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Article MEMOIR OF WILLIAM MASON, A.M. ← Page 2 of 3 →
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Memoir Of William Mason, A.M.
The Loves forsook their Cyprian bow ' rs , And round his temples wreath'd their fiow ' rs ; The Graces danc ' tl their mystic maze , 'Our Father struck him with his rays j And all our Sisters , . one by one , Gave him full draughts cf Helicon 1 Thus hound our servant at the shrine ,
Ordain'dhe was , and made divine . ' January 30 , 17 62 , he was presented by the King to theCanonryof Driffield , in the Cathedral of York , with the precentorship of the said church , in the room of Dr . Newton , made Bishop of Bristol . In the year 1767 he lost his wife by a consumption at the Bristol Wells , a most amiable and accomplished woman , whose death he has deplored in one of the few good epitaphs to be found in our language , and which is inscribed en an elegant marble-monument in Bristol Cathedral . It follows :
' Take , holy earth , all that my soul holds dear , Take that blest gift which Heav ' n so lately gave , , To Bristol's fount I bore ' with trembling care Her faded form : she bo \ v'd to taste tiie wave And died . D . ies youth , does beauty , read the line ? Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm ? Speak , de-td Maria , breathe a strain divine ; to charm
E ' en from the grave thou shaft have pow ' r . Bid ihem 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 , tho' ' tis an awful thing to die , ( 'Twas even to thee ) yet the dread path once trod , Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high , And bids ' the pure in heart behold their God . '
He devoted himself from this event entirely to parochial duties and literary amusements . Being exceedingly fond of Nature , he cultivated the gardens and * grounds of Aston in an uncommon manner . This having engaged him in a course of elegant study , he published the result of it in a most beautiful poem , called ' The English Garden . ' As a writer his reputation is of the very first class , and not one of his acknowledged works can be read without satisfaction . His' Elfrida
and Caractacus' transcend any poems of the same kind , . written in imitation of the antient drama , in our own or any foreign language . In the first the diction is elegant and sweet ; in the latter it is daring and sublime . The former , in his own opinion , was the most popular ; the latter , however , is acknowledged to be the most perfect , and is supposed , indeed , to stand unrivalled .
In these performances are sentiments and expressions which would do honour to the description and simplicity of Shakspeare . His elegies have been generally and deservedly admired , and they are , in fact , not at all inferior to any compositions of the kind in the English tongue , and will stand on a par with the best elegiac p ieces in the Homan language . The splendour of genius and accuracy of judgment conspicuous in
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Memoir Of William Mason, A.M.
The Loves forsook their Cyprian bow ' rs , And round his temples wreath'd their fiow ' rs ; The Graces danc ' tl their mystic maze , 'Our Father struck him with his rays j And all our Sisters , . one by one , Gave him full draughts cf Helicon 1 Thus hound our servant at the shrine ,
Ordain'dhe was , and made divine . ' January 30 , 17 62 , he was presented by the King to theCanonryof Driffield , in the Cathedral of York , with the precentorship of the said church , in the room of Dr . Newton , made Bishop of Bristol . In the year 1767 he lost his wife by a consumption at the Bristol Wells , a most amiable and accomplished woman , whose death he has deplored in one of the few good epitaphs to be found in our language , and which is inscribed en an elegant marble-monument in Bristol Cathedral . It follows :
' Take , holy earth , all that my soul holds dear , Take that blest gift which Heav ' n so lately gave , , To Bristol's fount I bore ' with trembling care Her faded form : she bo \ v'd to taste tiie wave And died . D . ies youth , does beauty , read the line ? Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm ? Speak , de-td Maria , breathe a strain divine ; to charm
E ' en from the grave thou shaft have pow ' r . Bid ihem 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 , tho' ' tis an awful thing to die , ( 'Twas even to thee ) yet the dread path once trod , Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high , And bids ' the pure in heart behold their God . '
He devoted himself from this event entirely to parochial duties and literary amusements . Being exceedingly fond of Nature , he cultivated the gardens and * grounds of Aston in an uncommon manner . This having engaged him in a course of elegant study , he published the result of it in a most beautiful poem , called ' The English Garden . ' As a writer his reputation is of the very first class , and not one of his acknowledged works can be read without satisfaction . His' Elfrida
and Caractacus' transcend any poems of the same kind , . written in imitation of the antient drama , in our own or any foreign language . In the first the diction is elegant and sweet ; in the latter it is daring and sublime . The former , in his own opinion , was the most popular ; the latter , however , is acknowledged to be the most perfect , and is supposed , indeed , to stand unrivalled .
In these performances are sentiments and expressions which would do honour to the description and simplicity of Shakspeare . His elegies have been generally and deservedly admired , and they are , in fact , not at all inferior to any compositions of the kind in the English tongue , and will stand on a par with the best elegiac p ieces in the Homan language . The splendour of genius and accuracy of judgment conspicuous in