Mason had obtained preferment for his literary deserts, and in such just measure as to satisfy himself, and those also who would wish that ecclesiastical preferment were always so properly bestowed. But he was not satisfied with his literary fame. Others passed him upon the stream of popularity with all their sails set, full speed before the wind, while he lay quietly upon his oars in a pleasant creek; and he did not sufficiently bear in mind that he was safe at his ease, when some of those who so triumphantly left him behind were upset and went to the bottom. He had done enough to secure for himself a respectable place among the poets of his country, and a distinguished one among those of his age. But more through indolence than from any deficiency or decay of power, he had fallen short of the promise of his youth, and of his own early aspirations. Discontent, especially when mingled with self-reproach, is an uneasy feeling, and like many others he appears to have sought relief by projecting it, and transferring as much of it as he could upon the world. He became an acrimonious whig, and took an active part in the factious measures by which Yorkshire was agitated about the close of the American war. Gray, if he had been then living, might perhaps have been able to have rendered him more temperate and more reasonable in his political views; certainly he would have prevailed upon him not to write, or having written not to publish or preserve, the last book of his English Garden, which is in every respect miserably bad; bad in taste as recommending sham castles and modern ruins; bad in morals, as endeavouring to serve a political cause and excite indignation against the measures of Government by a fictitious story, (which if it had been true could have had no bearing whatever upon the justice or injustice of the American war ;) and bad in poetry, because the story is in itself absurd. Not the least absurd part of this puerile tale is the sudden death of the heroine, at the unexpected sight of her betrothed husband, whom she was neither glad nor sorry to see; and the description of the

facies Hippocratica is applied to this person, thus dying in health, youth, and beauty! Dr. Dove used to instance this as a remarkable example of knowledge ignorantly misapplied.

Yet though the Doctor did not rank him higher as a physiologist than Miller did as a musician, or than Sir Joshua must have done as a painter, he found more pleasure than the organist could do in his conversation; partly because there was an air of patronage in Mason's intercourse with Miller at first, and afterwards an air of estrangement, (a sufficient reason); and partly because Mason was more capable of enjoying the richness of the Doctor's mind, and such of its eccentricities as were allowed to appear in company where he was not wholly without reserve, than he was of appreciating the simplicity of Miller's. That vein of humour which he indulged in his correspondence opened when he was conversing with one, like the Doctor, upon whom nothing was lost; at such times the heavy saturnine character of Mason's countenance, which might almost be called morose, seemed to be cast off; and pleasantry and goodnature animated its intellectual strength. But according to Polwhele's friend, there was a "sedate benignity in his countenance, which taught me," says Mr. Greville, "instantaneously to rely on him as a man the leading traits of whose disposition were feeling and reflection. This immediate impression of his character I found afterwards to be strictly just. I never yet met with a human being whose head and heart appear to act and react so reciprocally, so concordantly upon each other as his.-In his style of conversation, you can trace nothing of the vis vivida of the poet. Here his inventive powers apparently lie dormant. Those flashes of genius, those intellectual emanations which we are taught to believe great men cannot help darting forward in order to lighten up the gloom of colloquial communication, he seems to consider as affected; he therefore rejects them whenever they occur, and appears to pride himself on the preference which he gives to

simplicity and perspicuity. Conversation, (if you will excuse a pedantic allusion,) with him resembles the style of painting mentioned in the earlier part of the Athenian History, which consisted in representing the artist's ideas in a simple unaffected point of view, through the medium of one colour only; whereas his writings are like the pictures of Polygnotus. They glow with all the warmth of an invigorated imagination, an animated diction, and a rich luxuriant phraseology.

"His manners, too, are equally as chaste and unaffected as his conversation. The stream that winds its easy way through woods and verdant meads, is not less artificial or more insinuating than he is in doing the honours of the table, or promoting the graces of the drawing-room. That peculiar happiness which some few I have met with possess, of reconciling you implicitly to their superiority, he enjoys in an eminent degree, by the amiability of his sentiments, the benignity of his attention, and particularly by an indescribable way with him, of making you appear to advantage, even when he convinces you of the erroneousness of your opinions, or the inconclusiveness of your reasoning.

