character in the literary world. In his biography he chose to deviate from the usual plan, by adopting one which seemed to present more advantages. Objections have been made to it, because the biographer seldom appears either as the narrator or the critic, but it must be allowed that the whole is rendered more interesting, and that the attention of the reader being constantly fixed on the principal character, he is enabled to form a more impartial opinion than if he had perused no evidence but the assertions of the biographer. The plan has since been followed in the cases of Johnson, Cowper, sir William Jones, Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Beattie; and where lives of equal importance to literary curiosity are to be recorded, which cannot be often, it appears to be not only the most engaging species of minute biography, but also the most impartial. The "Memoirs of Gray" were published in 1775, in an elegant quarto volume, including an edition of his poems, with additions, and a series of his correspondence illustrative of those' particulars of education, genius, opinion, and temper, which, insignificant as they may often appear, are all that form the life of a scholar. In executing this task, Mr. Mason has been accused of partiality; but his partiality appears to be more in intention than proof. Some things he may have omitted, and others are certainly thrown into shade; but, by exhibiting so much of his friend's correspondence, he has laid him more open to public inspection than could have been done by any species of narrative. So much may be known of Gray from this volume, that probably very little is concealed which was necessary to be told; and accordingly we find that it has been appealed to with equal confidence by Gray's enemics and by his admirers *. In 1779, he published his political creed in the shape of an animated "Ode to the Naval Officers of Great Britain," written immediately after the trial of admiral Keppel in February of that year. Although attached to a retired life, he became tired of forbearance, when the disappointments of the American war had incited the whig party to discover the more distant or latent sources of national misfortune, and to propose remedies by which Britain should be always prosperous, and always victorious. This opinion, written in 1807, must not be allowed to interfere with the praise we have justly bestowed on He was already one of Mr. Mitford's well-written and correct those who thought the decision of parliament on the Middlesex election, a violation of the rights of the people; and when the counties began, in 1779, to associate for parlia mentary reform, he took an active part in assisting their deliberations, and wrote several patriotic manifestos, which raised bim as high in the opinion of his own party, as they degraded him in the eyes of the other. He is even said to have given so much offence at court, that he found it convenient to resign his chaplainship. It appears, however, by the poems he wrote in his latter days, that the fever of reform had abated, and that his cure, which was begun by Mr. Fox's India bill, was afterwards completed by the French revolution. His "Ode to Mr. Pitt," published in 1782, expresses the sanguine hopes he entertained of the virtues and talents of that young statesman. When he prepared this ode for a new edition in 1795, he altered the last line from to "Be thine the Muse's wreath; be thou the People's friend," 66 a "To claim thy sovereign's love, be thou thy Country's friend." The reason of this alteration he assigns in a note: person (Mr. Fox) had usurped the name of the Friend of the People, &c." To such vicissitudes are the eager assertors of theoretic liberty exposed. His Among Mr. Mason's accomplishments, his taste for painting was perhaps not inferior to that he displayed for poetry; and it has been thought that his judgment was more uniformly correct in the former than in the latter. "Translation of Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting," which appeared in 1783, was begun, as he informs us, in his early years, with a double view of implanting in his memory the principles of a favourite art, and of acquiring a habit of versification, for which purpose the close and condensed style of the original seemed peculiarly calculated, especially when considered as a sort of school exercise. The task, however, proved so difficult, that it was long laid aside. for original composition, and his translation would have never been made public, if sir Joshua Reynolds had not requested a sight of it, and offered to illustrate it by a series of notes. This induced him to revise the whole with such scrupulous care, that it may be considered, in a great measure, as the production of his mature talents, and whéther perused as an original or a translation, is certainly not VOL. XXI. FF. inferior to his most favourite works. In the poetical address, however, to sir Joshua Reynolds, he has not been thought so happy; and some inaccuracies of rhyme may be objected to a translation which is generally elegant and faithful. How much its value was enhanced to the artist, and to the connoisseur, by the annotations of sir Joshua Reynolds, is too obvious to be noticed. His last separate publication of the poetical kind was a "Secular Ode in Commemoration of the Glorious Revolution," 1688, and appeared when men of all parties joined in festal meetings to celebrate the restoration and establishment of English liberty. In the same year he condescended to be the biographer and editor of the poems of his friend William Whitehead, esq. Of his life of Whitehead some notice will be taken hereafter. Neither his subject nor his materials could furnish such memoirs as he has given of Gray, but it is interesting in an inferior degree, and would not have detracted much from his fame as a biographer, had he suppressed his splenetic notice of Dr. Johnson, and shewn that he had preserved that simplicity of character, and those generous feelings, which Gray once attributed to him. He appears to have been equally mistaken in a pamphlet which he published about this time, animadverting on the government of the York Lunatic Asylum; but the mistake was rather of the head than the heart, for be was a cordial and liberal supporter of that institution, and was betrayed