Mason

Mason, WILLIAM, minor poet, but more famous as the literary executor of Gray, was born son of a Yorkshire clergyman in 1724, studied at St John's College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1745, and was soon after elected Fellow of Pembroke College through the influence of Gray, who had been attracted to him by his Museus (1747), a poetic lament for the death of Pope (1744), in imitation of Lycidas. He published later two absurd but ambitious tragedies, Elfrida and Caractacus; the English Garden (1772-82), a long and tedious poem in blank verse; and the Memoirs of Gray in 1775, the serious defects of which have at length been demonstrated to all readers through the painstaking and honest labours of Mr Gosse. Mason took orders in 1754, and became vicar of Aston, in Yorkshire, and later also precentor and canon of York, where he died 7th April 1797.