"In regard to his morals, I believe from what I have collected, that few can look back upon a period of sixty years' existence, spent so uniformly pure and correct. In the course of our chit-chat, he informed me, in an unostentatious unaffected manner, that he never was intoxicated but once."

There was another point of resemblance, besides their vein of humour, between Mason and the Doctor, in their latter days; they were nearly of the same age, and time had brought with it to both the same sober, contemplative, deep feeling of the realities of religion.

The French Revolution cured Mason of his whiggery, and he had the manliness to sing his palinode. The fearful prevalence of a false and impious philosophy made him more and more sensible of the inestimable importance of his faith. On his three last birth-days he composed three sonnets, which

for their sentiment and their beauty ought to be inserted in every volume of select poems for popular use. And he left for posthumous publication a poem called RELIGIO CLERICI; as a whole it is very inferior to that spirited satire of Smedley's which bears the same title, and which is the best satire of its age; but its concluding paragraph will leave the reader with a just and very favourable impression of the poet and the man.

FATHER, REDEEMER, COMFORTER DIVINE !
This humble offering to thy equal shrine
Here thy unworthy servant grateful pays,
Of undivided thanks, united praise,

For all those mercies which at birth began,

And ceaseless flow'd thro' life's long-lengthened span,
Propt my frail frame thro' all the varied scene,
With health enough for many a day serene ;
Enough of science clearly to discern
How few important truths the wisest learn;
Enough of arts ingenuous to employ

The vacant hours, when graver studies cloy;
Enough of wealth to serve each honest end,
The poor to succour, or assist a friend;
Enough of faith in Scripture to descry,
That the sure hope of immortality,
Which only can the fear of death remove,
Flows from the fountain of REDEEMING Love.

One who visited York a few years after the death of the Poet, says, "the Verger who showed us the Minster upon my inquiring of him concerning Mason, began an encomium upon him in an humble way indeed, but more honourable than all the factitious praises of learned ostentation; his countenance brightened up when I asked him the question; his very looks told me that Mason's charities did not evaporate in effusions of sensibility; I learned that he was humble, mild, and generous; the father of his family; the delight of all that came within the sphere of his notice. Then he was so good in his parish. My soul contemplates, with fond exultation, the picture of a man, endowed with genius, wit and every talent to please the great, but suâ se virtute involventem, resigning himself with complacency to the humble duties of a country pastor, -turning select Psalms into Verse to be sung in his Church; simplifying and arranging, and directing to the purposes of devotion his church music; and performing his duties as a minister with meekness, perseverance, and brotherly love."

Enough has now been adduced to vindicate Mason's character from Miller's aspersion. They who desire to see his merits as a poet appreciated with great ability and equal justice should peruse his life in Hartley Coleridge's Boreal Biography, what a boisterous title for a book in which there is not one blustering sentence, and so many sweet strains of feeling and of thought!

CHAPTER CXXVII.

THE DOCTOR'S THEORY OF PROGRESSIVE EXISTENCE.

Quam multæ pecudes humano in corpore vivunt!
PALINGENIUS.

LIKE Mason, Dr. Dove looked to the future in that sure and certain hope without which the present would be intolerable to a thinking mind and feeling heart. But in his speculations he looked to the past also.

Watson Bishop of Llandaff amused himself with asking from whom his mind descended? where it existed before he was born? and who he should have been if he had not been Richard Watson ? "The Bishop was a philosopher," says Dr. Jarrold, "and ought not to have asked such idle questions."

