engrafted it into a regular poem. There is in this piece more
pertness than wit, and more confidence than knowledge. The versification
is tolerable, nor can criticism allow it a higher praise.

His first tragedy was Eurydice, acted at Drury-lane in 1731; of which I
know not the reception nor the merit, but have heard it mentioned as a
mean performance. He was not then too high to accept a prologue and
epilogue from Aaron Hill, neither of which can be much commended.

Having cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation so as to be no
longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disencumber himself
from all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change his
name from Scotch _Malloch_ to English Mallet, without any imaginable
reason of preference which the eye or ear can discover. What other
proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country, I know not; but it
was remarked of him, that he was the only Scot, whom Scotchmen did not
command.

About this time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his Essay on
Man, but concealed the author; and, when Mallet entered one day, Pope
asked him slightly, what there was new. Mallet told him, that the newest
piece was something called an Essay on Man, which he had inspected idly,
and seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in
writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away. Pope, to
punish his self-conceit, told him the secret[194]

A new edition of the works of Bacon being prepared, 1750, for the press,
Mallet was employed to prefix a life, which he has written with
elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge
of history than of science, that, when he afterwards undertook the life
of Marlborough, Warburton remarked, that he might, perhaps, forget that
Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a
philosopher.

When the prince of Wales was driven from the palace, and, setting
himself at the head of the opposition, kept a separate court, he
endeavoured to increase his popularity by the patronage of literature,
and made Mallet his under-secretary, with a salary of two hundred pounds
a year: Thomson, likewise, had a pension; and they were associated in
the composition of the Mask of Alfred, which, in its original state, was
played at Cliefden in 1740; it was afterwards almost wholly changed by
Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury-lane in 1751, but with no
great success.