day. But it was otherwise and more fortunately ordered for Mason: "he had the good fortune to be born in one of those 'vacant interlunar' periods of literature when a little poetic talent goes a great way,"'— hence his position, for a time, at the head of the poetical school of his country. William Mason was born in 1725. His father was vicar of St Trinity hall in the East riding of Yorkshire. In 1742 he was entered of St John's college, Cambridge, where he had Dr Powell for his tutor. Gray says of him at this period of his life: "he was one of much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty; a good well-meaning creature, but in simplicity a perfect child; he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make a fortune by it; a little vain, but in so harmless a way, that it does not offend; a little ambitious, but withal so ignorant of the world and its ways, that this does not hurt him in one's opinion; so sincere and undisguised, that no one with a spark of generosity would ever think of hurting him, he lies so open to injury; but so indolent, that if he cannot overcome this habit, all his good qualities will signify nothing at all." He took his Bachelor's degree in 1745; and probably about this period composed his monody on the death of Pope, of which Mr Hartley Coleridge says: "there is no man of twenty now living who could write half so well as Mason, that would not write much better on such an occasion. So much has been done in the last fifty years to reconcile poetry with reason." Mason's maiden poem is an imitation,-with improvements, of the then established models of elegiac composition so pleasantly ridiculed by Steele in the 30th No. of the Guardian. In 1747 he was chosen fellow of Pembroke college, chiefly on the recommendation of Gray; but the master-who probably disliked Mason for his whig politics-objected to the election, "because," says Mason himself," he will not have an extraneus when they have fit persons in their own college." It appears, however, that the master's objections were finally overruled in 1749, in which year also Mason took his master's degree. 6 In 1748 Mason attacked the Jacobitism of Oxford in his poem of Isis, to which Tom Warton replied in the Triumph of Isis.' In 1751 he appeared as a dramatic writer in his Elfrida,' in which he says he has attempted to pursue the method of the ancient drama, "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 Hartley Coleridge. "In looking over some English pastorals a few days ago, I perused at least fifty lean flocks, and reckoned up a hundred left-handed ravens, besides blasted oaks, withering meadows, and weeping deities. Indeed, most of the occasional pastorals we have are built upon one and the same plan. A shepherd asks his fellow Why he is so pale? if his favourite sheep hath strayed? if his pipe be broken? or Phyllis unkind? He answers, None of these misfortunes have befallen him, but one much greater, for Damon (or perhaps the god Pan) is dead.' This immediately causes the other to make complaints, and call upon the lofty pines and silver streams to join in the lamentaWhile he goes on, his friend interrupts him, and tells him that Damon lives, and shows him a track of light in the skies to confirm it; then invites him to chestnuts and cheese. Upon this scheme most of the noble families in Great Britain have been comforted, nor can I meet with any right honourable shepherd that doth not die and live again, after the manner of the aforesaid Damon." tion. 6 tragedy." Our readers will thank us for laying before them the following strictures on the Elfrida,' from the pen of one every way qualified to judge of the measure of success or failure which attended the introduction of this novelty into our poetical literature: "As an accommodation of the ancient drama to modern habits and sympathies," says Mr Hartley Coleridge, "Elfrida' must be pronounced a decided failure. The unities are indeed preserved; but at the expense of probability and common sense. The chorus, instead of forming a necessary and integral part of the drama, is a mere incumbrance on the action, and at best a divertissement between the acts. But a worse, because a moral fault, is, the unnecessary degradation of the parental character in the person of Orgar. His mock-mendicity, and lying, and skulking, and eves-dropping, and tale-telling, effect no purpose that might not have been better brought about in other ways; and after the discovery of Athelwold's treachery, he is of no use at all, but a dead weight upon the scene. We cannot help thinking that Mason began his 'Elfrida' with an eye to the theatre; but finding the lyric parts, in which his strength lay, overgrow the dramatic, he abandoned that intention, and did not even offer it to a manager. When, however, he had acquired a name, which was likely to fill the house, the elder Colinan most unjustifiably produced it at Covent Garden, with his own or somebody else's alterations. Mason was angry at this,-no wonder; and Colman threatened him with a chorus of Grecian washerwomen. Mason prudently let the matter drop. He had an irritable anxiety about his reputation, which made him a very unequal match for managers of iron nerve and brazen face; and though he had undoubtedly the right on his side, Colman and the chorus of washerwomen would have had the laugh on theirs. In 1776, Elfrida' appeared at Covent Garden with the author's own alterations. It was probably heard once or twice with respectful attention, and then heard no more. 'Elfrida' would have sunk in oblivion if Mason had never written Caractacus.' Mason took orders in 1754, on which occasion, it is said, Warburton thought fit to counsel him against further cultivation of the Muse, as inconsistent, or at least inexpedient, with his sacred profession, an advice which had all the influence with Mason which his learned bishop's example could add to it. Soon after taking orders, he was appointed chaplain to the earl of Holderness, and accompanied that nobleman on a visit to the continent. On his return to England, in 1756, he was presented to the vicarage of Aston in Yorkshire, where he spent the remainder of his life. In 1757, on the death of Cibber, and the non-acceptance on the part of Gray of the vacant laureateship, the ministry advanced Whitehead to the honours of the Butt and Bayes,' but thought it necessary to apologize to Mason for not offering the office to him: their ostensible excuse was that he was in orders,the true ground of his ineligibility, his politics. "Compared to El The drama of Caractacus' appeared in 1759. frida,'" says Coleridge, "it