"YET these, whom Heaven's mysterious choice fetched in, Quickly attain devotion's utmost scope; For, having softly mourned away their sin, They grow so certain as to need no hope." Ib. p. 185. 187. Here too, as in G. Herbert, a prediction that religion will take its way to America. 198. "Common faith-which is no more Than long opinion to religion grown." 210. "For love and grief are nourished best with thought." 224-5. In favour of a universal monarchy. 250. "If you approve what numbers lawful think, Be bold, for number cancels bashfulness. Extremes from which a king would blushing shrink, Unblushing senates act as no excess." With how much feeling might he write this! 294. Political feeling. 329-332. He would have the good labour to acquire wealth and power, as the means of beneficence. See, too, his preface, p. 19, 20. 51. A just remark in his preface (p. 2), that "story, wherever it seems most likely, grows most pleasant." 6. As if Du Bartas ranked at that time above Ariosto in public opinion. 13. A fine passage, contrasting the philanthropy of the Christian religion with the Jewish and Gentile religions. 26. A remarkable passage concerning wit, not however taking it in Barrow's sense, but in its earlier and wider acceptation. 40. Conscientious writers become for that reason voluminous. A very just observa tion. Hobbes's answer to this preface is full of excellent remarks upon poetry and language. "His private opinion was that religion at last (e. g. a hundred years hence) would come to settlement, and that in a kind of ingenious Quakerism." - AUBREY'S Notes. BOSWELL'S Malone's Shakespeare, vol. 3, p. 284. "He was buried in a coffin of walnut tree. Sir J. Denham said it was the finest coffin he ever saw."-Ibid. p. 283. SEE SPENCE's Anecdotes. 82. Mason never took a predominant possession "Ir so happened, some how or other, that sidered too flowery; though that is not an of the public mind. Perhaps he was conobjection commonly made by the popular voice. He often wrote with great harmony and polish, and there is a great show of imagination in his Elfrida and Caractacus ; but there is some indefinable failure of the true tone."-SIR EGERTON BRYDGES, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 132. COLE says of him, that he was esteemed at college to be one of the chief ornaments of the University. Cole was sorry that he had shown himself" so much of a party man in the Heroic Epistle, as I had a great veneration for his character," he says.Restituta, vol. 3, p. 75. HANNAH MORE. "I was much affected at the death of poor Mason. The Bishop of London was just reading us a sonnet he had sent him on his seventy-second birth day, rejoicing in his unimpaired strength and faculties: it ended with saying that he had still a muse able to praise his Saviour and his God, when the account of his death came. It was pleasing to find his last poetical sentiments had been so devout. I would that more of his writings had expressed the same strain of devotion, though I have no doubt of his having been piously disposed; but the Warburtonian school was not favourable to a devotional spirit. I used to be pleased with his turn of conver PERCIVAL STOCKDALE (Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 88,) says of the Heroick Epistle, "a piece of finer and more poignant poetical irony never was written. It was, I will venture to say, foolishly given, by many people to Mason: it was totally different from his manner; its force, its acuteness, its delicacy, and urbanity of genius prove that he was inca-sation, which was rather of a peculiar cast." pable to write it; yet he was absurdly and conceitedly offended with those who supposed him to be the author of it: that poet, who was certainly very little above mediocrity, fancied that his abilities and his fame were grossly injured by the mistaken supposition." WALPOLE, Vol. 4, p. 236, bears witness to the truth of Mr. Mainwaring's assertion, that authorship created no jealousy or variance in Mason towards Gray. - Memoirs, vol. 3, p. 16. "ELFRIDA Overcame all our common prejudices against the ancient form of tragedy, especially against the chorus. Mr. Colman therefore deserves praise for introducing on the stage, under his direction, so elegant a performance; and as a proof of the skill and judgment with which he has endeavoured to render it a pleasing exhibition to every class of the spectator, we must add, for the information of our distant readers, that it hath been received with a much warmer, more general, and more lasting approbation than perhaps even the most sanguine admirer of the poem could have expected from a work which the author never intended for theatrical representation.”—Monthly Review, No. 47, December, 1772, p. 486. His connection with Lord Holderness, 1754.-H. WALPOLE'S Letters, vol. 1, p. 329. His litigious conduct to Murray the bookseller.