JOHN GALT

'The amazing rapidity with which he wrote, caused him too often to delay his work to the very last moment, so that he almost always wrote under compulsion, and every second of time was of consequence. Under such a mode of labour there was no hour left for relaxation. When regularly in for an article for Blackwood, his whole strength was put forth, and it may be said he struck into life what he had to do at a blow. He at these times began to write immediately after breakfast, that meal being despatched with a swiftness commensurate with the necessity of the case before him. He then shut himself into his study, with an express command that no one was to disturb him, and he never stirred from his writing-table until perhaps the greater part of aNocteswas written, or some paper of equal brilliancy and interest completed. The idea of breaking his labour by taking a constitutional walk never entered his thoughts for a moment. Whatever he had to write, even though a day or two were to keep him close at work, he never interrupted his pen, saving to take his night's rest, and a late dinner served to him in his study. The hour for that meal was on these occasions nine o'clock; his dinner then consisted invariably of a boiled fowl, potatoes, and a glass of water—he allowed himself no wine. After dinner he resumed his pen till midnight, when he retired to bed, not unfrequently to be disturbed by an early printer's boy.'

His rapidly turned-out 'copy' would soon cover the table at which he wrote, after which the floor about his feet would be strewn with pages of his MS. 'thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.' Nor did he, even inthe depth of winter, indulge in a fire in his study, or in any other illumination than that afforded by a tallow candle set in a kitchen candlestick.

In the meantime he had not lost his love of the country and of country pursuits, and we hear of holidays spent at Innerleithen, in Ettrick Forest—where he rented Thirlestane—near Langholm, where his son John was established in a farm, in the Highlands, and in a cruise with an 'Experimental Squadron' of the Navy, during which he was accommodated with a swinging cot in the cockpit of H.M.S.Vernon. As is the case in the lives of so many celebrated men, these years, though the most fruitful, were not the most eventful of his life, and therefore call for less detailed examination than those which had preceded them. His character was formed, he was in the full swing of his labours, and the best key to the history of this period is to be found in the study of theNoctes, theRecreations, and the other works which it produced.

His heroic literary activity was continued down to 1840, in which year he was attacked by a paralytic affection of the right hand, which made writing irksome to him, so that for the next five years he contributed but two papers to the magazine. This ailment was the first warning he received that his wonderful constitution and great physical strength were subject to the universal law. But already the hand of death had been busy among his circle. In 1834 he had lost his esteemed friend Blackwood, in 1835 the Ettrick Shepherd had followed the publisher, whilst in 1837 he sustained the supreme bereavement by losing his beloved and devoted wife. His grief on this occasion was profound and lasting, and atouching picture of its uncontrollable outbursts in the presence of his class has been preserved. There, if anything occurred to renew the memory of his sorrow, he would pause for a moment or two in his lecture, 'fling himself forward on the desk, bury his face in his hands, and while his whole frame heaved with visible emotion, would weep and sob like a very child.' So, in his work and his play, his joy and his sorrow, the whole man was cast in an heroic mould. And, with that singular but sincere, though oft misunderstood, fantasticness, which in imaginative natures demands the outward visible sign, as long as he lived he continued with scrupulous care the habit of wearing white cambric weepers on the sleeves of his coat or gown, out of respect for the memory of his faithful partner.

The shadows were already falling thick about the lion-like head of the old Professor, and we have now to acknowledge that between his last years and the rest of his life there exists a discrepancy as regrettable as it is unexpected. The highest of animal spirits had been his through the brilliant promise of youth and the happy activity and domesticity of maturity, and when we remember his robust constitution and mellow philosophy, we naturally look forward to see him enjoy a green and peaceful old age. But such prognostications are apt to be fallacious, and the fact stands that his old age was a melancholy one. Nor was its melancholy of that kind, by no means incompatible with a large measure of serenity, which is directly traceable to evils common to all men whose years are prolonged; it was a peculiar despondency, profound and unexplained. Indeed the last pages of theLifeare sad reading, and we pass hastily over them to the end.

The first symptom of the alteration in his character of which we hear is his sense of loneliness. There was no occasion for him to be lonely, for he was rich in affectionate children and grand-children, yet in spite of these his habits insensibly became solitary, he grew to dislike being intruded upon, and at last was seldom seen in public. Still for a time his broad-brimmed hat with its deep crape band, his flowing locks, and his stately figure buttoned in its black coat, continued to be welcome sights in the streets of Edinburgh, and still he continued, without intermission, his labours among his class, until, in the winter of 1850, an alarming seizure which occurred in his retiring-room at the University compelled him to absent himself from his duties. In the following year he finally retired from the Professorship, which he had held for thirty years, his services being recognized by Government with a pension of £300 a year.

He now felt that his usefulness in life was over, and from henceforth his despondency deepened. We read that 'something of a settled melancholy rested on his spirit, and for days he would scarcely utter a word or allow a smile to lighten up his face;' and, again, that 'long and mournful meditation took possession of him; days of silence revealed the depth of his suffering, and it was only by fits and starts that anything like composure visited his heart.' He himself speaks of his 'hopeless misery.' 'Nothing,' he said to his daughter, 'can give you an idea of how utterly wretched I am; my mind is going, I feel it.' And, indeed, it seems that a gradualmental decline had set in. But he was spared its progress. On the 1st April 1854, at his house in Gloucester Place, he was attacked by paralysis, and there two days later, mourned by an almost patriarchal family of descendants, he breathed his last.

In the details of his daily life, Wilson was accustomed to follow his own inclinations more than 'tis given to most men to do, his robust individuality disdaining the minor fashions and conventions of the day, whilst his native independence, and still more his love of home, made him completely indifferent to what is known as social success. It is not in the 'great world,' therefore, that we must seek for the traits which characterize him. But a man is what he is at home, and within his own sphere Wilson's sympathies were of the widest and deepest. He was adored by every member of his large family, whilst his own large-hearted affection embraced all, down to—or, as perhaps I should say, remembering his special love for young children, up to the youngest babe in the household. Such anecdotes, too, as those told by his daughter of his generous treatment of his defaulting uncle, of his relations with his superannuated henchman, Billy Balmer, or of his sitting up all night at the bedside of an old female servant who was dying, 'arranging with gentle but awkward hand the pillow beneath her head,' or cheering her with encouraging words,—these speak more for the genuine humanity of the man than a thousand triumphs gained in an artificial world.

