David Mallet was born in 1698 near Crieff, the son of a farmer. Janitor at Edinburgh High School in 1717–18, he then studied at the university; in 1720 became a tutor, from 1723 to 1731 in the family of the Duke of Montrose, living mostly in London and changed his name “from Scotch Malloch to English Mallet.” In 1723 the adaptation of two old ballads into “William and Margaret” gained him a reputation as a poet, which he enhanced by “The Excursion” (1728). To please Pope, Mallet reviled Pope’s critics in “Verbal Criticism” (1733). In 1740 he published a mediocre Life of Bacon; in 1742 another poem, “The Hermit, or Amyntor and Theodora,” and the same year became under-secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales. To gratify Bolingbroke he heaped abuse upon his dead friend Pope in a preface to Bolingbroke’s “Patriot King,” and he edited Bolingbroke’s works: at the bidding of the ministry he directed the popular rage for the loss of Minorca upon Admiral Byng, and the “price of blood,” says Dr. Johnson, “was a pension which he retained till his death.” He received a legacy of £1000 from the Duchess to write a Life of Marlborough, but never penned a line. He also tried his hand at play-writing. “Mustapha” pleased for a while in 1739; “Eurydice” (1731) and “Elvira” (1763), tragedies, were failures. “Alfred, a Masque” (1740), was written in conjunction with Thomson, and one of its songs, “Rule Britannia,” was claimed for both. Mallet died 21st April 1765.
Personal
As a fellow who, while Mr. Pope lived, was as diligent in licking his feet, as he is now in licking your lordship’s; and who, for the sake of giving himself an air of importance, in being joined with you, and for the vanity of saying “the Author and I,”—“the Editor and me,”—has sacrificed all his pretensions to friendship, honour, and humanity.
Mallet’s boasts should not, I imagine, have much effect with those who know him; for, from the knowledge I have of him, I feel an unaccountable propensity to believe the contrary of what he tells me.
His stature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed; his appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered it to want no recommendation that dress could give it. His conversation was elegant and easy. The rest of his character may, without injury to his memory, sink into silence.
Mr. Mallet and his lady appeared to all the world to be the happiest couple in it, and I desire to have no doubt that they really were what they wished the world should think them. However, Mrs. Mallet, to her excessive love, joined the most consummate prudence. Every shilling of her fortune, which amounted to seven or eight thousand pounds, she settled upon herself; but then she took all imaginable care that Mr. Mallet should appear like a gentleman of distinction, and, from her great kindness, always chose herself to purchase everything that he wore; hat, stockings, coat, waist-coat, &c., were all of her own choice, and at her own cost; and so was the warmth of her fondness, that she took care all the world should know the pains she bestowed on her husband’s dress.
When Bolingbroke died and bequeathed the publication of his works to Mallet, Johnson observed:—“His Lordship has loaded a blunderbuss against Religion, and has left a Scoundrel to pull the trigger.” Being reminded of this a few years ago, the Doctor exclaimed, “Did I really say so?” “Yes, Sir.” He replied, “I am heartily glad of it.”
A minute life of Mallet might exhibit a curious example of mediocrity of talent, with but suspicious virtues, brought forward by the accident of great connexions, placing a bustling intriguer much higher in the scale of society than “our philosophy ever dreamt of.”
Into Bolingbroke’s relations with the cur Mallet we have no intention of entering. To the influence of that unprincipled adventurer and most detestable man is, we believe, in a large measure, to be attributed almost everything which loaded his latter years with reproach—the assault on Pope, the unseemly controversy with Warburton, the determination to prepare for posthumous publication what he had not the courage to publish during life.
He was a venal writer, a treacherous friend, a dishonest man.
He did a large amount of dirty work, and appears to have made a good income by it.
William and Margaret, 1724
I am never more delighted than when I meet with an opportunity to unveil obscure merit, and produce it into notice…. My having taken up, in a late perambulation, as I stood upon the top of Primrose Hill, a torn leaf of one of those Halfpenny Miscellanies which are published for the use and pleasure of our nymphs of low degree and known by the name of Garlands…. I fell unexpectedly upon a work, for so I have no scruple to call it, which deserves to live forever! and which (notwithstanding its disguise of coarse brown paper, almost unintelligible corruptions of the sense from the blunders of the press, with here and there an obsolete low phrase which I have altered for the clearer explanation of the author’s meaning) is so powerfully filled throughout with that blood-curdling chilling influence of Nature working on our passions (which Criticks call the sublime) that I have never met it stronger in Homer himself; nor even in that prodigious English genius, who has made the Greek our countryman. The simple title of this piece was “William and Margaret.” A Ballad. I am sorry that I am not able to acquaint my Reader with his name to whom we owe this melancholy piece of finished Poetry; under the humble title of a Ballad.
After what you have said of “William and Margaret,” I flatter myself that you will not be displeased with an account of the incident which gave birth to that ballad. Your conjecture that it was founded on the real history of an unhappy woman is true…. It was some time after this that I chanced to look into a comedy of Fletcher’s called “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.” The place I fell upon was where old Merrythought repeats these verses:—
| When it was grown to dark midnight, | |
| And all were fast asleep, | |
| In came Margaret’s grimly ghost, | |
| And stood at William’s feet. |
Poor Mallet! I pity his misfortune and feel for him probably more than he does for himself at present. His “William and Margaret,” his only good piece of poetry, is torn from him, and by the evidence of old Manuscripts turns out to be the work of the celebrated Andrew Marvel composed in the year 1670.
