dant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the ferpent with the fowl. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmoft, by interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interfperfing rural imagery and incidental digreffions, by cloathing fmall images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delufion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, fink him under infuperable oppreffion; and the disgust which blank verfe, encumbering and encumbered, fuperadds to an unpleafing fubject, foon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased.

Let

Let me however honeftly report whatever may counterbalance this weight of cenfure. I have been told that Akenfide, who, upon a poetical queftion, has a right to be heard, faid, " That he would "regulate his opinion of the reigning "tafte by the fate of Dyer's Fleece; for, "if that were ill-rec-ived, he should "not think it any longer reasonable to "expect fame from excellence."

MALLET.

F DAVID MALLET, having

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written memorial, I am able to give no other account than fuch as is fupplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common fame, and a very flight perfonal knowledge.

He was by his original one of the Macgregors, a clan that became, about fixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, fo formidable and fo infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themfelves anew, the father, I fup

Α

fuppofe, 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 hear. But he furmounted the disadvantages of his birth and fortune; for when the duke of Montrofe applied to the College of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his fons, Malloch was recommended; and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials.

When his pupils were fent to fee the world, they were intrufted to his care; and having conducted them round the common circle of modifh travels, he

re

returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the family in which he refided, he naturally gained admiffion to many perfons of the highest rank, and the highest character, to wits, nobles, and ftatesmen.

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

Not long afterwards he publifhed the Excurfion (1728); a defultory and capri

* Mallet's William and Margaret was printed in Aaron Hill's Plain Dealer, No 36, July 24, 1724. In its original ftate it was very different from what it is in this Collection.