fession, as Warburton was, who had begun his
career by translations in prose and verse from Latin writers, had then
mingled in the literary cabals of the day, and afterwards did not think
his time misemployed in editing and commenting on Shakspeare and Pope.
Yet he was unreasonable enough to continue his expectations that Mason
should do what he had, without any apparent compunction, omitted to do
himself; for after speaking of Brown, the unfortunate author of
Barbarossa, who was also an ecclesiastic, he adds: "How much shall I
honour one, who has a stronger propensity to poetry, and has got a
greater name in it, if he performs his promise to me of putting away
these idle baggages after his sacred espousal." After all, this proved
to be one of the vows at which Jove laughs. The sacred espousal did not
lessen his devotion to the idle baggages; and it is very doubtful
whether he discharged his duties as King's Chaplain or Rector of Aston
(for both which appointments he was indebted to the kindness of Lord
Holdernesse) at all the worse for this attachment, which he was indeed
barefaced enough to avow two years after by the publication of some of
his odes. At his Rectory of Aston, in Yorkshire, he continued to live
for great part of his remaining life, with occasional absences in the
metropolis, at Cambridge, or at York, where he was made Precentor and
Canon of the Cathedral, and where his residence was therefore sometimes
required. I have not learnt whether he had any other preferment. Hurd,
in a letter written in 1768, mentions that the death of a Dr. Atwell
threw a good living into his hands. Be this as it might, he was rich
enough, and had an annual income of about fifteen hundred pounds at his
death. Lord Orford says of him somewhere in his letters, that he
intended to have refused a bishopric if it had been offered him. He
might have spared himself the pains of coming to this resolution; for
mitres, "though they fell on many a critic's head," and on that of his
friend Hurd among the rest, did not seem adapted to the brows of a poet.
When the death of Cibber had made the laurel vacant, he was informed
that "being in orders he was thought merely on that account less
eligible for the office than a layman." "A reason," said he, "so
politely put, I was glad to hear assigned; and if I had thought it a
weak one, they who know me will readily believe that I am the last man
in the world who would have attempted to controvert it.