ty: 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
number