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FAMOUS SONGS
produced. Garrick himself afterwards tried to turn Mallet's failure as a masque into a tragedy, in 1773, to recover some of the money he had lost upon it, but he was not more successful than before. Mallet's f Life of the Duke of Marlborough' was paid for but never written. Mallet employed Lord Bolingbroke to write three additional verses for ' Rule Britannia' to replace three of Thomson's (which he would never have done if they had been his own) but the public would not have the new verses, and insisted upon Thomson's which they knew." To add further proof to the fact that Thomson was the genuine author of " Rule Britannia," I may state that in all the public advertisements when Arne's opera was played, Thomson's name alone was announced as the author of the ode. The rest of David Mallet's shameful life will be found in any English biography. He enjoyed a considerable pension, which had been bestowed on him for his success in turning the public ven-geance upon Admiral Byng by means of a letter of accusation under the character of " A Plain Man." That pension was Mallet's blood money. He had also a legacy of the copyright of Lord Bolingbroke's " Works," Bolingbroke having employed him to " blast the memory of Pope/' " a n office which he executed with all the
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