He also shared with Sir Walter Scott the love of birds and animals of all kinds, from the dog, Rover—one of many dogs—who, crawling upstairs in its last moments, died with its paw in its master's hand, to the sparrowwhich inhabited his study for eleven years, and which, boldly perching on his shoulder, would sometimes carry off a hair from his shaggy head to build its nest. In these matters animals have an instinct which rarely misleads them, and that they had good grounds for recognizing a friend in the Professor is proved by the following incident. One afternoon Wilson, then far advanced in life, was observed remonstrating with a carter who was driving an overladen horse through the streets of Edinburgh—

'The carter, exasperated at this interference, took up his whip in a threatening way, as if with intent to strike the Professor. In an instant that well-nerved hand twisted it from the coarse fist of the man, as if it had been a straw, and walking quietly up to the cart he unfastened itstrams, and hurled the whole weight of coals into the street. The rapidity with which this was done left the driver of the cart speechless. Meanwhile, poor Rosinante, freed from his burden, crept slowly away, and the Professor, still clutching the whip in one hand, and leading the horse in the other, proceeded through Moray Place to deposit the wretched animal in better keeping than that of his driver.'

'This little episode,' adds the writer, 'is delightfully characteristic of his impulsive nature, and the benevolence of his heart.'

Whilst human nature remains what it is, traits of such broad and genial humanity as this are never out of date; but when we turn from the writer to the writings, it is to find the case altered, and ourselves brought face to face with the devastations of time. In the sense of great and immediate effect produced by his work, Wilson was unquestionably the most brilliant, as—excepting the too-fertile Galt—he was the most prolific, of the group of distinguished authors who are here associated with the publishing-house of Blackwood; yet in vitality, in enduring freshness, such a novel asThe Inheritance, such asea-piece asTom Cringle's Log, not to speak of such a character-study asThe Provost, to-day leaves his work far behind. Of course this is in large measure due to the nature, not to the defects, of that work. North's most distinctive writings were not creative, and in general it is only creative work that lives. The critic's reputation is transitory; Time's revenge deals swiftly, hardly by it; it has none of the phœnix-property of the creator's. Of all our distinguished critical reputations of the last hundred years or so, how many now survive? To-day the critic Johnson is remembered chiefly for blindness, the critic Jeffrey for overweening self-confidence when he was wrong, the critic Macaulay for idle rhetoric and for consistent failure to strike the mark. The appreciator Lamb is almost alone in holding his own. And there is not one reader in a thousand who has time, or cares, for the purely historical task of looking closer, of studying these eminent writers in relation to the age in which they lived, and of estimating accordingly the services which they performed. Christopher North, in so far as he was a critic, has not escaped the common doom. Scattered over the pages of theNoctes, there are no doubt some shrewd and pregnant observations upon writers and upon literature. But these sparse grains of salt are not enough to preserve the general fabric from decay; whilst the more numerous errors of judgment in which his work abounds require no pointing out. As a reviewer North was not lacking in discrimination, as may be seen in the historical though generally misconceived essay on Tennyson; and, granted a really good opportunity—as in the case of that completion ofChristabelwhich was to Martin Tupper the pastime of some idle days—noman knew better how to avail himself of it. The pages signed by him also afford abundant evidence of the gentleness, generosity, and enthusiasm of his spirit. But when so much has been said, what remains to be added? Of stimulus to the reader, of conspicuous insight into the subject discussed, we find but little.

Turning to the essays, collected under the title of 'Recreations of Christopher North,' we sometimes see the author to better advantage, as, for instance, when he dons his 'Sporting Jacket,' and recounts in mock-heroic style the Sportsman's Progress. The subject was one which keenly appealed to him, rousing all the enthusiasm of his perfervid nature, and some very bright and characteristic pages are the result.

His hero is fishing, and has hooked a fish.

'But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the waterfall! Give her the butt—give her the butt—or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep!—Now comes the trial of your tackle—and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards—right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very source where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep—and the line goes steady, boys, steady—stiff and steady as a Tory in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal fin—danger in the flap of her tail—and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction—the coast is clear—no tree-roots here—no floating branches—for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch.In medio tutissimus ibis—ay, now you feel she begins to fail—the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to havediscovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook!—you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?—Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council.—Curse that collie! Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks—if that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by between us and the river, then "Madam! all is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made—ten thousand to the Foundling—ditto to the Thames Tunnel——ha—ha—my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself to death! No faith in female—she trusts to the last trial of her tail—sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy planet. Scrope—Bainbridge—Maule—princes among Anglers—oh! that you were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious sympathy—far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! Poor Sandy—why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!—Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with a swirl—whitening as she nears the sand—there she has it—struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or Venus—and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood!'

Nor are his pictures of Coursing and of Fox-Hunting less good. But anon his overladen style crops out again, as in this passage, where he has just discharged his gun into the midst of a flock of wild-duck afloat upon a loch:—

'Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro—who with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quickbreath ever and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards heaven—then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky lines—precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling art—next—nobly done, glorious Fro—that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings—and now, if we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name—finally, that exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means and appliances to boot, carved finely—most finely—by razor-like knife, in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide—tasted by a tongue and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning rose—swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its intense delight—and received into a stomach yawning with greed and gratitude,—Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!'

