what no parson of the Church of England ought to make an ode to,) it is generally agreed that Smollett's was better, and if so, no matter.

One of these odes "On the fate of Tyranny," is, as Mr. Mason tells us, a free paraphrase of part of the 11th chapter of Isaiah, where the Prophet, after he has foretold the destruction of Babylon, subjoins a song of triumph, which he supposes the Jews will sing when his prediction is fulfilled. "And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this parable against the Kings of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppression ceased, &c. If any one would know what the sublimest poetry is, and how immortal, nay inspired poetry, may be spoiled by mortal mixtures, let him compare the 14th chapter of Isaiah and Mason's ode. And yet that ode is one of the best, perhaps the best, paraphrase of Scripture that ever was made.

To confirm our sentence we will give a few words which certainly do prove the advantage of a few words over many:

Isaiah. "How art thou fallen from Heaven O Lucifer, son of the Morning!" 12, 13, 14.

Ohe, jam satis est. Milton himself, who produced the greatest, aye, far the greatest work of the mere human mind, failed deplorably in the attempt to versify a psalm. In the ode to "an Æolus Harp," we look in vain for one line better or worse than another. It is a copy and that is all.

of verses

These odes were ludicrously parodied by Colman and Lloyd, who treated with equal disrespect the Bard and other lyric compositions of Gray. Gray took this as he took most things-very quietly, but Mason seems to have been considerably annoyed. His style had certain peculiarities, which made it easy to take off, and there was a buckram solemnity, especially in his earlier works, and a degree of assumption, which always is sure to provoke ridicule. Gray's letter upon this publication of the travestied odes, and Masons remarks thereon, shew the character of the two poets in a strongly contrasted light:

"I have sent Museus back as you desired me, scratched here and there, and with it also a bloody satire, written against no less persons than you and I by name. I concluded at first it was Mr. ***, because he is your friend and my humble servant, but then I thought he knew

the world too well to call us the favourite minions of taste and fashion, especially as to odes. For to them his ridicule is confined,-so it is not he, but Mr. Colman, nephew to Lady Bath, author of the Conoisseur, a member of one of the Inns of Court, and a particular acquaintance of Mr. Garrick. What have you done to him? for I hever heard his name before: he makes very tolerable fun with me where I understand him (which is not every where), but seems to be more angry with you. Lest people should not understand the humour of the thing (which, indeed, they must have our lyricisms at their finger ends to do), letters come out in Lloyd's Evening Post to them who and what it was that he meant, and says it is like to produce a great combustion in the literary world. So if you have any mind to combustle about it, well and good for me, I am neither so literary nor so combustible. The Monthly Review, I see, just now, has much stuff about us on this occasion. It says one of us, at least, has always borne his faculties meekly. I leave you to guess which of us it is."

To which Mason subjoins the following note:-" Had Mr. Pope disregarded the sarcasms of the many writers that endeavoured to eclipse his poetical fame, as Mr. Gray here appears to have done, the world would not have been possessed of a Dunciad, but it would have been impressed with a more amiable idea of its author's temper." Mason afterwards proved that he wanted not abilities to have vindicated his muse by powerful satire, which is the only way for an aggrieved author to get the public to his side.

In the year 1757, the death of Cibber left the laureateship vacant, and it was offered to Gray, who politely declined it, though it was thought he would have been allowed to hold it as a sinecure. The Ministry apologized for not offering it to Mason, on the score that he was in orders; a false excuse, which he was willing enough to admit, having no ambition for the office. His politics, not his cloth, were the true ground of his inelegibility. A clergyman was surely as fit to write the praise of "sacred majesty" as a player; and in fact, Eusden, the predecessor of Cibber, was an honest Vicar. It was well for Mason's peace that he was not invested with this ill-paid and invidious honour. Ever since the Restoration, every successive Laureate has been the mark of scurrility. Davenant was the original hero of the Rehearsal; but when Dryden succeeded to the Bayes, he also inherited the ridicule from which death had delivered its first object. Dryden was no sooner stript of the laureate-ship himself, than he held it up to scorn in the person of Shadwell. The fatal example, shewn by King William or his ministry, of bestowing what ought to have been the highest poetical honour, upon mere party considerations, was more

mischievous to the crown than superficial observers would readily conceive. It tended to bring all loyal poetry into disrepute. It stripped the kingly office of its poetic halo. Statesmen have perhaps yet to learn how much it is to have the imagination of the country on their side.

We may suppose that Mason was not displeased to see his friend Whitehead advanced to the honours of "the Butt and Bayes." In fact, the appointment was very judicious. The character of Whitehead was highly respectable, and he was at least a respectable poet.

Of the publication of Caractacus in 1759 we have already spoken. Nothing remarkable appears to have befallen our author till 1762, when he was preferred to the Canonry of York, the Prebend of Driffield, and the Precentorship of York Minster. He still, however, made Aston his principal residence,-somewhat, it seems, to the dissatisfaction of Gray, who, in a letter from which we have extracted pretty largely, says, "I do not like your improvements at Aston, it looks so like settling; when I come I will set fire to it."

In 1764, Mason published a collection of his poems, with a dedicatory sonnet to the Earl of Holderness, including most of the poems he had hitherto produced, but omitting the Isis. If, however, he was content to have that juvenile indiscretion forgotten, he did not quite forget it himself, and apprehended consequences from its in-dwelling in the memory of others, against which he might modestly have felt himself secure. It is reported that, passing through Oxford late in the evening, he observed to his travelling companion, that he was glad it was dark; and being interrogated why he was pleased at that circumstance, answered importantly, "Do not you remember my Isis?"

