibly dispense with: and nothing of intrigue or refinement was to be admitted, at which ancient judgment could reasonably take offence. Good sense, as well as antiquity, prescribed an adherence to the three great unities; these, therefore, were strictly observed. But on the other hand, to follow the mo dern masters in those respects wherein they had not so faintly deviated from their predecessors, a story was chosen, in which the tender rather than the noble passions were predominant, and in which love had the principal share."

This is the character of Elfrida; the observation will also apply to Caractacus; except, that the principal character of the latter is heroic.

It appears, then, that Mason's ambition was to steer between the irregularity of Shakspeare, and the classical severity of Milton. The former, not more from a consciousness of his mighty genius, than a desire to humour the false taste of the age, broke through all the ancient rules; the latter was not inferior to Shakspeare in talent, but disdained the lawless practice of his own times. Too proud to court fame, he left her to follow at her own leisure: I allude to his conduct in his admirable

Author of the Essay on Picturesque Beauty, Observations on the Mountains and Lakes of Cum. berland and Westmoreland, &c.

drama, formed, without any concession to English custom, on the strict laws of Aristotle.

Of these two dramas, the former gained the greatest share of public applause; but the latter, and it should seem justly, the greatest approbation from ingenious criticism: for public admiration, and the truth of criticism, are not always the same, though they are apt to be confounded.

These poems have established the character of Mason as a poet, beyond any other; the principal object of both was to make an experiment, how far the irregularity and intrigue, too observable on the English stage, might be remedied by the introduction of the chorus! so essential a part of the Greek drama.

"You may say what you will," said Gray," but the contrivance, the manners, the interests, the passions, and expression, go beyond the dramatic part of your Elfrida many, many leagues. I even say, though you will think me a bad judge of this, that the world will think it better."-But that fastidious critic was mistaken.

On another occasion, speaking of these two plays, Gray observes, "Caractacus is the work of a man; whereas Elfrida is that of a boy: a promising boy, indeed, and of no common genius; yet this is the popular performance, and the other little known in comparison."

Mason's success, however, with both his dramatic poems, was beyond his most sanguine expectation. They are his first attempts at blank verse before the public, except a few lines on Musæus, and are correct, harmonious, energetic, abounding frequently with double endings, like our other dramatic writings; not so mellifluous as Milton's, nor so negligently constructed as Shakspeare's; of a character somewhat between both, and sometimes coming so near each, as strongly to resemble their principal excellences. Elfrida was set to music by Dr. Arne, and performed with great applause at Covent-Garden theatre, and in 1779 was prepared again for the stage, with new music by Giardini; in 1776 Caractacus was adapted to music.

The plots of these dramas are well-conducted, the incidents striking; and, though they are professedly written on the Greek model, the eye is never shocked with those disgusting representations that were allowed on the Greek stage. At the same time, the author never falls into those conceits, and what Voltaire calls theatrical indecencies which had been so frequently introduced into the English tragedy.

With respect to the introduction of a chorus, the distinguishing feature of these dramatic poems, various objections have been advanced; and we have been told it suits but ill with the English stage: the author of the Poetical Prælections, and even the ingenious Voltaire, the great admirer of the simplicity of the Greek tragedy, agree to disclaim it. One excellence, however, without going farther, the Greek drama possessed in the use of their chorus, which has not been supplied by modern art. Bishop Hurd judiciously observes, "the importance of the office of the chorus, to the utility of the representation, is so great, that, in a moral view, nothing can compensate for the deficiency."

To this observation also should be added Gray's: "I am struck with the chorus, who are not there merely to sing and dance, but bear throughout a principal part in the action, and have (beside the costume, which is excellent) as much a character of their own, as any other person."

Gray is here speaking in reference to Aristotle's rule for the chorus, that it should be a member of the dramatic composition, as in Sophocles, and not a string of songs unconnected with the subject, as it was in Agatha.

. Another characteristic feature of these dramas is the excellence of their descriptions, which are sometimes bold and glowing, yet simple, much in the manner of Shakspeare. The fabulous or my. thological colouring also is natural, because British, of a piece with the stories, and thrown into the mouth of proper dramatic personages. Gray and Mason themselves were aware of the necessity of preserving this distinction here, though in other instances, in conformity to their classical taste and the costume of modern poets, going, however, fast out of fashion, they violated the principle.