In point of style could anything well be much worse? Even the far-famedNoctes Ambrosianæ, by much the most celebrated of Wilson's writings, though they may still be dipped into with pleasure, will scarcely stand critical examination nowadays. Of course, from their very nature, they have come to labour under the disadvantage of being largely concerned with topics and persons of long since exhaustedinterest. And, again, their convivial setting, which pleased in its own day, is now probably by many looked upon askance, and that, it must be confessed, not without some show of excuse. If this were all, it would be well. As we have seen, Wilson wrote his dialogues hastily and presumably wrote them for the moment, so that to judge them as permanent contributions to literature is to judge them by a standard contemplated not by the author, but by his injudicious critics. Amongst these, Professor Ferrier, in his introductory critique to the authoritative edition of theNoctes, published forty years ago, most confidently claims that they possess solid and lasting qualities, and in the front rank of these qualities he places humour and dramatic power. Now to us, except in outward form, theNoctesappear almost anything rather than dramatic; they are even less dramatic than the conversation-pieces of Thomas Love Peacock. It is true that of the two principal talkers one speaks Scotch and the other English; but in every other respect they might exchange almost any of their longest and most important speeches without the smallest loss to characterisation. The same authority (I use the word in a purely empirical sense) enthusiastically lauds the creation of The Shepherd; and upon him it is true that, by dint of insistence on two or three superficial mannerisms, a certain shadowy individuality has been conferred. But surely it is needless to point out that a label is not a personality, and that this sort of thing is something quite apart from dramatic creation. The critic then goes on to say that 'in wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humour he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakespeare.' The last part of the sentence strikes us as even more surprising than the first, for had our opinion of theimaginary revellers at Ambrose's been asked we should have had to confess that, though they possess high spirits in abundance and a certain sense of the ludicrous, of humour in the true sense—of the humour, I won't say of a Sterne, but of a Michael Scott—all are alike entirely destitute. And one may even add that with persons of equally high spirits such is almost always the case. Well then, it may be asked, if they lack both humour and dramatic power, in what qualities, pray, do these world-famed dialogues excel? The answer is, of course, that in brilliant intellectual and rhetorical display theNoctesare supreme. Yet here, also, there is often about them something too much of deliberate and self-conscious fine-writing. And yet, even to-day, when tastes have changed and fashions altered, the exuberance of their eloquence is hard to withstand, and in reading them we sometimes almost believe that we are touched when in reality we are merely dazzled. This dazzling quality is not one of the highest in literature: with the single possible exception of Victor Hugo, the greatest writers have always been without it. But it pervades, floods, overwhelms theNoctes. It is a somewhat barren, and unendearing quality at best; yet, after all, it is an undoubted manifestation of intellectual power; and whatever it may be worth, let us give Wilson full credit for having excelled in it.

One last word. The literary workman has no more unpleasing task to perform than that of so-called destructive criticism; but if Wilson himself, as apart from his writings, be indeed, as we believe him to be, an immortal figure, by releasing him from the burden of ill-judged praise which like a mill-stone hangs about his neck, and by setting him in his true light, we shall have donehim no disservice. On the poetic imagination, then, he looms as one heroically proportioned; whilst more practical thinkers will cherish his memory as that of a most brilliant contributor to the periodical literature of his day, a great inspirer of youth, and a standard and pattern to his countrymen of physical and intellectual manhood.

Through life the subject of this sketch was unfortunate; nor has posthumous justice redressed the balance in his favour. His fellow-countrymen and fellow-craftsmen, Scott and Smollett—with whom, if below them, he is not unworthy to be mentioned—have long since been accorded high rank among the great novelists of English literature: Galt remains in obscurity. And yet it is easy to understand how his qualities have failed of recognition. For though his character was in the ordinary sense of the word exemplary, his genius extraordinary, yet in either there was something lacking. Indeed the study of his life and works reveals almost as much to be blamed as to be praised.

John Galt was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, on the 2nd May, 1779, in that humbler station of society, which—in so far as it dispenses with screens and concealments, and so brings a child the sooner face to face with life as it is—may be considered favourable to genius. In childhood he was of infirm constitution and somewhat effeminate disposition—defects which were, however, in due course amply rectified. At this time his passion for flowers and for music gave evidence of a sensibility which, if one is loth to condemn it as unwholesome, is at least of doubtfulaugury for happiness in a workaday world. To these affections he joined the love of ballads and story-books—in the midst of which he would often pass the day in lounging upon his bed. Nor did oral tradition fail him; for, frequenting the society of the indigent old women of the locality, from their lips he would drink in to his heart's content that lore of a departing age which he afterwards turned to such good account in his works. To his own mother, whom nature had gifted with remarkable mental powers, and in particular with a strong sense of humour and a faculty of original expression, his debt was admitted to be great. Not unnaturally Mrs Galt at first strenuously opposed her son's bookish propensities, though it is recorded that she lived to regret having done so. The father, who by profession was master of a West Indiaman, though, in his son's words, 'one of the best as he was one of the handsomest of men,' does not appear in mind and force of character to have risen above mediocrity.

The most striking incident in the childhood of the future novelist is his association with the 'Buchanites,' a religious sect who took their name from a demented female, Mrs Buchan. It happened that this person had been much impressed by the preaching of Mr White, the Relief Minister of Irvine, and had followed him from Glasgow to that place, where some weak-headed members of the congregation mistook her ravings for inspiration, and made her warmly welcome. White himself participated in their delusion, and when authoritatively required to dismiss his adherent, chose rather to resign his church. From this time meetings would be held in a tent, generally in the night time, and there Mrs Buchan would holdforth, announcing herself to be the woman spoken of in the twelfth chapter of the Revelations, and Mr White as the man-child whom she had brought forth. The proceedings attracted public attention, rioting followed, and it was found advisable to expel the evangelists from the town. Some forty or fifty disciples accompanied their exodus, who sang as they went, and declared themselvesen routefor the New Jerusalem, and in the company of the crack-brained enthusiasts went the infant Galt, his imagination captivated by the strangeness of their doings. He had not proceeded far, however, ere that sensible woman, his mother, pounced upon him and bore him off home. Nevertheless the wild psalmody of the occasion abode in his memory, and when in later life, in his fine novel ofRingan Gilhaize, he came to describe the Covenanters, the recollection stood him in good stead. It is also recorded of him that, after reading Pope's Iliad, he was so deeply impressed by the book as to kneel then and there, and humbly and fervently pray that it might be vouchsafed to him to accomplish something equally great. It must not be thought, however, that in him imagination predominated to the exclusion of everything else. On the contrary, to the love of what was beautiful or strange, he united a pronounced mechanical and engineering turn, which led him, among other undertakings, to construct an Æolian harp, and to devise schemes for improving the water-supply of Greenock, the town to which his family had in the meantime removed. Thus was first manifested that diversity of faculty which enabled him in later life with equal ease to pourtray men and manners and to found cities and subdue wastes.