into a degree of intemperance of remark by excess of zeal for its prosperity. Of his general humanity, or what he has termed "moral patriotism," he afforded during this year an eloquent proof in a discourse delivered in York cathedral on the subject of the African slave tradę. He was one of the first who contributed to expose the infamy of that trade, and to invigorate those remonstrances which have at length been heard with effect. In 1795, he published a judicious, comprehensive, and elegant "Essay, historical and critical, on English Church Music." This work embraces so many subjects connected with the decorous administration of public worship as to deserve much more attention than has yet been bestowed upon it. His answer to Mr. Thomas Warton's objections to metrical psalmody is not the least valuable part; and the spirit and intelligence which he displays on this subject do credit to him, both as a poet and a divine. His knowledge of music was very accurate, and he is said to have composed a Te Deum, a hymn, and other pieces for the choir of York. The improvement, if not the invention of the piano forte is also attributed to him in an elaborate article on that subject, inserted in Dr. Gleig's supplement to the "Encyclopedia Britannica*." In all the editions of his poems hitherto published, Mr. Mason omitted some pieces for various reasons; but, about 1796, he determined to collect the whole into an additional or third volume, interspersed with some which had never been printed. This appeared in 1797, immediately after his death. His death, although he had reached his seventy-second year, was not the consequence of age. His health was yet more robust than most men enjoy at that advanced period, and his faculties had undergone no perceptible alteration, when he received a burt in stepping into a carriage, which, producing a mortification, terminated his life on the 7th of April, 1797. A monument has been since erected to his memory in Westminster abbey, adjoining to that of Gray, with a short Latin inscription. The countess Harcourt also erected an urn to his memory in the flower-garden at Nuneham, with an inscription celebrating his "simple manners, piety, and steady friendship." A yet higher tribute of respect has been paid by his friend Mr. Gisborne in some elegant verses. The opinion of so good a man as Mr. Gisborne is entitled to confidence, and there is no reason to doubt that Mason deserved the praise he has given him; nor, considering the general and acknowledged frailty of human nature, will this panegyric suffer by the few *"Mr. Mason," says Dr. Burney in the Cyclopædia, "was not only an excellent poet and able divine, but a dilettante painter and musician; and in these last capacities an acute critic. We did not, however, agree with him in his reforming schemes of church music. He had been himself a good performer on the harpsichord; had some knowledge of composition, a refined taste, and was a very good judge of modern music; but his ideas of reforming cathedral music would reduce it to Calvinistical psalmody. He wished for nothing but plain counterpoint in the services and full anthems, and dull and dry harmory in the voluntaries, without melody, accent, or measure; and he preferred the mechanical execution of a barrel organ in church music, to the most judicious accompaniment of a consummate organist. As precentor of the cathedral of York, it is to be feared, he has stript music of all its ornaments, as Jack did religion, in the Tale of a Tub. There are, however, many excellent reflections in his 'Compendium of the History of our Church Music,' and, in general, a just and discriminate character of our ecclesiastical composers, in his Copious Collection of those portions of the Psalms of David, Bible, and Liturgy, which have been set to Music, and sung as Anthems in the Cathedral and Collegiate Churches of England. To which is prefixed a critical and historical Essay on Cathedral Music,' Printed at York in 1782." exceptions which, in truth and justice to the merits of others, his contemporaries, may be offered. Mr. Mason's life appears to have been principally devoted to the duties of his profession, occasionally relieved by the cultivation of the fine arts. His associates, at least in the latter part of his life, were few. He had the misfortune to survive the greater number whose friendship he had cultivated in his early years, and he was not ambitious of new connections. This brought on him the imputation of that pride, or distance of manner, which is ascribed to men of unsocial habits. But Mason's heart was not inaccessible, and his friendships were inviolable. The simplicity, however, attributed to him in his young days by Gray, and the patience with which lord Orford informs us, he heard his faults, did not accompany him through life. On the publication of Gray's life, he was ready to allow that "twenty-five years had made a very considerable abatement in his general philanthropy ;" and by philanthropy he seems here to mean a diffidence of opinion on matters of literature, and an unwillingness to censure acknowledged merit. It can have no reference to philanthropy in the more general acceptation of the word, for he was to the last, liberal, humane, and charitable. What it really means, indeed, we find in the work just alluded to. The contemptuous notice of Waterland, Akenside, and Shenstone, which he did not suppress in Gray, he employed himself with more harshness whenever he could find an opportunity to attack the writings of Dr. Johnson. The opinion this great critic pronounced on Gray may be probably quoted as the provocation, and great allowance is to be made for the warmth and zeal with which he guards the memory of his departed friend. But surely one of his notes on Gray's Letters may be here fairly quoted against him. "Had Mr. Pope disregarded the sarcasms of the many writers that endeavoured to eclipse his poetical fame, as much as Mr. Gray 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." Nor was his prosecution of Murray, for taking about fifty lines from his works of Gray into an edition which that bookseller published, much to the credit of his liberality, especially as he refused to drop the prosecution, when requested to name his own terms of compensation. Such littlenesses are to be regretted in a man |