Where the whole is so excellent, it will not be necessary to point out particular beauties. The Pindaric ode in Elfrida beginning

The elegy (for an account is next to be given of his elegies) admits not the sublimity, but requires something of the elegance of the ode. Horace calls this measure exiguus elegos, slender elegies: it is well adapted to serious and melancholy subjects, but not exclusively. The cheerfulness of spring, the communicativeness of friendship, and the tenderness of love, move as agreeably in elegiac measure, as the horrors of death, or the querulousness of disappointment. The epistles of Ovid, no less than his Tristium, are elegiac, and Tibullus and Catullus are called elegiac, nó less in their sportive than in their serious moments.

The first elegy, addressed to a young nobleman on leaving the university, was written in 1753: the advice throughout is eloquent, and the close of it more particularly weighty and sententious. The second, in the garden of a friend, was written in 1758; the sentiments in this are interesting, the descriptions natural, the arrangement is agreeable, " the expression," I here borrow Gray's words, "sometimes too easy." This was written in the garden of an English friend, who might, therefore, fairly enough have asked the poet who the lady and gentleman mentioned, or beings more than mortals, are?

How soon obedient Flora brought her store,

And o'er thy breast a shower of fragrance hung;

Vertumnus came; his earliest blooms he bore, And thy rich sides with waving purple hung.

His

The third is addressed to the late bishop Hurd, then vicar of Thurcaston in Leicestershire, to whose critical judgment he had submitted his poetical compositions: the introduction and ending of this ode are very excellent sentiments. fourth, written in 1760, on the death of lady Coventry, has been much admired; and, in point of novelty of design, elegance of composition, and manly tenderness, may be considered as his chef d'œuvre.

For she was fair beyond your brightest bloom,

(This envy owns, since now her bloom is fled,) Fair as the forms, that, wove in Fancy's loom,"

Float in light visions round the poet's head."

The structure of these lines is truly elegiac, and the sentiment beautifully poetic, a fair specimen of the whole. I must observe, however, though it is but noticing a speck of dirt on a mirror, that this poem abounds too much with antithesis, which does not agree with the solemn, dignified, and tender character of this elegy:

In life to lavish, or in death to spare,

Or shades with horror what with smiles should

glow.

Our author has written many shorter pieces at different periods, and on different occasions, in a spirit somewhat similar to that displayed in his elegies such as sonnets, epitaphs, inscriptions, &c. But we shall not detain the reader by entering on an examination of them.

July 1771 was an era, the most distressing in the life of our author. In 1770 he was visited at Aston by Gray, for the last time. The health of the latter was then precarious. He returned to Pembroke-hall, whence his last letter to Mason is dated, written at the end of May 1771, when he removed to London. He returned thence to college, where this fine genius paid the debt of nature. He died

of the gout in the stomach. Thus was Mason deprived of his guide, philosopher, and friend.

When Mason received this sad intelligence he was at a distance from the direct post, on the eastern side at Yorkshire. He hastened to Cambridge; but did not arrive there till the corpse had been interred. The funeral obsequies had been performed under the direction of Dr. Brown, master of Pembroke-hall; but Mason united in the performance of the other trusts, having been made joint executor with the doctor. The fallowing epitaph was written by Mason, and inscribed on a monument in Westminster Abbey, erected at the joint expense of Dr. Brown, Richard Stonehewer, auditor of the exchequer, and our author:

No more the Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns;
To Britain let the nations homage pay:
She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,

A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.

We have already noticed our author's early attachment to the Art of Painting: this is conspicuous throughout his writings, but more particularly in his translation of that admirable work, Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; a work with which no painter or poet should be unacquainted.

The poem being preceptive, is to be considered, like Horace's Art of Poetry, more as a display of rules than an attempt at poetic excellence. The translation also must, in like manner, be taken with these grains of allowance: notwithstanding this declaration, some parts possess great spirit and elegant poetry.