Meantime his education, which had been begun at home and continued at the grammar-school of Irvine, was carried on at Greenock, where it was supplemented with advantage by independent reading in a well-chosen public library. In Greenock, also, where he spent some fifteen years, he was fortunate in having as associates a group of young men whom the spirit of intellectual emulation characterised, and of whom more than one was destined to attain distinction. Among these were Eckford, who is referred to as the future architect and builder of the United States' Navy, and Spence, afterwards the author of a treatise on Logarithmic Transcendents. But undoubtedly young Galt's most congenial companion was one James Park, a youth of elegant and scholarly tastes, who shared in his passion for thebelles-lettres, and criticised in a friendly spirit the attempts which he was now beginning to make as a poet. Would that this young man's influence had been exerted to greater effect, for he seems to have been just the sort of mentor of whom Galt stood in need, and whose discipline throughout life he missed! 'He seemed,' says theAutobiography, 'to consider excellence in literature as of a more sacred nature than ever I did, who looked upon it but as a means of influence.' A means of influence! One would gladly believe this but the querulous insincere utterance of a disappointed man. Unhappily evidence is but too abundant that Galt was consistently lacking in the respect due to his high calling. Among his earliest poetical efforts was a tragedy on the life of Mary Queen of Scots, and in course of time he began to contribute to the local newspaper and to theScots Magazine. With Park and other young men he also joined in essay and debating societies, a recreationwhich they varied by walking-tours to Edinburgh, Loch Lomond, the Border Counties, and elsewhere. Before this time he had been placed in the Custom House at Greenock, to acquire some training as a clerk, whence in due course he was transferred to work in a mercantile office. It was the period of the resumption of the war with France, and he took a leading part in the movement for forming local companies of volunteer riflemen.

This period of his adolescence strikes one as having been unusually prolonged. It came to a sudden and violent end. It appears that about this time a set of purse-proud upstarts, who stood much in need of schooling in more ways than one, had made their appearance in Glasgow. In relation to some matter of business, one of these had addressed an insolent letter to the firm with which Galt was connected. It was delivered into his hands. On discovering its contents his indignation was boundless, and he proceeded to action with all the impetuosity of a Hotspur. Missing the writer in Glasgow, he straightway tracked him to his quarters in Edinburgh, and having bolted the door of the room in which he sat, forced from him a written apology. So much was satisfactory; but the turmoil excited in the young man's brain did not subside immediately. He did not return to his employment, but, after spending some time in an indeterminate sort of fashion, set off for London 'to look about him.' In theAutobiography, written when he was old and an invalid, all this is detailed in a loose and cursory manner. There is no reference to emotion or the inner life, and the style is that of one who, having written many books, is grown very tired of writing. Tothe reader this is the reverse of stimulating; yet whatever may be stated and whatever kept back, we may feel sure that, in so emotional and imaginative a man, an intense inner life must have existed, and one in all probability not of the smoothest. At the time of leaving home, however, the writer acknowledges to having felt exceedingly depressed. Then follows a description of sensations experienced, whilst horses were being changed, on the road between Greenock and Glasgow. His father accompanied him on his journey.

'I walked back on the fields,' says the young man, 'alone, with no buoyant heart. The view towards Argyleshire, from the brow of the hill, is perhaps one of the most picturesque in the world. I have since seen some of the finest scenes, but none superior. At the time it seemed as if some pensive influence rested on the mountains, and silently allured me back; and this feeling was superstitiously augmented by my happening in the same moment to turn round and behold the eastern sky, which lay in the direction of my journey, sullenly overcast. On returning to the inn, the horses had been some time in harness, and my father was a little impatient at my absence, but conjecturing what was passing in my mind, said little; nor did we speak much to each other till the waiter of the inn opened the door for us to alight at Glasgow. In truth I was not blind to the perils which awaited me, but my obstinacy was too indulgently considered.' The above reads like a passage fromThe Omen. In it we see the true Galt, or at least one side of him—brooding, fantastic, the devotee of mysticism, discerning, at this momentous point in his career, the finger of fate where another would have seen but an ordinary process of nature!

As to the time he now spent in London, beyond an incidental admission that it was one of the least satisfactory periods of his career, Galt does not take us into his confidence. One guesses that had he consulted his own feelings only, he would have enjoyed the luxury of writing Confessions. But, after all, he was a Scotchman, though an unusual variety of the class, and Scotchmen do not indulge in luxuries of that kind. His Autobiography, when it came to be written, was in the main a piece of book-making; certainly it has nothing of the confessional character, and, indeed, what of self-revelation he at this time supplies must be sought in his letters to Park.

He had brought with him to the metropolis a goodly number of introductions, which procured him much civility but nothing more. Whilst waiting, however, to see what was to be done for him in the shape of practical assistance, he employed himself in preparing for the press a poem which had been inspired by his studies in antiquarianism, and written some time earlier. The title of this production wasThe Battle of Largs, and its theme the invasion of Scotland by Haco, King of Norway, in the year 1263,—a subject which had already prompted the Titanic suggestions of Lady Wardlaw'sHardyknute. The poem, as it survives in extracts, is turgid, crude, and immature, exhibiting the exact reverse of what is desirable in poetry—to wit, a great expenditure of means to produce a very small result. For 'tis in vain we are assured that desperate deeds are doing if we find it possible to remain completely unmoved. A strain of somewhat similar kind was afterwards taken up by Motherwell, and by Tom Stoddart in the unbridled fantasy of his only half-serious 'Necromaunt,' calledThe Death-Wake.To do Galt justice, he quickly realised that he had mounted the wrong Pegasus, and almost immediately suppressed his poem. He acted wisely, and here once for all it may be admitted that, in the specialised sense of the term, he was no poet. Fancy, imagination, dramatic power, and many another fine attribute of the poet he of course possessed in high degree, but, whether because lacking the 'accomplishment of verse,' or for some other reason, he failed to give expression to these gifts in poetry. Metre seems to have impeded rather than assisted him, and he is most poetic when writing in prose—a conclusion suggested by the poem now under consideration, and borne out by hisStar of Destiny, his posthumousDemon of Destiny, and his poetic plays. From his own frank avowal that, when drawing up a list of his works for publication, an epic[3]was overlooked, we judge that not much of the labour of the file was expended upon his verse.

