Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/178

 refuge with William Cavendish, earl of Devonshire, and occupied his leisure in disputing on religious topics with Hobbes, the earl's tutor. ‘Between them,’ says Wood, ‘there never was a right understanding.’ Aubrey, however, describes Mayne as Hobbes's ‘old acquaintance.’ On 1 Nov. 1653 Mayne had written from Derbyshire, apparently from Chatsworth, declining Richard Whitlocke's invitation to prefix verses to Whitlocke's forthcoming ‘Zωοτομία,’ on the double ground that the rude place in which he was dwelling abated his fancy, and that his published verse had been condemned as unbefitting his profession.

At the Restoration Mayne was reinstated in his benefices, and was appointed a canon of Christ Church, archdeacon of Chichester, and chaplain in ordinary to the king. He preached at Oxford 27 May 1662, when ‘his drift was to display the duncery of the university in the late intervall’, and in the same year he preached in London at the consecration of Herbert Croft [q. v.], bishop of Hereford. Both sermons were published, the latter with a graceful dedication to Mayne's early benefactor, Duppa. In January 1663–4, at a supper given by Dean Fell at Christ Church after the undergraduates had performed a play, Mayne made a speech, declaring that ‘he liked well an acting student’. He died at Oxford on 6 Dec. 1672, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. Robert Thynne wrote Latin elegiac verses in his honour. [q. v.] and [q. v.] were his executors, and by his will he left 500l. towards the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral, and 100l. to each of his benefices, Cassington and Pyrton. He left nothing to Christ Church, because, according to Wood, ‘he had taken some distaste for affronts received from the dean of his college and certain students encouraged by him in their grinning and sauciness towards him.’ Though ‘accounted a witty and a facetious companion,’ he seems to have been addicted to unseasonable practical jokes. He told an old servant that he had left him ‘something which would make him drink after his master's death.’ The bequest was a red herring.

Besides the works noticed, Wood tentatively assigns to Mayne ‘Policy Unveiled, or Maxims and Reasons of State, by J. M., of Oxon.’

 MAYNE, JOHN (1759–1836), Scottish poet, was born at Dumfries, 26 March 1759. Educated in the local grammar school, he became a printer in the office of the ‘Dumfries Journal.’ In 1782 he accompanied his family to Glasgow, where he was engaged for five years in the publishing house of the brothers Foulis. In 1787 he settled in London, first as a printer, and then as proprietor and joint editor of the ‘Star,’ an evening paper, in which he inserted several of his poems. He had written poetry in Dumfries, and after 1777 he occasionally contributed poems to ‘Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine,’ Edinburgh. Between 1807 and 1817 several of his lyrics appeared in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine.’ Although expressing in verse a strong desire to revisit Dumfries, Mayne never realised his wish. He died at Lisson Grove, London, 14 March 1836.

Mayne's ‘Siller Gun,’ descriptive of a Dumfries wapinschaw (wherein the competitors are members of the corporations, and the prize a silver cannon-shaped tube presented by James VI), consisted of twelve stanzas when it appeared in 1777. Enlarged to two cantos in 1779, and to three and four in 1780 and 1808 respectively, it took final shape in five cantos with notes in 1836. It is vivacious and humorous, conceived and worked in the spirit of ‘Peblis to the Play.’ Scott considers it superior to anything of Fergusson's and approaching the excellence of Burns (note to Lady of the Lake, v. 20). Mayne's ‘Hallowe'en,’ published in ‘Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine,’ in November 1780, probably stimulated Burns's brilliant treatment of the same theme (, Life and Work of Burns, i. 154, ed. 1851). ‘Logan Braes,’ which appeared in the ‘Star,’ 23 May 1789, is a song so daintily attuned to the old Scottish spirit and manner that Burns, thinking it a vagrant of an early master, appropriated two of its lines in a ‘Logan Braes’ of his own. ‘Glasgow,’ a poem of description and characterisation, published in the ‘Glasgow Magazine’ in December 1783, was favourably noticed in the ‘Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,’ i. 451, and was enlarged and issued in 1803. In the same year Mayne published a patriotic address entitled ‘English, Scots, and Irishmen.’

 MAYNE, PERRY (1700?–1761), vice-admiral, was the son of Covill Mayne, captain in the navy, who in 1740 commanded