The English Garden is the poem on which Mason particularly prided himself; and it is unquestionably an excellent performance. It is of the didactic form, written in blank verse; and, like the Georgics of Virgil, of which it is a professed imitation, contained in four books: begun in 1767, a little after the death of Mrs. Mason,

The design of the English Garden is to apply "the rules of imitative art to real nature;" and, by proper selections, and agreeable combinations, in the relative position of hedges, buildings, trees, and water; by an accurate arrangement of lands, in reference to hills, valleys, and the like, to produce beautiful and picturesque scenery; an art but little known in Greece and Rome, and in which the English have surpassed all modern nations. Hence the title The English Garden.

In this poem, in opposition to the false taste of our forefathers, "the dull uniformity" of vistas, "the contrivance quaint" of Chinese gardens, and the laboured littleness of tasteless wealth, our author proposes to transplant from art to nature, proceeding on the principles of painting:

-The contrasts broad,

The careless lines, whose undulating forms
Play through the varied canvas.-

The principles are ingeniously and poetically laid down in the first book; the other three deliver precepts for the application of them. The different parts were written and published at different periods, but are now thrown together, and form an agreeable whole.

After the plan of the Mantuan poet, of whose Georgics, as before observed, the English Garden is a professed imitation, and to relieve from the monotony of precept, Mason diversifies the style of his work in the fourth book, and forms it into an entire story. In the management of it, however, if an opinion may be ventured, he shows less judgment than the Roman poet, in proportion to the length of the story. In Virgil, the history of Arlstæus and Orpheus is not continued too long, and indeed forms a most interesting and expressive kind of epilogue. In Mason, the didactic form of his poem is lost sight of too long, the story of Nerena and Alcander embraces a whole book; and the length and interest of the dialogue give it too much the form of the drama.

It has been already observed, that his writings

have a strong bias towards the principles of liberty. It should be farther observed, that he uniformly avowed himself a Whig, and, by his public conduct, no less than by his private declarations, acted from those principles. He first made his appearance on public business when the important question con. cerning the Middlesex election was agitated; the decision on which he conceived to be a great violation of the rights of the people. He therefore united with those independent freeholders, who, by declarations and petitions throughout the nation, opposed corruption, and claimed a reform of parliament. When the county of York assembled in 1779, he was of the commitee, and had a great share in drawing up those spirited resolutions which were adopted by the other associated bodies. The animated vindication of the conduct of the freeholders, and various other papers, though printed anonymously in the newspapers, and so printed in Mr. Wyvill's collection of political tracts, are well known to be Mason's production. He is said to have been concerned in the paper called the "Yorkshire Freeholder," in which King Stephen's Watch is said to be his composition.

This conduct rendered him obnoxious to the court-party, who charged him even with maintain. ing his principles with violence. He was at this time one of the king's chaplains, but when it became his turn to preach before the royal family, the queen appointed another person to supply his place. Mason told lord Orford, when the substitute began the service, that he started at the same time. Which got the better was not mentioned; Mason, however, resigned the chaplainship.

Of late years, however, his language was changed. He took a decided part in opposing Mr. Fox's India bill in 1785, and was probably the cause of Lord Holderness's zealous opposition. He even wrote to Lord Orford, telling him that every one ought to support the king on this occasion, and strongly solicited him to use all his influence against the bill. From that time "lord Holderness became a dangler at court, and lady Holderness was appointed lady of the bed-chamber to the queen; and Mason himself, as lord Orford expressed it, became a kind of courtier."

His sentiments may indeed be collected from his poems, which in the latter period of his life take a colour less favourable to liberty. Whether alarmed at the march of the French revolution, and apprehensive of its principles in this country; whether influenced by the timidity of age, or the secret influence of friendship; or whether (a passion that frequently sways men of genius) from a desire of keeping fair with the reigning party, and of being spoken of more honourably among the British poets, I undertake not to determine; whatever the cause, in his latter days he lowered his high tone, left the cause of reform to shift for itself, and the reformers of England to complain of his inconsistency, telling one of the most consistent among them, that if he persevered, they must entirely separate."

