George Gregory Smith

“ 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 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”