(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 readily 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 Glaf, 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 profane 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 anything 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 splendour 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 any 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 Lutterduly 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 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 Mafon 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 Mafon's talents and virtues should have embarked in their dangerous pursuits; and though we perceive 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 defense 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 Mafon, however, showed, by his subsequent conduct, that however carefully he might wish for what he doubtless considered as an expedient reform in the common-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 democracies, 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 thin grazed against the step. This accident had taken place several days before he paid the proper attention to it; and on April the 3rd 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 affected perhaps too much the fastidious manners of Mr Mafon 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.

FREE MASONRY, is a subject which, after the copious detail given in the Encyclopedia of its lodges, and wardens, and grand masters, we should not have refuted in this place, but to warn our countrymen against the pernicious superstructures which have been raised by the French and Germans on the simple system of British masonry.

Much falsehood is current respecting the origin and antiquity of the masonic associations. That the Dionysiacs of Afa Minor were a society of architects and engineers, who had the exclusive privilege of building temples, fladia, and theatres, under the mysterious tutelage of Bacchus, seems to be unquestionable. "We are also certain, that there was a similar trading association during the dark ages in Christian Europe, which monopolized the building of great churches and castles, and enjoyed many privileges under the patronage of the various sovereigns. Circumstances (says Dr Robiton), which it would be tedious to enumerate and discuss, continued this association longer in Britain than on the continent;" but there is no good evidence, that anterior to the year 1648, any man sought admission into it, who was not either a builder by profession, or at least skilled in the science of architecture. At that period, indeed, Mr Ashmole, the famous antiquary (see Ashmole, Encycl.), was admitted into a lodge at Warrington, together with his father-in-law Colonel Mainwaring; and these are the first distinct and unequivocal instances that we have in Britain of men unconnected with the operative masons being received into their mysterious fraternity. The secrecy, however, of the lodges made them fit places for the meetings of the royalists; and accordingly many royalists became free masons. "Nay, the ritual of the master's degree seems to have been formed, or perhaps twisted from its original institution, so as to give an opportunity of founding the political principles of the candidate, and of the whole brethren present. For it bears to easy an adaptation to the death of the king, to the overturning of the venerable constitution of the English government of three orders by a mean democracy, and its re-establishment by the efforts of the loyalists, that this would start into every person's mind during the ceremonial, and could hardly fail to shew, by the countenances and behaviour of the brethren, how they were affected."

This supposition receives much countenance from the well known fact, that "Charles II. was made a mason, and frequented the lodges. It is not unlikely, that besides the amusement of a vacant hour, which was always agreeable to him, he had pleasure in meeting with his loyal friends, and in the occupations of the lodge, which recalled to his mind their attachment and services. His brother and successor James II. was of a more serious and manly cast of mind, and had little pleasure in the frivolous ceremonies of masonry. He did not frequent the lodges." But, by this time, they were the resort of many persons who were not of the profession, or members of the trading corporation. This circumstance, It was not till some years after this period that the lodges made open profession of the cultivation of general benevolence, and that the grand aim of the fraternity was to enforce the exercise of all the social virtues. The establishment of a fund for the relief of unfortunate brethren did not take place till the very end of the last century; and we may presume, that it was brought about by the warm recommendations of some benevolent members, who would naturally enforce it by addresses to their assembled brethren. Hence the probable origin of those philanthropic discourses, which are occasionally delivered in the lodges by one of the brethren as an official task.

The boasted philanthropy of masons serves, however, another purpose. The inquisitive are always prying and teasing, eager to discover the secrets of their neighbours; and hence the brethren are induced to say, that universal beneficence is the great aim of the order, for it is the only point on which they are at liberty to speak. They forget, that universal beneficence and philanthropy are inconsistent with the exclusive and monopolizing spirit of an association, which not only confines its benevolence to its own members (like any other charitable association), but hoards up in its bosom inestimable secrets, whose natural tendency, they say, is to form the heart to this generous and kind conduct, and inspire us with love to all mankind. The profane world cannot see the beneficence of concealing from public view a principle or a motive which so powerfully induces a mason to be good and kind. The brother says, that publicity would rob it of its force; and we must take him at his word: and our curiosity is so much the more excited, to learn what are the secrets which have so singular a quality, for they must be totally unlike the principles of science, which produce their effects only when made public.

