a new design, he then laboured it with very patient industry; and
that he composed with great labour and frequent revisions. His
verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to
have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own
ear. But with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.



MALLET.



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 hear. 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 entrusted to his care; and having conducted them