a person employed under the direction of an architect, in the raising of a stone building.

The chief business of a mason is to make the mortar; raise the walls from the foundation to the top, with the necessary retreats and perpendiculars; to form the vaults, and employ the stones as delivered to him. When the stones are large, the business of hewing or cutting them belongs to the stonecutters, though these are frequently confounded with masons: the ornaments of sculpture are performed by carvers in stones or sculptors. The tools or implements principally used by them are the square, level, plumb line, bevel, compass, hammer, chisel, mallet, saw, trowel, &c. See SQUARE, &c.

Besides the common instruments used in the hand, they have likewise machines for raising of great burdens, and the conducting of large stones; the principal of which are the lever, pulley, wheel, crane, &c. See LEVER, &c.

William, an English poet of distinction, born in 1725, was the son of a clergyman who held the living of Hull. He took his first degrees at St John's college, Cambridge in 1745, whence he removed to Pembroke college, of which he was admitted a fellow in 1747. He was M.A. in 1749, a minister in 1754. The earl of Holdernesse presented him to the valuable rectory of Aston in Yorkshire, and procured for him the office of chaplain to his majesty. His ode on the installation of the duke of Newcastle as chancellor of the university of Cambridge was the first specimen of his poetical talents, which gained him considerable reputation, although the subject was not popular. His monody to the memory of Pope, and Isis, an elegy, added to his fame, which was still farther increased by his dramatic poem of Elfrida in 1752, and Caractacus in 1759.

He did not succeed in writing tragedy, as he did not compose for the modern stage, but wished to revive the manner of the ancients. He published a small collection of odes in 1756, intended as an imitation of his dear friend Gray. He gave the world some elegies in 1763, which in general are marked with the simplicity of language proper to this species of composition, breathing noble sentiments of freedom and of virtue. In point of morality he may justly be considered as the purest of poets, and one of the warmest friends of civil liberty by which the age he lived in was distinguished. The first book of his English Garden made its appearance in 1772, a didactic poem in blank verse, of which the fourth and last book was printed in the year 1781. Some good critics consider this poem as rather stiff, and the dry minuteness of the preceptive part, prevented it from bringing the author any great degree of popularity. In 1775 he published the poems of Mr Gray, to which he prefixed memoirs of his life and writings. His observations on the character and genius of his friend did honour to his taste and feelings, and of consequence the volume was favourably received.

At the place of his residence he acted with the friends of reform, and the enemies of such measures as were deemed incompatible with the liberties of freemen. During the continuance of the American war, he addressed an ode to the naval officers of Great Britain, on the acquittal of Admiral Keppel in 1779, in which he decidedly execrated the war carrying on against the people of America. When Mr Pitt rose to power in 1782, Mafon addressed an ode to him, which contained patriotic and manly sentiments, but his lyric imagery did it considerable injury. He published in 1783 a poetical translation of Frenoy's Latin poem on the art of painting, which unites great elegance of language and verification with a correct representation of a difficult original.

Besides the living with which he was presented soon after taking orders, he obtained the preferments of precentor and canon residentiary of the cathedral of York. At that church he preached an occasional discourse in 1788 on the subject of the slave-trade, full of animated declamation against the inhumanity of the traffic. The centenary commemoration of the revolution in that year produced his secular ode, which breathed his usual spirit of freedom. An additional volume of his poems was given to the world in 1797, consisting of miscellaneous pieces, the revised productions of his youth, and the effusions of his old age. In his Palindromy to Liberty we behold the change wrought in his political principles by the melancholy events of the French revolution.

Mr Mafon died in April 1797, at the age of 72, the consequence of a mortification by a hurt in his leg. He had married an amiable lady, who died of a consumption in 1767, and was buried at Bristol cathedral, under a monument on which are inscribed some very tender and beautiful lines by her husband. The character of Mafon in private life was exemplary for worth and active benevolence. A tablet has been placed to his memory in Poets Corner in Westminster abbey. Some satirical pieces of merit have been ascribed to him, but some are of opinion that the internal evidence is sufficient to decide against his title to them; yet it must be allowed that he could write with energy and simplicity, and the objects of satire in these pieces are such as it was extremely probable that he would fix upon.