Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch

Critical Strictures on the New
Tragedy of
by Mr. David
Malloch (1768), by James
Boswell, Andrew Erskine and
George Dempster

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Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1768), by James Boswell,
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Title: Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr.
David Malloch (1768)
Author: James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
Release Date: May 18, 2005 [EBook #15857]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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STRICTURES ***

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The Augustan Reprint Society
JAMES BOSWELL, ANDREW ERSKINE, and GEORGE
DEMPSTER
Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David
Malloch
(1763)

With an Introduction by Frederick A. Pottle
Publication Number 35

Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of
California 1952

* * * * *
GENERAL EDITORS
H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library RICHARD C.
BOYS, University of Michigan ROBERT S. KINSMAN, University of
California, Los Angeles JOHN LOFTIS, University of California, Los
Angeles
ASSISTANT EDITOR

W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN
BOYCE, Duke University LOUIS BREDVOLD, University of
Michigan JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR
FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago EDWARD NILES HOOKER,
University of California, Los Angeles LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton
University SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST
MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, University
College, London H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California,
Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
EDNA C. DAVIS, Clark Memorial Library
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
"WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY [1763]. This was a day eagerly
expected by Dempster, Erskine, and I, as it was fixed as the period of
our gratifying a whim proposed by me: which was that on the first day
of the new Tragedy called Elvira's being acted, we three should walk
from the one end of London to the other, dine at Dolly's, & be in the
Theatre at night; & as the Play would probably be bad, and as Mr.
David Malloch, the Author, who has changed his name to David Mallet,
Esq., was an arrant Puppy, we determined to exert ourselves in
damning it."[1]
George Dempster, aged thirty, a Scots lawyer who by putting his
fortune under severe strain had been elected Member of Parliament for
the Forfar and Fife burghs, was in London in his official capacity.
Andrew Erskine, aged twenty-two, younger son of an impoverished
Scots earl, was waiting in London till the regiment in which he held a
lieutenant's commission should be "broke," following the Peace. James

Boswell, heir to the considerable estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire, also
aged twenty-two, had come to London in the previous November in an
attempt to secure a commission in the Foot Guards. Dempster, Erskine,
and Boswell had constituted themselves a triumvirate of wit in
Edinburgh as early as the summer of 1761, and had already made more
than one joint appearance in print.[2]
David Mallet, now in his late fifties, was also a Scotsman. "It was
remarked of him," wrote Dr. Johnson many years later, "that he was the
only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend."[3] Scotsmen
considered him a renegade. They felt that he had repudiated his country
in changing his distinctively Scots name, perhaps also in learning to
speak English so well that Johnson had never been able to catch him in
a Scotch accent. They would have been willing to forget his humble
origins if he had not shown that he was ashamed of them himself. But
when he allowed himself to assume arrogant manners and to style
himself "Esq." (a kind of behavior especially offensive to genuine men
of family, like our trio), they chose to remember, and to remind the
world, that he was the son of a tenant farmer (a Macgregor, at that), that
as a boy he had been willing to run errands and to deliver legs of
mutton, and that for a time in his youth he had held the menial post of
Janitor in the High School of Edinburgh.
It was not merely the Scots who had their knives out for Mallet. He was
generally unpopular, apparently for adequate reasons. He had accepted
a large sum of money from the Duchess of Marlborough to write a life
of the Duke, of which he never penned a line, though he pretended for
years that he was worn out by his labors in connection with