He waited for some months in London, whiling away the time, as he pretends, by dabbling in astrology, alchemy, and other studies which served to feed his love of the occult, and then at last, in despair, decided to shift for himself. This led to his entering into partnership with a young Scotchman named McLachlan, in a business which, for reasons unknown, is mentioned only under the vague name of a 'commercial enterprise.' Whatever may have been its nature, for Galt this undertaking started badly, and after a period of better success, at the end of three years ended in bankruptcy. The precise steps by which this final consummation was reached are carefully detailed by Galt, yet tominds unversed in commercial procedure they remain very far from clear. In general terms, however, we gather that the failure was due to the dishonesty of a debtor, occurring in conjunction with a succession of financial misfortunes.

Having failed in commerce, Galt's next thought was of the Law. He entered himself of Lincoln's Inn, and whilst waiting to be formally called to the Bar, went abroad in the hope of improving his health, which was not good at the time. He tells us that by this time he had realised that, without friends, there is no such thing as 'getting on' in life possible. These he was conscious of lacking, and when he now turned his back on England it was, in his own words, half desiring that no event might occur to make him ever wish to return. He betook himself in the first instance to Gibraltar, where, in the well-known Garrison Library, he had his first glimpse of a young man whose feelings, had they been revealed, might have been found to tally strangely with his own. Lord Byron, at that time known only as the author of a mordant satire, was starting upon the tour which was so soon to make him famous, and as Galt had him and Hobhouse for fellow-travellers to Malta and Sicily, he got to know them fairly well. It is noticeable that his first impressions of the Pilgrim betray prejudice; and that long afterwards, when he was called on to be his biographer, he complains that Moore's portrait reveals only the sunny side of his lordship's character, and is 'too radiant and conciliatory.'

After visiting Malta and Sicily, Galt proceeded to Athens. His active mind, abhorring idleness, was soon at work again. It may be remembered that this was the period of Buonaparte's endeavour to enforce his nefariousBerlin and Milan Decrees, which had been designed with the object of annihilating British commerce. Our traveller now conceived the idea that they might be evaded by introducing British goods into the Continent through Turkey. And here it may be noted that his biographers have united in representing this scheme as the object of his going abroad, whereas he himself distinctly, though incidentally, states that he left England for the benefit of his health,[4]and that his scheme first occurred to him when at Tripolizza.[5]This fact, immaterial in itself, is of importance as affording evidence that his circumstances at the time were fairly easy; for his travels must have been costly, yet they do not appear to have brought him in any return until after his written account of them had been published, when he was recouped for the whole, or a part, of his outlay.

In pursuance of the newly-devised scheme, it was now his object to find a locality where a depôt of goods might be established. For this purpose, after visiting various out of the way places, he selected Mykoni, an island of the Archipelago, which possessed an excellent harbour, where he acquired a large building, suited for a storehouse, which had originally been erected by Orloff at a time when the Empress Catherine the Second had designs on these islands. Hence, in the summer of 1810, he returned to Malta, to make known and to develope his scheme, and whilst awaiting the result of communications with England, he filled up the time with further travels, visiting Constantinople and Widdin. Turkey was now in arms against Russia, and in the course of his present journey, which was performed in wintry weather, he sawsomething of the hardships as well as of the pomp of war. Without presuming to question that he kept business in view—as possibly also did George Borrow in his rambles in Spain—we note the fact that in his own account of his travels the details of his specific labours are kept well in the background, if not indeed out of sight. At the worst his journeys, which led him through some singularly wild and little known parts of the globe, by bringing him acquainted with many picturesque and unusual characters, must have been rich in suggestions of adventure and romance; and, indeed, there is evidence that some of his experience of primitive and martial life acquired at this time was afterwards turned to account in painting similar life at home for his historical novels. His expectations of patronage for his project were, however, disappointed, and he resolved to return without delay to England, in the hope of there finding support for it. In the meantime literature had not been entirely neglected. Keeping his eyes well about him, he had amassed the notes on which were subsequently based hisVoyages, andLetters from the Levant; whilst a translation from Goldoni, executed in a single wet day at Missolonghi, and published in the 'New British Theatre' asThe Word of Honour, together with the tragedy ofMaddalen, composed whilst undergoing quarantine at Messina, belong also to this time.

Back in London, he had the mortification of finding his commercial scheme—as to the presumptive value of which one would wish to have specialist opinion—regarded coldly by the Foreign Office, whilst at the same time he seems to have satisfied himself of the inutility of proceeding further in his legal career. But, whatever may havebeen his defects, want of resourcefulness was certainly not among them. An outburst of literary industry followed, and the year 1812 saw the publication of his Voyages and Travels, his Life of Wolsey, and his Tragedies. But in justice to one who has sins enough of slipshod composition to answer for, it must be stated that most of the Life of Wolsey—one of the most carefully composed of his books—had been written at an earlier date.

Of hisVoyages and Travels in the years 1809, 1810, and 1811, containing statistical, commercial, and miscellaneous observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Cerigo and Turkey, a competent critic remarks that, 'while containing some interesting matter, they are disfigured by grave faults of style and by rash judgments.' The public received them favourably, but a contemptuous notice in theQuarterly Reviewwas warmly resented by the author.

