MASON (the Rev. William) was a man of such eminence both as a poet and as a scholar, that a more particular account of his life and of his studies should be published than our scanty materials enable us to give. He was born at Hull, where his father possessed the vicarage of St Trinity; but where he received his school education we have not been able to learn. At the proper time he was admitted into St John's College, Cambridge; where he took the degrees of B. A. and M. A. and in 1747, he obtained a fellowship in Pembroke Hall. It was there that he contracted an intimate friendship with Gray the poet, and with Mr Hurd, now Bishop of Worcester. When the former of these gentlemen died, Mr Mason took upon himself the office of editor of his works and guardian of his fame; and upon the promotion of the latter to the see of Litchfield and Coventry, he expressed his satisfaction in some beautiful verses, which we read at the time, but do not recollect where.
In 1754 he entered into holy orders, and was patronized by the then Earl of Holderness, who obtained for him the appointment of chaplain to the king, and presented him with the valuable rectory of Alton in Yorkshire. He was some time afterwards made precentor of York Cathedral, when he published a small volume of church music, which has alternately met with opposition and applause. In our opinion some of his anthems are unrivalled.
It was natural for the precentor of a cathedral church, who was likewise a poet, to turn his attention to sacred music; and Mason had been a poet from his early years. His Elfrida and Caractacus, two tragedies on the Grecian model, were both published before the year 1757. These two dramas, in the opinion of Dr Hurd, do honour to modern poetry, and are, according to him, a sufficient proof of the propriety of reviving the chorus on the British stage. In this sentiment few critics, we believe, will agree with his Lordship; but the tragedies have certainly great merit, and
transcend perhaps every poem of the same cast in our own or any other modern tongue. In the first, the language is elegant and sweet; in the latter, it is daring and sublime. The author himself always considered the former as the most perfect; and Johnson, whose critical judgment will not be rashly questioned, seems to have been of the same opinion. Johnson's partiality to Oxford, as is well known, made him embrace every opportunity of turning into ridicule Cambridge men and Cambridge poems; but while he boasted of having spent hours in burlesquing Caractacus for the amusement of his Oxford friends, he confessed that Elfrida was too beautiful to be hurt by ridicule. The voice of the public, however, seems to give the preference to the latter, and to consider it as standing, like Dryden's celebrated ode, without a rival. In both are sentiments and expressions which would do honour to the genius of Shakespeare; and Caractacus, in the Greek version of Mr Glafs, would not have disgraced an Athenian theatre.
Besides his two tragedies, Mr Mason published many other poems. His English Garden is universally read and admired, being unquestionably the finest poem of the kind that has appeared since the days of Thomson; though some have affected to consider it as treating the subject rather with professional skill than with poetical genius. That there are in it a few prosaic expressions we shall not controvert; for such seem inseparable from didactic poetry; but, taken as a whole, where shall we find its equal? His elegies, particularly that on the death of his wife, and that on the demise of Lady Coventry, have been generally read and extolled, though not more than they deserve, as superior in classic elegance to any thing of the kind in the English tongue, and expressing a manliness and tenderness of the pathetic, rarely found in the most polished elegies of Roman writers. The splendor of genius, and accuracy of judgement, conspicuous in his dramas, are equally displayed in his character as a lyric writer. His quarry was bold and impetuous, and he never swept the ground with an ignominious flight. In his Sappho and Phaon he has happily imitated the style of Dryden and Metastasio; and at his death he was employed on a poem in which he proposed to measure his strength with Dryden.
We have reason to believe that this ingenious man was not only a poet and a musical performer, but the inventor of the fashionable instrument the Piano Forte. We cannot indeed at present bring evidence of this fact; but we have instituted such inquiries as, we hope, shall enable us to ascertain the truth under the article Piano Forte.
Poetry and music, and the duties of his office, might be supposed to have employed all his time; but, unfortunately, he caught the alarm which in 1769 was spread over the nation by the expulsion of Mr Wilkes from the House of Commons, and immediately enrolled himself among the supporters of the Bill of Rights. The decision of the House, which pronounced Mr Lutteral duly elected in opposition to Mr Wilkes, he considered as a gross violation of the rights of the people; and though he surely did not approve of the conduct of the exiled member, he joined with other freeholders in Yorkshire in a petition to the king that he would dissolve the parliament.
Being now leagued with the opposition, he joined in some violent clamours for a parliamentary reform. In the
Mason. the year 1779, when the city of London, and some other commercial towns, agreed to present their petitions to parliament for a more economical expenditure of the public money, and a more equal representation of the people, Mr Mason came forward, and took an active part in promoting these designs, as one who was convinced of their importance and necessity. When the county of York assembled, on the 30th of December 1779, and resolved unanimously, "that a committee of correspondence should be appointed, for the effectually promoting the object of the petition then agreed to, and also to prepare a plan of association to support that laudable reform, and such other measures as may conduce to restore the freedom of parliament," he was chosen upon the committee, and was consulted with, or assisted in drawing up those various high-spirited resolutions and addresses to the public, for which the Yorkshire committee was so celebrated; and which was afterwards generally adopted by the other associated bodies of reformers. This part of his conduct is surely entitled to no praise. Thinking as we do of the parliamentary reformers, we cannot but regret that a man of Mr Mason's talents and virtues should have embarked in their dangerous pursuits; and though we perceived less hazard in those pursuits than we do, we should still consider them as unsuitable to the character of a clergyman. Our author, however, was of a different opinion. In reply to a censure passed by a dignified clergyman on the political conduct of himself and some of his reverend brethren, he published, without his name indeed, a spirited defence of their proceedings and designs in some of the country papers. The York committee, too, at its next meeting, resolved, "that a Protestant, by entering into holy orders, does not abandon his civil rights; they also resolved, "that the thanks of the committee be given to those reverend gentlemen who, thus preferring the public good to their own private emoluments, have stood forth the firm friends to the true interests of their country."
Mr Mason, however, showed, by his subsequent conduct, that however earnestly he might wish for what he doubtless considered as an expedient reform in the commons-house of Parliament, he was firmly attached to the British constitution. He was indeed a whig; but he was a whig of the old school. In the beginning of 1794, when the reformers had betrayed the principles of French democrates, he deserted them, and ranged himself under the banners of the servants of the crown; and for this conduct, which was certainly consistent, he has been plentifully traduced by our Jacobin journalists as an alarmist, who not only deserted his old friends, but ascribed to them a certain degree of guilt and political depravity.
The death of this great and good man, which happened in April 1797, was occasioned neither by age nor by inveterate disease. As he was stepping into his chariot, his foot slipped, and his shin grazed against the step. This accident had taken place several days before he paid the proper attention to it; and on April the 3d a mortification ensued, which, in the space of forty-eight hours, put a period to his life.
That he was a scholar and a poet of high eminence is universally acknowledged; and we are assured, that his posthumous works, when published, will not detract from his living fame. In private life, though he affect-
ed perhaps too much the fasidious manners of Mr Mason Gray, whose genius he estimated with a degree of enthusiasm amounting almost to idolatry, his character was distinguished by philanthropy and the most fervid friendships; and he may be considered as a man who merits to be ranked with the ablest supporters of British liberty and British morals.