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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 it. He courted Pope,
accepted kindnesses from him, and then attacked him after he was dead. He
published Bolingbroke's posthumous infidelities, causing Johnson to remark
that Bolingbroke had charged "a blunderbuss against religion and morality"
and had "left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger
after his death."[4] His behavior towards the memory of his friend and
collaborator Thomson was thought to be less than candid. He had written a
discreditable party pamphlet at the instigation of the Earl of Hardwicke
against the unfortunate Admiral Byng, and had then deserted Hardwicke for
the Earl of Bute, who had found him a sinecure of £300 a year. And even as
early as 1763 people were saying that he was really not the author of the
fine ballad _William and Margaret_ which he had published as his own.
Boswell, at least, had meditated an attack on Mallet before _Critical
Strictures_ was written. In the large manuscript collection of his
verses preserved in the Bodleian Library are two scraps of an unpublished
satire imitating Churchill's _Rosciad_ (1761), to be entitled _The
Turnspitiad_, a canine contest of which Mallet is the hero:
If dogg'rel rhimes have aught to do with dog,
If kitchen smoak resembles fog,
If changing sides from Hardwick to Lord B--t
Can with a turnspit's turning humour suit,
If to write verse immeasurably low,
Which Malloch's verse does so compleatly show,
Deserve the preference--Malloch, take the wheel,
Nor quit it till you bring as _gude a Chiel_![5]
And the decision to damn _Elvira_ was made in advance of the
performance, as we have seen.
Having failed, in spite of shrill-sounding catcalls, to persuade the
audience at Drury Lane to damn the play, our trio went to supper at the
house of Erskine's sister, Lady Betty Macfarlane, in Leicester Street, and
there found themselves so fertile in sallies of humour, wit, and satire on
Mallet and his play that they determined to meet again and throw their
sallies into order. Accordingly, they dined at Lady Betty's next day (20
January). After dinner Erskine produced a draft of their observations
thrown into pamphlet size, they all three corrected it, Boswell copied it
out, and they drove immediately in Lady Betty's coach to the shop of
William Flexney, Churchill's publisher, and persuaded him to undertake the
publication. Next day Boswell repented of the scurrility of what they had
written and got Dempster to go with him to retrieve the copy. Erskine at
first was sulky, but finally consented to help revise it again. It went
back to Flexney in a day or two, and was published on 27 January.[6]
_Elvira_ was essentially a translation or adaptation of Lamotte-Houdar's
French tragedy _Inès de Castro_, a piece published forty years
before, but the English audience of 1763 saw in it a compliment to the
King of Portugal, whose cause against Spain Great Britain had espoused
towards the end of the Seven Years' War. The preliminaries of peace had
already been signed, but the spirit of belligerency had not subsided; so
that the making of the only odious person in the play (the Queen) a
Spaniard, and having it end with a declaration of war against Spain, could
not fail to please a patriotic audience. Since nobody reads _Elvira_
any more, I shall venture to give an expanded version of Genest's outline
of the plot, in order to make the comments in Critical Strictures more
intelligible:
Don Pedro [son of Alonzo IV, King of Portugal] and Elvira [maid of honour
to the Queen, who is the King's second wife, and is mother of the King of
Spain] are privately married--the King insists that his son should marry
Almeyda [the Queen's daughter, sister to the King of Spain]--he
acknowledges his love for Elvira--she is committed to the custody of the
Queen--Don Pedro takes up arms to rescue Elvira--he forces his way into
the palace--she blames him for his rashness--the King enters, and Don
Pedro throws away his sword--Don Pedro is first confined to his apartment,
and then condemned to death--Almeyda, who is in love with Don Pedro, does
her utmost to save him--she prevails on the King to give Elvira an
audience--Elvira avows her marriage, and produces her two children--the
King pardons his son--Elvira dies, having been poisoned by the Queen--Don
Pedro offers to kill himself, but is prevented by his father.[7]
The play had a respectable run, in spite of its colliding with the
Half-Price Riots, but contemporary accounts appear to indicate that it
was not highly thought of by the judicious. I extract the following terse
criticism from a letter in the _St. James's Chronicle_ for 20 January,
the day after the play opened:
_A Brief Criticism on the New Tragedy of Elvira_
Act I. Indifferent.