"To say more on this trivial subject, would betray a solicitude on my part very foreign from my present feelings or inclination. My easy and independent circumstances make such a suspicion sit mighty easy upon me; and the minister, nay the whole ministry, are free to think what they please of a man, who neither aims to solicit, nor wishes to accept any favour from them."

What our author has here remarked concerning internal evidence, has probably occurred to all who fixed their suspicions on him. From the works published under his name, no person could for a moment suppose him to be a man of humour, or inclined to personal and political satire. He might even have asked whether it was probable that a man whose pen had been uniformly devoted to solemn and serious poetry, and who had never brought forward the shadow of a claim for the honours of wit, should at an advanced period of life suddenly eclipse his contemporaries and some of his predecessors, by exhibiting a humour which he had never been suspected to possess, and a spirit which would have better become a Paul Whitehead, or a Charles Churchill: and that he should carry this humour and this spirit through six poems of no inconsiderable length, on dissimilar subjects. Yet as even this, however remarkable, is not beyond the reach of genius, it was surely in his power to bring the question to a more prompt issue. But this he evades, and uses every argument against Mr. Warton's opinion but that which must have at once refuted it, the plain and flat denial of a man of honour and principle.

On this account, therefore, the Heroic Epistle, and the other pieces published under the name of Macgregor, are now added to Mr. Mason's works, but not without a wish that they could have been attributed to some writer of less private and public worth. If they be his, they will add to his literary reputation, by placing him among the first satirical poets of his day, if not above the first; but whoever contemplates the disaffected spirit in which they are written will probably be of opinion, that by adopting the floating invectives and prejudices of a party and of a turbulent period, he did not consult the consistency of his character, or the dignity of his Muse.