Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/263

 Dictionary of English Literature 251

Melville (1819), Knox's successor as the leader of the Reformers in Scotland, also a work of great merit. M'C. also pub. histories of the Reformation in Italy and Spain. He received the degree of D.D. in 1813.

MACDONALD, GEORGE (1824-1905). Poet and novelist, s.

of a farmer, was b. at Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and ed. at the Univ. oi Aberdeen, and at the Independent Coll., Highbury. He became minister of a congregation at Arundel, but after a few years retired, on account partly of theological considerations, partly of a threatened breakdown of health. He then took to literature, and pub. his first book, Within and Without (1856), a dramatic poem, Poems followed in 1857, and Phantasies, a Faerie Romance, in 1858. He then turned to fiction, and produced numerous novels, of which David Elginbrod (1862), Alec Forbes (1865), Robert Falconer (1868), The Marquis of Lassie (1877), and Sir Gibbie (1879), are perhaps the best. He also wrote stories for children of great charm and originality, including The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood. As a novelist he had consider able narrative and dramatic power, humour, tenderness, a genial view of life and character, tinged with mysticism, and within his limits was a true poet. On retiring from the ministry he attached himself to the Church of England, but frequently preached as a lay man, never accepting any remuneration for his sermons.

MACKAY, CHARLES (1814-1889). Poet and journalist, s.

of a naval officer, was b. at Perth, and ed. at the Royal Caledonian Asylum, London, and at Brussels, but much of his early life was spent in France. Coming to London in 1834, he engaged in journal ism, pub. Songs and Poems (1834), wrote a History of London, Popular Delusions, and a romance, Longbeard. His fame, however, chiefly rests upon his songs, some of which, including Cheer, Boys, Cheer, were in 1846 set to music by Henry Russell, and had an astonishing popularity. In 1852 he became ed. of the Illustrated London News, in the musical supplement to which other songs by him were set to old English music by Sir H. R. Bishop. M. acted as Times correspondent during the American Civil War, and in that capacity discovered and disclosed the Fenian conspiracy. He had the degree of LL.D. from Glasgow in 1846.

MACKENZIE, SIR GEORGE (1636-1691). Lawyer and mis cellaneous writer, s. of Sir Simon M., of Lochslin, a brother of the Earl of Seaforth, was ed. at St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Bourges, called to the Bar in 1659, in 1677 became Lord Advocate, in which capacity he was the subservient minister of the persecuting policy of Charles II. in Scotland, and the inhumanity and relentlessness of his persecution of the Covenanters gained for him the name of " Bloody Mackenzie." In private life, however, he was a cultivated and learned gentleman with literary tendencies, and is remembered as the author of various graceful essays, of which the best known is A Moral Essay preferring Solitude to Public Employment (1665). He also wrote legal, political, and antiquarian works of value, including Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1684), Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland (1686), Heraldry, and Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland