He had made another resolution, which was not kept, because it was not reasonable. When the Earl of Holdernesse offered him the Rectory of Aston, he was not in orders, and he called upon Warburton to ask his advice. “I found him,” says Warburton, “yet unresolved whether he should take the Living. I said, was the question about a mere secular employment, I should blame him without reserve if he refused the offer. But as I regarded going into orders in another light, I frankly owned to him he ought not to go, unless he had a _call_: by which I meant, I told him, nothing fanatical or superstitious; but an inclination, and, on that, a resolution, to dedicate all his studies to the service of religion, and totally to abandon his poetry. This sacrifice, I said, I thought was required at any time, but more indispensably so in this, when we are fighting with infidelity _pro aris et focis_. This was what I said; and I will do him the justice to say, that he entirely agreed with me in thinking that decency, reputation, and religion, all required this sacrifice of him; and that, if he went into orders, he intended to give it.” “How much shall I honour him,” says Warburton in another letter, “if he performs his promise to me of putting away those idle baggages after his sacred espousals!” This unwise promise explains Mason's long silence as a poet, and may partly account for his uncomfortable state of mind as long as he considered himself bound by it. There were other circumstances about him which were unfavourable to happiness; he seems never to have been of a cheerful, because never of a hopeful temper; otherwise Gray would not have spoken of his “insatiable repining mouth,”—the lively expression of one who clearly perceived his constitutional faults, and yet loved him, as he deserved to be loved, in spite of them. The degree of malice also, which Gray noticed as the strongest passion in his nature, is to be reckoned among those circumstances. By far the most popular of his compositions were those well known satires which he never owned, and which professional critics with their usual lack of acumen, pronounced not to be his because of their sarcastic humour and the strength of their language. He had a great deal of that sarcastic humour, and this it was which Gray called malice; in truth it partakes of maliciousness, and a man is the worse for indulging it, if he ever allows himself to give it a personal direction, except in cases where strong provocation may warrant and strict justice require it. That these satires were written by Mason will appear upon the most indisputable proof whenever his letters shall be published; and it is earnestly hoped those letters may not be allowed to perish, for in them and in them only will the character of the writer appear in its natural lights and shades.