My Doctor would not have agreed with Dr. Jarrold in this opinion. Who the Bishop might have been if he had not been the discontented hero of his own autobiography, he could not indeed have pretended to divine; but what he was before he was Richard Watson, where his mind had existed before he was born, and from whom, or rather from what, it had been transmitted, were questions which, according to his notions, might admit of a probable solution. It will not surprise the judicious reader to be told that the Doctor was a professed physiognomist, though Lavater had not in those days made it fashionable to talk of physiognomy as a science. Baptista Porta led him to consider the subject; and the coarse wood-cuts of a bungling Italian elucidated

the system as effectually as has since been done by Mr. Holloway's graver. But Dr. Dove carried it farther than the Swiss enthusiast after, or the Neapolitan physician before him. Conceiving in a deeper sense than Lebrun, que chacun avait sa bête dans la figure, he insisted that the strong animal likenesses which are often so distinctly to be traced in men, and the correspondent propensities wherewith they are frequently accompanied, are evidence of our having pre-existed in an inferior state of being. And he deduced from it a theory, or notion as he modestly called it, which he would have firmly believed to be a part of the patriarchal faith, if he had known how much it resembled the doctrine of the Druids.

His notion was that the Archeus, or living principle, acquires that perfect wisdom with which it acts, by passing through a long progression in the lower world, before it becomes capable of being united to a rational and immortal soul in the human body. He even persuaded himself that he could discover in particular individuals indications of the line by which their Archeus had travelled through the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

There was a little pragmatical exciseman, with a hungry face, sharp nose, red eyes, and thin, coarse, straggling hair of a yellow cast, (what was formerly called Judas-colour,) whom he pronounced to have been a ferret in his last stage. "Depend upon it," he said, "no rat will come under the roof where he resides!" And he was particularly careful when they met in the open air always to take the wind of him.

One lawyer, a man of ability and fair character, but ready to avail himself of every advantage which his profession afforded, he traced from a bramble into a wasp, thence into a butcher-bird, and lastly into a fox, the vulpine character being manifestly retained in his countenance. There was another, who, from sweeping his master's office and blacking his shoes, had risen to be the most noted pettifogger in those parts. This fellow was his peculiar abhorrence; his living principle, he affirmed, could never

have existed in any other form than that of a nuisance; and accordingly he made out his genealogy thus: :-a stinker (which is the trivial name of the phallus impudicus,) a London bug, an ear-wig, a pole-cat,and, still worsening as he went on, a knavish attorney.

He convicted an old Major in the West York Militia of having been a turkey cock; and all who knew the Major were satisfied of the likeness, whatever they might be of the theory.

One of the neighbouring justices was a large, square-built, heavy person, with a huge head, a wide mouth, little eyes, and a slender proportion of intellect. Him he set down for a hippopotamus.

A brother magistrate of the Major's had been a goose, beyond all dispute. There was even proof of the fact; for it was perfectly well remembered that he had been born web-fingered.

All those persons who habitually sit up till night is far spent, and as regularly pass the best hours of the morning in bed, he supposed to have been bats, night-birds, night-prowling beasts, and insects whose portion of active life has been assigned to them during the hours of darkness. One indication of this was, that candle-light could not have such attractions for them unless they had been moths.

The dog was frequently detected in all its varieties, from the lap-dog, who had passed into the whipper-snapper petit-maître, and the turn-spit, who was now the bandylegged baker's boy,- to the Squire's eldest son, who had been a lurcher, the Butcher, who had been a bull-dog, and so continued still in the same line of life ;-Lord A -'s domestic chaplain, harmless, good-natured, sleek, obsequious, and as fond of ease, indulgence and the fire-side, as when he had been a parlour spaniel; Sir William B -'s huntsman, who exercised now the whip which he had felt when last upon four legs, and who was still an ugly hound, though staunch; and the Doctor's own man, Barnaby, whom, for steadiness, fidelity, and courage, he pronounced to have been a true

old English mastiff, and one of the best of his kind.

Chloris had been a lily. You saw it in the sickly delicacy of her complexion. Moreover she toiled not, neither did she spin.

A young lady, in whose family he was perfectly familiar, had the singular habit of sitting always upon one or other foot, which as she sat down she conveyed so dexterously into the seat of her chair, that no one who was not previously acquainted with her ways, could possibly perceive the movement. Upon her mother's observing one day that this was a most unaccountable peculiarity, the Doctor replied, "No, madam! I can account for it to my own entire satisfaction. Your daughter was a bird of some gentle and beautiful species, in her last stage of existence; in that state she used always to draw up one leg when at rest. The habits that we acquire in our pre-existent state, continue with us through many stages of our progress; your daughter will be an Angel in her next promotion, and then, if Angels close their eyes in slumber, she will sleep with her head under her wing."

