William Mason (poet)

Rev. William Mason (12 February 1724 - 7 April 1797) was an English poet, editor, and gardener.

William Mason (1724-1797). Portrait by William Doughty (1757-1784), oil on canvas, 1778. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Mason, son of a clergyman, was born at Hull, and educated at Cambridge. He took orders and rose to be a canon of York. His 1st poem was Musæus, a monody on the death of Pope, and his other works include Elfrida (1752), and Caractacus (1759), dramas; an Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, the architect, in which he satirised some modern fashions; in gardening, The English Garden, his largest work; and some odes. He was a close friend of Gray, whose Life he wrote. His language was too magnificent for his powers of thought, but he has passages where the rich diction has a pleasing effect.

Youth and education

Mason was born in Kingston upon Hull, the son of William Mason by his 1st wife, Sarah. The father was appointed vicar of Holy Trinity, Kingston upon Hull, in 1722, and held that benefice until his death on 26 August. 1753.

The son entered St John's College, Cambridge on 30 June 1743, and was elected a scholar in the following October. He earned a B.A. in 1745 and an M.A. in 1749. He had shown some literary and artistic tastes, which were encouraged by his father.

He had become known to Thomas Gray, then resident at Pembroke Hall, and by Gray's influence was elected a fellow of Pembroke. He had entered St. John's with a view to a Platt fellowship, but the Pembroke fellowships were then reckoned the best in the university. The fellows voted for Mason in 1747, but the master disputed their right to choose a member of another college, and his final election did not take place until 1749. He became a close friend of Gray, who was a good deal amused with the simplicity, openness, and harmless vanity of his young admirer. Gray says that Mason "reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make a fortune by it."

Mason was also known by 1750 to Hurd, then resident at Cambridge. Cambridge was then divided between the "polite scholars" and the "philologists," and the philologists thought that the "polite scholars, including Gray, Hurd, and Mason, were a set of arrogant coxcombs" (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. v. 613). Hurd introduced his young friend to Warburton, who had been pleased by the monody on Pope, and who condescended to approve Mason's Elfrida, a dramatic poem on the classical model, which appeared in the beginning of 1752. Warburton writes to Hurd (9 May 1752) of some offer made to Mason by Lord Rockingham.

Career

In 1754 Mason was presented by Robert D'Arcy, 4th earl of Holderness, to the rectory of Aston, near Rotherham, Yorkshire. He became chaplain to Holderness and resigned his fellowship at Pembroke. Warburton told him that if he took orders he should "totally abandon his poetry," and Mason, he says, agreed that decency and religion demanded the sacrifice. If so, Mason soon changed his mind.

He visited Germany in 1755, and had hopes of appointments from various great men. He was appointed one of the king's chaplains in ordinary, through the interest of the Duke of Devonshire, on 2 July 1757, and the appointment was renewed under George III on 19 Sept. 1761. On 6 December 1756 he was appointed to the prebend of Holme in York Cathedral, was made canon residentiary on 7 January 1762, and on 22 February 1763 became precentor and prebendary of Driffield (resigning Holme). He held his living and his precentorship till his death.

He was a good specimen of the more cultivated clergy of his day. He improved his church and built a village school. He built a parsonage at Aston, thereby (as he told Walpole, 21 June 1777), making a "pretty adequate" return for the patronage of Lord Holderness, whose family retained the advowson. He resided 3 months in the year at York, and had, as chaplain, to make an annual visit to London.

Mason came into an estate in the East Riding upon the death of John Hutton of Marsh, near Richmond, Yorkshire, on 12 June 1768. His income is said to have been 1,500l. a year. He resigned his chaplaincy in 1773, finding, as he said, that the journey to London was troublesome, and being resolved to abandon any thoughts of preferment. Holderness behaved so "shabbily" to him that he declined coming to Strawberry Hill at the risk of encountering his patron.

