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MAL
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MAL

Reed's Shakspeare, controverting the views of Steevens, led to a quarrel. Malone had been destined by Steevens to be his successor in the editorship of Shakspeare. Instead of successor, he became a rival; and adopting a different theory of Shakspeare's text, accepting whenever he could the readings of the first folio, which Steevens treated with contempt, he elaborated an edition of Shakspeare of his own. After eight years spent in collecting and digesting material gathered from every source, he published in 1790, in ten volumes, his edition of "The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare," which at once placed him in the first rank of Shakspearean editors. Caution and research are Malone's characteristics as an editor and writer; his biography of the poet, still more his historical account of the English stage, accompanying his edition of Shakspeare, were the results of an industry that never wearied, and a vigilance that never slumbered. In 1782 he had entered into the Rowley controversy, and published a volume of "Cursory Remarks," which powerfully aided in disproving the genuineness of the Rowley poems and in producing the belief that they were the work of Chatterton. In 1796, in like manner, his "Inquiry into the authenticity of certain papers attributed to Shakspeare" gave the death-blow to the Ireland forgeries. In 1797 he prefixed an accurate memoir of his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, to an edition of the painter's literary remains. In 1800 appeared his edition of the "Critical and miscellaneous prose writings of Dryden, with an account of the life and writings of the author," a work displaying all his usual originality of research, and which paved the way for Scott's Dryden. An edition of William Gerard Hamilton's works, with memoir prefixed, appeared in 1808, and successive editions of Boswell's Johnson owed much to Malone's revision and annotations. He died in May, 1812, and his valuable library was presented by his brother to the Bodleian. The completion of his extended edition of Shakspeare devolved upon the son of Johnson's biographer. It appeared in 21 vols. in 1821. The only biographical memorial of this singularly laborious and reliable illustrator of our early drama, was a mere sketch published in several forms by the younger Boswell, until in 1860 appeared an elaborate Life of Edmund Malone, with selections from his manuscript annotations, by Sir James Prior, the biographer of Burke and Goldsmith.—F. E.

MALPIGHI, Marcello, a distinguished physician, anatomist, and physiologist, born near Bologna in 1628. He studied medicine at the university of Bologna, and received his degree there in 1653. He was the pupil, and afterwards the son-in-law of Massari, at whose house he and some other young men were accustomed to meet in private to work at dissections, and to discuss the important discoveries of the day. He successively filled the chairs of medicine in the universities of Bologna and Pisa, at which latter place he acquired the friendship of the celebrated Borelli, professor of mathematics in that school. The climate of Pisa not agreeing with him, he was compelled to vacate his chair there and return to Bologna. In 1662, however, he was called to succeed Castello at Messina, and remained as professor of medicine there for four years. In 1666 he again returned to Bologna, where he continued to reside till 1691, when he was invited to Rome, receiving the appointment of chief physician and chamberlain to Pope Innocent XI. He died at Rome in 1694, and his remains were embalmed and conveyed to Bologna, where they were interred with great honours. Malpighi ranks very high among the philosophers of the physiological age in which he lived. At that time physiological inquiries had begun to be prosecuted earnestly and with success; nature had begun to be studied instead of books, and the dreams of the schools were giving place to practical inquiries and observations. He had early in life learned the necessity of making experiment the foundation of true philosophy, and several striking discoveries were the result. Such are those with regard to the anatomy of the skin and secreting glands. Malpighi appears to have been the first physiologist who examined the circulation of the blood by means of the microscope; he also published some excellent observations on the chemical and other qualities of the blood; and his work on the process of incubation was an important addition to the knowledge of his day. While prosecuting his anatomical inquiries connected with the animal kingdom, he was led to pay attention to the anatomy and physiology of vegetables. The structure and physiology of plants had hitherto been but little investigated. On these subjects, however, Malpighi has shown himself an original as well as a profound observer. Malpighi is the author of numerous important treatises, and several editions of his complete works have at different times been published. Plumier has dedicated a genus of plants to him—Malpighia.—W. B—d.

MALTBY, Edward, D.D., bishop successively of Chichester and Durham, was born in 1770 at Norwich, at the grammar-school of which city he was educated under Dr. Parr, by whose advice he was sent to Winchester. He proceeded thence to Pembroke college, Cambridge, where, as previously at Norwich and Winchester, he highly distinguished himself. Entering the church, he was appointed examining chaplain to Bishop Pretyman; and in 1803 he published a collection of sermons, "Illustrations of the truth of the Christian Religion." In 1823 he succeeded Bishop Heber as preacher of Lincoln's inn. In 1831 he was appointed bishop of Chichester, and in 1836 he was translated to Durham. He was very active in the organization of the new university of Durham, to which he transferred his valuable library. In 1856, having entered his eighty-seventh year, he was allowed by a special act of parliament to resign his see, and an annuity of £4500 was secured to him. He died in London in July, 1859. At least as early as 1815 he published an improved edition of Morell's Lexicon Græco-Prosodiacum, a work which, still further improved in successive editions, came to be known as "Maltby's Greek Gradus."—F. E.

MALTE-BRUN (the name adopted in France by Malte-Conrad Bruun), an eminent Danish geographer, was born at Thisted in Jutland on the 12th of August, 1775, and died in Paris on the 14th of December, 1826. He was the son of a councillor of justice, and was destined by his father for the church; but he quitted that profession for the bar. Having published some political writings of a revolutionary tendency, he was twice prosecuted by the Danish government. On the first occasion he took refuge in Sweden, and was soon permitted to return; on the second occasion he fled to Hamburg, was sentenced in absence to a long period of banishment, and finally removed to France about the time of the establishment of the consulate, with a view, it is said, of seeking some political appointment under a government which he admired. He abandoned that project, however, upon the appointment of Bonaparte to the consulate for life, of which he strongly disapproved, and devoted himself for the rest of his life to science and literature. Between 1803 and 1807 he wrote, along with Edme Montelle and Herbin, a voluminous work entitled "Geographié mathématique, physique, et politique de toutes les parties du monde," which established for him a high reputation as a geographer. In the course of the same period he wrote various other geographical works and memoirs, and set on foot a geographical periodical. The great work on which his fame chiefly rests is the well-known "Précis de la Géographie Universelle," of which the first volume appeared in 1810. In 1821 he took a leading part in founding the "Société de Géographie."—His son, Victor-Adolphe Malte-Brun, also an eminent geographer, lately edited a new edition of his father's great work.—W. J. M. R.

MALTHUS, Thomas Robert, the founder of a once flourishing sect of social economists called after him Malthusians, was born in 1766 at the seat of his father, the Rookery, in the vicinity of Dorking, Surrey. The elder Malthus, a gentleman of fortune, was a personal friend and disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the education which he gave his second son was of the most "liberal" kind. Robert Graves, the author of the Spiritual Quixote, and Gilbert Wakefield, were among his early instructors, and from the care of the latter at the academy at Warrington he proceeded to Jesus' college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. Taking orders he received the pastoral care of a small parish in the neighbourhood of his birthplace, and about this time, 1792, he wrote a pamphlet never published, "The Crisis," in which he opposed the policy of Pitt. Frequently conversing on such subjects as the perfectibility of man, on which his father had embraced the views of Godwin and Condorcet, he was accustomed to raise to the doctrines of these philosophers objections founded on the tendency of the human race to increase in population beyond the means of subsistence. In 1798 he published an essay on population which embodied his views. In the following year he made a tour in the north of Europe in search of data, and in the company of Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Otter and bishop of Chichester, who was destined to become his biographer. After his return he published in 1803 a new edition of his "Essay on the principle of population," which excited great attention in England and on the