Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch | Page 3

Execrable.
Act V. Very Tolerable.
Dempeter later regretted his share in Critical Strictures on the ground
that neither he nor his collaborators could have written a tragedy nearly
so good. The Critical Review, in which Mallet himself sometimes wrote,
characterized the pamphlet as "the crude efforts of envy, petulance, and
self-conceit." "There being thus three epithets," says Boswell, "we, the
three authours, had a humourous contention how each should be
appropriated."[8] The Monthly Review was hardly less severe. It
conceived the author of Critical Structures to be either a personal
enemy of Mallet's or else a bitter enemy of Mallet's country, prejudiced
against everything Scotch. The reviewer could not but look upon this
author "as a man of more abilities than honesty, as the want of candour
is certainly a species of dishonesty."[9]
It was natural to infer that Critical Strictures was motivated by
prejudice against Scotland. It appeared in the days of Wilkes's North
Briton and shortly after Charles Churchill's Prophecy of Famine, that is,
at the height of the violent anti-Scotch feeling which the opponents of
Bute (a Scotsman by birth) had stirred up and were exploiting in order
to force him out of office. But the critics might have remembered that
the most savage criticism of any Scot generally comes from other Scots
who think he has not remained Scotch enough; as witness, by what new
appears to be retributive justice, the general Scots dislike of Boswell
himself. At any rate, the pamphlet was the production, not of one
Englishman imbued with a hatred of all things Scots, but of three
warmly patriotic Scotsmen.
Critical Strictures is the merest of trifles, but at least three reasons can
be given for publishing a facsimile of it. Scholars on occasion need to
be able to read all the productions of great authors no matter how
trifling, and this one is excessively rare; so rare, indeed, that few of
Boswell's editors have been able to get a sight of it. It makes a pleasant
and useful footnote to Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1765, a work

now being widely read, or at least widely circulated. And it contains a
remark or two that should be of interest to historians of English drama
in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Mr. C. Beecher Hogan has given me expert assistance in writing two of
the notes.
The copy of Critical Strictures used for making this reproduction was
given to the Library of Yale University by Professor Chauncey B.
Tinker.
Frederick A. Pottle Yale University.

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763, ed. F.A. Pottle, McGraw-Hill
Book Co. (New York), William Heinemann (London), 1950, p. 152,
quoted with permission of the McGraw-Hill Book Co. This edition
(which will hereafter be referred to as LJ) prints the journal in a
standardized and modernized text. In the passage above quoted I have
restored the ampersands and capitals of Boswell's manuscript.
2. See F.A. Pottle, The Literary Career of James Boswell, Clarendon
Press, 1929, pp. 6, 12.
3. "The Life of Mallet," in Lives of the Poets.
4. James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. G.B. Hill and L.F.
Powell, Clarendon Press, 6 vols., 1934-1950, i. 268. (Hereafter referred
to as Life.)
5. Douce MS 193, 93^v, quoted with permission of the Curators of the
Bodleian Library.
6. LJ, pp. 154-155, 162, 163-164, 172, partly paraphrased, partly
quoted.

7. John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from ... 1660 to
1830, 10 vols., Bath, 1832, v.12-13.
8. Life, i. 409 n. 1; The Critical Review, xv (Feb. 1763). 160.
9. The Monthly Review. xxviii (Jan. 1763). 68, written by the editor,
Ralph Griffiths (B.C. Nangle, The Monthly Review, First Series
1749-1789, Clarendon Press, 1934, p. 84, no. 995).
* * * * *
CRITICAL STRICTURES ON THE New TRAGEDY OF ELVIRA,
WRITTEN BY Mr. DAVID MALLOCH.
LONDON: Printed for W. FLEXNEY, near Gray's Inn, Holborn.
MDCCLXIII.
(Price Sixpence.)

* * * * *

Advertisement.[A]
We have followed the Authority of Sir David Dalrymple, and Mr.
Samuel Johnson, in the Orthography of Mr. Malloch's Name; as we
imagine the Decision of these Gentlemen will have more weight in the
World of Letters, than even that of the said Mr. Malloch himself.
* * * * *
CRITICAL STRICTURES, &c.
In our Strictures on the Tragedy of Elvira, we shall not hasten all at
once into the midst of Things, according to the Rules of Epic Poetry;
Heroic Poems and Remarks on New Plays, are things so essentially
different, that they ought not to be written by the same Rules. Had Mr.

Malloch been aware of these Distinctions in writing, which surely are
not very nice, he probably would have discovered that Scenes
admirably adapted for forming a Burlesque Tragedy, would never
succeed in forming a serious