He had some antiquarian taste, like his friends Gray and Walpole. It was by his and Gray's criticisms that Walpole's eyes were opened to Chatterton's forgery. Mason was an accomplished musician. He composed some church music and published an essay upon the subject. He is said by a doubtful authority (Encycl. Brit. 1810) to have invented an improvement of the pianoforte brought out by Zumpe. Mrs. Delany says that he also invented a modification called the `Celestina,' upon which he performed with much expression; this is the instrument mentioned in the Mason and Walpole Correspondence as the celestinette (Encycl. Brit. 9th ed. `Pianoforte;' Grove, Dictionary of Music, `Mason' and 'Pianoforte;' Mrs. Delany, Autobiography, &c., 2nd ser. ii. 90). He was also something of an artist, and a portrait which he painted of the poet Whitehead was in 1853 bequeathed by the Rev. William Alderson, together with the poet's favourite chair, to the Rev. John Mitford, the editor of the Gray and Mason Correspondence.

On 25 September 1764 he married, at St. Mary's, Lowgate, Mary, daughter of William Sherman of Kingston-upon-Hull (register entry given in Notes and Queries, 6th ser. iv. 347). She soon fell into a consumption and died at Bristol, where she had gone to drink the Clifton waters, on 27 March 1767. She was buried in the north aisle of Bristol Cathedral, where there is a touching inscription by her husband (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. ii. 240), the last three lines of which were written by Gray.

Mason appears to have done little for some time; Gray visited him for the last time in the summer of 1770, and on his death (30 July 1771) left the care of his papers to his friend. Mason had been to the last an affectionate disciple of Gray, who called him `Scroddles,' and condescended to a minute revision of all his poems before publication.

Mason published Gray's Life and Letters in 1774. His plan of printing the letters as part of the life, said to have been suggested by Middleton's `Cicero,' was followed by later writers, including Boswell. Johnson himself had thought meanly of the Life, describing it as "fit for the second table," but he was doubtless not influenced by Mason's whiggism in politics. Mason took great liberties with the letters, considering them less as biographical documents than as literary material to be edited and combined (see, e.g., his letter to Walpole of 28 June 1773, where he proposes to alter Gray's French and "run two letters into one"). The book, however, is in other respects well done.

It brought him into a long correspondence with Horace Walpole, who supplied him with materials, and whom he consulted throughout. The correspondence continued after the publication of the life, and was published by Mitford in 1851. Walpole supplied the country parson with the freshest town gossip and `criticised' the works submitted to him, if criticism be a name applicable to unmixed flattery. They corresponded in particular about Mason's Heroic Epistle, a sharp satire, in the style of Pope, upon Sir William Chambers, whose Dissertation upon Oriental Gardening appeared in 1772. This and some succeeding satires under the pseudonym of "Malcolm Macgregor" are very smartly written. Mason took great pains to conceal the authorship, and even his correspondence with Walpole is so expressed that the secret should not be revealed if the letters were opened at the post-office.

The friendship, like most of Walpole's, led to a breach. Both correspondents were whigs, and even played at republicanism. When, however, Mason took a prominent part in the agitation which began with the Yorkshire petition for retrenchment and reform in the beginning of 1780 (he was a leading member of the county association for some years), Walpole thought that his friend was going to extremes. He remonstrated in several letters, and the friendship apparently cooled. Mason afterwards became an admirer of Pitt, to whom he addressed an ode, and he took the side of the court in the struggle over Fox's India Bill. Walpole thought that Mason had persuaded their common friend, Lord Harcourt, to oppose Fox's measure and become reconciled to the crown. In a couple of letters (one probably not sent) he showed that he could be as caustic on occasion as he had been effusive. In the suppressed letter he says that Mason had "floundered into a thousand absurdities: through a blind ambition of winning popularity. The letter actually sent was not milder in substance, and the friendship expired. In 1796 Mason again wrote to Walpole, however, and some civil letters passed between them. The French revolution had frightened both of them out of any sympathy for radical reforms.

In 1797 Mason hurt his shin on a Friday in stepping out of his carriage. He was able to officiate in his church at Aston on the Sunday, but died from the injury on the following Wednesday.

Writing

frontispiece of Musæus: A monody to the memory of Mr. Pope, in imitation of Milton’s Lycidas (1747)

In 1744 he wrote a monody upon Pope's death in imitation of Lycidas. It was published in 1747 as Musaeus: A monody on the death of Mr. Pope to acclaimm and quickly went through several editions. Discussing it, William Lyon Phelps writes:

Musaeus was a monody on the death of Pope, and written in imitation of Milton's Lycidas. Different poets in Musaeus bewail Pope's death; Chaucer speaks in an imitation of old English, and Spenser speaks two stanzas after the metre of the Shepherd's Calendar and three stanzas in the style of the Fairy Queen. There is nothing remarkable about these imitations.

