with the rank of colonel in 1877, having been created C.S.I. in 1872. He died at Kensington, on the 1st of March 1898. He was a voluminous writer, his first work to attract attention being the famous “Red Pamphlet,” published at Calcutta in 1857, when the Mutiny was at its height. He continued, and considerably rewrote the History of the Indian Mutiny (6 vols., 1878–1880), which was begun but left unfinished by Sir John Kaye. Among his other books the most valuable are History of the French in India (2nd ed., 1893) and The Decisive Battles of India (3rd ed., 1888).
MALLET (or Malloch), DAVID (?1705–1765), Scottish poet and dramatist, the son of a Perthshire farmer, was born in that county, probably in 1705. In 1717 he went to the high school at Edinburgh, and some three years later to the university, where he made the friendship of James Thomson, author of The Seasons. As early as 1720 he began to publish short poems in the manner of the period, a number of which appeared during the next few years in collections such as the Edinburgh Miscellany and Allan Ramsay’s Tea Table Miscellany, in which his ballad “William and Margaret” was published in 1724. For some years from 1723 he was private tutor to the duke of Montrose’s sons, with whom he travelled on the Continent in 1727. His real name was Malloch; but this he changed to Mallet in 1724. In 1735 he took the M.A. degree at Oxford. He had already made the friendship of Pope, whose vanity he flattered in a poem on Verbal Criticism, in 1733; and through Pope he became acquainted with Bolingbroke and other Tory politicians, especially those attached to the party of the prince of Wales, who in 1742 appointed Mallet to be his paid secretary. 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; by his first wife he had a daughter, Dorothy, who married Pietro Paolo Celesia, a Genoese gentleman, and was the author of several poems and plays, notably Almida, produced by Garrick at Drury Lane in 1771.
Mallet’s own works included several plays, some of which were produced by Garrick, who was Mallet’s personal friend. Eurydice, a tragedy, with prologue and epilogue by Aaron Hill, was produced at Drury Lane in 1731; 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. This masque is notable as containing the well-known patriotic song, “Rule Britannia,” the authorship of which has been attributed to Mallet, although he allowed it to appear without protest in his lifetime with Thomson’s name attached. His other writings include Poems on Several Occasions (1743); Amyntor and Theodora, or the Hermit (1747); another volume of Poems (1762).
In 1759 a collected edition of Mallet’s Works was published in three volumes; and in 1857 his Ballads and Songs were edited by F. Dinsdale with notes, and a biographical memoir of the author.
MALLET, PAUL HENRI (1730–1807), Swiss writer, was born on the 20th of August 1730, in Geneva. After having been educated there, he became tutor in the family of the count of Calenberg in Saxony. In 1752 he was appointed professor of belles lettres to the academy at Copenhagen. He was naturally attracted to the study of the ancient literature and history of his adopted country, and in 1755 he published the first fruits of his researches, under the title Introduction à l’histoire du Danemarck où l’on traite de la religion, des mœurs, des lois, et des usages des anciens Danois. A second part, more particularly relating to the ancient literature of the country, Monuments de la mythologie et de la poesie des Celtes, et particulièrement des anciens Scandinaves, was issued in 1756, and was also translated into Danish. A translation into English, with notes and preface, by Bishop Percy, was issued in 1770 under the title of Northern Antiquities (republished with additions in 1847). The book had a wide circulation, and attracted much attention on account of its being the first (though a very defective) translation into French of the Edda. The king of Denmark showed his appreciation by choosing Mallet to be preceptor of the crown prince. In 1760 he returned to Geneva, and became professor of history in his native city. While there he was requested by the czarina to undertake the education of the heir-apparent of Russia (afterwards the czar Paul I.), but declined the honour. An invitation more congenial to his tastes led to his accompanying Lord Mountstuart in his travels through Italy and thence to England, where he was presented at court and commissioned to write the history of the house of Brunswick. He had previously received a similar commission from the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel for the preparation of a history of the house of Hesse, and both works were completed in 1785. The quietude of a literary life was rudely broken by the shock of the Revolution, to which he was openly hostile. His leanings to the unpopular side were so obnoxious to his fellow-citizens that he was obliged to quit his native country in 1792, and remained in exile till 1801. He died at Geneva, on the 8th of February 1807.
A memoir of his life and writings, by Sismondi, was published at Geneva in 1807. Besides the Introduction to the History of Denmark, his principal works are: Histoire du Danemarck (3 vols., Copenhagen, 1758–1777); Histoire de la maison de Hesse (4 vols., 1767–1785); Histoire de la maison de Brunswick (4 vols., 1767–1785); Histoire de la maison et des états du Mecklenbourg (1796); Histoire des Suisses ou Helvétiens (4 vols., Geneva, 1803) (mainly an abridgment of J. von Müller’s great history); Histoire de la ligue hanséatique (1805).
MALLET, ROBERT (1810–1881), Irish engineer, physicist and geologist, was born in Dublin, on the 3rd of June 1810. He was
educated at Trinity College in that city, and graduated B.A. in
1830. Trained as an engineer, he was elected M.Inst.C.E. in
1842; he built in 1848–1849 the Fastnet Rock lighthouse, south-west
of Cape Clear, and was engaged in other important works.
Devoting much attention to pure science, he became especially
distinguished for his researches on earthquakes, and from 1852–1858
he was engaged (with his son John William Mallet) in the
preparation of his great work, The Earthquake Catalogue of the
British Association (1858). In 1862 he published two volumes,
dealing with the Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 and The
First Principles of Observational Seismology. He then brought
forward evidence to show that the depth below the earth’s
surface, whence came the impulse of the Neapolitan earthquake,
was about 8 or 9 geographical miles. One of his most important
essays was that communicated to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans.
clxiii. 147; 1874), entitled Volcanic Energy: an Attempt to develop
its True Origin and Cosmical Relations. He sought to show that
volcanic heat may be attributed to the effects of crushing, contortion
and other disturbances in the crust of the earth; the
disturbances leading to the formation of lines of fracture, more
or less vertical, down which water would find its way, and if the
temperature generated be sufficient volcanic eruptions of steam
or lava would follow. He was elected F.R.S. in 1854, and he
was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of
London in 1877. He died at Clapham, London, on the 5th of
November 1881.
MALLET DU PAN, JACQUES (1749–1800), French journalist,
of an old Huguenot family, was born near Geneva in 1749, the
son of a Protestant minister. He was educated at Geneva, and
through the influence of Voltaire obtained a professorship at
Cassel. He soon, however, resigned this post, and going to
London joined H.S.N. Linguet in the production of his Annales
politiques (1778–1780). During Linguet’s imprisonment in the
Bastille Mallet du Pan continued the Annales by himself (1781–1783);
but Linguet resented this on his release, and Mallet du
Pan changed the title of his own publication to Mémoires historiques
(1783). From 1783 he incorporated this work with the
Mercure de France in Paris, the political direction of which had
been placed in his hands. On the outbreak of the French
Revolution he sided with the Royalists, and was sent on a mission
(1791–1792) by Louis XVI. to Frankfort to try and secure the
