Chapter 13

His death, which was at last sudden, was caused by a hurt on his shin, that happened when he was stepping out of his carriage. On the Sunday (two days after) he felt so little inconvenience from the accident, as to officiate in his church at Aston. But on the next Wednesday, the 7th of April, 1797, a rapid mortification brought him to his grave. His monument, of which Bacon was the sculptor, is placed in Westminster Abbey, near that of Gray, with the following inscription:--

Optimo Viro Gulielmo Mason, A.M. Poetae, Si quis alius Culto, Casto, Pio Sacrum. Ob. 7. Apr. 1797. Aet. 72.

Mason is reported to have been ugly in his person. His portrait by Reynolds gives to features, ill-formed and gross, an expression of intelligence and benignity. In the latter part of life, his character appears to have undergone a greater change, from its primitive openness and good nature, than mere time and experience of the world should have wrought in it. Perhaps this was nothing more than a slight perversion which he had contracted in the school of Warburton. What was a coarse arrogance in the master himself, assumed the form of nicety and superciliousness in the less confident and better regulated tempers of Mason and Hurd. His harmless vanity cleaved to him longer. As a proof of this, it is related that, several years after the publication of Isis, when he was travelling through Oxford, and happened to pass over Magdalen Bridge at a late hour of the evening, he turned round to a friend who was riding with him, and remarked that it was luckily grown dusk, for they should enter the University unobserved. When his friend, with some surprise inquired into the reason of this caution: What, (said he) do you not remember my Isis?

He was very sensible to the annoyance of the periodical critics, which Gray was too philosophical or too proud to regard otherwise than as matter of amusement. He was the butt for a long line of satirists or lampooners. Churchill, Lloyd, Colman, the author of the Probationary Odes, and, if I remember right, Paul Whitehead and Wolcot, all levelled their shafts at him in turn. In the Probationary Odes, his peculiarities were well caught: when the writer of these pages repeated some of the lines in which he was imitated to Anna Seward, whose admiration of Mason is recorded in her letters, she observed, that what was meant for a burlesque was in itself excellent. There is reason to suppose that he sometimes indulged himself in the same license under which he suffered from others. If he was indeed the author of the Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, and of some other anonymous satires which have been imputed to him, he must have felt Hayley's intended compliment as a severe reproach:

Sublimer Mason! not to thee belong The reptile beauties of invenom'd song.

Of the Epistle, when it was remarked, in the hearing of Thomas Warton, that it had more energy than could have been expected from Walpole, to whom others ascribed it, Warton remarked that it might have been written by Walpole, and buckramed by Mason. Indeed, it is not unlikely that one supplied the venom, and the other spotted the snake. In a letter of expostulation to Warton, Mason did not go the length of disclaiming the satire, though he was angry enough that it should be laid at his door. I have heard that he received with much apathy the praises offered him by Hayley, in the Essay on Epic Poetry. He has remarked, "that if rhyme does not condense the sense, which passes through its vehicle, it ceases to be good, either as verse or rhyme."[2] This rule is laid down too broadly. His own practice was not always consonant with it, as Hayley's never was. With Darwin's poetry, it is said that he was much pleased.

His way of composing, as we learn from Gray's remarks upon his poems, was to cast down his first thoughts carelessly, and at large, and then clip them here and there at leisure. "This method," as his friend observed, "will leave behind it a laxity, a diffuseness. The force of a thought (otherwise well-invented, well-turned, and well-placed) is often weakened by it." He might have added, that it is apt to give to poetry the air of declamation.

Mason wished to join what he considered the correctness of Pope with the high imaginative power of Milton, and the lavish colouring of Spenser. In the attempt to unite qualities so heterogeneous, the effect of each is in a great measure lost, and little better than a caput mortuum remains. With all his praises of simplicity, he is generally much afraid of saying any thing in a plain and natural manner. He often expresses the commonest thoughts in a studied periphrasis. He is like a man, who being admitted into better company than his birth and education have fitted him for, is under continual apprehension, lest his attitude and motions should betray his origin. Even his negligence is studied. His muse resembles the Prioresse in Chaucer,

That pained her to counterfete chere, Of court and be stateliche of manere, And to been holden digne of reverence.

