71 



and on the Dictionary he observes, that " the world con- 

 templated with wonder, so stupendous a work, atchieved by 

 one man, while other countries had thought such under- 

 takings fit only for whole academies." Linnaeus and Haller 

 styled Ray's History of Plants, opus immensi laboris. One 

 may justly apply the same words to this Dictionary. It was 

 well for Mr. Mason that he escaped (what Miss Seward 

 called) " the dead-doing broadside of Dr. Johnson's satire." 

 George Mason omits no opportunity of censuring Mr. Whate- 

 ley's Observations on Modern Gardening. In the above 

 Essay, he censures him in seven different pages, and in his 

 distinct chapter or division on this book of Mr. Whateley's, 

 (consisting of thirteen pages) there are no less than thirty- 

 three additional sneers, or faults, found with his opinions. 

 He does not acknowledge in him one single solitary merit, 

 except at page 191. In page 160, he nearly, if not quite, 

 calls him a /bo/, and declares that vanity is the passion to 

 which he is constantly sacrificing.* It would be an insult to 

 any one who has read Mr. Whateley's work, to endeavour 

 to clear him from such a virulent and ill-founded attack. 

 Neither Dr. Johnson, with all his deep learning, nor Mr. 

 Whateley, with all the cultivated fancy of a rich scholastic 

 mind, \vould either of them have been able to comprehend, 

 or to understand, or even to make head or tail of the first 

 half of Mr. George Mason's poem, with which he closes the 

 above edition of his Essay. As he has been so caustically 

 severe against Dr. Johnson, it cannot be ungenerous if one 



* How widely different has the liberal and classic mind of Dr. Alison 

 viewed the rich pages of Mr. Whateley, in his deep and learned Essays on 

 Taste, first published nearly twenty years after Mr. Whateley's decease. 

 One regrets that there is no Portrait of Mr. Whateley. Of Dr. Alison, 

 there is a masterly one by Sir Henry Raeburn, admirably engraved by 

 W. Walker, of Edinburgh, in 1823. Perhaps it is one of the finest Portraits 

 of the present day. One is happy to perceive marks of health expressed in 

 his intellectually striking countenance. 