is as the well-considered work of a man, to the rash adventure of a boy. It is better, even as a tragedy, than any thing that was produced in Mason's time. It aims at a high mark. It addresses itself to the moral imagination: it recognises a sympathy between the uneasy strivings of the soul of man, and the everlasting works of nature: it proves its author to have been a true poet in desire and object; and if, instead of a tragedy, he has given a serious poem in dialogue, let us not quarrel with a golden vase, if it should not exactly correspond with its description in the catalogue." The following choral ode, which occurs in this drama, was considered a chef d'œuvre by Mason's contemporaries : "Mona on Snowdon calls: Hear, thou King of mountains, hear! King of mountains, bend thine ear! And burst thy base with thunder's shock; Shall Mona use than those that dwell In music's secret cells, and lie Steep'd in the stream of harmony. "Snowdon has heard the strain : Busy murmurs hum around, Rustling vestments brush the ground; Round, and round, and round they go, Through the twilight, through the shade, Mount the oak's majestic head, And gild the tufted mistleto." + The author of Caractacus,' in strict keeping with the spirit of northern mythology, has put the following battle-hymn into the mouth of 'the warrior' Death: • "Gray seems to have been much pleased with these lines. Speaking of the advantages and licenses of subjects like Caractacus, drawn from a period of whose manners and opinions scarcely any thing is known, he says, They leave an unbounded liberty to pure imagination and fiction, (our favourite provinces,) where no critic can molest, or antiquary gainsay us: and yet (to please me) these fictions must have some affinity, some seeming connexion, with that little we really know of the character and customs of the people. For example, I never heard in my life that midnight and the moon were sisters; that they carried rods of ebony and gold, or met to whisper on the top of a mountain; but now I could lay my life that it is all true, and do not doubt it will be found so in some pantheon of the Druids, that is to be discovered in the library at Herculaneum.' I cannot think sober sisters' by any means a happy epithet in the present state of the English language. Sober originally meant soundminded, self-possessed; but at present it only implies the absence of ebriety."-H Coleridge. "This last image, pretty as it is, is far too pretty for the occasion. It would be well in a sportive fairy-tale; but the Druids, while invoking mysterious powers, in whose existence they had a real, not a poetical belief, could not be in a mood to observe such minute effects."-Ibid. These extracts will impress the reader with a favourable idea of Mason's lyrical powers. In 1765 he was united to an amiable and accomplished woman, Miss Maria Sherman of Hull, whose death he was called upon to lament within less than twelve months from their nuptials. In 1771 he lost his friend Gray, who bequeathed to him his books and manuscripts. Mason in return performed the duties of editor and biographer to the accomplished bard, in a manner which detracted nothing from the reputation of either. In 1772 he published the first book of his 'English Garden,' of which the fourth and last appeared in 1782. It is a very long and very dull poem. Politics chiefly occupied the latter part of Mason's life. He opposed the American war, and advocated parliamentary reform; but a new light latterly broke in upon his mind on these matters, and he followed the course of Burke in abjuring his former tenets, and publishing a new political faith in his Palinodia,' which was written in 1794. For some years previous to his death, he was in the habit of composing an anniversary sonnet on his birth-day. The following, commemorating the completion of his 72d year, is perhaps the last piece of poetry he ever wrote: The snow-drop pale, the crocus spik'd with gold: Strains not discordant to each moral theme In thee, my God, my Saviour, and my Lord!" He died in May, 1797, of the consequences of a contusion he had received on his leg. William Julius Mickle. BORN A. D. 1734.-DIED A. D. 1788. THE ingenious translator of The Lusiad,' was the son of a Scottish clergyman of some reputation in the commonwealth of letters, and received his early education at the school of Langholm, of which parish his father was minister. He evinced a decided taste for literature while yet a very young man, but having engaged in some business speculations which proved unfortunate, his attention was for several years turned aside from letters. In 1762 he published a poem, entitled, Providence, or Arandus and Emilée,' which obtained for him the favourable notice of Lord Lyttleton. Mr Chalmers represents his lordship as having, upon the whole, baulked the young poet's expectations, after exciting them considerably with the promise of his patronage. We do not think, however, that the biographer has made good this charge against his lordship, although it is certain that Mickle encountered not a few of the hardships and uncertainties attendant upon a literary life, after his removal to the English metropolis, and was at last happy to accept the office of a corrector to the Clarendon press at Oxford. In 1767 he published a poem, which he at first entitled, 'The Concubine,' but in subsequent editions, Sir Martyn.' This poem is written in the Spenserian stanza, and evinces considerable genius and a good ear for rhythm. It made some noise at the time it appeared, and was attributed to different writers of established reputation. In 1772 he edited a collection of Fugitive pieces, which was published in continuation of Dodsley's collection, in four volumes, 8vo., by George Pearch. He was now, however, meditating his great work, the translation of The Lusiad;' on which he nearly exclusively employed himself for four years. It was published in 1775, in one volume, quarto; a second edition was called for in 1778. The Lusiad,' in its English dress, was very favourably received both by the English and Portuguese critics, and procured for the translator many civilities from the countrymen of his favourite Camoens, on his visiting Lisbon, in 1779, in the quality of secretary to Commodore Johnstone. He died in 1788. An edition of his poems, with a biographical sketch, was published in 1794, by Mr Ireland. Of his principal piece, 'The Lusiad,' it may be safely affirmed, that we possess very few translations of superior merit.; it is at once free and literal; a poem fitted "to live in the English language," and at the same time a faith 1, |