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

CRITICAL STRICTURES ***

Produced by David Starner, Clare Boothby and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

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

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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_

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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.