It was whilst standing in the quadrangle of Christchurch College, when on a visit to Oxford, that Galt had conceived the idea of hisLife of Wolsey. He had worked hard at the book before he went abroad, and he claimed that it embodied new views, and the results of much original research. Notwithstanding this, theQuarterly Reviewassailed him again, and this time so libellously as to lead him to think of a criminal prosecution. He, however, dropped the idea, with the result that when his Tragedies saw the light, the persecution—now as in the case of the Travels conducted by Croker in person—was renewed with additional pungency. In the general form of hisMaddalen, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra, the author followed Alfieri, whose works he had studied abroad and admired enthusiastically, thoughwith reservations. The plays are of a tentative character, and certainly do not deserve Scott's condemnation as the 'worst ever seen.'Lady Macbeth, which the author thought the 'best or the worst' of the series, though not lacking in imaginative touches, is without progression or story, and besides provoking irresistible comparisons, fails by ending just where it began. And whilst on the subject of Galt's drama, we may mentionThe Witness, the most important of several plays contributed by him to the 'New British Theatre,' a publication undertaken by Colbourn at his instigation. Here the dramatist had a powerfully dramatic if also a somewhat inconsequent story to work upon—a subject, in fact, after his own heart. Unfortunately the execution of the piece is hasty, and by no means equal to its conception. It was performed for some nights in Edinburgh asThe Appeal, when Scott wrote an Epilogue for it, said to be the only piece of humorous verse existing from his pen. Galt himself rehandled the subject in narrative form, under the title ofThe Unguarded Hour.

He now embarked on a journalistic enterprise, assuming for a time the editorship of thePolitical Review. But the work did not suit him. After about a month he began to tire of it, and it was soon abandoned. He also contributed lives of Hawke, Byron, and Rodney, to an edition of Campbell'sLives of the Admirals; whilst, in 1813, hisLetters from the Levantmade their appearance. These contain 'views of the state of society, manners, opinions, and commerce, in Greece and several of the principal islands of the Archipelago,' and had actually been written as letters at the places from which they are dated, being subsequently but little altered.

Perhaps we have already seen enough of the subject of this sketch to convince us that any lengthy perseverance in one course of conduct must not be expected of him, and, sure enough, the next thing we hear of him is that he is bound for Gibraltar, on another commercial enterprise. Before setting out, he had taken occasion to revisit the scenes of his early years, going in turn to every place which he remembered having frequented, even to the churchyard, amid whose tombstones, like his own Andrew Wylie, he had haunted as a boy. Taking stock of himself and his surroundings, he tells us that he was sensible of change everywhere, but nowhere more than in his own hopes. 'I saw that a blight had settled on them, and that my career must in future be circumscribed and sober.' When it is remembered that he was now touching upon what is called the prime of life, his tone of disillusion is pathetic.

He had gone to Gibraltar as the emissary of Kirkman Finlay—a Glasgow merchant, who afterwards bore a spirited part in the Greek War of Independence—with a view to ascertain the feasibility of smuggling British goods into Spain. But the victories of the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula were unfavourable to his mission, and much against his will he found himself compelled to return to England, having accomplished nothing, to seek surgical treatment for a painful malady from which he was now suffering. Whilst in London he was married, his wife being the daughter of a Dr Tilloch, editor of thePhilosophical Magazine, to which Galt was an occasional contributor. His marriage was a very happy one, and on the principle, perhaps, that the happiest countries have no history, his married life is not referredto in the biographies. In 1814, at the time of the Restoration in France, we find him visiting Holland and that country, with a view to promote yet another 'abortive scheme.'

It had now become imperative that he should exert himself, and having, as one may say, nothing better to do on his return from the Continent, he resumed the labours of the pen. His first known work of fiction was the result. It was entitledThe Majolo, founded upon a Sicilian superstition, and published anonymously in 1816. It was a favourite with its author, and has been described as a 'strange flighty production, enjoyed only by a few peculiar minds.' With it may be mentionedThe Earthquake, a three-volume novel written in 1820, and founded on the Messina earthquake of 1783. The latter, though an extravagant and ill-constructed story, is said to describe Sicilian habits and sentiments with accuracy.The Majolowas followed in the same year by the earlier instalment of aLife of Benjamin West, compiled from materials supplied by the painter himself—a work which was completed four years later, after his death. Then the eternal commercial scheme cropped up again. This time it emanated from Glasgow, leading Galt to move with his family to Finnart, near Greenock, where he spent a period afterwards characterised as the most unsatisfactory in his whole life. As usual the scheme in which he was interested failed, and he returned to London, having accepted employment from the Union Canal Company, in order to assist the passing through Parliament of a bill promoted by that body. This being accomplished, he returned to the drudgery of the desk, and, first and last, turned out a portentous body of hack-work, the variousitems of which need not be catalogued. Fortunately for himself, if not always for his reader, he had the strength andinsoucianceunder labour of what he physically was, a giant. Among the tasks performed at this time were the fascinating, if fabulous, Pictures from English, Scottish, and Irish History;The Wandering Jew, described as a 'conglomerate of history, biography, travel, and descriptive geography,' and a collection of 'All the Voyages round the World'—the last issued under the pen-name of Samuel Prior.

