one; and, from year to year, he continued to indulge his poetical likings not
only in its columns, but also in the "Gentleman's Magazine," to which he
occasionally contributed from 1807 to 1817. After a long life of usefulness
and comfort, which extended to seventy-eight years, he died in his residence,
No. 2, Lysson Grove, South, on the 14th of March, 1836, and was buried in his family vault, Paddington church-yard.
As a poet, John Mayne must be allowed a much higher standing than is usually given to the Scottish bards of the present century; and in comparing him, it must be with Ramsay, Ferguson, and Hogg, to whom he approached the nearest, rather than with inferior standards. The moral character of his writings, also, cannot be too highly commended. "He never wrote a line," says a popular author, "the tendency of which was not to afford innocent amusement, or to improve and increase the happiness of mankind." Of his private character, Allan Cunningham also testifies that "a better or warmer- hearted man never existed."
MIDDLETON, John, Earl of Middleton.—This man, although neither good nor great, demands, like the Duke of Lauderdale, a place in Scottish biography, in consequence of the pernicious influence he exercised upon Scottish events, and the destinies of better men than himself. He was the eldest son of John Middleton, of Caldhame, in the county of Kincardine, the descend- ant of an ancient Scottish family, that derived its name from the lands of Middleton, in the same county, which had been a donation to the founder of the race by the "gracious Duncan." John, the future earl, like many of the nobly-descended, but scantily-endowed young Scots of this period, appears to have devoted himself to the profession of arms, and "trailed a pike" in Hepburn's regiment during the Huguenot wars in France. Returning from that country during the civil wars of his own, he took service in the parliamentary army of England, and, in 1642, commanded a troop of horse, with the rank of lieutenant-general, under Sir William Waller. After this he returned to Scot- land, and obtained a command, first under Montrose, while still a Covenanter, and afterwards under General Lesley; and with the former of these he saw hot service at the Bridge of Dee, and had a considerable share in the defeat of the Gordons, who were in arms for the king. When the Marquis of Montrose abandoned the ranks of the Covenanters for the service of the king, he afterwards found in Middleton one of his most determined opponents; and for this, indeed, according to all Scottish reckoning, there was but too good a cause, for his father had been shot by the soldiers of the marquis in 1645, while sitting peacefully in his hall in the mansion of Caldhame. Middleton soon obtained both revenge and honour, for he greatly contributed, as Lesley's lieutenant-general, to the defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh, on the 13th September, during the same year ; and so highly were his services valued on this occasion, that the Scottish parliament voted him a gift of 25,000 marks. When the formidable marquis raised a fresh army, and renewed the war, Middleton was sent against him as commander of the Covenanters; and so well did he acquit himself in this charge, that he raised the siege of Inverness, and pressed so vigorously upon Montrose as to compel him, in July, 1646, to sign a capitulation, by which he agreed to leave the kingdom, on condition of an indemnity being granted to his followers.
The change of political events now threw Middleton into a new course of action, and prepared him for that life of apostasy and persecution by which he was afterwards signalized. The Scottish parliament, that had done so much
