As there was no further naval service for Sir Pulteney Malcolm, his rank
in the navy continued to rise according to the established routine. He was
advanced, therefore, to the rank of vice-admiral in 1821, and of full admiral in
1837. During this interval he was also invested with the Grand Cross of the
Bath in 1833. To some of our narrow-minded political economists, who can only
measure the value of public services by their noise and glitter, the rewards that
had been conferred upon him were thought to be beyond his deserts; and an
attack of this kind upon Sir Pulteney in Parliament, produced from one of his
friends an indignant reply. We quote from it the following just and rapid summary of the admiral's career:—
"He was the son of a humble sheep farmer, and had won his fame, as his brother, Sir John, also had done, without the aid of powerful friends. He had risen to the highest honours of his profession by his own exertions, and his honour, till the other night, had never been questioned; he enjoyed a spotless reputation, and possessed the friendship not only of the great men that were at present in existence, but those who had departed. He was the comrade in arms of the gallant Nelson; and in the last action in which that great man was engaged, he commanded a ship which had the splendid distinction of being called the Happy Donegal. He had the friendship of the first general of the day (the Duke of Wellington). He had the honour of conveying in the ship under his command the hero of Assay e. Sir Pulteney Malcolm at Vigo, landed the future conqueror of the Peninsula. At the special desire of the Duke of Wellington, the flag of Sir Pulteney Malcolm was flying at Ostend when the destinies of the convulsed world were decided in the field of Waterloo. As a conqueror, he became the friend of the conquered. His flag was at St. Helena during the time Napoleon was there, and by the cordiality of his disposition and manners, he not only obtained the confidence, but won the affections of that great man, who, in his last moments, acknowledged his generosity and benevolence."
Thus honoured in his public, and beloved in private life, Sir Pulteney Malcolm died at East Lodge, Enfield, on the 20th of July, 1838, in the eighty-first year of his age. A public monument has since been erected to his memory.
MAYNE, John.—This amiable and talented poet was born at Dumfries, on the 26th of March, 1759, and was educated at the grammar-school of that town, under Dr. Chapman, whose learning and worth his grateful pupil afterwards commemorated in the "Siller Gun." His stay at school was a short one, and his progress in scholarship afterwards was chiefly accomplished by self education, as he became a printer at a very early age, and was employed upon the "Dumfries Journal," which was conducted by Professor Jackson. He had not been long thus occupied, when he left Dumfries for Glasgow, to which latter city he accompanied his father's family, and took up his residence with them at the farther extremity of the Green of Glasgow, this locality being commonly called Greenhead by the citizens, who have, time out of mind, been proud of this their place of public recreation on the banks of the Clyde. At a very early period, the chief predilection of John Mayne appears to have been towards poetry, and that, too, in his own native dialect, instead of the statelier and more fashionable diction of Pope and Addison. In him such a preference was the more commendable, because it was before the poetry of Burns had arrested the decay of our Doric tongue, and given it a classical permanency. It deserves