From this account of masonry, it would appear to have been at first a loyal association, and as such it was carried over from England to the continent; for all the masons abroad profess to have received their mysteries from Great Britain. It was first transported into France by the zealous adherents of King James, who, together with their unfortunate master, took refuge in that country; and it was cultivated by the French in a manner suited to the taste and habits of that highly polished and frivolous people. To the three simple British degrees of apprentice, fellow-craft, and master, they gradually added degrees innumerable, all decorated with flares and ribbons; and into their lodges they introduced the impieties and seditious doctrines of Voltaire and the other philosophists. Indeed, if the account which the Abbé Barruel gives of masonry be just, it must be admitted, that even the secrets of the most ancient legends, though in one sense harmless and just, are so expressed, that they may be easily twisted to very dangerous purposes. This author was advanced by a few friends to the degree of master, without being obliged to take the oath of secrecy; and being furnished with the signs, he got admission into a lodge, where he heard the secret regularly communicated, with all the ordinary forms, to an apprentice. "It would be useless," says he, "to describe the ceremonials and trials on such occasions; for in the first degrees, they are nothing more than the play of children." The grand object was the communication of the famous secret, when the candidate was ordered to approach nearer to the venerable. At that moment, the brethren, who had been armed with swords for the occasion, drawing up in two lines, held their swords elevated, leaning the points towards each other, and formed what in masonry is called the arch of steel. The candidate passed under this arch to a sort of altar elevated on two steps, at the farther end of the lodge. The matter, seated in an armchair, or a sort of throne, behind this altar, pronounced a long discourse on the inviolability of the secret which was to be imparted, and on the danger of breaking the oath which the candidate was going to take. He pointed to the naked swords, which were always ready to pierce the breast of the traitor; and declared to him that it was impossible to escape their vengeance. The candidate then swore, "that rather than betray the secret, he consented to have his head cut off, his heart and entrails torn out, and his ashes cast before the winds." Having taken the oath, the matter said the following words to him: "My dear brother, the secret of masonry consists in these words, equality and liberty; all men are equal and free; all men are brothers." The matter did not utter another syllable, and everybody embraced the new brother equal and free. The lodge broke up, and we gayly adjourned to a masonic repast."

In the British lodges, the author admits, that no other interpretation is given to this famous secret, than that, as all men are children of one common parent, and creatures of the same God, they are in duty bound to love and help each other as brethren; but he contends, that in France it was differently interpreted; and he supports his opinion by the following arguments:

On the 12th of August 1792, Louis XVI. was carried a prisoner to the tower of the temple, so called because it formerly belonged to the knights templars. On that day, the rebel assembly decreed, that to the date of liberty the date of equality should be added in future in all public acts; and the decree itself was dated the fourth year of liberty, the first year and first day of equality. It was on that day, for the first time, that the secret of free-masonry was made public; that secret so dear to them, and which they preserved with all the solemnity of the most inviolable oath. At the reading of this famous decree, they exclaimed, "We have at length succeeded, and France is no other than an immense lodge. The whole French people are free masons, and the whole universe will soon follow their example."

"I witnessed (says our author) this enthusiasm; I heard the conversations to which it gave rise; I saw masons, till then the most reserved, who freely and openly declared, 'Yes, at length the grand object of free-masonry is accomplished, equality and liberty; all men are equal and brothers; all men are free.' That was the whole substance of our doctrine, the object of our wishes, the whole of our grand secret!"

This is a very serious charge against the original secre... Masonry, erect of masonry, as it was understood in France; and though the author does not bring it directly against the same secret as understood in Britain, he yet seems to say, that in all lodges, the following question is put to the candidate before he is entrusted with any secret:

"Brother, are you disposed to execute all the orders of the grand master, though you were to receive contrary orders from a king, an emperor, or any other sovereign whatever?"

And as the brother is obliged to promise this unlimited obedience, it is easy to conceive how much a traitorous conspiracy may be promoted by means of mason lodges. The allegorical story which is told at the conferring of the degree of master, is capable of various and even contrary interpretations; for though in this country it was originally rendered subservient to the purposes of the royalists, in the occult lodges on the continent it has been made the vehicle of treason and impiety.

When the degree of master-mason is to be conferred, the lodge is hung round with black. In the middle is a coffin covered with a pall, the brethren standing round it in attitudes denoting sorrow and revenge. When the new adept is admitted, the master relates to him the following history or fable:

"Adoniram presided over the payment of the workmen who were building the temple by Solomon's orders. They were three thousand workmen. That each one might receive his due, Adoniram divided them into three classes, apprentices, fellow-crafts, and masters. He entrusted each class with a word, signs, and a grip, by which they might be recognized. Each class was to preserve the greatest secrecy as to these signs and words. Three of the fellow-crafts, wishing to know the word, and by that means obtain the salary, of master, hid themselves in the temple, and each posted himself at a different gate. At the usual time when Adoniram came to shut the gates of the temple, the first of the three met him, and demanded the word of the masters; Adoniram refused to give it, and received a violent blow with a stick on his head. He flies to another gate, is met, challenged, and treated in a similar manner by the second; flying to the third door, he is killed by the fellow-craft posted there, on his refusing to betray the word. His assassins buried him under a heap of rubbish, and marked the spot with a branch of acacia.