This record of futile commercial enterprise, varied by uninspiring literary work, constitutes dull reading; fortunately a happier period is now reached. In 1820, Mr Blackwood acceptedThe Ayrshire Legateesfor his magazine, and this book proved to be Galt's first real literary success. Perhaps it is also the first deliberate attempt in our literature to delineate, for their own sake, contemporary Scottish manners and character. It will be seen that the mechanism of the story, though of the simplest, is well contrived for supplying to these the necessary relief. Dr Pringle, the minister of a secluded rural parish in Ayrshire, having to his surprise been appointed residuary legatee of a wealthy Indian cousin deceased, betakes himself to London to attend to his affairs in person. He is accompanied by his wife and family—the latter consisting of a son just called to the Scottish bar, and a daughter. The Scottish characters are thus detached against an English background, and the letters in which they describe their experiences in the metropolis to their several correspondents at home make up the staple of the book. The characters of this little group—of the simple, but truly pious and kind-hearted minister, with his sturdy presbyterianism and quainttraditional phraseology of the pulpit; of that notable managing woman his spouse, like whom there was not another within the jurisdiction of the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr; and of the really able and acute young advocate, with his Scottish magniloquence, and his pose as a man of the world even whilst betraying his inexperience—all these are well conceived and well drawn, their unconscious self-revelation being cleverly and naturally managed. The high-flown and romantic young lady, who so soon adapts herself to her new circumstances, though a pleasing enough portrait, is less distinctively Scottish than the rest. Fragments of narrative interpolated among the letters serve to introduce us to the audience before whom these are read out, and at the same time to present a second series of slighter, though not less racy, character-sketches. The hint of the book, with its unanswered correspondence, is obviously drawn fromHumphrey Clinker, and, as in that masterpiece, real persons and events—such as the funeral of George the Third and the trial of Queen Caroline, Braham the singer and Sir Francis Burdett—supply much of the epistolary subject-matter. As in Smollett's novel, too, the same subjects are at times discussed in turn by the different writers—a plan which, though it serves the purpose of contrasting character, is not entirely free from objection.

The Ayrshire Legateeswas followed in the next year by the yet more originalAnnals of the Parish. The history of the growth of this book is identical with that ofWaverley—it had been begun years before, laid aside, and then resumed and completed—only that Galt has told us that his reason for discontinuing it was that he had been assured that a Scotch novel had no chance of success—an assurance which the case ofWaverleyhas proved untrue. TheAnnalsstands in somewhat the same relation to Scott's novel as does a Dutch to an Italian masterpiece, a tale of Crabbe's to an Elizabethan tragedy. It is given out as an account of the ministry of Micah Balwhidder, parish priest of Dalmailing (Dreghorn), written by himself. Mr Balwhidder had happened to be inducted on the very day on which King George the Third came to the throne; and, irrespective of its merit as a work of fiction, his narrative possesses real historical value as a record of the progress of a rural parish during the half-century succeeding that event. Indeed, with some omissions, the book might almost be printed as an appendix to the old Statistical Account of the parishes of Scotland, drawn up by the ministers. When rumours of great events—such as the American War of Independence or the French Revolution—reach the secluded hamlet, their sound is softened and their influence subdued. But the records of such local matters as floods and bad seasons, improvement of land, making of roads and planting of hedges, development of mineral resources, and so on, are also in their degree the stuff of which history is made, and as here set down they are worthy the attention of an Arthur Young. Then we are incidentally informed of the fluctuations of prices, of the rise of new industries, and the change of fashions—information which to the ordinary novel-reader would appear dry, but for the human and personal interest by which it is pervaded. For the history of the parishioners is interwoven with that of the parish, and over the whole is cast the charm of the kindly Doric and the simple and guileless personality of the minister. In theory an uncompromising stickler for orthodoxy of doctrine, and a terror to evil-doers in the abstract, Mr Balwhidder's instinct is wiser than hiscreed, and where the two are at variance the stronger insensibly gains the day. The tone of his fragmentary narrative is of itself proof sufficient of his fatherly interest in his villagers. And among those villagers, or at least within the narrow bounds of his parish, he can exhibit a sufficiently motley and picturesque variety in character and the experience of life. First of all we have Lord Eaglesham, the kind landlord, genial gentleman and free liver; Mr Cayenne, the irascible business-man, whose bark is worse than his bite, and Lady Macadam, the flighty and high-handed Great Lady of the old school. Then there is Mrs Malcolm, the pattern widow left with a large young family, her son Charles, the frank sailor, and her handsome daughter Kate; old Nanse Banks, the school-mistress, and her more advanced successor, Miss Sabrina Hookey; Colin Mavis, the youthful poet; the labourer who deserts his slatternly wife and family in order to enlist; the 'naturals,' Jenny Gaffaw and her fantastic ill-fated daughter; pious Mizy Mirkland, and many more. And if these figures be not drawn life-size and set direct in the reader's eye, it is for the sake of artistic keeping: the book is deliberately pitched in a lower key than the ordinary novel, and its persons are shown to us, as it were, afar off. But, none the less, every history is life-like, every character consistent within itself—living as with the life of those real people who flourished before our time, and of whom we have all of us heard in fireside stories as children. In this respect the author's aim is perfectly realised, and his work is a perfect work of art.

As is theAnnalsto ministerial and parochial life, so isThe Provost(published in the following year) to the life of magistrates and municipalities. Yet a greater contrast tothe ingenuous pastor of Dalmailing than that presented by the long-headed Provost of the Royal Burgh of Gudetown it would be almost impossible to conceive. Either of the two, in fact, presents a happy illustration of the respective shares of personality and environment in the formation of character: each is in part God's work, in part the world's. But it is in the magistrate that the world has the larger share. Provost Pawkie, who is Galt's masterpiece in the delineation of character, is worldly wisdom incarnate. Entering public life at a period when jobbery and corruption are rife, he simply takes the world as he finds it, and turns it to the best account he can. Only, as nature has endowed him with a sharper wit than his brother bailies and councillors, he is enabled to tread the paths of policy to much better advantage than they, whilst in the midst of very questionable transactions retaining the appearance of clean hands. A fortunate geniality of temper, which is partly the cause and partly the result of his prosperity, keeps him even at the worst from entirely forfeiting our regard; while, strange as it may seem, the warmth and rightness of his feeling in public or private matters where his own interest is not concerned prove that his heart remains unperverted by the element in which he works. As time goes on, the public life around him becomes purer, and he himself keeps pace with the times. Is this because he has seen the error of his ways, and like all people who are good in the main grows better as he grows older; or is it merely the result of policy trimming his sails to catch the popular breeze? Perhaps the balance of the doubt is in his favour; yet assuredly he is far too clear-sighted to persevere in methods which have become publicly discredited. Galt's artistic instinctwas too true to allow him to make perfectly clear to us all the workings of so subtle a mind; but the worthy cloth-mercer himself stands before us to the life, shrewd, portly, and consequential, with the redeeming twinkle of a dry Scotch humour in his eye and a racy Scotticism on his lip.

