Mr. Mason married in 1765 a most amiable woman; she fell at length into a rapid consumption, and at Bristol hot-wells she died. Gray's letter to Mr. Mason while at that place, is full of eloquence; upon which the latter observes, "I opened it almost at the precise moment when it would be necessarily most affecting. His epitaph on the monument he erected on this lady, in the Bristol cathedral, breathes such tender feeling and chaste simplicity, that it can need no apology for being noticed here:
Take, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear;
Take that best gift which heav'n so lately gave:
To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care
Her faded form: she bow'd to taste the wave
And died. Does youth, does beauty, read the line?
Does sympathetic fears their breasts alarm?
Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine:
E'en from the grave thou shalt have power to charm.
Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee;
Bid them in duty's sphere as meekly move;
And if so fair, from vanity as free;
As firm in friendship, and as fond in love.
Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die,
('Twas e'en to thee) yet the dread path once trod,
Heav'n lifts its everlasting portals high,
And bids "the pure in heart behold their God."
A very short time after Mrs. Mason's death, he began his English Garden, and invokes the genius both of poetry and painting
——that at my birth
Auspicious smil'd, and o'er my cradle dropp'd
Those magic seeds of Fancy, which produce
A Poet's feeling, and a Painter's eye.
——with lenient smiles to deign to cheer,
At this sad hour, my desolated soul.
For deem not ye that I resume the lyre
To court the world's applause; my years mature
Have learn'd to slight the toy. No, 'tis to soothe
That agony of heart, which they alone,
Who best have lov'd, who best have been belov'd,
Can feel, or pity: sympathy severe!
Which she too felt, when on her pallid lip
The last farewell hung trembling, and bespoke
A wish to linger here, and bless the arms
She left for heav'n.—She died, and heav'n is her's!
Be mine, the pensive solitary balm
That recollection yields. Yes, angel pure!
While memory holds her seat, thine image still
Shall reign, shall triumph there; and when, as now,
Imagination forms a nymph divine,
To lead the fluent strain, thy modest blush,
Thy mild demeanour, thy unpractis'd smile,
Shall grace that nymph, and sweet Simplicity
Be dress'd (ah, meek Maria!) in thy charms.
Dr. Thomas Warton thus speaks of the above poem, when reviewing Tusser's Husbandry:—"Such were the rude beginnings in the English language of didactic poetry, which, on a kindred subject, the present age has seen brought to perfection, by the happy combination of judicious precepts, with the most elegant ornaments of language and imagery, in Mr. Mason's English Garden." His Elfrida and Caractacus, are admired for boldness of conception and sublime description. Elfrida was set to Music by Arne, and again by Giardini. Caractacus was also set to music. Mr. Mason's success with both these dramatic poems was beyond his most sanguine expectation.
Dr. Darwin wrote an epitaph on Mr. Mason; these lines are its concluding part:
Weave the bright wreath, to worth departed just,
And hang unfading chaplets on his bust;
While pale Elfrida, bending o'er his bier,
Breathes the soft sigh and sheds the graceful tear;
And stern Caractacus, with brow depress'd
Clasps the cold marble to his mailed breast.
In lucid troops shall choral virgins throng,
With voice alternate chant their poet's song.
And, oh! in golden characters record
Each firm, immutable, immortal word!
"Those last two lines from the final chorus of Elfrida, (says Miss Seward), admirably close this tribute to the memory of him who stands second to Gray, as a lyric poet; whose English Garden is one of the happiest efforts of didactic verse, containing the purest elements of horticultural taste, dignified by freedom and virtue, rendered interesting by episode, and given in those energetic and undulating measures which render blank verse excellent; whose unowned satires, yet certainly his, the heroic epistle to Sir William Chambers, and its postscript, are at once original in their style, harmonious in their numbers, and pointed in their ridicule; whose tragedies are the only pathetic tragedies which have been written in our language upon the severe Greek model. The Samson Agonistes bears marks of a stronger, but also of an heavier hand, and is unquestionably less touching than the sweet Elfrida, and the sublime Caractacus."
Mr. Mason, in 1756 published four Odes. "It would be difficult to say, (says the biographer of the annual Necrology of 1797,) which is most to be admired, the vividness of the conception, or the spirit of liberty, and the ardent love of independance throughout. The address to Milton in his Ode to Memory, and to Andrew Marvel, in that to Independance, cannot be too much admired. At the period when the Middlesex election was so much agitated, he united with those independant freeholders, who, by their declarations and petitions, throughout the nation, opposed corruption, and claimed a reform in parliament; and when the county of York assembled in 1779, he was of the committee, and had a great share in drawing up their spirited resolutions. The animated vindication of the conduct of the freeholders, and other papers, though printed anonimously in the newspapers, and so printed in Mr. Wyvill's collection of political tracts, in 3 vols. are well known to be Mr. Mason's production. This conduct rendered him obnoxious to the court party. He was at this time one of the king's chaplains, but when it became his turn to preach before the royal family, the queen appointed another person to supply his place. It has been observed, that his sentiments in a later period of his life, took a colour less favourable to liberty. Whether alarmed at the march of the French revolution, or from the timidity of age, we know not. His friend Horace Walpole, charges him with flat apostacy:" The Heroic Epistle to Sir W. Chambers, and the Heroic Postscript, are now positively said to have been written by Mr. Mason. Mr. Thomas Warton observed, "they may have been written by Walpole, and buckramed by Mason."
The late Sir U. Price, in the generous and patriotic conclusion of his letter to Mr. Repton, pays a delicate compliment to the genius of Mr. Mason in whatever concerns rural scenery; and his respect for Mr. Mason, and his high opinion of his talents, is farther shewn in pp. 295 and 371 of his first volume, and in p. 94 of vol. ii. Mr. Mathias, after supposing Mr. Mason to have been the author of the Heroic Epistle, and after paying a high compliment to his general poetry, thus concludes his generous tribute: