THE REVEREND WILLIAM MASON. So happy a life as Mason's, though exceedingly agreeable to think of, is neither easy to write, nor very interesting when written. Even when such favoured mortals have chosen, like the excellent Lindley Murray, to be their own biographers, though their reflections and observations are most valuable, their actions exemplary, and their tranquillity and thankfulness truly edifying, more good people will be found to recommend their work than to peruse it. Yet Mason was not a man to be forgotten. He was the friend and biographer of Gray, and he was the most considerable poet that Yorkshire has produced since Marvel. As a man, as a poet, as a politician, and as a divine, he was highly respectable, and he that is thoroughly respectable, and nothing more, has the best possible chance of earthly happiness. A few squabbles with managers and critics, were all that he had to convince him that "man is born to mourn." He had the good fortune too to be born in one of those " vacant interlunar" periods of literature, when a little poetic talent goes a great way, and in an age when a clergyman, if not negligent of his professional duties, was allowed to cultivate his talents in any innocent way he thought proper. His character was deservedly esteemed by many who were themselves estimable, and his genius is praised by some who themselves possessed more. William Mason was born in 1725. His father, who was Vicar of St. Trinity-Hall, in the East Riding, superintended his early education himself, and instead of checking, kindly fostered his poetical tastes, for which judicious indulgence he made grateful acknowledgment in a poetical epistle, written in his twenty-first year. Unlike too many poets, he never had occasion to regret his early devotion to the Muses but then, He left no calling for the idle trade, However little parents may approve of their offspring being bad poets, or however barren they may think the bays of the good ones, they will always do wisely to imitate the worthy father of Mason, and let instinct have its course. To oppose is certain to add the curse of disobedience to the calamities of poetry. In 1742, young Mason was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge. His tutor was Dr. Powell, a man of the same liberal sentiments as his father, who, while he directed his pupil to the classic models of antiquity, did not dissuade him from cultivating English verse. Mason's scholarship, though elegant and diffusive, was not of that accurate and technical kind, which may be strictly termed academical; but he passed his time happily at Cambridge, with good books and good company, studying rather for delight and public fame, than for college honours and emoluments. It is too much the habit of tutors, and of those who should give the tone to our Universities, to consider all study which has not a direct reference to the tripos and class-paper, as mere mental dissipa tion: a prejudice which not only turns the young academician into a school-boy, but converts the fullgrown academicians, who should form the learned class, into common-place schoolmasters. The constant routine of tuition leaves the senior neither time nor spirits for fresh acquisitions of knowledge, and in consequence many men of high attainments, whose continued residence in their colleges would be highly beneficial both to themselves and to the community, are driven away from absolute want of genial society and conversation. Few now choose a college life, but such as are either tutors for subsistence, or decorous loungers and temperate bonvivans; consequently the Universities have lost a part of their salutary influence on the public mind, and are too sharply opposed to current opinion to modify and moderate it as they ought to do. Such, we fear, is the general case; but the exceptions are many, honourable, and yearly on the increase: and there is great hope that, ere long, specimens of every cast and size of intellect may grow and flourish on the peaceful borders of Cam and Isis— Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. The youthful character of Mason, as drawn by his early and constant friend Gray, is at once amiable and amusing. He says that "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." Very few of these traits outlasted Mason's youth, and perhaps some of them never existed but in Gray's good-natured interpretation. To have more fancy than judgment, to be very modest, and a little (which means not a little) vain, are qualities common to every young man that is, or is to be, or sincerely wishes to be, a poet: * and a stripling, who came to college direct from his father's parsonage, might well be ignorant of the world. But his simplicity and unsuspicion, like his extravagant expectations, seem to have arisen solely from his ignorance of the world, and his indolence was probably more than half affected out of vanity for vain clever men cannot bear to be suspected of fagging. Mason took his Bachelor's degree in 1745. Probably it was about this time that he composed, or at least began to compose, his Monody on the Death of Pope, who died in the preceding year; but it did not appear before 1747, when it was published by advice of Dr. Powell. As the work of an author of two and twenty, it is greatly commendable, and contains some really fine lines. But grief, if we may judge by the practice of poets, has a privilege above all other passions, love itself not excepted; a plenary indulgence for all sins of nonsense. Elegies, Monodies, and Epicedia have generally less meaning than * An ingenuous youth will always be modest in proportion as he is vain. For modesty and vanity are only different phenomena of one and the same disposition, viz. an extreme consciousness and apprehensiveness of being observed. In the well-constituted young mind, there is a perpetual struggle between the fear to offend, which is modesty, and the desire to please, which is vanity. any other compositions. Mr. Mason begins thus, in complicated imitation of the whole tribe of poetic mourners : Sorrowing I catch the reed, and call the Muse; If yet a muse on Britain's plain abide, Since rapt Musæus tuned his parting strain : Where Camus winds along his broidered vale, Yet ah! ye are not dead, Celestial Maids, Nor Thespia's grove; till with harmonious teen Or where mild Ladon's welling waters play. Forego each vain excuse, And haste to Thames's shores; for Thames shall join Our sad society, and passing mourn, The tears fast trickling o'er his silver urn. Is not trim a strange epithet for a mountain? We have trim gardens in Milton, properly; but was the piny verdure of Manalus wrought into topiary works, or regularly clipped by "old Adam's likeness?" VOL. II. 8 |