William Mason (poet)
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William Mason (1724 – 1797) was an English poet, editor and gardener.
He was born in Hull and studied at St John's College, Cambridge. He was ordained in 1754 and held a number of posts in the church.
In 1747, his poem "Musaeus, a Monody on the Death of Mr. Pope" was published to acclaim and quickly went through several editions.[1] Summarizing this poem, 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....[2] | ” |
Among his other works, none of them highly regarded today, are the historical tragedies Elfrida (1752) and Caractacus (1759) and a long poem on gardening, The English Garden (three volumes, 1772-82). His garden designs included one for the 2nd Earl of Harcourt. He published the Poems of Mr Gray, a friend who was a great influence on his own work, in 1775. In 1785 he was William Pitt the Younger's choice to succeed William Whitehead as Poet Laureate but refused the honour.
[edit] References
- ^ Singer, S.W. (1822). The Life of William Mason, M.A. (in "The British Poets including Translations. In One Hundred Volumes"). Chiswick: C. Whittingham, College House, Vol. LXXVII, p. 5.
- ^ Phelps, William Lyon (1904). The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement. Boston: Ginn and Co., p. 69.
