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1

THE

LIFE OF
OF MALLET,

BY DR. JOHNSON.

OF DAVID MALLET, having no written memorial, I am able to give no other account than such as is supplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common fame, and a very slight personal knowledge.

He was, by his original, one of the Macgregors, a clan, that became, about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves anew, the father, I suppose of this author, called himself Malloch.

David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be Janitor of the High School at Edinburgh; a mean office, of which he did not afterwards delight to bear. But he surmounted the disadvantages of his birth and fortune; for, when the duke of Montrose applied to the college of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch was recommended; and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials. When his pupils were sent to see the world, they were intrusted to his care; and, having conducted them round the common circle of modish travels, he returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the family in which he resided, he naturally gained admission to many persons of the highest rank and the highest character, to wits, nobles, and statesmen.

Of his works, I know not whether I can trace the series. His first production was William and Margaret'; of which, though it contains nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved.

Not long afterwards he published The Excursion (1728); a desultory and capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not devoid of poetical spirit. Many of his images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant. The cast of diction seems to be copied from

'Mallet's William and Margaret was printed in Aaron Hill's Plain Dealer, No. 36, July 24, 1724. In its original state it was very different from what it is in the last edition of his works.

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