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

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).
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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.)

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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.
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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 Drama. In the Prologue the Author informs us, that the Preliminaries of Peace are signed, and the War now over and he humbly hopes, as we have spared the French, we will spare his Tragedy. But as the Principles of Restitution seem at present strong in this Nation, before we extend our Mercy to him, we insist that in imitation of his Superiors, he shall restore every thing valuable he