The landlady of the White Lion had been a cabbage, a blue-bottle fly, a tame duck, and a bacon-pig.

Who could doubt that Vauban had been an earthworm, a mole, and a rabbit? that Euclid acquired the practical knowledge of geometry when he was a spider; and that the first builder of a pyramid imitated unconsciously the proportionately far greater edifices which he had been employed in raising when he was one of a nation of white ants?

Mrs. Dove had been a cowslip, a humble bee, and, lastly, a cushat.

He himself had been a Dove and a Serpent- for "Dan was a Serpent by the way;" and moreover, he flattered himself that he had the wisdom of the one, and the simplicity of the other. Of his other stages he was not so certain, except that he had probably once been an inhabitant of the waters, in the shape of some queer fish.

CHAPTER CXXVIII.

ELUCIDATIONS OF THE COLUMBIAN THEORY.

Thou almost makest me waver in my faith, To hold opinion with Pythagoras,

That souls of animals infuse themselves

Into the trunks of men.

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MERCHANT OF VENICE.

MANY facts in illustration or exemplification of the Doctor's theory concerning progressive existence must have occurred to every one within the circle of his own observations. One of the scientific persons who abridged the Philosophical Transactions says, he was acquainted with a medical practitioner of considerable eminence who could not refrain from eating toasted cheese, though he was subject to an alarming pulmonary complaint which was uniformly aggravated by it, and which terminated fatally at an age by no means advanced." This practitioner, the Doctor would have said, had been either a mouse or a rat, and in that pre-existent form had nibbled at such a bait, perhaps once too often. This would account for the propensity, even if he were not a Welshman to boot.

The same author says "there is now living a physician of my acquaintance who at an autumnal dessert never ceases eating all the filberts he can lay his hands upon, although he very candidly acknowledges that they are extremely indigestible and hurtful things." Upon the Doctor's theory, who can doubt that he had been a squirrel? "I remember," says a certain Mr. George Garden, in a letter written from Aberdeen in 1676, "when Mrs. Scougall and I were with you last summer, we had occasion to speak of a man in this country very remarkable for something peculiar in his temper, that inclines him to imitate unawares all the gestures and motions of those with whom he converses. We then had never seen him ourselves. Since our return we were together at Strathbogie where he dwells, and notwithstanding all we had heard of him before, were somewhat surprised with the oddness of this dotterel quality. This per

son named Donald Munro, being a little old and very plain man, of a thin slender body, has been subject to this infirmity, as he told us, from his very infancy. He is very loath to have it observed, and therefore casts down his eyes,when he walks in the streets, and turns them aside when he is in company. We had made several trials before he perceived our design, and afterwards had much ado to make him stay. We caressed him as much as we could, and had then the opportunity to observe that he imitated not only the scratching of the head, but also the wringing of the hands, wiping of the nose, stretching forth of the arms, &c., and we needed not strain compliments to persuade him to be covered, for he still put off and on as he saw us do, and all this with so much exactness, and yet with such a natural and unaffected air, that we could not so much as suspect that he did it on design. When we held both his hands and caused another to make such motions, he pressed to get free; but when we would have known more particularly how he found himself affected, he could only give us this simple answer, that it vexed his heart and his brain."

The writer of this letter had hit upon the solution of the idiosyncracy which he describes, but had not perceived it. The man had been a dotterel.

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"Have we not heard," said the Doctor, of persons who have ruminated? Do we not read well-authenticated cases of some whose skins were tuberculated? Is it not recorded of Dioscorides, not the botanist, but the Alexandrian physician of Cleopatra's time, that he was called Phacas because his body was covered with warts? And where was this so likely to have happened as in Egypt? He had been a crocodile. The cases are more frequent of people who in the scaliness of their skins have borne testimony of their piscine origin.

Was not Margaret Griffith, wife of David Owen of Llan Gaduain in Montgomeryshire shown in London, because a crooked horn four inches long grew out of the middle of her forehead? "A miraculous and mon