The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-01-19
DAVID MASON.
Four Great English Novelists Were
 His Pupils in Literature.

The man who taught English litera- ture to four great English writers, Rob- ert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, s. R. Crockett and Dr. John Watson Gan Maclaren), has just died in Scotland His name was David Mason, and writ
 CT in the Milwaukee Sentinel gives a short history of Prof. Masson's life and com ments upon the four famous pupils. To quote:
 All these novelists studied at Edin- burgh university, where Prof. Mason oc- cupied the chair of English literature from 1865 to 1895. Stevenson and Barrie were members of his classes In the early
 7Os, while among other pupils were Will
 liam Archer. the dramatic critic, and Lord Rosebery.
 Of all these, however, perhaps the one who bears the deepest testimony to Mas sons influence is J. M Barrie who once declared that he made up his mind to go in for literature one day when he saw the professor rummaging over a second hand bookstall with $500 in bank notes buldging out of his pockets. 4a whimsical thumb nail sketch of his old pedagogue by Barrie is worth quoting. It comes in a series of recol- lections of the novelist's college days, the Edinburgh Eleven, and is as fol- lows Mason always comes to my memory first, knocking nails into his desk or trying to tear the gas bracket from its socket. He said that the Danes scattered over England, taking such
 hold as nail takes when 1t is driven into wood For the moment he saw his
 desk turned into England; he whrled an invisible hammer in the air, and down it came on the desk with a crash. No one who has sat under Mas son can forget how the Danes nailed
 themselves upon England. It was when his mind groped for an image that he clutched the bracket. He seemed to tear his good things out of it. Silence over came the class; some were fascinated by the man. Others trembled for the braek- et It shook, groaned and yielded. Mas son said another of the things that made his lectures literature. The crisis had passed, and everybody breathed again." It was in 1895 that this rugged, pie turesque, literary veteran, so long familiar figure in Edinburg streets, resigned his chair to live out his days in retirement. He had been called to the university thirty years before to succeed the famous ballad sch holar, Prof. Aytoun, and twelve years before that he had taken the vacant place of the Poet Clough as professor of Eng
 fish at University college, London. At nineteen he was editor of a religious magazine in Aberdeen, his birthplace. and at twenty five, when he went down to London, he was one of the best known magazine writers in Scotland. Before he became a professor he was the first editor of Macmillan's Nigga zine, which. curiously enough has is sued its last number and has died with, its first great editor.
 It was in these days that Carlyle, one of his intimate friends, warned him not to fritter away his talents on little things, but to concentrate them on some thing big. The result of this was his masterly Life and Times of Milton." in six volumes. the great work of his life, which occupied all the leisure of twenty-one years. More brilliant Is the smaller Life of Chatterton" and the fourteen volume edition of De Quincy's works, the outcome of long and intimate friendship with the fla nous opium eater whose life he con tributed to the English men of letters series. There are many people in Great Britain today who feel that in "Davie, real kindly Scot" Edinburgh has lost her most distinguishe ed citizen.