William Mason (poet)

"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?"

"The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty."

"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."