MLR, 104.3, 2009 841 have incorporated thewealth of insight and information found in themuch larger bibliographical work these scholars produced with The Pamela Controversy: Criti cisms and Adaptations of Samuel Richardson's 'Pamela, 1740-1750, 6 vols (London: Pickering 6kChatto, 2001), which provides headnotes to the facsimiles of themany pamphlets, parodies, plays, verses, illustrations, and other printed matter generated by the 'Epidemical Phrenzy' caused by Richardson's best-seller. Another overlooked study, Janine Barchas's Graphic Design, Print Culture, and theEighteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), has raised a number of important issues about typography and textualmeaning in thisprinter's fiction. Itmay well be that the final chapter of this book, a meditation on our present electronic media revolution, is themost original contribution offered here. But the apocalyptic call for a 'restructuring of knowledge itself seems unlikely to help the cause of teaching the humanities as aworthwhile pursuit of ideas. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign John A. Dussinger David Mallet, Anglo-Scott: Poetry, Patronage, and Politics in theAge ofUnion. By Sandro Jung. Newark: Delaware University Press. 2008. 211 pp. ?33.50. ISBN 978-0-87413-005-8. David Mallet (i70i/2?-i765) was a Scottish-born poet, dramatist, and historian. He mingled with literati including Aaron Hill, JamesThomson, and Alexander Pope, wrote for the patriot* opposition to Robert Walpole, and was literary executor to that opposition's leader,Henry St John,Viscount Bolingbroke. Here, Sandro Jung seeks to overturn Samuel Johnson's unjustly negative' (p. 55), 'jealous' (p. 13), and 'spiteful' (p. 32) 'immoralization ofMallet in the Lives of thePoets' (p. 14). In fact, Jungvastly exaggerates Johnson's actually quite mild censure, overstating itsnegative influence on Mallet's posthumous reputation. This is indicative: Jung's treatment of hismaterial is amateurish and error-strewn throughout thisbook. The section on The Excursion (1728), Mallet's first long poem, isan extended example, as Jungattempts to account for revisions made to the 1743 second edition, suggesting thatMallet adapted his 'flightof fancy' poem to the new trend, the sublime. However, the literaryanalysis, when itcomes, is rambling, vague, and inconclusive, bombarding the reader with tangentially relevant information, quoting at lengths that occlude close engagement, and listing literary techniques without analysing or accounting for them (see page 45 on 'synesthesia', for example). Mallet's tragedies, Eurydice (1731) and Mustapha (1739), and his other long poem, Amyntor and Theodora (1747), get similarly patchy attention. Perhaps themost significant new information in Jung'sbook is the existence of a draft ofMallet's biography of the Duke ofMarlborough, commissioned by his widow, theDuchess, in 1744, butwhich everyone assumed Mallet had not even startedwhen he died in 1765. It is typical of the book's skewed prioritization that Junggives this just four anodyne pages in the epilogue (pp. 163-66). Moreover, Jung'sbook isburdened throughout by arbitrary and irrelevantdetails. For example, we are told that '[John]Dyer's friendshipwith John Wesley, the founder 842 Reviews ofMethodism, may also have influencedMallet inhis religious convictions' (p. 31). Wild conjectures need some elaboration; this is tacked on to the end of a paragraph and nowhere pursued. In addition, thebook misleads the reader. Jungclaims (p. 140) that 'ithas generally been assumed thatMallet was responsible' for changes to the 1752 edition of Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use ofHistory (1738), but cites a 1962 article which proves Mallet was not theman. How can an assumption be general' when dismissed for almost fifty years? If this seems pedantic, there are certainlymore egregious errors: 'Before theRestoration [Bolingbroke] had engaged in the negotiations against the Exclusion Bill', states Jung (p. 89). Even if we accept 'Restoration' (1660) as a slip for 'Revolution' (1688), this is nonsense: Bolingbroke was born in 1678 and was not so precocious as to have opposed the Exclusion Bill one year later. Jung continues: 'Bolingbroke, a Tory, then confirmed his staunch allegiance to Jameswho succeeded his brother Charles as King James II (1685-88)' (ibid.). How useful James II found the staunch allegiance of the ten-year-old St John history has not recorded. Worst of all, one senses that there are interesting things to be said about Mallet in regard to the three items in Jung's subtitle?poetry...