next obtained a similar situation, but with a salary of £30 per annum, in the family of the Duke of Montrose. In 1723, he went to London with the duke's family, and next year his ballad of William and Margaret' appeared in Hill's periodical, the ‘Plain Dealer.' He soon numbered among his friends Young, Pope, and other eminent persons, to whom his assiduous attentions, his agreeable manners, and literary taste, rendered his society acceptable. In 1726 he began to write his name Mallet, for there is not one Englishman,' he said, 'that can pronounce Malioch.' In 1728 he published his poem the 'Excursion,' written in imitation of the blank verse of Thomson. The defects of Thomson's style are servilely copied; some of his epithets and expressions are also borrowed; but there is no approach to his redeeming graces and beauties. Passing over his feeble tragedies, Mallet, in 1733, published a satire on Bentley, inscribed to Pope, entitled 'Verbal Criticism,' in which he insolently characterises the venerable scholar as In error obstinate, in wrangling loud, Through the recommendation of Pope, Mallet was appointed travelling tutor to the son of Mr. Knight of Gosfield, with whom he visited the continent for several summers. He was next patronised by Frederick, Prince of Wales, then head of the Opposition, and by command of the prince, he wrote, in conjunction with Thomson, the mask of ‘Alfred,' which was performed in 1740, at Cliefden, the summer residence of his royal highness. In this slight dramatic performance - which was afterwards altered by Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury Lane in 1751-Rule Britannia' first appeared; a song which, as Southey said, will be the political hymn of this country as long as she maintains her political power.' Whether Thomson or Mallet was the author of Rule Britannia' is not quite settled. A competent critic, Mr. Bolton Corney, ascribes it to Mallet, who indirectly claimed it as wholly his own composition, but his assertion carries little weight with it, and the lyric seems to breathe the higher inspiration and more manly and patriotic spirit of Thomson. The neat artistic hand of Mallet may, however, have been employed on some of the stanzas. In the same year (1740), Mallet wrote a life of Bacon, prefixed to an edition of the works of the philosopher. In 1742, he was appointed under-secretary to the Prince of Wales, with a salary of £200 per annum; and a fortunate second marriage-nothing is known of his first—added to his income, as the lady had a fortune of seven or eight thousand pounds. She was daughter of Lord Carlisle's steward. Both Mallet and his wife professed to be deists, and the lady is said to have surprised some of her friends by commencing her arguments with: Sir, we deists.' When Gibbon the historian was dismissed from his college at Oxford for embracing popery, he took refuge in Mallet's house, and was rather scandalised, he says, than reclaimed, by the philosophy of his host. Wilkes mentions that the vain and fantastic wife of Mallet one day lamented to a lady that her husband suffered in reputation by his name being so often confounded with that of Smollett; the lady wittily answered: Madam, there is a short remedy: let your husband keep his own name.' On the death of the Duchess of Marlborough, it was found that she had left £1000 to Glover, author of 'Leonidas,' and Mallet jointly, on condition that they should draw up from the family papers a life of the great duke. Glover, indignant at a stipulation in the will, that the memoir was to be submitted before publication to the Earl of Chesterfield, and being a high-spirited man, devolved the whole on Mallet, who also received a pension from the second Duke of Marlborough to stimulate his industry. He pretended to be busy with the work, and in the dedication to a small collection of his poems published in 1762, he stated that he hoped soon to present his grace with something more solid in the life of the first Duke of Marlborough. Mallet had received the solid money, and cared for nothing else. On his death, it was found that not a single line of the memoir had been written. In 1747, appeared Mallet's poem, 'Amyntor and Theodora.' This, the longest of his poetical works, is a tale in blank verse, the scene of which is laid in the solitary island of St. Kilda, whither one of his characters, Aurelius, had fled to avoid the religious persecutions under Charles II. Some highly wrought descriptions of marine scenery, storms, and shipwreck, with a few touches of natural pathos and affection, constitute the chief characteristics of the poem. The whole, however-even the very names in such a locality--has an air of improbability and extravagance. In 1749, Mallet came forward as the ostensible editor of Bolingbroke's 'Patriot King'-insulting the memory of his benefactor Pope; and the peer rewarded him by bequeathing to him the whole of his works, manuscripts, and library. Mallet's love of money and infidel principles were equally gratified by this bequest-he published the collected works of Bolingbroke in 1754* His next appearance was also of a discreditable character. When the government became unpopular by the defeat at Minorca, Mallet was employed (1756) in its defence, and under the signature of a Plain Man, he published an address imputing cowardice to the admiral of the fleet. He succeeded: Byng was shot, and Mallet was pensioned. The accession of George III opened a way for all literary Scotsmen subservient to the crown. Mallet was soon a worshipper of the favourite Lord