In 1748 Mason published a poem called Isis, denouncing the Jacobitism of Oxford. Thomas Warton replied by The Triumph of Isis, which is thought by those who have read both to be the better of the 2. Mason never republished this poem till he collected the volume which appeared posthumously. According to Richard Mant, he expressed pleasure some years later when he was entering Oxford that as it was after dark he was not likely to attract the notice of the victims of his satire.

In 1749 he was employed to write an ode upon the Duke of Newcastle's installation as chancellor, which Gray thought "uncommonly well on such an occasion."

Among his other works are the historical tragedies Elfrida (1752) and Caractacus (1759) (both used in translation as libretti for 18th century operas: Elfrida - Paisiello and LeMoyne, Caractacus - Sacchini (as Arvire et Evelina )) and a long poem on gardening, The English Garden (three volumes, 1772–1782). He published the Poems of Mr Gray, a friend who was a great influence on his own work, in 1775.

Though performing his ecclesiastical duties regularly, Mason never gave up his literary pursuits. In 1756 he published 4 odes. In 1757 some apology was made for not offering him the laureateship, vacant by the death of Colley Cibber, which was declined by Gray and given to William Whitehead. In 1759 he published his Caractacus, a rather better performance in the Elfrida style, which Gray had carefully criticised in manuscript and read `not with pleasure only but with emotion." Mason's odes and the choruses in his dramas show a desire to imitate Gray, and the two were parodied by George Colman the elder and Robert Lloyd in their "Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion" (published in Lloyd's Poems). Gray declined to "combustle" about it, and Mason was equally wise. Mason published some "elegies" in 1762, and in 1764 a collection of his poems, omitting `Isis' and the `Installation Ode,' with a prefatory sonnet to Lord Holderness.

Mason continued his literary labours after the Life of Gray. His Elfrida was brought out at Covent Garden on 21 Nov. 1772 by Colman without his consent, and again, with alterations by himself, at the same theatre on 22 Feb. 1779. The `Caractacus,' also corrected by himself, was performed at Covent Garden on 1 Dec. 1776, and was again produced on 22 Oct. 1778. The success of both plays was very moderate. In 1778 he wrote an opera called Sappho, to be set to music by Giardini. Some other theatrical writings remained in manuscript. In 1777 he had a lawsuit with John Murray, the first publisher of the name, who had infringed his copyright by publishing extracts from Gray. Mason obtained an injunction, but Murray attacked him effectively in a pamphlet Concerning Mr. Mason's Edition of Mr. Gray's Poems, and the Practices of Booksellers, 1777.

Mason was a man of considerable abilities and cultivated taste, who naturally mistook himself for a poet. He accepted the critical canons of his day, taking Gray and Hurd for his authorities, and his' serious attempts at poetry are rather vapid performances, to which his attempt to assimilate Gray's style gives an air of affectation. The Heroic Epistle gives him a place among the other followers of Pope's school in satire. Mason's poems were collected in one volume in 1764, and in two volumes in 1774. A third volume, prepared by himself, was added in 1797. His `Works' were collected in four volumes in 1811.

Recognition

In 1785, Mason was William Pitt the younger's choice to succeed William Whitehead as Poet Laureate, but refused the honour.

A marble memorial plaque to Mason, dated 1799, is in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Memorial inscriptions for Mason may be found at the parsonage he built at Aston near Rotherham and in York Minster. There is also a monument in Aston Church.

12 of his poems were included in Dodsley's Collection of Poems in Six Volumes; by several hands.

