Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch | Page 2

it. He
courted Pope, accepted kindnesses from him, and then attacked him
after he was dead. He published Bolingbroke's posthumous infidelities,
causing Johnson to remark that Bolingbroke bad charged "a
blunderbuss against religion and morality" and had "left half a crown to
a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death."[4] His
behavior towards the memory of his friend and collaborator Thomson
was thought to be less than candid. He had written a discreditable party
pamphlet at the instigation of the Earl of Hardwicke against the
unfortunate Admiral Byng, and had then deserted Hardwicke for the

Earl of Bute, who had found him a sinecure of £300 a year. And even
as early as 1763 people were saying that he was really not the author of
the fine ballad William and Margaret which he had published as his
own.
Boswell, at least, had meditated an attack on Mallet before Critical
Strictures was written. In the large manuscript collection of his verses
preserved in the Bodleian Library are two scraps of an unpublished
satire imitating Churchill's Rosciad (1761), to be entitled The
Turnspitiad, a canine contest of which Mallet is the hero:
If dogg'rel rhimes have aught to do with dog, If kitchen smoak
resembles fog, If changing sides from Hardwick to Lord B--t Can with
a turnspit's turning humour suit, If to write verse immeasurably low,
Which Malloch's verse does so compleatly show, Deserve the
preference--Malloch, take the wheel, Nor quit it till you bring as gude a
Chiel![5]
And the decision to damn Elvira was made in advance of the
performance, as we have seen.
Having failed, in spite of shrill-sounding catcalls, to persuade the
audience at Drury Lane to damn the play, our trio went to supper at the
house of Erskine's sister, Lady Betty Macfarlane, in Leicester Street,
and there found themselves so fertile in sallies of humour, wit, and
satire on Mallet and his play that they determined to meet again and
throw their sallies into order. Accordingly, they dined at Lady Betty's
next day (20 January). After dinner Erskine produced a draft of their
observations thrown into pamphlet size, they all three corrected it,
Boswell copied it out, and they drove immediately in Lady Betty's
coach to the shop of William Flexney, Churchill's publisher, and
persuaded him to undertake the publication. Next day Boswell repented
of the scurrility of what they had written and got Dempster to go with
him to retrieve the copy. Erskine at first was sulky, but finally
consented to help revise it again. It went back to Flexney in a day or
two, and was published on 27 January.[6]
Elvira was essentially a translation or adaptation of Lamotte-Houdar's

French tragedy Inès de Castro, a piece published forty years before, but
the English audience of 1763 saw in it a compliment to the King of
Portugal, whose cause against Spain Great Britain had espoused
towards the end of the Seven Years' War. The preliminaries of peace
had already been signed, but the spirit of belligerency had not subsided;
so that the making of the only odious person in the play (the Queen) a
Spaniard, and having it end with a declaration of war against Spain,
could not fail to please a patriotic audience. Since nobody reads Elvira
any more, I shall venture to give an expanded version of Genest's
outline of the plot, in order to make the comments in Critical Strictures
more intelligible:
Don Pedro [son of Alonzo IV, King of Portugal] and Elvira [maid of
honour to the Queen, who is the King's second wife, and is mother of
the King of Spain] are privately married--the King insists that his son
should marry Almeyda [the Queen's daughter, sister to the King of
Spain]--he acknowledges his love for Elvira--she is committed to the
custody of the Queen--Don Pedro takes up arms to rescue Elvira--he
forces his way into the palace--she blames him for his rashness--the
King enters, and Don Pedro throws away his sword--Don Pedro is first
confined to his apartment, and then condemned to death--Almeyda,
who is in love with Don Pedro, does her utmost to save him--she
prevails on the King to give Elvira an audience--Elvira avows her
marriage, and produces her two children--the King pardons his
son--Elvira dies, having been poisoned by the Queen--Don Pedro offers
to kill himself, but is prevented by his father.[7]
The play had a respectable run, in spite of its colliding with the
Half-Price Riots, but contemporary accounts appear to indicate that it
was not highly thought of by the judicious. I extract the following terse
criticism from a letter in the St. James's Chronicle for 20 January, the
day after the play opened:
A Brief Criticism on the New Tragedy of Elvira
Act I. Indifferent.
Act II. Something better.

Act III. MIDDLING.
Act IV.