Bute. In 1761, he published a flattering *Johnson's sentence on the noble author and his editor is one of his most pointed con. versational memorabilia: Sir. he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charg ing a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not resolutioa to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Bootchman to draw the trigger after his death. ' poetical epistle, Truth in Rhyme,' addressed to Lord Bute, and equally laudatory of the king and the minister. Of this piece Chesterfield said: It has no faults, or I no faults can spy! It is all beauty, or all blindness I. Astrea from her native sky beholds the virtues of the 'patriot king,' and summons Urania to sing his praises. Urania doubts whether a prince deserving but shunning fame, would permit her strains, but she calls upon all Britons to emulate their king, and, considering to whom such grateful lays' should be sent, To strike at once all scandal mute, The goddess found, and fixed on Bute! Such is the poor conceit on which the rhyme is built. Mallet afterwards dedicated his tragedy of ' Elvira' (1763) to Lord Bute, and was rewarded with the office of Keeper of the Book of Entries for the port of London, which was worth £400 per annum. He enjoyed this appointment little more than two years, dying in London, April 21, 1765. Gibbon anticipated that if ever his friend Mallet should attain poetic fame, it would be by his 'Amyntor and Theodora;' but, contrary to the dictum of the historian, the poetic fame of Mallet rests on his ballads, and chiefly on his William and Margaret,' which, written about the age of twenty-two, afforded high hopes of ultimate excellence. The simplicity, here remarkable, he seems to have thrown aside when he assumed the airs and dress of a man of taste and fashion. All critics, from Dr. Percy downwards, have united in considering William and Margaret' one of the finest compositions of the kind in our language. Sir Walter Scott conceived that Mallet had imitated an old Scottish tale to be found in Allan Ramsay's 'Teatable Miscellany,' beginning: There came a ghost to Margaret's door. The resemblance is striking. Mallet confessed only-in a note to his ballad-to the following verse in Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle :' When it was grown to dark midnight, And all were fast asleep, In came Margaret's grimly ghost, And stood at William's feet. In the first printed copies of Mallet's ballad, the first two lines were nearly the same as the above When all was wrapt in dark midnight, And all were fast asleep. He improved the rhyme by the change; but beautiful as the idea is of night and morning meeting, it may be questioned whether there is not more of the ballad simplicity in the old words. Some additional stanzas were added to the above by Dr. Bryce, Kirknewton. Invermay is in Perthshire, the native county of Mal let, and is situated near the termination of a little picturesque stream called the May. The 'birk' or birch-tree is abundant, adding grace and beauty to rock and stream. Though a Celt by birth, Mallet had none of the imaginative wildness or superstition of his native country. Macpherson, on the other hand, seems to have been completely imbued with it. MARK AKENSIDE. The author of The Pleasures of Imagination,' one of the most pure and noble-minded poems of the age, was of humble origin. His parents were dissenters, and the Puritanism imbibed in his early years seems, as in the case of Milton, to have given a gravity and earnestness to his character, and a love of freedom to his thoughts and imagination. MARK AKENSIDE was the son of a respectable butcher at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was born, November 9, 1721. An accident in his early years-the fall of one of his father's cleavers, or hatchets, on his foot-rendered him lame for life, and perpetuated the recollection of his lowly birth. The Society of Dissenters advanced a sum for the education of the poet as a clergyman, and he repaired to Edinburgh for this purpose in his eighteenth year. He afterwards repented of this destination, and, returning the money, entered himself as a student of medicine. He was then a poet, and in his Hymn to Science,' written in Edinburgh, we see at once the formation of his classic taste, and the dignity of his personal character: That last best effort of thy skill, Raise me above the vulgar's breath, And all in life that 's mean; A youth animated by such sentiments, promised a manhood of honour and integrity. The medical studies of Akenside were completed at Leyden, where he took his degree of M.D. May 16, 1744. Previous to this he had published anonymously his 'Pleasures of Imagination,' which appeared in January of that year, and was so well received that a second edition was called for within four months. The price demanded for the copyright was £120, a large sum; but Dodsley the publisher having submitted it to Pope, the latter advised him not to make a niggardly offer, for this was no everyday writer.' The suc cess of the work justified alike poet, critic, and publisher. The same year Akenside in a poetical epistle attacked Pulteney under the name of Curio, but desirous of some more solid support than the Muse, he commenced physician at Northampton. The ground was preoccupied, and he did not succeed. He then published a collection of Odes,' and in January 1746, he engaged to contribute to Dodsley's 'Museum' an essay and review of new books once a fortnight, for which he was to receive £100 per annum. He continued also to |