MACHLINIA, WILLIAM de (fl. 1482–1490), printer, appears, as his name denotes, to have been a native of Mechlin in Belgium. It is uncertain when he first came to England or when he first began to print, but in 1482 he was in partnership with John Lettou [q. v.] for some months at a printing-press near the church of All Saints in the city of London. There they printed the first edition of the 'Tenores Novelli,' by Sir Thomas Littleton [q. v.], and a few other works. From about 1483 to 1485 Machlinia was residing alone near the Fleet Bridge, where he printed ' Vulgaria Terencii,' Albertus Magnus's 'Liber Aggregationis' and 'Secreta Mulierum,' the 'Revelation to a Monke of Evesham,' 'Horæ ad usum Sarum,' and a few other books. From about 1485 he had a press in Holborn, where he printed 'The Chronicles of England;' Canutus 'On the Pestilence' (perhaps in consequence of that which raged in London in the first year of Henry VII)—of this he issued three editions; the ' Speculum Christian'; 'a few law books, and a bull of Innocent VIII (dated 2 March 1485-6), being a broadside relating to Henry VIIs title and marriage. About twenty-two books are allotted to Machlinia's press, some being only known by a few detached leaves: one edition of Canutus 'On the Pestilence,' printed by Machlinia, has a separate title-page, an innovation not known in England before 1491-2. Machlinia appears to have been succeeded as a printer by Richard Pynson [q. v.]
[Information from E. Gordon Duff, esq.; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Early English Books to 1640; Ames's Typographical Antiquities.]
MACIAN of Glencoe. [See Macdonald, Alexander, d. 1692.]
M'IAN, ROBERT RONALD (1803–1856), painter of historical subjects, born in 1803, was descended from the old M'Ians or Maedonalds of Glencoe, Argyllshire. In his early years he was an actor, a member of the Bath and Bristol company; and on the London stage he attracted attention by his spirited representations of such highland characters as the Dougal Creature in the 'Twa Drovers' of Scott. Meanwhile he had been diligently training himself in art. In 1835 and 1837, while acting in the English Opera House, he exhibited in the Suffolk Street Gallery, and in 1836 he sent a landscape to the Royal Academy. In 1838 he was engaged at Covent Garden, and in 1839 at Drury Lane, but in the latter year he abandoned the stage, and devoted himself entirely to art, entering upon the pursuit with all the energy of a particularly enthusiastic temperament, and deriving the subjects of his figure-pictures from highland history and familiar life. In 1843 he produced 'The Battle of Culloden' and 'A Highland Feud,' and in the same year his 'Highland Cearnach defending a Pass' was exhibited in the Royal Academy. One of his most ambitious efforts, 'An Incident in the Revolutionary War of America' (the Fraser highlanders at Stone-ferry), was exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy in 1854. The national character of his subjects rendered the engravings from his pictures very popular in the highlands, and his work on 'The Clans of the Scottish Highlands/ illustrated from his original sketches of costumes, arms, &c, published in 1845, was reissued in 1857. He was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1852, and died at Hampstead, 13 Dec. 1856. Milan's wife, Mrs. Fanny M'Ian, was long a teacher in the female school of design, Somerset House, London (see Macready, Reminiscences, vol. ii.) She exhibited works, of a similar character to those of her husband, in the Royal Academy, Royal Scottish Academy, and the British Institution. Her 'Highlander defending his Family at the Massacre of Glencoe' has been engraved.
[Redgrave's Dictionary; Brydall's Art in Scotland; Exhibition Catalogues.]
MACILWAIN, GEORGE (1797–1882), medical writer, born in 1797, was the son of an Irish country surgeon, who had been a pupil of John Abernethy (1764-1831) [q. v.] In 1814 he was likewise sent to study under Abernethy at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 4 Sept. 1818, being elected honorary fellow in 1843. For twenty years he was surgeon to the Finsbury Dispensary, and temporarily to the Fever Hospital, being appointed consulting surgeon on his retirement. He was also consulting surgeon to St. Anne's Society schools, and surgeon to the City of London Truss Society. In practice he was opposed to indiscriminate amputation and the use of violent purgatives. He was besides an uncompromising foe to vivisection. In 1871 he gave up his chambers in the Courtyard, Albany, Piccadilly, London, where he had resided since November 1853, and retired to Matching, near Harlow, Essex. He died at Matching on 22 Jan. 1882.
Macilwain was member of the Royal Institution, fellow and for some time vice-president of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society, and member of the Royal Irish Academy.
In 1853 Macilwain published rambling