"Adoniram's absence gave great uneasiness to Solomon and the masters. He is sought for every where; at length one of the masters discovers the corpse, and, taking it by the finger, the finger parted from the hand; he took it by the wrist, and it parted from the arm; when the master, in astonishment, cried out, Mac Benac; which the craft interprets by 'the flesh parts from the bones.'"

"Left Adoniram should have revealed the word, the masters convened and agreed to change it, and to substitute the words Mac Benac; sacred words, that freemasons dare not pronounce out of the lodges, and there each only pronounces one syllable, leaving his neighbour to pronounce the other."

The history finished, the adept is informed, that the object of the degree he has just received is to recover the word lost by the death of Adoniram, and to revenge this martyr of the masonic secrecy. The gener-

alinity of masons, looking upon this history as no more than a fable, and the ceremonies as puerile, give themselves very little trouble to search farther into these mysteries.

These sports, however, assume a more serious aspect when we arrive at the degree of elect (Ela). This degree is subdivided into two parts; the first has the revenging of Adoniram for its object, the other to recover the word, or rather the sacred doctrine which it expressed, and which has been lost.

In this degree of elect, all the brethren appear dressed in black, wearing a breast-piece on the left side, on which is embroidered a death's head, a bone, and a poignard, encircled by the motto of Conquer or die. The same motto is embroidered on a ribbon which they wear in falter. Everything breathes death and revenge. The candidate is led into the lodge blindfolded, with bloody gloves on his hands. An adept with a poignard in his hand threatens to run him through the heart for the crime with which he is accused. After various frights, he obtains his life, on condition that he will revenge the father of masonry in the death of his afflatus. He is thrown to a dark cavern. He is to penetrate into it; and they call to him, Strike all that shall oppose you; enter, defend yourself, and avenge our master; at that price you shall receive the degree of elect. A poignard in his right hand, a lamp in his left, he proceeds; a phantom opposes his passage; he hears the same voice repeat, Strike, avenge Hiram, there is his afflatus. He strikes, and the blood flows.—Strike off his head, the voice repeats; and the head of the corpse is lying at his feet. He seizes it by the hair (A), and triumphantly carries it back as a proof of his victory; shows it to each of the brethren, and is judged worthy of the new degree.

Our author says, that he has questioned divers masons whether this apprenticeship to ferocity and murder had never given them the idea, that the head to be cut off was that of kings; but they all affirmed, that such an idea had never occurred to them till the French revolution had convinced them of the fact. At this indeed we are not surprized. The afflatus of Hiram is nowhere said to have been a king; and why should the young elect have supposed, that when stabbing that afflatus, he was training to be a regicide? The ceremony, however, is certainly ferocious in the highest degree, and obviously calculated to reconcile the masons of the occult lodges to the practice of assassination at the command of their superiors; and when it is remembered, that they are bound to pay obedience to those unseen superiors even against their lawful sovereigns, the atrocities of the revolution would naturally make them interpret this shocking ceremony as it is interpreted by the Abbé.

It was the same with respect to the religious part of this degree, where the adept is at once pontiff and sacrificer with the rest of the brethren. Veiled in the ornaments of the priesthood, they offer bread and wine, according to the order of Melchisedec. The secret object of this ceremony is to re-establish religious equality, and to exhibit all men equally priests and pontiffs, to recall the brethren to natural religion, and to persuade them that the religion of Moses and of Christ had violated religious equality and liberty by the distinction of

(A) The reader may easily conceive that this corpse is no more than a mannikin containing bladders full of blood. It was the revolution again which opened the eyes of many of the adepts, who then owned that they had been dupes to this impiety, as they had been to the regicide effay in the former part.

Our author treats the fraternity of the occult lodges through the higher degrees of Scotch masonry, those of the Rosicrucians, and that of the knights Kadosch; and sums up his account in the following terms:

"In the two first degrees, that is to say, in those of apprentice and fellow-craft, the feet begins by throwing out its equality and liberty. After that, it occupies the attention of its novices with puerile games of fraternity or masonic repasts; but it already trains its adepts to the profoundest secrecy by the most frightful oaths.