-CROKER'S Boswell, vol. 4, p. 152. His Musæus to an unnatural strain of poetry, which is that of Lycidas, adds a more unnatural pathos, and has yet the greater fault of making Spenser, Milton, and Chaucer address Pope as one who had excelled them. A FAVOURITE lyric measure of his consists in couplets of four or five, alternately, but written continuously. Sometimes he begins with the longer, sometimes with the shorter lines. The Ode to a Water Nymph is in a very agreeable metre. The rhymes are quatrain, but the arrangement of the lines is two of four and two of five feet, then two of five and two of four, and so alternately through the poem; the versification being continuous. That to an Æolian harp is in a sweet quatrain of two fours and two fives. He had a good ear for versification, which, however, is not so apparent in blank verse; but certainly he had not a good ear for rhyme, unless a broad provincial pronunciation had corrupted it. I am far from objecting to imperfect rhymes when they are properly disposed; but they offend the ear greatly when it is made to rest upon them, as, for example (Ode x. for Music), employ and sky, in a couplet which closes a stanza wherein there is no rhyme to either of these words. P. 40. "The larks' meridian ecstasy." O'er this shrine of glory pour."-P. 54. Ode xiii. Cp. 63, must be to the Duchess of Devonshire. There is a manliness in his moral poems -as in the Elegy to a young Nobleman, for example. 93. The movement of his continuous quatrains is always pleasing. 97. An amusing example of what popularity is-Mason felt that Garrick was preferred to him as a poet! which yet he never was, nor could have been. 103. A pleasing acknowledgment that he was too much elated with applause. 105. Epistle to Hurd. Here he relates his deliberate choice of an artificial and gorgeous style because Shakespeare precluded all hope of excellence in any other form of drama. 243. His own birthday Sonnets in old age are in a very pleasing and natural strain. "and all that browse, Or skim or dive, the plain, the air, the flood." This is the latest example I remember of an old construction, more artificial than pleasing. 248. A fashion of white palisades tipped with gold and red. "Gothic now, And now Chinese, now neither, and yet both." This had passed away before my memory. 248. A curious example of a receipt in verse, how to mix colours for painting a fence green. 244. His opinion expressed of the manner in which such subjects, in themselves essentially unpoetical, and antipoetical, should be poetically treated. 252. "Alas! ere we can note it in our song, Comes manhood's feverish summer, chill'd full soon By cold autumnal care, till wintry age 262. Gray's admiration of Keswick, expressed in verse by Mason. 264."That force of ancient phrase, which speaking, paints; And is the thing it sings." 275. His contempt of fountains, "that toss In rainbow dews their crystal to the sun.” 280. A pleasing passage : "Yes, let me own, To these, or classic deities like these, From very childhood was I prone to pay Harmless idolatry." The last book of the Garden is in every respect miserably bad. Bad in taste, as recommending sham castles and modern ruins; bad in morals, as endeavouring to serve a political cause by a fictitious story, which, if it had been true, could have nothing to do with the right or wrong of the American war,—and bad in poetry, because the story is in itself absurd. Not the least absurd part is the sudden death of the lady at seeing her betrothed husband, whom she was neither glad nor sorry to see; and the description of the facies Hippocratica is applied to a person thus dying in health, youth, and beauty. See in Book 1. for his love of painting as well as poetry. 392. An excellent description of the English Boulingrin from the Encyclopedia. Poetical Recreations, &c. Part I. by MRS. JANE BARKER. Part II. by several Gentlemen of the Universities, and others. 1688. P. 12. A very pretty expression villainously applied: "From married men wit's current never flows, But grave and dull as standing pond he grows; Whilst the other, like a gentle stream does play With this world's pebbles which obstruct his way." 21. "Here plants for health and for delight are met, The cephalic cowslip, cordial violet; Under the diuretic woodbine grows 24. Pretty lines to a rivulet: "Yet, gentle stream, thou'rt still the same, Always going, never gone: Yet dost all constancy disclaim, Wildly dancing to thine own murmuring tuneful song, Old as Time, as Love and Beauty young." 31. Her skill in medicine. 39. "For I can only shake, but not cast Fashion of portraits in her youth: Lo then my Muse sate by and smiled To hear how some the sentence did oppose, Saying an apple, bird, or rose Were objects which did more befit My childish years and no less childish wit.” 41. "their modish wit to me doth shew But as an engyscope1 to view yours through." 101. Some odd anatomical verses. She seems to have studied physic with a view to practise it. Her most delightful and excellent romance of Seepina was in the press. Part 2. P. 161. By this dialogue concerning the prohibition of French wines, it appears that barrels were broached in the streets, or rather staved. 212. Bonny Moll and Black Bess, in a serious imitation of Virgil's Eclogues. There is no difficulty in this word, but I have no authority to quote for it at hand.J. W. W. |