Yet there were happier moments in which he delivered himself up to the ruling inspiration. So it was when he composed the choruses in the Caractacus, beginning,

Mona on Snowdon calls-- Hail, thou harp of Phrygian frame--

and

Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread--

of which it is scarcely too much to say that in some parts they remind us of the ancient tragedians.

In each of his two Tragedies, the incidents are conducted with so much skill, and there is so much power of moving the affections, that one is tempted to wish he had pursued this line, though he perhaps would never have done any thing much better in it. One great fault is, that the dramatis personae are too much employed in pointing out the Claudes and Salvator Rosas, with which they are surrounded. They seem to want nothing but long poles in their hands to make them very good conductors over a gallery of pictures. When Earl Orgar, on seeing the habitation of his daughter, begins--

How nobly does this venerable wood, Gilt with the glories of the orient sun, Embosom yon fair mansion! The soft air Salutes me with most cool and temperate breath And, as I tread, the flower-besprinkled lawn Sends up a cloud of fragance--

and Aulus Didius opens the other play with a description somewhat more appropriate:

This is the secret centre of the isle: Here, Romans, pause, and let the eye of wonder Gaze on the solemn scene; behold yon oak, How stern he frowns, and with his broad brown arms Chills the pale plain beneath him: mark yon altar, The dark stream brawling round its rugged base, These cliffs, these yawning caverns, this wide circus, Skirted with unhewn stone: they awe my soul, As if the very genius of the place Himself appear'd, and with terrific tread Stalk'd through his drear domain--

we could fancy that both these personages had come fresh from the study of the English garden. The distresses of Elfrida, and the heroism of Caractacus, are in danger of becoming objects of secondary consideration, while we are admiring the shades of Harewood, and the rocks of Mona. He has attempted to shelter himself under the authority of Sophocles; but though there are some exquisite touches of landscape painting in that drama, the poet has introduced them with a much more sparing hand. It is said that Hurd pruned away a great deal more luxuriance of this kind, with which the first draught of the Elfrida was overrun; and we learn from Gray, in his admirable letter of criticism on the Caractacus, that the opening of that tragedy was, as it at first stood, even much more objectionable than at present. Such descriptions are better suited to the Masque, a species of drama founded on some wild and romantic adventure, and of which the interest does not depend on the manners or the passions. It is therefore more in its place in Argentile and Curan, which he calls a legendary drama, written on the old English model. He composed it after the other two, and during the short time that his wife lived; but, like several of his poems, it was not published till the year of his decease. The beginning promises well: and the language of our old writers is at first tolerably well imitated. There is afterwards too much trick and too many prettinesses; such is that of the nosegay which the princess finds, and concludes from its tasteful arrangement to be the work of princely fingers. The subordinate parts, of the Falconer, and Ralph, his deputy, are not sustained according to the author's first conception of them. The story is well put together. He has, perhaps, nothing else that is equal in expression to the following passage.

Thou know'st, when we did quit our anchor'd barks, We cross'd a pleasant valley; rather say A nest of sister vales, o'erhung with hills Of varied form and foliage; every vale Had its own proper brook, the which it hugg'd In its green breast, as if it fear'd to lose The treasur'd crystal. You might mark the course Of these cool rills more by the ear than eye, For, though they oft would to the sun unfold Their silver as they past, 'twas quickly lost; But ever did they murmur. On the verge Of one of these clear streams, there stood a cell O'ergrown with moss and ivy; near to which, On a fall'n trunk, that bridged the little brook A hermit sat. Of him we ask'd the name Of this sweet valley, and he call'd it Hakeness.

(_Argentile and Curan_, A, 1.)