The ballad supposed to be lost has been lately recovered, in a copy of the date 1711, with the title “William and Margaret, an Old Ballad,” and turns out to be substantially the piece which Mallet published as his own in 1724, Mallet’s changes being comparatively slight. “William and Margaret” is simply “Fair Margaret and Sweet William” rewritten in what used to be called an elegant style.
David Mallet’s literary reputation is chiefly due to a piece of poetry which he never wrote. “William and Margaret” was one of the most popular ballads of the eighteenth century. It appeared in nearly all the numerous miscellanies, both poetic and musical; it was read, sung, and recited on all sides. It was even parodied. With the exception of a few skeptical and unimportant personages, its authorship was universally attributed to Mallet, and men like James Thomson, Dr. Johnson, and Bishop Percy gave him the weight of their authority. The ballad floated all the rest of Mallet’s literary performances, and he died a famous man…. As has been said, it was “William and Margaret” that established Mallet’s literary reputation; and it is only within a few years that his claim to its authorship has been successfully assailed. We shall see unfolded one of the prettiest cases of literary forgery on record, as well as one of the meanest, for it took a great deal of deliberate lying on Mallet’s part to make good his claim…. The proof of the forgery did not come till the year 1878, when a black-letter copy of the old ballad of “William and Margaret” was brought to light. This copy bears a Queen Anne stamp, and on this stamp rests the evidence against Mallet. In 1711 an act of Parliament was passed requiring stamps upon newspapers. This Act was not meant to apply to ballads, and, as Mr. Chappell says, “they were speedily excepted from its operation.” This ballad is exactly the same as the one published in Mallet’s works, with the exception of a few verbal alterations. It could not have been written by Mallet, for he would have been more than a marvel of precocity to produce such a thing at the age of eleven or twelve years. This Queen Anne stamp completely disposes of Mallet’s claim; and thus it is altogether probable that “William and Margaret,” as it stands, is one of the old English ballads, and not an eighteenth century production at all…. “William and Margaret” has an importance, independent of its authorship, as contributing to the early hidden growth of the English Romantic movement. Its great popularity in “the age of prose and reason” shows that there was a love for poetry of this kind, however much fashion condemned it in the abstract. For its introduction to the public, we must be grateful to Aaron Hill—a pompous, short-sighted person—and Allan Ramsay—a sturdy, unscrupulous, half-vulgar fellow. They builded better than they knew.
Mr. Child says that Mallet passed off as his own, with very slight changes, a ballad called “William and Margaret,” a copy of which, dated 1711, has been discovered. But the resemblances between the two poems scarcely seem to justify Mr. Child’s criticism, though Gibbon’s statement confirms it. The writer of the article on Mallet, in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” throws no doubts upon Mallet being the author of “William and Margaret,” nor does the writer on Marvell, in the same series, lay any claim for Marvell to its authorship. Thomas, better known as “Hesiod,” Cooke, who published his “Life and Writings of Andrew Marvell” in 1726, and who not only disliked Mallet, but characterised his “William and Margaret” as “trash,” nowhere suggests that Mallet was not the author.
General
The nauseous affectation of expressing everything pompously and poetically, is nowhere more visible than in a poem lately published, entitled “Amyntor and Theodora.”
| Next Mallet came; Mallet who knows each art | |
| The ear to tickle and to soothe the heart; | |
| Who with a goose-quill, like a magic rod, | |
| Transforms a Scotish peer into a god. | |
| Oh! matchless Mallet, by one stroke to clear, | |
| One lucky stroke, four hundred pounds a year. | |
| Long round a court poor Gray dependent hung | |
| (And yet more trimly has the poet sung), | |
| Twice six revolving years vain hoping pass’d, | |
| And unrewarded went away at last. |
As a writer, he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species of composition in which he was eminent. His Dramas had their day, a short day, and are forgotten; his blank verse seems to my ear the echo of Thomson…. His works are such as a writer, bustling in the world, showing himself in public, and emerging occasionally from time to time into notice, might keep alive by his personal influence; but which, conveying little information, and giving no great pleasure, must soon give way, as the succession of things produce new topics of conversation and other modes of amusement.
Mallet’s literary reputation did not live long, and one contemporary at least was not too severe in calling him a “whiffler in poetry” (Cooke). Johnson told Goldsmith that he “had talents enough to keep his literary reputation alive as long as he himself lived,” and he has worked out the same idea in his criticism in the “Lives.” His lack of originality justified the sorry joke of the aggrieved Theobald, “that there is no more conceit in him than in a mallet” (edit. of Shakespeare, 1733, Pref. lii); and Hume’s dictum, that “he was destitute of the pathetic,” would not be difficult to prove. At times his lines show the cadence of Pope’s verse (e. g. “Verbal Criticism”), and his tragedies echo the fuller rhythm of his friend’s “Seasons;” but his motif is always poor. His early ballad of “William and Margaret,” and the claim set up on his behalf to the authorship of the national ode of “Rule Britannia,” alone give him any title to posthumous recognition.
Was little better than a mere parrot.
It is a far cry from Mallet’s “System of Runic Mythology” to William Morris’ “Sigurd the Volsung” (1877), but to Mallet belongs the credit of first exciting that interest in Scandinavian antiquity which has enriched the prose and poetry not only of England but of Europe in general. Gray refers to him in his notes on “The Descent of Odin,” and his work, continued to be popular authority on its subject for at least half a century. Scott cites it in his annotations on “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” (1805).
“Edwin and Emma,” though not so good, was long as famous as “William and Margaret,” and all but a few of Mallet’s more numerous pieces in the lighter style show the grace and wit which belongs to the now too-much-neglected lighter verse of the eighteenth century.
