Mason's Miltonic imitations, "Musaeus," "Il Bellicoso" and "Il Pacifico" were written in 1744—according to the statement of their author, whose statements, however, are not always to be relied upon. The first was published in 1747; the second "surreptitiously printed in a magazine and afterward inserted in Pearch's miscellany," finally revised and published by the author in 1797; the third first printed in 1748 in the Cambridge verses on the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. These pieces follow copy in every particular. "Il Bellicoso," e.g., opens with the invocation.
"Hence, dull lethargic Peace,
Born in some hoary beadsman's cell obscure!"
The genealogies of Peace and War are recited, and contrasted pictures of peaceful and warlike pleasures presented in an order which corresponds as precisely as possible to Milton's in "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
"Then, to unbend my mind, I'll roam
Amid the cloister's silent gloom;
Or, where ranged oaks their shades diffuse,
Hold dalliance with my darling Muse,
Recalling oft some heaven-born strain
That warbled in Augustan reign;
Or turn, well pleased, the Grecian page,
If sweet Theocritus engage,
Or blithe Anacreon, mirthful wight,
Carol his easy love-lay light. . .
And joys like these, if Peace inspire
Peace, with thee I string the lyre."[9]
"Musaeus" was a monody on the death of Pope, employing the pastoral machinery and the varied irregular measure of "Lycidas." Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, under the names of Tityrus, Colin Clout, and Thyrsis, are introduced as mourners, like Camus and St. Peter in the original. Tityrus is made to lament the dead shepherd in very incorrect Middle English. Colin Clout speaks two stanzas of the form used in the first eclogue of "The Shepherd's Calendar," and three stanzas of the form used in "The Faërie Queene." Thyrsis speaks in blank verse and is answered by the shade of Musaeus (Pope) in heroic couplets. Verbal travesties of "Lycidas" abound—"laureate hearse," "forego each vain excuse," "without the loan of some poetic woe," etc.; and the closing passage is reworded thus:
"Thus the fond swain his Doric oat essayed,
Manhood's prime honors rising on his cheek:
Trembling he strove to court the tuneful Maid,
With stripling arts and dalliance all too weak,
Unseen, unheard beneath an hawthorn shade.
But now dun clouds the welkin 'gan to streak;
And now down dropt the larks and ceased their strain:
They ceased, and with them ceased the shepherd swain."
In 1746 appeared a small volume of odes, fourteen in number, by Joseph Warton, and another by William Collins.[10] The event is thus noticed by Gray in a letter to Thomas Wharton: "Have you seen the works of two young authors, a Mr. Warton and a Mr. Collins, both writers of odes? It is odd enough, but each is the half of a considerable man, and one the counterpart of the other. The first has but little invention, very poetical choice of expression and a good ear. The second, a fine fancy, modeled upon the antique, a bad ear, a great variety of words and images with no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not." Gray's critical acuteness is not altogether at fault in this judgment, but half of his prophecy has failed, and his mention of Collins is singularly inappreciative. The names of Collins and Gray are now closely associated in literary history, but in life the two men were in no way connected. Collins and the Wartons, on the other hand, were personal friends. Joseph Warton and Collins had been schoolfellows at Winchester, and it was at first intended that their odes, which were issued in the same month (December), should be published in a volume together. Warton's collection was immediately successful; but Collins' was a failure, and the author, in his disappointment, burned the unsold copies.
The odes of Warton which most nearly resemble Milton are "To Fancy," "To
Solitude," and "To the Nightingale," all in the eight-syllabled couplet.
A single passage will serve as a specimen of their quality:
"Me, Goddess, by the right hand lead
Sometimes through the yellow mead,
Where Joy and white-robed Peace resort
And Venus keeps her festive court:
Where Mirth and Youth each evening meet,
And lightly trip with nimble feet,
Nodding their lily-crowned heads;
Where Laughter rose-lip'd Hebe leads," etc.[11]
Collins' "Ode to Simplicity" is in the stanza of the "Nativity Ode," and his beautiful "Ode to Evening," in the unrhymed Sapphics which Milton had employed in his translation of Horace's "Ode to Pyrrha." There are Miltonic reminiscences like "folding-star," "religious gleams," "play with the tangles of her hair," and in the closing couplet of the "Ode to Fear,"