English poet, minister, amateur musician and musical theorist, abolitionist, and landscape designer; he was a friend of Horace Walpole until political differences led to their estrangement; he was a lifelong enemy of – and target of – Samuel Johnson. His greatest friend was Thomas Gray; Mason collaborated with Gray and served as his literary executor & biographer. (Indeed, a publisher's unauthorized use of some lines by Gray led to a lawsuit by Mason that helped extend copyright protection.) A number of his poems show a clear affinity with the Graveyard School poets, of whom Gray, of course, was a prominent member. Even Mason's garden designs (only one of which survives today) are also said to encourage the melancholy and the sentimental -- important components of the Graveyard School's emotional lexicon, of course. Notably, Mason was fairly well-known for his landscape design work. He is often regarded as a transitional figure between mainstream neo-classicism and Romanticism, although it cannot be said he is or was a major poetic presence.
Sites:
Biographical note
[1911 Encyclopedia]
Brief biographical note
[Columbia Encyclopedia]
Brief biographical note[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]
Portraits
[National Portrait Gallery, London]
Etexts:
