Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/267

 overture, Cervantes, which owed its first performance to the encouragement and help of von Bülow. On the advice of this great pianist, he gave up his Edinburgh appointments, which had quite worn him out, and settled in Florence in order to compose. The cantatas The Bride (Worcester, 1881) and Jason (Bristol, 1882) belong to this time, as well as his first opera. This was commissioned for the Carl Rosa Company, and was written to a version of Merimée’s Colomba prepared by Franz Hueffer. It was produced with great success in 1883, and was the first of a too short series of modern English operas; Mackenzie’s second opera, The Troubadour, was produced by the same company in 1886; and his third dramatic work was His Majesty, an excellent comic opera (Savoy Theatre, 1897). In 1884 his Rose of Sharon was given with very great success at the Norwich Festival; in 1885 he was appointed conductor of Novello’s oratorio concerts; The Story of Sayid came out at the Leeds Festival of 1886; and in 1888 he succeeded Macfarren as principal of the Royal Academy of Music. The Dream of Jubal was produced at Liverpool in 1889, and in London very soon afterwards. A fine setting of the hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus” was given at Birmingham in 1891, and the oratorio Bethlehem in 1894. From 1892 to 1899 he conducted the Philharmonic Concerts, and was knighted in 1894. Besides the works mentioned he has written incidental music to plays, as, for instance, to Ravenswood, The Little Minister, and Coriolanus; concertos and other works for violin and orchestra, much orchestral music, and many songs and violin pieces. The romantic side of music appeals to Mackenzie far more strongly than any other, and the cases in which he has conformed to the classical conventions are of the rarest. In the orchestral ballad, La Belle Dame sans Merci, he touches the note of weird pathos, and in the nautical overture Britannia his sense of humour stands revealed. In the two “Scottish Rhapsodies” for orchestra, in the music to The Little Minister, and in a beautiful fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra on Scottish themes, he has seized the essential, not the accidental features of his native music.

MACKENZIE, SIR GEORGE (1636–1691), of Rosehaugh, Scottish lawyer, was the grandson of Kenneth, first Lord Mackenzie of Kintail, and the nephew of Colin and George, first and second earls of Seaforth; his mother was a daughter of Andrew Bruce, principal of St Leonard’s College, St Andrews. He was born at Dundee in 1636, educated at the grammar school there and at Aberdeen, and afterwards at St Andrews, graduating at sixteen. He then engaged for three years in the study of the civil law at Bourges; on his return to Scotland he was called to the bar in 1659, and before the Restoration had risen into considerable practice. Immediately after the Restoration he was appointed a “justice-depute,” and it is recorded that he and his colleagues in that office were ordained by the parliament in 1661 “to repair, once in the week at least, to Musselburgh and Dalkeith, and to try and judge such persons as are there or thereabouts delate of witchcraft.” In the same year he acted as counsel for the marquis of Argyll; soon afterwards he was knighted, and he represented the county of Ross during the four sessions of the parliament which was called in 1669. He succeeded Sir John Nisbet as king’s advocate in August 1677, and in the discharge of this office became implicated in all the worst acts of the Scottish administration of Charles II., earning for himself an unenviable distinction as “the bloody Mackenzie.” His refusal to concur in the measures for dispensing with the penal laws against Catholics led to his removal from office in 1686, but he was reinstated in February 1688. At the Revolution, being a member of convention, he was one of the minority of five in the division on the forfeiture of the crown. King William was urged to declare him incapacitated for holding any public office, but refused to accede to the proposal. When the death of Dundee (July 1689) had finally destroyed the hopes of his party in Scotland, Mackenzie betook himself to Oxford, where, admitted a student by a grace passed in 1690, he was allowed to spend the rest of his days in the enjoyment of the ample fortune he had acquired, and in the prosecution of his literary labours. One of his last acts before leaving Edinburgh had been to pronounce (March 15, 1689), as dean of the faculty of advocates, the inaugural oration at the foundation of the Advocates’ library. He died at Westminster on the 8th of May 1691, and was buried in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh.

While still a young man Sir George Mackenzie appears to have aspired to eminence in the domain of pure literature, his earliest publication having been Aretina, or a Serious Romance (anon., 1661); it was followed, also anonymously, by Religio Stoici, a Short Discourse upon Several Divine and Moral Subjects (1663); A Moral Essay, preferring Solitude to Public Employment (1665); and one or two other disquisitions of a similar nature. His most important legal works are entitled A Discourse upon the Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1674); Observations upon the Laws and Customs of Nations as to Precedency, with the Science of Heraldry (1680); Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1684); and Observations upon the Acts of Parliament (1686); of these the last-named is the most important, the Institutions being completely overshadowed by the similar work of his great contemporary Stair. In his Jus Regium: or the Just and Solid Foundations of Monarchy in general, and more especially of the Monarchy of Scotland, maintained (1684), Mackenzie appears as an uncompromising advocate of the highest doctrines of prerogative. His Vindication of the Government of Scotland during the reign of Charles II. (1691) is valuable as a piece of contemporary history. The collected Works were published at Edinburgh (2 vols. fol.) in 1716–1722; and Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from the Restoration of King Charles II., from previously unpublished MSS., in 1821.

See A. Lang, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1909).

MACKENZIE, HENRY (1745–1831), Scottish novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Edinburgh in August 1745. His father, Joshua Mackenzie, was a distinguished physician, and his mother, Margaret Rose, belonged to an old Nairnshire family. Mackenzie was educated at the high school and the university of Edinburgh, and was then articled to George Inglis of Redhall, who was attorney for the crown in the management of exchequer business. In 1765 he was sent to London to prosecute his legal studies, and on his return to Edinburgh became partner with Inglis, whom he afterwards succeeded as attorney for the crown. His first and most famous work, The Man of Feeling, was published anonymously in 1771, and met with instant success. The “Man of Feeling” is a weak creature, dominated by a futile benevolence, who goes up to London and falls into the hands of people who exploit his innocence. The sentimental key in which the book is written shows the author’s acquaintance with Sterne and Richardson, but he had neither the humour of Sterne nor the subtle insight into character of Richardson. One Eccles of Bath claimed the authorship of this book, bringing in support of his pretensions a MS. with many ingenious erasures. Mackenzie’s name was then officially announced, but Eccles appears to have induced some people to believe in him. In 1773 Mackenzie published a second novel, The Man of the World, the hero of which was as consistently bad as the “Man of Feeling” had been “constantly obedient to his moral sense,” as Sir Walter Scott says. Julia de Roubigné (1777), a story in letters, was preferred to his other novels by “Christopher North,” who had a high opinion of Mackenzie (see Noctes Ambrosianae, vol. i. p. 155, ed. 1866). The first of his dramatic pieces, The Prince of Tunis, was produced in Edinburgh in 1773 with a certain measure of success. The others were failures. At Edinburgh Mackenzie belonged to a literary club, at the meetings of which papers in the manner of the Spectator were read. This led to the establishment of a weekly periodical called the Mirror (January 23, 1779–May 27, 1780), of which Mackenzie was editor and chief contributor. It was followed in 1785 by a similar paper, the Lounger, which ran for nearly two years and had the distinction of containing one of the earliest tributes to the genius of Robert Burns. Mackenzie was an ardent Tory, and wrote many tracts intended to counteract the doctrines of the French Revolution. Most of these remained anonymous, but he acknowledged his Review of the Principal Proceedings of the Parliament of 1784, a defence of the policy of William Pitt, written at the desire of Henry Dundas. He was rewarded (1804) by the office of comptroller of the taxes for Scotland. In 1776 Mackenzie married Penuel, daughter of Sir Ludovick Grant of Grant. He was, in his later years, a notable figure in