David Mallet (c.1705–65,) originally David Malloch, was a Scottish poet and dramatist.
Born near Crieff, Perthshire, Mallet worked as the janitor at Edinburgh High School 1717–18, then studied at Edinburgh University. He quit his studies in 1720 to become a tutor, working from 1723 to 1731 in the family of the Duke of Montrose. In that role, he became friendly with Alexander Pope, James Thomson, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, and other literary figures. He also changed his name from Scottish Malloch to English Mallet.
Mallet’s popular ghost ballad William and Margaret (1723) developed from the fragment of a traditional ballad. It gained him a reputation as a poet, which he enhanced by the philosophical poem The Excursion (1728.) He also wrote the play Mustapha (1739.)
With Thomson, Mallet wrote Alfred, a Masque (1740,) and one of its songs, ‘Rule Britannia,’ was claimed by both. Mallet also wrote The Life of Francis Bacon (1740) and edited Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke’s Works (5 vols., 1754.) Mallet’s most notable tragedy was Elvira (1763,) which was admired by historian Edward Gibbon.
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The multitude unawed is insolent; once seized with fear, contemptible and vain.
—David Mallet
Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humuily, and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.
—David Mallet
True valor, on virtue founded strong, meets all events alike.
—David Mallet
Uncertainty ! fell demon of our fears! The human soul that can support despair, supports not thee.
—David Mallet
Topics: Uncertainty
A sovereign’s great example forms a people; the public breast is noble or vile as he inspires it.
—David Mallet
Who hath not known ill-fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue.
—David Mallet
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties, Courage
Bred in camps, trained in the gallant openness of truth that best becomes a soldier, thou art happily a stranger to the baseness and infamy of courts.
—David Mallet
I courted fame but as a spur to brave and honest deeds; who despises fame wil soon renounce the virtues that deserve it.
—David Mallet
Topics: Fame
O grant me, Heaven, a middle state,
Neither too humble nor too great;
More than enough, for nature’s ends,
With something left to treat my friends.
—David Mallet