George Gregory Smith

“ Dunbar’s chief allegorical poems are The Goldyn Targe and The Thrissil and the Rois. The motif of the former is the poet’s futile endeavour, in a dream, to ward off the arrows of Dame Beautee by Reason’s “scheld of gold.” When wounded and made prisoner, he discovers the true beauty of the lady: when she leaves him, he is handed over to Heaviness. The noise of the ship’s guns, as the company sails off, wakes the poet to the real pleasures of a May morning. Dunbar works on the same theme in a shorter poem, known as Beauty and the Prisoner. ”

“ Spotiswood had meanwhile informed the council of the capture and of the examination of Ogilvie's Glasgow accomplices; and they had on 11 Nov. issued a commission to him and to the treasurer-depute, the clerk of register, and Sir William Livingston of Kilsyth, or any three of them, the archbishop being one, to proceed to Glasgow to try all suspected persons, and generally to clear up the whole conspiracy (Register of Privy Courtcil, x. 284-6) . Ogilvie was, however, taken to Edinburgh, and brought before five of the council. ”

“ He is spoken of as the Rhymer of Scotland in the accounts of the English privy council dealing with the visit of the mission for the hand of Margaret Tudor, rather because he wrote a poem in praise of London, than because, as has been stated, he held the post of laureate at the Scottish court. In 1511 he accompanied the queen to Aberdeen and commemorated her visit in verse. Other pieces such as the Orisoun (“Quhen the Gouernour past in France”) , apropos of the setting out of the regent Albany, are of historical interest, but they tell us little more than that Dunbar was alive. ”

“ Masson continued to edit the 'Magazine' with success till 1867, when his place was taken by Sir George Grove [q. v. Suppl. I] . In the autumn of 1863 he undertook, in addition, the editorship of the short-lived 'Reader.' Two years later he published a volume of essays entitled 'Recent British Philosophy.'
On the death of William Edmonstoune Aytoun [q. v.] in 1865, Masson was appointed professor of rhetoric and English literature in the university of Edinburgh; and from that date to the close he resided in Edinburgh. There he completed his 'Life of Milton' ”

“ He first exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1862, and in that year he received a commission from her majesty to make a drawing of Holyrood Palace. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1869) , an honorary member of the Liverpool Society of Water-colour Painters (1872) , and a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Water-colour Painters (1878) . During the last ten years of his life he was in bad health, and on 8 March 1895 he succumbed to an attack of pleurisy, at his house, 14 George Square, Edinburgh. ”

“ He was too independent in character to owe much to another, and the trait by which his authority was won — sincerity in workmanship, that 'indisputable air of truth' which is felt in everything he wrote and did — was not derived from, and hardly confirmed by, the intercourse at Chelsea. In his literary work he sometimes sacrificed the claims of art to the importunities of research ”

“ It opens with a description of the state of Scotland at the death of Alexander III. (1286) and concludes with the death of Douglas and the burial of the Bruce’s heart (1332) . The central episode is the battle of Bannockburn. Patriotic as the sentiment is, it is in more general terms than is found in later Scots literature. The king is a hero of the chivalric type common in contemporary romance; freedom is a “noble thing” to be sought and won at all costs; the opponents of such freedom are shown in the dark colours which history and poetic propriety require ”

“ According to tradition, Macpherson was handsome in appearance and of kindly temper. No charge of bloodshed was preferred against him, and evidence was adduced at his trial that one of his ‘unlawful’ visits had been for the purpose of curing a sick man.
It is said that before his execution he played a ‘rant’ or dirge on his favourite violin, offered the instrument as a keepsake to any one in the crowd who would think well of him, and, receiving no response, broke it and threw it into the open grave by his side. The rant is said to have appeared in a broadside in 1701. ”

“ From 1869 to 1878 he resided at 10 Regent Terrace, Edinburgh (where he was visited by John Stuart Mill and Carlyle) ; and from 1882 at 58 Great King Street. His closing years were spent at Lockharton Gardens, Edinburgh. He died on the night of Sunday, 6 Oct. 1907, and was buried in the Grange cemetery, Edinburgh.
Masson's long association with Carlyle and his admiration of his friend's genius have to some extent obscured the individuality of his own work; and an alleged physical likeness, more imagined than true to fact, has encouraged the popular notion of discipleship. ”

“ The interest in his work is chiefly local, partly because he wrote nearly all in the Scots dialect, partly because the topics were connected with the legal society of the Scottish capital; but in a few instances, notably in the 'Annuity,' the rich humour and happy expression appeal to a wider circle. Outram collaborated with 'Christopher North' in the 'Dies Boreales,' which followed the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ.' He also printed for private circulation a collection of legal anecdotes. ”

“ This strain runs throughout many of the occasional poems, and is not wanting in odd passages in Dunbar’s contemporaries; and it has the additional interest of showing a direct historical relationship with the work of later Scottish poets, and chiefly with that of Robert Burns. Dunbar’s satire is never the gentle funning of Chaucer: more often it becomes invective. ”

“ He first figures as Mallet in the list of subscribers' names in Savage's ‘Miscellanies,’ 1726; but in the introductory verses and preface to the second edition of Thomson's ‘Winter’ he was still called Malloch, though Thomson then writes of him as Mallet. Dr. Johnson, ‘an unforgiving enemy,’ remarked in his octavo edition of the Dictionary, ‘alias means otherwise, as Mallet alias Malloch, that is, otherwise Malloch’ (cf. Boswell, iv. 217, v. 127) . ”

