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sublime description. Elfrida was set to Music by Avne, 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 me- 

 mory of him who stands second to Gray, as a lyric poet ; 

 whose English Garden is one of the happiest efforts of di- 

 dactic 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 un- 

 owned satires, yet certainly his, the heroic epistle to Sir 

 William Chambers, and its postscript, are at once original 

 in their style, harmonious in their numbers, and pointed in 

 their ridicule ; whose tragedies are the only pathetic trage- 

 dies which have been written in our language upon the se- 

 vere Greek model. The Samson Agonistes bears marks of a 

 stronger, but also of an heavier hand, and is unquestionably 

 less touching than the sweet Elfrida, and the sublime Ca- 

 ractacus." 



