MALHERBE, FRANCOIS DE, a French lyric poet and miscellaneous writer of great industry, born at Caen, is, from his correct though affected style, regarded as one of the reformers of the French language (1555-1628).

MALIGNANTS, the advisers of Charles I., chief among whom were Strafford and Laud; were so called by the Parliamentarians, who blamed them for the evils of the country; the name was afterwards applied to the whole Royalist party.

MALINES or MECHLIN (52), a Belgian city on the Dyle, 14 m.  S. of Antwerp; has lost its old commercial activity, and is now the quiet ecclesiastical capital; masterpieces of Van Dyck and Rubens adorn its churches.

MALINGERING, a name given in the army to the crime of feigning illness to evade duty or obtain a discharge.

MALLET, DAVID, originally MALLOCH, Scottish litterateur, born in Crieff; wrote several plays, and is remembered for his ballad entitled “William and Margaret”; he was a friend of Thomson, and divided with him the honour of the authorship of “Rule Britannia,” the merit of which, however, is more in the music than in the poetry, about which they contested (1702-1765).

MALLOCK, WILLIAM HURRELL, author, born in Devonshire, educated at Oxford; published “The New Republic,” 1876, a masterly satire on prominent contemporaries, which none of his subsequent work has excelled; b. 1849.

MALMAISON, a historical chateau 10 m.  W. of Paris; belonged originally to Richelieu; saw the last days of Josephine, whose favourite residence it was, and was the scene of the repulse of Ducrot’s sortie in October 1870.

MALMESBURY, WILLIAM OF, an English chronicler of the 12th century; his chief work “Gesta Regum Anglorum” and “Gesta Pontificum Anglorum,” followed by his “Historia Novella.”

MALMOe (50), important seaport and third town of Sweden, opposite Copenhagen; ships farm produce, cement, and timber; imports machinery, textile fabrics, and coffee; has cigar and sugar factories, and some shipbuilding.

MALONE, EDMUND, a Shakespearian critic and editor, born in Dublin, was a stickler for literary accuracy and honesty (1741-1812).

MALORY, SIR THOMAS, flourished in the 15th century; was the author of “Morte d’Arthur,” being a translation in prose of a labyrinthine selection of Arthurian legends, which was finished in the ninth year of Edward IV., and printed fifteen years after by Caxton “with all care.”

MALPIGHI, MARCELLO, Italian anatomist and professor of Medicine; noted for his discovery of the corpuscles of the kidney and the spleen, named after him (1628-1694).

MALSTROeM, or MAELSTROeM, a dangerous whirlpool off the coast of Norway, caused by the rushing of the currents of the ocean in a channel between two of the Loffoden Islands, and intensified at times by contrary winds, to the destruction often of particularly small craft caught in the eddies of it, and sometimes of whales attempting to pass through it.