In 1765, he married Miss Maria Sherman, of Hull, but few indeed were his days of nuptial happiness. Consumption, the bane of the young and beautiful, was lurking in Mrs. Mason's constitution, and began to shew unequivocal symptoms almost immediately after her marriage. During the short period of their union, her husband was incessantly employed in watching the vicissitudes of a malady which mocks despair with similitudes of hope; and in less than twelve months from their nuptials, the lady expired at the Bristol hot-wells, whither she had been carried, not so much in real expectation of benefit, as that nothing for her recovery might be left undone. Mason bore his loss with the tenderness of a man and the resignation of a Christian.

Mrs. Mason lies buried in Bristol cathedral, and her husband has recorded her merits and his own loss, in an epitaph, of four elegaic He also alludes to his bereavement, in the invocation of the first book of the "English Garden.”

stanzas.

Nothing worthy of record took place in the few next succeeding years of Mason's existence. The death of Gray, in 1771, exhibited him in the new light of an editor and biographer. Gray had visited his friend, at Aston, in the summer of 1770, and even then his health was declined so much, that he expressed his determination to resign his professorship of modern history if he continued unable to execute its duties, a sacrifice of income from which Mr. Mason, less scrupulous, endeavoured to dissuade him. But whatever might be his plans of exertion or retirement, they were rendered abortive by his death, which happened on the 31st of July, 1771. Mason did not receive the intelligence of this event (which, though not unexpected, was sudden at last) in time to see the remains of his friend interred, Gray died at Cambridge, yet he was buried beside his mother and aunt, in the church-yard of Stoke-Pogis, said to be the scene of his famous Elegy; but there is little in the Elegy whereby its locality can be ascertained. A monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, for which Mason wrote a short inscription, that does little honour either to Gray or to himself; for the praise it contains is both hacknied and inappropriate, and the turn of the verses trivial :

"No more the Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns;

To Britain let the nations homage pay,
She boasts a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,

A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray."

Gray bequeathed to Mason £500, with his books, MSS., &c. In the volume entitled "Memoirs of Gray," Mason has written no more than was just necessary to connect the letters of his subject. He had little to do, but that little is done judiciously: no letter is published which ought not to have been so, nothing is elucidated which had better been left in obscurity. Yet to Gray's literary fame he is hardly just; for many of the "remains" which have since appeared, set his learning, taste, and talent in a higher point of view than either his poems or his correspondence.

The next important work of our author's was his " English Garden," of which the first book appeared in 1772; the second, 1777; the third, in 1779; the fourth and last, in 1782. As this poem was the production of a powerful mind in its maturest vigour, as it had every advantage of delay and revision, and treats of a topic apparently capable of much descriptive embellishment, and with which the author was familiarly and practically acquainted, it is hard to suppose it wholly destitute of beauties, especially as it consists of 2423 lines of blank verse. We will not, therefore, say that it is the dullest poem we ever read, but it is assuredly one of the dullest we ever attempted to read. The

most interesting passages are, the tribute to the memory of his wife, in the first book, and the remembrance of Gray, in the commencement of the third.

Mr. Mason's love of landscape gardening and of simplicity appeared in 1773, in a far more sprightly production, " An heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers." Sir William Chambers, a Scot by descent, but born in Sweden, having come to England in his infancy, had risen by good fortune, enterprise, talent, and the patronage of Lord Bute, from the supercargo of a Swedish vessel (in which he visited China) to the posts of Royal Architect and Surveyor-General of the Board of Works to his Majesty. In this capacity he was engaged in laying out the royal gardens at Kew, in which he shewed a striking disregard of Mr. Mason's ideas of the picturesque. In a work published about the same time, he expatiated on the wonders of Oriental gardening, as displayed in the imperial gardens of Yven Minn Yven, near Pekin, and more than implied a contempt for the simple natural-imitating system, and no great respect for nature herself. Mason, whose temper was by no means free from suspicion and jealousy, perhaps thought that his book was reflected upon in Sir William's, or he might think that to satirize the court architect was a good method of satirizing the court, to which his politics were strongly opposed. The method he adopted to ridicule the orientalist was simple and effectual. He just versified the most glaring paragraphs, and subjoined the original prose as a running commentary. One or two specimens must suffice :

Sir William Chambers:

"Nature affords us but few materials to work with. Plants, water, and ground are her only productions; and though both the forms and arrangements of these may be varied to an incredible degree, yet they have but few striking varieties, the rest being of the nature of changes rung upon bells, which, though in reality different, still produce the same uniform kind of gingling, the variation being too minute to be readily perceived. Art must therefore supply the scantiness of nature. Our larger works are only a repetition of the smaller ones, like the honest bachelor's feast, which consisted in nothing but a multiplication of his own dinner; three legs of mutton and turnips, three roasted geese, and three buttered apple-pies.-Preface, page 7.

Mr. Mason:

For what is Nature? Ring her changes round,
Her three flat notes are water, plants, and ground:
Prolong the peel, yet spite of all your clatter,
The tedious chime is still, earth, plants, and water.

So when some John his dull invention racks

To rival Boodle's dinners, or Almacks,