David, the author of the ballad of William and Margaret, was the son of a small innkeeper at Crieff, in Perthshire, and was born about the year 1700. His real name was Malloch, and he is supposed to have been a descendant of the proscribed clan of Macgregor. According to the most recent account, he studied first at Aberdeen, and afterwards at Edinburgh, and while attending the university in the latter city he became tutor to the sons of the Duke of Montrose. Accompanying his pupils to London, and on a tour through the Continent, and coming in contact with persons of the highest rank, Mallet gradually acquired that knowledge of the world, and that refinement of manners, which were, perhaps, the chief stepping-stones to his subsequent eminence. He fixed his residence in London; and in 1724 published, in No. 36 of the Plain Dealer, his ballad of William and Margaret, the work by which he is now best remembered. The spirit of this piece seems to have been caught from the two old ballads, William's Ghast and Fair Margaret, yet there is sufficient originality in its simple feeling and graceful diction to entitle Mallet to be called its author. It was about this time, when he was moving in the society of the chief wits of the day, and was desirous of expunging every trace of his humble origin, and even of his native country, that Mallet assumed the name by which he is now known.

In 1728 appeared his Excursion, a servile imitation of the style of Thomson, who was then becoming known to the world. His poem on Verbal Criticism, published in 1773, was a satire on Bentley, written to please Pope. About this period Frederic Prince of Wales, who was at variance with his father, and was courting popularity by patronizing literary men, appointed Mallet his under-secretary, with a salary of L200; and in 1740 employed him, conjointly with Thomson, to write The Masque of Alfred, in honour of the birthday of the Princess Augusta. This piece Mallet afterwards entirely altered, and produced, without any great success, on the stage of Drury Lane. In 1742 he married his second wife, the daughter of Lord Carlisle's steward, and received L10,000 as her dowry. Not content with the liberal fortune which he now possessed, Mallet was yet mercenary enough to become the hired tool of any one. He was employed by Lord Bolingbroke, in 1749 to traduce his deceased patron Pope, in a preface to that nobleman's Patriot King, and received as his paltry payment the bequest of his lordship's works. With equal servility did he lend himself to government for the purpose of directing the public vengeance against the ill-fated Admiral Byng. The admiral was shot in 1757, and Mallet received a pension. Towards the close of his life Mallet repaired to France for the benefit of his health, but on feeling that his constitution was rapidly giving way, he returned to England, and died soon afterwards, in April 1765. The base character of the man was now revealed in glaring distinctness. It was discovered that a Life of the great Duke of Marlborough, which he had been hired to write by a legacy of L1000 from the old duchess, and by a pension from the second duke, and which he had professed during his latter years to be composing, was not even begun.

Mallet was an avowed infidel. "As a writer," says Dr Johnson, "he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species of composition in which he was eminent. His dramas had their day—a short day—and are forgotten; his blank verse seems to my ear the echo of Thomson." Besides the works already mentioned, Mallet wrote Everydice, Mustapha, and Eleoira, tragedies; Britannia, a masque; Amyntor and Theodore, a poem; and a Life of Bacon. His Ballads and Songs, with Notes and Illustrations, accompanied by a Memoir by Frederick Dinsdale, were published in London, 1857.