Publications

Poetry

• Musaeus: A monody to the memory of Mr. Pope, in imitation of Lycidas. London: R. Dodsley, 1747.
• Isis: An elegy. London: R. Dodsley, 1749.
• Ode Performed in the Senate House at Cambridge ... at the installation of ... Thomas Holles, duke of Newcastle, chancellor. Cambridge, UK: J. Bentham, 1749.
• Odes. Cambridge, UK: J. Bentham, for William Thurlbourn / R. & J. Dodsley, London, 1756.
• Poems. London: H. Payne, 1760; Robert Horsfield, 1764.
• Elegies. London: Robert Horsfield, 1763.
• The English Garden: A poem, in four books.
  • Book I: London: R. Horsfield / H. Dunoyer / et al, 1772; York, UK: A. Ward, for J. Dodsley, London / T. Cadell, London / et al, 1781.
  • Book II: York, UK: J. Todd / J. Dodsley, London / T. Cadell, London / H. Denoyer, London / J. Todd, York, 1777.
• An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers. London: J. Almon, 1773.
• An Heroic Postscript to the Public. London: J. Almon, 1774.
• Poems. (2 volumes), York, UK: A. Ward, for R. Dodsley, London / T. Cadell, London / et al, 1774; Glasgow: Andrew & Robert Foulis, 1774.
• Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck: Upon his newly invented patent candle-snuffers. London: J. Almon, 1776.
• An Epistle to Dr Shebbeare / An ode to Sir Fletcher Norton in imitation of Horace. London: J. Almon, 1777.
• Ode to the Naval Officers of Great Britain. London: T. Cadell, 1779.
• An Archeological Epistle to ... Jeremiah Miles D.D. London: J. Nichols / J. Walter / R. Faulder / et al, 1782.
• The Dean and the Squire: A political eclogue. London: J. Debrett, 1782.
• King Stephens's Watch: A tale founded on fact. London: T. Longman, 1782.
• Ode to the Honourable William Pitt. London: J. Dodsley, 1782.
• Secular Ode in Commemoration of the Glorious Revolution. London: J. Robson & W. Clarke, 1788.
• Poems. (3 volumes), York, UK: W. Blanchard, 1796-1797.
• Poetical Works. London: Biggs, for Richard Phillips, 1805.
• The Poems of William Mason. Chiswick, UK: Press of C. Whittingham, 1822.
• Satirical Poems Published Anonymously; with notes by Horace Walpole (edited by Paget Jackson Toynbee). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1926.

Plays

• Elfrida: A dramatic poem. London: J. Knapton, 1752; London: George Cawthorn, 1796.
• Caractacus: A dramatic poem. London:J. Knapton / R. & J. Dodsley / R. Horsfield, 1760; London: John Bell, 1796.
• Sappho: A lyrical drama, in three acts (with Italian translation by Thomas James Mathias). London: T. Becket & G. Porter, 1809.

Non-fiction

• Animadversions on the Present Government of the York Lunatic Asylum. York, UK: W. Blanchard, for J. Todd, et al, 1788.
• An Occasional Discourse ... on the subject of the African slave trade. York, UK: privately published, printed by A. Ward, 1788.
• Essays on English Church Music. York, UK: W. Blanchard, for J. Todd / J. Robson, London, 1795.

Collected editions

• Works. (4 volumes), London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1811. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV

Translated

• Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy, The Art of Painting. York, UK: A. Ward, for R. Dodsley, London / T. Cadell, London / et al, 1783.

Edited

• Thomas Gray, Poems: To which are prefixed memoirs of his life and writings. York, UK: A. Ward, for J. Todd / J. Dodsley, London, 1775.
• A Copious Collection of portions of the Psalms ... set to music. York, UK: printed by A. Ward, 1782.
• The School for Satire; or, A collection of modern satirical poems. London: Jacques, 1802.

Letters

• The Correspondence of Horace Walpole ... and William Mason (edited by John Mitford). (2 volumes), London: Bentley, 1851.
• The Correspondence of Thomas Gray and William Mason (edited by John Mitford). London: Bentley, 1853.
• The Letters of Thomas Gray; including the correspondence of Gray and Mason (edited by D.C. Tovey & Norton Nicholls). London: George Bell, 1900-1912. Volume I
• The Correspondence of Richard Hurd and William Mason (edited by Ernest Harold Pearce & Leonard Whibley). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1932.
• Horace Walpole's Correspondence with William Mason (edited by W.S. Lewis). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Stephen, Leslie (1893) "Mason, William (1724-1797)" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 36 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 438-440  . Wikisource, Web, Aug. 15, 2016.

External links

Poems

• Rev. William Mason (1725-1797) at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• William Mason at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive

Books

• William Mason at Amazon.com

About

• William Mason at Westminster Abbey
• Mason, William in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• William Mason at Author and Bookinfo.com

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Mason, William (1724-1797)