“ An Authentic Account of the Imprisonment and Martyrdom of Father John Ogilvie, translated by C. J. Karslake, S.J., Glasgow, 1877 (a translation of the Relatio) ; Narratives of Scottish Catholics. by W. Forbes-Leith, Edinburgh, 1885, in which reference is made to a Latin manuscript in the Archives S.J., entitled 'Proceedings of the Trial and Mode of Death of Father John Ogilvie.' Spotiswood's True Relation and the Relatio are reprinted in James Forbes's Life (supra) , and the former is also reprinted in Pitcairn. ”

“ To the same period belong, among other works, his volume on De Quincey for the 'English Men of Letters' series (1878) , and 'Edinburgh Sketches and Memories' (1892) , a reprint of magazine articles. During the thirty years of academic life in Edinburgh (1865–95) , where more than 5000 students passed through his class-room, he achieved a popularity which remains a pleasant tradition in Scottish university life. ”

“ The date of his death is uncertain. He is named in Lyndsay’s Testament and Complaynt of the Papyngo (1530) with poets then dead, and the reference precedes that to Douglas who had died in 1522. He certainly survived his royal patron. ”

“ On 17 Dec. 1016 Oliphant was elected a member of the financial committee of the council known as the commissioners for the king's rents (ib. x. 676 ; Balfour, Annals, ii. 65) . As kind's advocate he appears in all the great political trials, notably those of Gordon of Gicht and Sir James Macdonald of Islay. ”

“ This mean act involved Mallet in a short pamphlet-war with Pope's friends (cf. Boswell, i. 329) , but he was rewarded by the gift of Bolingbroke's works, printed and in manuscript, of which he published an edition in 5 vols. in March 1754 (Goldsmith, Life of Bolingbroke) . Dr. Johnson remarked on this enterprise that Bolingbroke had ‘spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity,’ and ‘left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.’ In 1751, three years after the death of Thomson, Mallet published a new version of the masque of 1740. ”

“ Two portraits (from photographs of Masson in later life) were published in 1911: (a) in the Scottish History Society's edition of Craig's 'De Unione,' and (b) in the posthumous volume of 'Memories of Two Cities.' A marble bust by J. P. Macgillivray, R.S.A., presented by subscription to the university of Edinburgh in 1897, is less successful than the portraits by Reid and Huth.
Masson's published writings comprise: 1. 'History of Rome' (Chambers's Educational Course) , 1848. 2. 'Ancient History' (the same) , 1848. 3. ”

“ Wyntoun speaks (Chronicle III. iii.) of a “Treteis” which Barbour made by way of “a genealogy” of “Brutus lynagis”; and elsewhere in that poem there are references to the archdeacon’s “Stewartis Oryginale.” This “Brut” is unknown; but the reference has been held by some to be to (3) a Troy-book, based on Guido da Colonna’s Historia Destructionis Troiae. Two fragments of such a work have been preserved in texts of Lydgate’s Troy-book, the first in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. ”

“ At Paris he was ordained priest in 1613. Towards the close of the year he and two other priests, Moffat and Campbell, were ordered by the superior of the Scottish mission of the Society of Jesus to repair to Scotland. ”

“ He was imprisoned in the tolbooth of Banff under an exceptionally strong guard, and was tried before the sheriff of that place on 7 Nov., on the charge of ‘going up and doune the country armed and keeping mercats in a hostile manner.’ He and an accomplice, Gordon, were sentenced to death, and were executed at the Cross of Banff during the afternoon market of Friday, 16 Nov. ”

“ He was rewarded in 1763 by Lord Bute, to whom he had given fulsome praise, with the post of inspector of exchequer-book in the outports of London, at a salary of 300l., a sinecure which he held till his death (ib. and i. 268) . In the autumn of the following year he joined his wife at Paris, but ill-health compelled him to return to London (Hume, Letters, ii. 200) . His weakness gradually increased, and he died on Sunday, 21 April 1765, ‘aged 63’ (Scots Mag. 1765, p. 224) . ”

“ April 1628, and was buried in the Greyfriars' churchyard at Edinburgh. To Oliphant is due the present procedure of examining witnesses in the hearing of the jury. Hitherto evidence had been taken in the trial of one Listen, accused of the murder of a certain John Mayne (Pitcairn) . ”

“ John Nepomuc (1730) , pl. 16, The latter approximates so closely to the conventional figures of the jesuit hagiologies, and in features bears such close resemblance to the many other Johns celebrated in the book, that it cannot be considered an authentic portrait. ”

“ Sir Walter Stewart, and Sir George Elphinston. The narrative. of the proceedings appeared in the 'True Relation' ascribed to Archbishop Spotiswood. Ogilvie refused to give information ('his busines,' he said, 'was to saue soules') , and was sent to a chamber in the castle, where he remained till 8 Dec., lacking nothing 'worthy of a man of his quality,' and having the constant attention of sundry ministers of the Kirk, who could not, however, argue him into a confession. ”

“ His second wife was Lucy, youngest daughter of Lewis Elstob, steward to the Earl of Carlisle, who brought him a dowry of 10,000l. when he married her, on 7 Oct. 1742 (Gent. Mag. 1742, p. 546) . Gibbon, who was ‘domesticated’ with the Mallets from 1758, describes her as ‘not destitute of wit or learning’ (Misc. Works, i. 115) . She died at Paris on 17 Sept. ”