In two lines more, we are unluckily reminded that this is no living landscape.

Thither, my Sewold, go, or pitch thy tent Near to thy ships, for they are near the _scene_.

Since the time of Mason, this rage for describing what is called scenery (and scenery indeed it often is, having little of nature in it) has infected many of our play-writers and novelists.

Argentile's intention of raising a rustic monument to the memory of his father, is taken from Shakspeare.

This grove my sighs shall consecrate; in shape Of some fair tomb, here will I heap the turf And call it Adelbright's. Yon aged yew, Whose rifted trunk, rough bark, and gnarled roots Give solemn proof of its high ancientry, Shall canopy the shrine. There's not a flower, That hangs the dewy head, and seems to weep, As pallid blue-bells, crow-tyes and marsh lilies, But I'll plant here, and if they chance to wither, My tears shall water them; there's not a bird That trails a sad soft note, as ringdoves do, Or twitters painfully like the dun martlet, But I will lure by my best art, to roost And plain them in these branches. Larks and finches Will I fright hence, nor aught shall dare approach This pensive spot, save solitary things That love to mourn as I do.

How cold and lifeless are these pretty lines, when compared to the "wench-like words," of the young princes, which suggested them.

If he be gone he'll make his grave a bed With female fairies will his tomb be haunted, And worms will not come to thee.

_Arv_. With fairest flow'rs, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would With charitable bill (O bill, fore-shaming The rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie Without a monument!) bring thee all this; Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, To winter-ground thy corse.

This is grief, seeking to relieve and forget itself in fiction and fancy; the other, though the occasion required an expression of deeper sorrow, is a mere pomp of feeling.

His blank verse in the English Garden has not the majesty of Akenside, the sweetness of Dyer, or the terseness of Armstrong. Its characteristic is delicacy; but it is a delicacy approaching nearer to weakness than to grace. It has more resemblance to the rill that trickles over its fretted channel, than to the stream that winds with a full tide, and "warbles as it flows." The practice of cutting it into dialogue had perhaps crippled him. As he has made the characters in his plays too attentive to the decorations of the scene-painter, so in the last book of the English Garden he has turned his landscape into a theatre, for the representation of a play. The story of Nerina is too long and too complicated for an episode in a didactic poem. He will seldom bear to be confronted with those writers whom he is found either by accident or design to resemble. His picture of the callow young in a bird's-nest is, I think, with some alteration, copied from Statius.

--Her young meanwhile Callow and cold, from their moss-woven nest Peep forth; they stretch their little eager throats Broad to the wind, and plead to the lone spray Their famish'd plaint importunately shrill.

(_English Garden_, b. 3.)

--Volucrum sic turba recentum, Cum reducem longo prospexit in aethere matrem, Ire cupit contra, summaque e margine nidi Extat hians; jam jamque cadat ni pectore toto Obstet aperta parens et amantibus increpet alis.

(_Theb._ lib. x. 458.)

Oppian's imitation of this is happier.

[Greek: Os dhopot aptaenessi pherei bosin dortalichoisi Maetaer, eiarinae Zephurou protangelos ornis, Oi dapalon truzontes epithroskousi kaliae, Gaethusunoi peri maetri, kai imeirontes edodaes Xeilos anaptussousin apan depi doma lelaeken Andros xeinodochoio liga klazousi neossois.]

(Halieut. I. in. 248.)

Hurd, in the letter he addressed to him on the Marks of Imitation, observed, that the imagery with which the Ode to Memory opens, is borrowed from Strada's Prolusions. The chorus in Elfrida, beginning

Hail to thy living light, Ambrosial morn! all hail thy roseate ray:

is taken from the Hymnus in Auroram, by Flaminio.

