William Mason (poet)

William Mason (12 February 1724 – 7 April 1797) was an English poet, editor and gardener.

Quotes

When'er with soft serenity she smiled,
Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise,
How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild,
The liquid lustre darted from her eyes?
- On the Death of a Lady (1760), The poems of William Mason, vol. 1, 1822, p. 86

The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty.
- Heroic Epistle, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises, ...Epicuri de grege porcum" (translated: "You may see me, fat and shining, with well-cared for hide,—…a hog from Epicurus' herd"), Horace, Epistolæ, lib. i. iv. 15, 16.

There is hardly a writer of his period who is so little known in our day and whose poems ran through so many editions in his own day. The reviews praised his works; Gray spoke highly of them; Walpole was all adulation; Mrs. Siddons acted in one of his plays; Reynolds annotated one of his poems; Johnson admitted the power of his satire; and Warton went out of his way to bestow supreme commendation upon his didactic poetry. Works by Mason were done into German, French, and Italian; and more than a score of early biographies testify to the interest in his life and personality.
- John W. Draper (1893–1976), William Mason, a study in eighteenth-century culture. New York University Press. 1924. p. 3.