Mallet

Mallet, or MALLOCH, DAVID, the wielder of a venal pen under the second and third Georges, was born about 1705, at Crieff, where his father was a Roman Catholic small farmer. Janitor for six months at the High School, Edinburgh (1717-18), he then studied for one session at the university, and in 1720 became tutor in the family of Mr Home of Dreghorn, in 1723 in that of the Duke of Montrose. Here he remained several years, and made the tour of Europe with his pupils. In 1723 the adaptation of two old ballads into a new one, 'William and Margaret,' gained him a reputation as a poet, which he enhanced by a poem, The Excursion (1728). After this, having 'by degrees cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation, so as to be no longer distinguished as a Scot, . . . he took upon him to change his name from Scotch Malloch to English Mallet'—an instance of his insufferable vanity. Strange to say, Pope, the poet, was his friend, and to please him Mallet reviled Bentley in a work in verse, Verbal Criticism (1733). About this time he was appointed under-secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, then holding a separate court from his father's. In 1740 Mallet published a mediocre life of Bacon, and in 1742 another fairly creditable poem, The Hermit, or Amyntor and Theodora. After this he appears in the most despicable character: to gratify Bolingbroke he heaped abuse upon his dead friend Pope in a preface to Bolingbroke's Patriot King; at the bidding of the ministry he directed the popular rage for the loss of Minorca upon Admiral Byng, and his reward for this 'price of blood was,' says Dr Johnson, 'a pension which Mallet retained till his death;' and he received a legacy of £1000, besides other sums, to write a life of the great Duke of Marlborough, but never penned a single line—'he groped for materials and thought of it till he had exhausted his mind.' He also tried his hand at play-writing, but with no very great success: Mustapha pleased for a while in 1739, because it was thought to contain some political allusions; Eurydice (1731) and Elvira (1763), tragedies, were failures. Alfred, a Masque (1740) was written in conjunction with Thomson, and one of its songs, 'Rule Britannia,' has been claimed for both of them. Besides, Mallet published two volumes of miscellaneous verse. He died on 21st April 1765.