His Sappho, a lyrical drama, is one of the few attempts that have been made to bring amongst us that tuneful trifle, the modern Opera of the Italians. It has been transferred by Mr. Mathias into that language, to which alone it seemed properly to belong. Mr. Glasse has done as much for Caractacus by giving it up to the Greek. Of the two Odes, which are all, excepting some few fragments, that remain to us of the Lesbian poetess, he has introduced Translations into his drama. There is more glitter of phrase than in the versions made, if I recollect right, by Ambrose Phillips, which are inserted in the Spectator, No. 222 and 229; but much less of that passionate emotion which marks the original. Most of my readers will remember that which begins,

Blest as the immortal Gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee, all the while, Softly speak and sweetly smile.

It is thus rendered by Mason:

The youth that gazes on thy charms, Rivals in bliss the Gods on high, Whose ear thy pleasing converse warms, Thy lovely smile his eye.

But trembling awe my bosom heaves, When placed those heavenly charms among; The sight my voice of power bereaves, And chains my torpid tongue.

Through every thrilling fibre flies The subtle flame; in dimness drear My eyes are veil'd; a murmuring noise Glides tinkling through my ear;

Death's chilly dew my limbs o'erspreads, Shiv'ring, convuls'd, I panting lye; And pale, as is the flower that fades, I droop, I faint, I die.

The rudest language, in which there was anything of natural feeling, would be preferable to this cold splendour. In the other ode, he comes into contrast with Akenside.

But lo! to Sappho's melting airs Descends the radiant queen of love; She smiles, and asks what fonder cares Her suppliant's plaintive measures move. Why is my faithful maid distrest? Who, Sappho, wounds thy tender breast? Say, flies he? soon he shall pursue: Shuns he thy gifts? he soon shall give: Slights he thy sorrows? he shall grieve, And soon to all thy wishes bow.

_Akenside_, b. 1, Ode 13.

This, though not unexceptionable, and particularly in the last verse, has yet a tenderness and spirit utterly wanting in Mason.

What from my power would Sappho claim? Who scorns thy flame? What wayward boy Disdains to yield thee joy for joy? Soon shall he court the bliss he flies; Soon beg the boon he now denies, And, hastening back to love and thee, Repay the wrong with extacy.

In the Pygmalion, a lyrical scene, he has made an effort equally vain, to represent the impassioned eloquence of Jean Jaques Rousseau.

In his shorter poems, there is too frequent a recurrence of the same machinery, and that, such as it needed but little invention to create. Either the poet himself, or some other person, is introduced, musing by a stream or lake, or in a forest, when the appearance of some celestial visitant, muse, spirit, or angel, suddenly awakens his attention.

Soft gleams of lustre tremble through the grove, And sacred airs of minstrelsy divine Are harp'd around, and flutt'ring pinions move. Ah, hark! a voice, to which the vocal rill, The lark's extatic harmony is rude; Distant it swells with many a holy trill, Now breaks wide warbling from yon orient cloud.

_Elegy_ 2.

And,

But hark! methinks I hear her hallow'd tongue! In distant trills it echoes o'er the tide; Now meets mine ear with warbles wildly free, As swells the lark's meridian extacy.

_Ode_ vi.

After the extatic notes have been heard, all vanishes away like some figure in the clouds, which

Even with a thought, The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is in water.

His abstractions are often exalted into cherubs and seraphs. It is the "cherub Beauty sits on Nature's rustic shrine;" "heaven-descended Charity;" "Constancy, heaven-born queen;" Liberty, "heaven-descending queen." Take away from him these aerial beings and their harps, and you will rob him of his best treasures.

He holds nearly the same place among our poets, that Peters does among our painters. He too is best known by--

The angel's floating pomp, the seraph's glowing grace;

and he too, instead of that gravity and depth of tone which might seem most accordant to his subjects, treats them with a lightness of pencil that is not far removed from flimsiness.

In the thirteenth Ode, on the late Duchess of Devonshire, the only lady of distinguished rank to whom the poets of modern times have loved to pay their homage, and in the sixteenth, which he entitles Palinodia, he provokes a comparison with Mr. Coleridge. One or two extracts from each will shew the difference between the artificial heat of the schools and the warmth of a real enthusiasm.