Mallet, Paul-Henri, an eminent historian, was born at Geneva in 1730, of a family distinguished for the great number of notable men whom it has produced. After completing his education with marked success, he became tutor to the Count of Calenberg, and in 1752 was appointed regius professor of belles-lettres in the university of Copenhagen. The duties devolving on Mallet in this position were discharged with signal ability; but as the French language was not much cultivated in Denmark at that time, the number of his auditors was for the most part very limited. He employed his leisure time in the study of the old Norse language, and brought to light many important historical facts respecting the ancient inhabitants of the north, almost entirely unknown to their descendants of Denmark or the Scandinavian peninsula. The reception which his work met among the learned drew upon the professor the attention of the king, who appointed him instructor in the French language and literature to the young prince, afterwards Christian VII. In 1760 Mallet returned to his native city; and after having filled the chair of history in the college of Geneva for four years with distinguished success, he was chosen a member of the Council of the Two Hundred. Unmistakable marks of admiration flowed in upon Mallet from persons of rank and distinction; from the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, from the Czarina of Russia, and from the Earl of Bute, whose son, Lord Mountstewart, Mallet accompanied to Italy, and afterwards to England, where he was presented to the royal family, and was asked by the queen to write a history of the House of Brunswick. On returning to his native country, Mallet resolved to spend the evening of his days in studious retirement and tranquillity; when, in 1792, the revolution of Geneva, in which he warmly espoused the cause of the aristocratic party, deprived him of what moderate fortune his talents had purchased. Owing to the events of the war, the pensions which he had received from the English queen and from the landgrave of Hesse ceased to be forthcoming; but the government of France, on being made aware of the circumstance, granted Mallet an allowance, which he did not live long to enjoy. He died at Geneva, of an attack of paralysis, on the 8th of February 1807.

Mallet was an associate of the Academy of Inscriptions of France, a member of the academies of Upsal, Lyons, and Cassel, and of the Celtic Society. His principal works are,—Introduction à l'Histoire de Danemark, ou l'on Traité de la Religion, des Mœurs, des Lois, et des Usages des Anciens Danois, Copenhagen, 1755-66. This work, the most po- pular of Mallet's in this country, was translated into English and extended by Bishop Percy in 1770, and has recently been republished, with further additions by Blackwell, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library, under the title of Mallet's Northern Antiquities. The Histoire de Danemark, from A.D. 714 to 1699, Copenhagen, 1758-65-77, 3 vols. 4to; De la Forme du Gouvernement de Suede, avec quelques Pieces Originales, contenant les Lois Fondamentales et le Droit Public de ce Royaume, Copenhagen, 1756, 8vo; Histoire de la Maison de Hesse, 1766-85, 4 vols. 8vo; Histoire de la Maison de Brunswick, 1767-85, 4 vols. 8vo; Des Interets et des Devoirs d'un Republicain, par un Citoyen de Raguse, Inverdur, 1770, 8vo; Histoire de la Maison et des Etats de Mecklenbourg, Schwerin, 1796, 1 vol. 4to; it only came down to 1503, and was never finished. Histoire des Suisses ou Helvetiens, Geneva, 1803, 4 vols. 8vo; Histoire de la Ligue Hanseatique, Geneva, 1805, 8vo; Memoires sur la Litérature du Nord, Copenhagen, 1759-60, 6 vols. 8vo. Also a Traduction du Voyage de Will. Coxe en Pologne, Russie, Suede, et Danemark, Geneva, 1786, 4 vols. 8vo, with the Voyage en Norvège. He also published a new and enlarged edition of the Dictionnaire de la Suisse, by Tscharnier, Geneva, 1788, 3 vols. 8vo. (See De la Vie et des Ecrits de P. H. Mallet, by I. C. L. S. Sissomdi, Geneva, 1807, 8vo.)

Mallet-Prevost, Henri, the eldest brother of the preceding, was a geographer of some note, born at Geneva in 1727, and died at the same place in 1811.

Mallet-Dupan, Jacques, kinsman of the former, and a royalist writer of great power and originality during the French revolution, was born at Geneva in 1749. He was one of the conductors of the Mercure de France, and edited the Mercure Britannique, published in London during his residence in that city in 1789-99. He died at Richmond in 1800. (See Memoirs and Correspondence of Mallet-Dupan, by Sayous, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1852.)

Mallicolli, or Manicola, one of the largest of the New Hebrides group of islands in the South Pacific, in S. Lat. 16° 30', and E. Long. 167° 57'. It is about 54 miles in length, and from 15 to 21' in breadth, while it rises to a considerable height. A great part of the surface is covered with forests. Mallicolli was discovered by Quiros in 1606, and visited by Cook in 1774. The inhabitants are diminutive, ugly, and in the lowest state of barbarism.