Lord Orford, indeed, observes, "I do think that Mason changed his sentiments from a silly hope of seeing his favourite scheme of parliamentary reform prosper in Mr. Pitt's hands, but which that giddy boy afterwards so notoriously juggled.-I must nevertheless regard the change as flat apos. tacy; for Pitt was then acting in formal opposition to the constitution of his country, being the only minister who ever withstood the house of com

mons."

Be this as it may, the cause of reform is the cause of human improvement, and will work its own way, whatever becomes of timid poets and short-sighted politicians: truth stands on a solid basis, and courts the patronage of none; she has found, and will continue to find, steady and constant advocates among the most enlightened statesmen, the profoundest philosophers, the sublimest poets, the first, the brightest ornaments of their species. If poets weighed more than other men, and truth stood in need of supporters, Milton might be called in:

Concerning the theological character of Mason, what has already been said must suffice. These memoirs have been confined almost exclusively to his poetical capacity.

While speaking, however, of his theological character, I am constrained to observe, (and of one who displays in his poetical writings an amiable and liberal spirit, I am sorry, to observe it,) that he was not a little tinctured with bigotry, if not with intolerance, as well against the Methodists, as against Socinians and unbelievers: and this observation is not made rashly, but after serious inquiry, and of persons who have been in habits of close intimacy and friendship with him. We must then consider Mason in his two-fold character, as a poet and as a clergyman. In poetry, illiberality is inelegance, but is not always considered as such in theology. From the height of the pulpit, the head is apt to turn giddy; men begin to dictate and domineer, and are led to consider their creed, taken up frequently after little examination, and with slender knowledge, as a standard for the whole world.

Mason wore his faculties well, lived to a good old age, and produced his annual sonnet to the last; and died, at length, not of old age or disease, but overtaken by an accident. While getting into his carriage, his foot slipped and received a bruise; he took no notice of it for several days, but on the 3d of April a mortification ensued, which in fortyeight hours put a period to his life, in the seventysecond year of his age. The character with which he ought to be handed down to posterity, is that of a man virtuous in his morals, amiable in his manners, and ornamental in the republic of letters; but, as a divine, destitute neither of bigotry nor prudence.

In this account of our author, it must appear to candour, that some pains have been here taken to do justice to his superior merit. There are few, perhaps, who place Mason in the first rank of poets; some question his claim to original genius; but without inquiring into the character of original genius, or denying, for brevity's sake, that any such thing exists, I suppose it not disputable,

whether Mason possessed great poetical powers, or highly cultivated them. His taste was not so exact, his rhyme so melodious, nor his learning so extensive as Gray's; but he selected greater variety, and, as a waiter, was more persevering. He has excellencies enough to delight us: but let us not admire what is unnatural, or be pleased with puerilities; nor let us take up after him what he himself should have left behind him at school, or at college.

Green-haired water-nymphs, silver-slippered Thesis, Daughter of Jove, Venus' train, nereids, and dryads, and fawns, with all the other classical personages, are properly associated in the mystical Imitations of Orpheus, the Hymns of Callimachus, or the Odes of Pindar and of Horace. A believer, also, in the ancient mythology may call in their assistance, and address his hymn to Venus, to Cupid, to Neptune: farther still, if the scene be dramatic, and the ground itself classical, Cytherea may be set a dancing, the Graces may pay their homage, and rosy-crowned Cupids glance their many-twinkling feet. But when Christian or deistical poets, in most serious mood, invoke such celestials, can we be surprised at these questions being put: who are the green-haired nymphs with drooping heads? Why is a goddess of Cyprus introduced on English plains? And where is the lady with the silver slipper? If to please be the great object of poetry, let nature be pursued through all her agreeable varieties. If to imitate be the very essence of poetry, let character, passion, manners be imitated; let the assistance of fancy be called, and invention be skilfully directed. But the poet should study proportion in his very fictions, and, when making excursions in the regions of fancy, be cautious how he proceeds, and know where to stop. He should beware of being unnecessarily obscure, unnaturally ostentatious; and cautious, lest, in stead of enriching his country with ideas luminous, varied, and original, he should introduce frivolous conceit and classical monotonies; he ought to follow the truth of imitation, and not become an imi tator of imitators.