Art thou not she whom fav'ring fate In all her splendour drest, To show in how supreme a state A mortal might be blest? Bade beauty, elegance, and health, Patrician birth, patrician wealth, Their blessings on her darling shed; Bade Hymen, of that generous race Who freedom's fairest annals grace, Give to thy love th'illustrious head.

_Mason._

Light as a dream, your days their circlets ran, From all that teaches brotherhood to man Far, far removed; from want, from hope, from fear, Enchanting music lull'd your infant ear, Obeisant praises sooth'd your infant heart: Emblasonments and old ancestral crests, With many a bright obtrusive form of art, Detain'd your eye from nature; stately vests, That veiling strove to deck your charms divine, Were your's unearn'd by toil.

_Coleridge, Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Gloucester._

Say did I err, chaste Liberty, When, warm with youthful fire, I gave the vernal fruits to thee, That ripen'd on my lyre? When, round thy twin-born sister's shrine I taught the flowers of verse to twine And blend in one their fresh perfume; Forbade them, vagrant and disjoin'd, To give to every wanton wind Their fragrance and their bloom?

_Mason._

Ye clouds, that far above me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may controul! Ye ocean waves, that, whereso'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws! Ye woods, that listen to the night-birds singing, Midway the smooth and perilous steep reclin'd; Save when your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man belov'd of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod, How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flow'ring weeds I wound, Inspir'd beyond the guess of folly, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O, ye loud waves, and O, ye forests high, And O, ye clouds, that far above me soar'd! Thou rising sun! thou blue rejoicing sky! Yea, every thing that is and will be free, Bear witness for me wheresoe'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest liberty.

_Coleridge. France, An Ode._

The Elegy written in a churchyard in South Wales, is not more below Gray's.

Of eagerness to obtain poetical distinction he had much more than Gray; but in tact, judgment, and learning, was exceedingly his inferior. He was altogether a man of talent, if I may be allowed to use the word talent according to the sense it bore in our old English; for he had a vehement _desire_ of excellence, but wanted either the depth of mind or the industry that was necessary for producing anything that was very excellent.

FOOTNOTES [1] It is said, that the best likeness of Gray is to be found in the figure of Scipio, in an engraving for the edition of Gil Blas, printed at Amsterdam, 1735, vol. iv. p. 94.--See Mr. Mitford's Gray, vol. i. lxxxi. A copy of this figure would be acceptable to many of Gray's admirers. [2] Essays on English Church Music, Mason's Works, vol. iii. p. 370.

* * * * *

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Oliver, the second son of Charles and Anne Goldsmith, was born in Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, in the Parish of Forgany or Forney in the County of Longford. By a mistake made in the note of his entrance in the college register, he is represented to have been a native of the county of Westmeath.

His father, who had before resided at Smith-hill in the county of Roscommon, (which has by some been erroneously said to be the birth-place of his son, Oliver,) removed thence to Pallas, and afterwards to his Rectory of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath; and in the latter of these parishes, at Lissoy, or Auburn, he built the house described as the Village-Preacher's modest mansion in the Deserted Village. His mother was daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan school at Elphin. Their family consisted of five sons and three daughters.

In a letter from his elder sister, Catherine, the wife of Daniel Hodson, Esq. inserted in the Life of Goldsmith, which an anonymous writer, whom I suppose to have been Cowper's friend, Mr. Rose, from a passage in Mr. Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, prefixed to his Miscellaneous Works, wonders are told of his early predilection for the poetical art; but those who have observed the amplification with which the sprightly sallies of childhood are related by domestic fondness, will listen to such narrations with some abatement of confidence. It seems probable, that a desire of literary distinction might have been infused into his youthful mind by hearing of the reputation of his countryman, Parnell, with whom, as we learn from his life of that poet, his father and uncle were acquainted.