Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/433

Rh and ‘left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.’ In 1751, three years after the death of Thomson, Mallet published a new version of the masque of 1740. Here Alfred was ‘what he should have been at first—the principal figure in his own masque’ (Advt.), and new scenes and songs were added. According to Mallet's account, very little of Thomson's share was retained. It was acted at Drury Lane on 23 Feb. 1750–1, with Garrick in the title-rôle (, iv. 323–5). The masque of ‘Britannia,’ an appeal to patriotic sentiment on the eve of an outbreak of war with France, followed in 1755. It was produced at Drury Lane on 9 May, when Garrick ‘spoke the prologue as a drunken sailor’ (ib. p. 411;, Works, i. 185). On 19 Jan. 1762–3 Mallet's ‘Elvira’ was acted at the same theatre during the ‘half-price riots’ (, Account, v. 12). Garrick took the part of Don Pedro, the last ‘new character’ in which he was seen (, ii. 58); but it was not a success, and it provoked a pamphlet of ‘Critical Strictures’ by James Boswell and two fellow-Scots (, i. 408). In the interval he had written a few minor pieces, including the ballad of ‘Edwin and Emma,’ 1760, and a discreditable party indictment by a ‘Plain Man’ against Admiral Byng, 1757 (ib. ii. 128). He was rewarded in 1763 by Lord Bute, to whom he had given fulsome praise, with the post of inspector of exchequer-book in the outports of London, at a salary of 300l., a sinecure which he held till his death (ib. and i. 268). In the autumn of the following year he joined his wife at Paris, but ill-health compelled him to return to London (, Letters, ii. 200). His weakness gradually increased, and he died on Sunday, 21 April 1765, ‘aged 63’ (Scots Mag. 1765, p. 224). He was buried on the 27th in St. George's cemetery, South Audley Street, but no monument remains to mark the spot.

By his first wife, Susanna, whom he married about 1734, and who died in January 1741–2, he had two children, Charles, and Dorothy, who married a Genoese gentleman named Celesia [see ]. His second wife was Lucy, youngest daughter of Lewis Elstob, steward to the Earl of Carlisle, who brought him a dowry of 10,000l. when he married her, on 7 Oct. 1742 (Gent. Mag. 1742, p. 546). Gibbon, who was ‘domesticated’ with the Mallets from 1758, describes her as ‘not destitute of wit or learning’ (Misc. Works, i. 115). She died at Paris on 17 Sept. 1795, aged 79. By her Mallet had two daughters (cf., Letters, ii. 260): Lucy, born 1743, who married a Captain Macgregor in the French service (, Letters, ii. 232), and Arabella, born 1745, who married Captain Williams of the royal engineers.

Mallet was small of stature, but well made, though in later years he became very corpulent, being in 1764 ‘exactly like the shape of a barrel’ (Addit. MS. Brit. Mus. 6858, f. 30;, p. 49). He was very careful in his dress, ‘the prettiest drest puppet about town,’ says Johnson (, v. 174); his conversation was easy and elegant (ib. i. 268, and, Lives, iv. 439); and he early ‘cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation, so as to be no longer distinguishable as a Scot’ (, Lives, iv. 433; cf. also , ii. 159). Hume, although he disliked him, appealed to him ‘very earnestly,’ on more than one occasion, for aid in purging his manuscript of Scotticisms (, Letters, ii. 3–5, 79). In his actions, rather than in his writings, he showed intense vanity, which was fostered by his second wife (ib. ii. 142;, in Gent. Mag. 1791, ii. 1181; cf. , Corresp. i. 77 n.) He posed as ‘a great declaimer in all the London coffee-houses against Christianity’ (ib.), and Hume found his household too studiously sceptical for his taste (, ii. 59; Life of Charlemont, i. 235). His deceit in connection with the ‘Marlborough Memoirs,’ his behaviour to Hume, ‘like a dog in the manger’ (, Letters, ii. 144), the unscrupulous use of his pen in party politics towards the close of his life, and, chief of all, his treatment of the memory of Pope, his friend and patron, are dark blots on an otherwise ‘respectable’ and successful career.

Mallet's literary reputation did not live long, and one contemporary at least was not too severe in calling him a ‘whiffler in poetry’ (, supra). Johnson told Goldsmith that he ‘had talents enough to keep his literary reputation alive as long as he himself lived’ (, ii. 233), and he has worked out the same idea in his criticism in the ‘Lives’ (iv. 440). His lack of originality justified the sorry joke of the aggrieved Theobald, ‘that there is no more conceit in him than in a mallet’ (edit. of Shakespeare, 1733, Pref. lii); and Hume's dictum, that ‘he was destitute of the pathetic,’ would not be difficult to prove. At times his lines show the cadence of Pope's verse (e.g. ‘Verbal Criticism’), and his tragedies echo the fuller rhythm of his friend's ‘Seasons;’ but his motif is always poor. His early ballad of ‘William and Margaret,’ and the claim set up on his behalf to the authorship of the national ode of ‘Rule Britannia,’ alone give him any title to posthumous recognition.