Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/234

 scripts of the National Library at Paris, and his ‘Quæstiones de Sacramento’ in the library of St. Anthony, Padua. Other works are preserved at Assisi. All or nearly all of these manuscripts date from the thirteenth century—showing that Meliton's popularity, though considerable, was not lasting.

 MELL, DAVIS (fl. 1650), violinist, born at Wilton near Salisbury 15 Nov. 1604, was son of a servant of William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke [q. v.] He was primarily a clockmaker, and was, until the middle of the seventeenth century, accounted the first violinist in England in point of skill. He may be said to occupy the position of the earliest English violinist of note. Wood says that Mell was ‘one of the musick to King Charles I,’ and ‘had a sweet stroke.’ According to the same authority, Mell visited Oxford in March 1657–8, when ‘Peter Pett, Will Bull, Ken Digby, and others of Allsoules did give him a very handsome entertainment in the Taverne, called “The Salutation,” in St. Marie's Parish. The company did look upon Mr. Mell to have a prodigious hand on the violin, and they thought that no person, as all in London did, could goe beyond him. But when Tho Baltzar [q. v.], an Outlander, came to Oxon in the next yeare, they had other thoughts of Mr. Mell, who tho he played farr sweeter than Baltzar, yet Baltzar's hand was more quick.’ Elsewhere Wood describes Mell as ‘a well-bred gentleman, and not given to excessive drinking as Baltzar was.’ Wood seems to have entertained him at Oxford in August 1658. Mell was conjointly with George Hudson the first ‘Master of the Music,’ or leader of Charles II's ‘four and twenty fiddlers,’ a band of twenty-four performers on the violin, tenor, and bass, instituted by the king in 1660 in imitation of Louis XIV's ‘vingt-quatre violons du Roi.’ He was succeeded in 1661 by Baltzar. Some of Mell's compositions for the instrument are to be found in Christopher Simpson's ‘Division Violin,’ 1684. In Aubrey's ‘Miscellanies’ is an account of a child of Davis Mell, who was cured of a crooked back by the touch of a dead hand.

 MELLENT, (1104–1166), warrior. [See ]

MELLIS, HUGH (fl. 1588), mathematician, had from his youth, as he himself informs us, a natural genius for drawing proportions, maps, cards, buildings, and plates. He attended Dr. Robert Forth at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and went to the arithmetic lecture in the common school. He left the service of Forth, who afterwards became a master in chancery, about 1564. Subsequently he kept a school for writing and arithmetic at Mayes Gate, near Battle Bridge, in the parish of St. Olave, ‘in shorte Southwarke.’

His works are: 1. ‘Brief Rules, called Rules of Practize, of Rare, Pleasant, and commodious effect, abridged into a briefer Method than hitherto hath bene published. With diuers other very necessarie Rules, Tables, and Questions, not only profitable for Merchants, but also for Gentlemen and all other occupiers whatsouer;’ dedicated to Dr. Robert Forth, it constitutes the third part or addition to Robert Recorde's ‘Grounde of Artes, teaching the perfecte Worke and Practise of Arithmetike,’ London, 1582. 2. ‘A Briefe Instruction and Maner how to keepe Bookes of Accompts after the order of Debitor and Creditor, & as well for proper Accompts partible, &c. … Newely augmented and set forth by John Mellis,’ London (J. Windet), 1588. In the preface he describes his work as a reissue ‘of an auncient old copie printed here in London the 14 of August, 1543,’ from the pen of ‘Hugh Oldcastle, Scholemaster.’ No copy of Oldcastle's edition is known. 3. ‘A Short and Plaine Treatise of Arithmeticke in whole numbers comprised into a briefer Method than hetherto hath bin published,’ London, 1588, 8vo, ff. 54; annexed to the preceding work.

 MELLISH, GEORGE (1814–1877), lord justice of appeal, second son of Edward Mellish, D.D., rector of East Tuddenham, Norfolk, and afterwards dean of Hereford, by his wife Elizabeth Jane, daughter of a prior dean of Hereford, William Leigh of Rushall Hall, Staffordshire, was born at Tuddenham, 19 Dec. 1814. His godfather was George Canning, who was his mother's first cousin. He was educated at Eton, where his name appears in the school lists (pp. 137 a, 147 a) in 1829, in the middle division, and in 1832 in the sixth form. At school he was a good sculler, but neither