rnment, that he could not
resist the opportunity, however ill-timed, of casting a slur on this
nobleman, who was accused of being over-partial to it. In the third
Essay, on Parochial Psalmody, he gives the preference to Merrick's weak
and affected version over the two other translations that are used in
our churches. The late Bishop Horsley, in his Commentary on the Psalms,
was, I believe, the first who was hardy enough to claim that palm for
Sternhold, to which, with all its awkwardness, his rude vigour entitles
him.

When he comes to speak of _Christianizing_ our hymns, the apprehension
which he expresses of deviating from the present practice of our
establishment, seems to have restrained him from saying something which
he would otherwise have said. The question surely is not so much, what
the practice of our present establishment is, as what that of the first
Christians was. There is, perhaps, no alteration in our service that
could be made with better effect than this, provided it were made with
as great caution as its importance demands.

His death, which was at last sudden, was caused by a hurt on his shin,
that happened when he was stepping out of his carriage. On the Sunday
(two days after) he felt so little inconvenience from the accident, as
to officiate in his church at Aston. But on the next Wednesday, the 7th
of April, 1797, a rapid mortification brought him to his grave. His
monument, of which Bacon was the sculptor, is placed in Westminster
Abbey, near that of Gray, with the following inscription:--

Optimo Viro
Gulielmo Mason, A.M.
Poetae,
Si quis alius
Culto, Casto, Pio
Sacrum.
Ob. 7. Apr. 1797.
Aet. 72.

Mason is reported to have been ugly in his person. His portrait by
Reynolds gives to features, ill-formed and gross, an expression of
intelligence and benignity. In the latter part of life, his character
appears to have undergone a greater change, from its primitive openness
and good nature, than mere time and experience of the world should have
wrought in it. Perhaps this was nothing more than a slight perversion
which he had contracted in the school of Warburton. What was a coarse
arrogance in the master himself, assumed the form of nicety and
superciliousness in the less confident and better regulated tempers of
Mason and Hurd. His harmless vanity cleaved to him longer. As a proof of
this, it is related that, several years after the publication of Isis,
when he was travelling through Oxfo