tions, who, of course, attributed the comparative failure to certain alterations that Colman had made, with a view to stage feasibility. Mason was very furious; but Colman silenced him by a threat of a burlesque, with Greek washerwomen. Elfrida, however, though not an acting play, has considerable merit as a dramatic poem. In 1754 Mason went into orders, and was appointed one of the chaplains to the king, by the patronage of Lord Holdernesse, whose chaplain he also became, whom he accompanied on a foreign tour, and who gave him the living of Aston. In 1756 he sent forth four odes on Independence, Memory, Melancholy, and The Fall of Tyranny, the main merit of which was that they afforded effective subjects for amusing parodies by Colman and Lloyd. In 1759 Caractacus was published, which, though, like Elfrida, and for the same reason, no acting play, is highly esteemed as a poem, and by Campbell is preferred to the tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher on the same subject, in the leading respect, that it brings forward the persons and abodes of the Druids with more magnificent effect. In 1775 was published his Memoirs and Letters of Gray, compiled from the papers which, with 500l., his deceased friend had bequeathed to him. His English Garden (published in detail in 1772, 1777, 1779, and 1782,) is a very dull affair; though Mr. Warton, with an air of entire gravity, pronounces it the perfection of didactic poetry. Mason's Whig principles, which he manfully adhered to, creating a certain distaste towards him "in the highest quarter," at that time especially out of sorts by reason of the American war, the royal chaplaincy was resigned; and our poet, rendered more elastic in spirit by the relief, sent forth a great deal of very pleasant and very telling whiggery, under the pseudonyme of Malcolm Macgregor. The author of Caractacus was long unrecognised as the writer of the Heroic Epistle to Sir W. Chambers. In 1783 appeared our poet's translation of Dufresnoy's metrical treatise on painting; a version manifesting Mason's critical knowledge of his subject, and enriched with illustrative notes by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Mr. Mason's last works were, An Ode on the Commemoration of the British Revolution; a memoir of his friend Whitehead; and, an interesting proof of the variety of his accomplishments, an Historical and Critical Essay on English Church Music, which Dr. Burney speaks of in very respectful terms. It is singular, however, as Campbell pleasantly points out, that the fault ascribed by the doctor to Mason's musical theory should be that of Calvinistic plainness so that whereas in verse he was my Lord Peter, in his taste for sacred music he was Jack in the Tale of a Tub. Mr. Mason died in 1797 of mortification of the leg, occasioned by an accident. END OF VOL. III. PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN, |