"In that of master, it relates the allegorical history of Adoniram, who is to be avenged; and of the word, which is to be recovered.

"In the degree of elect, it trains the adepts to vengeance, without pointing out the person on whom it is to fall. It carries them back to the time of the patriarchs, when, according to them, men knew no religion but that of nature, and when every body was equally priest and pontiff. But it had not as yet declared that all religion revealed since the time of the patriarchs was to be thrown aside.

"This last mystery is only developed in the Scotch degrees. There the brethren are declared free: The word so long sought for is, Deism; it is the worship of Jehovah, such as was known to the philosophers of nature. The true mason becomes the pontiff of Jehovah; and such is the grand mystery by which he is extricated from that darkness in which the profane are involved.

"In the degree Rose Croix, he who wrestled the word, who destroyed the worship of Jehovah, is Christ himself, the author of Christianity; and it is on the Gospel and on the Son of Man that the adept is to avenge the brethren, the pontiffs of Jehovah.

"At length, on his reception as Kadosch, he learns that the assailant of Adoniram is the king, who is to be killed to avenge the grand master Molay; and the order of the masons successors of the knights templars. The religion which is to be destroyed to recover the word, or the true doctrine, is the religion of Christ, founded on revelation. This word in its full extent is equality and liberty, to be established by the total overthrow of the altar and the throne.

"Such are the incipient degrees, the process, and the whole system of masonry; it is thus that the feet, by its gradual explanation of its twofold principle of equality and liberty, of its allegory of the founder of masonry to be avenged, of the word to be recovered, leading the adepts from secret to secret, at length initiates them into the whole Jacobinical code of revolution."

If this account of masonry be not greatly exaggerated, what are we to think of those men among ourselves, who, since the publication of the Abbé Barruel's book and Dr Robison's, have displayed a zeal for the propagation of their mysteries, by which they seem not to be formerly actuated, and to which the importance of the business that, by their own account, is transacted in the lodges, cannot be thought to bear an adequate proportion? It is not enough to say that British masonry is harmless, and that the equality and liberty taught in our lodges are the equality and liberty taught in the bible. Without directly questioning this assertion, we only beg leave to put our countrymen in remembrance, that French and German masonry, as it was derived from Britain, must have been originally as harmless as our own; and to call their attention to the monstrous superstructures of impiety and rebellion which in these countries have been raised upon our foundation. Have there been no symptoms of sedition and irreligion among us, since the commencement of the French revolution, that we should be so confident that the equality and liberty of our lodges will never degenerate into the equality and liberty of the French Jacobins? This cannot be said; for it has been proved, that there are several occult lodges in Britain; and what security have we, or what security can we receive, that their number will not increase? The legislature indeed has lately laid some salutary restraints on the meetings of masons; but such is the nature of these meetings, that nothing can effectually secure us against the introduction of the higher mysteries, but the voluntary shutting up for a time of all lodges. This has been done by the honest masons in Germany; and why may it not be done by the masons in Britain? The fund for the relief of poor brethren may surely be managed without secrecy; the signs and grips may be communicated without the word, or exacting a promise of implicit obedience; and the relinquishing of the joys of a social hour would be no great sacrifice to the peace of a country.

But is British masonry really so harmless as the younger masons with us to believe? The writer of these reflections was never initiated in its mysteries, and therefore cannot, from his own knowledge, say what is their tendency; but he has no hesitation to affirm, because he believes himself able to demonstrate, that it is grossly immoral to promise implicit obedience to unknown superiors, or to swear that one will keep inviolate a secret, to the nature of which he is an absolute stranger. He hopes, indeed, and is inclined to believe, that, in the decent lodges of Britain, the candidate is assured, before he is required to take the oath, that the secret to be communicated, and the obedience which he is to pay, militate in no respect against the civil government or the religion of his country; but still if the secret contain information of value, it is, in his opinion, sinful to keep it a secret; and he cannot conceive upon what principle a native of Britain can promise unlimited obedience to any human being. The mysteries of masonry must relate to something which is either important and laudable; frivolous, though innocent; or dangerous and immoral. To confine to a feet any information which is laudable and important, is surely not to act the part of genuine philanthropists; to administer the most tremendous oath in the midst of frivolous amusements, is to violate one of the most sacred precepts of our holy religion; and, as no man will pretend to vindicate dangerous and immoral mysteries, masonry appears, in every point in which it can be placed, an association which no good Christian will think himself at liberty to encourage.