“ After Pope’s death, in 1744, Mallet, at the instigation of Bolingbroke and forgetful of past favours and friendship, vilified the poet’s memory, thereby incurring the resentment of Pope’s friends. For his services as a party pamphleteer, in which character he published an attack on Admiral Byng, Mallet received from Lord Bute a lucrative sinecure in 1760. He died on the 21st of April 1765. Mallet was a small man, in his younger days something of a dandy and inordinately vain. He was twice married ”

“ Mustapha, also a tragedy, had considerable success at the same theatre in 1739; in 1740, in collaboration with Thomson, he produced the masque Alfred, of which he published a new version in 1751, after Thomson’s death, claiming it to be almost entirely his own work. ”