As in theAnnals of the Parish, so inThe Provosta chronicle of external progress forms the background to the narrator's experiences, and in the latter case this chronicle deals with improvements in the burgh, sanitary enactments, paving and lighting, repairing the Tolbooth steeple, and so forth. These affairs, though in their own way typical also, are of narrower interest than the changes in a countryside, but their inferiority in this respect is more than made up for by such admirable passages of interpolated narrative as, for instance, those which describe the execution of Jean Gaisling for child-murder, the Windy Yule with its disasters on the sea and heart-break on land, the duel, and the visit of the press-gang, or, in humorous vein, the fracas with the strolling players in the change-house, and the incident of the supposed French spy.

Few writers have possessed a greater native gift of story-telling than Galt, and few, it must alas! be added have used their gift more carelessly. In the very slightest of his numberless tales, traces of this gift are apt to appear, and perhaps in none of his writings is it seen to greater advantage than in the incidental reminiscences ofThe Provost. But, in fact, this little book possesses the merit, so rare among our author's writings, of perfection as an artistic whole. In reviewing Galt we are too apt to find ourselves driven to the naïve conclusion of the man in the anecdote, 'that the work would have beenbetter if the craftsman had taken more pains.' But in this case he eitherdidtake more trouble than usual, or else, which is more likely, his inspiration was better sustained.

The period now under consideration may be defined as that of Galt's masterpieces; yet even now a slight decline in his workmanship begins to be manifest. In the same year withThe Provost, he publishedThe Steamboat, andSir Andrew Wylie, thus already betraying a tendency to over-write.The Steamboatconsists mainly of an account of the experiences of one Thomas Duffle, burgess of the Saltmarket, at the Coronation of George the Fourth—which is described in detail—the said experiences being couched in the racy autobiographical style already familiar to readers ofThe Provost, and relieved by a series of short stories supposed to be related by Duffle's fellow-travellers. In many of these stories—and notably in those told by the Sailor Boy and the Soldier's Mother, inDeucalion of KentuckyandThe Dumbie's Son—Galt's powers are seen to advantage. Unfortunately their effect is marred by the singularly ill-conceived and irritating device on the part of the author of 'leaving off at the most interesting point.' In a single instance this trick might have been tolerated, but the reader loses patience when he finds it repeated again and again. This, however, is but a single example out of many which might be cited from Galt's writings of his propensity to ill-timed joking, and his seeming inability to take his own work seriously.

It has been asserted that, of all Galt's novels,Sir Andrew Wyliewas the most popular south of the Tweed. If this was so, its popularity was due far less to intrinsic desert than to the accident that a great part of the actionof the story takes place in England, whilst the principal actors—among whom is included a portrait of Lord Blessington—instead of belonging to the Scottish lower or middle classes, are members of the English aristocracy. A success based upon such grounds as these has of course no real value, and besides being of tedious length, the novel in question falls in other ways far short of the author's best achievements. Andrew Wylie is intended as the type of the canny young Scot who goes up to London and makes his fortune. We see him first as a queer 'auld-farrant' urchin, and then as an eident thrifty youth. He fully means to get on, he has the sharpest of eyes to see on which side his bread is buttered, and, above all, he has none of the ordinary failings of youth, and sows no wild oats. In fact he is rich in all those serviceable qualities of which perhaps the perfect exemplar in real life is no Scot but the Yankee Benjamin Franklin, and he has a quaint vein of native humour thrown in. And yet, notwithstanding so many qualities and so few infirmities, he is no prig, but, like Franklin, compels not only our respect, but our liking. So far the author has done well. But when he goes on to describe 'Wheelie's' rise in the world, we feel that the means of his advancement are altogether too phenomenal. With such a friend as the Earl to help him, what young man might not have risen? But this is only a single instance of his luck. Throughout his career, the hero meets with the consistent and amazing good-fortune of a prince in a fairy-tale, making conquests at first sight not only of lackadaisical Riversdales and scatter-brain Dashingwells, but of the King and of Pitt himself. And so, as the story progresses, its improbability increases, until in the scenes between Andrew and thedowager, and Andrew and the baronet, it becomes flatly and absolutely incredible. In this particular—I mean in the entire disproportion between the effect produced by the hero upon the reader and that which he is supposed to exercise on the other characters in the book—the story shares the fundamental defect of another Scottish novel, the work of a much more pains-taking hand—The Little Minister.

Galt's next publication of importance wasThe Entail—a novel of which the theme is 'gear,' a Scotsman's pertinacity in gathering it, and his tenacity in holding it when gathered—a matchless subject for the illustration of national character. And in this case the mere desire of acquisition is elevated and to some extent humanised by being associated with another characteristic passion of the Scot—to wit, the pride of family. The story turns upon the disinheriting, for estate reasons, by Claud Walkinshaw, Laird of Grippy, of his eldest son, and on the events which spring therefrom. Walkinshaw, who is the representative of an old but ruined family, has been brought up in penury, but at an early age has set before himself as his aim in life the reconquest of the family estates. Towards this object every step he takes is directed; in its interest every secondary consideration is sacrificed. His youth has been spent in haggling as a pedlar, and when, having by his own exertions established himself in trade, he decides to marry, he goes, of course, 'where money is.' His firstborn, Charles, is his favourite son; but even paternal affection must give way before the ruling passion. Watty, the second son (a masterly sketch) has been a 'natural' from his birth. But he is heir to the estate of his maternal grandfather, and it is only through a transaction dependingon the possession of this property that a Walkinshaw can be reinstated in possession of the undiminished Walkinshaw estates. To these circumstances Charles is without hesitation sacrificed, and his father's dream seems at last to be realised. But, though he has gained his point, the old man finds himself further than ever from contentment. The stars in their courses seem to fight against him, the consequences of his unjust act recoil upon him, and he is even driven to believe himself an object of heavenly vengeance. Thus—in his character as a father visited by retributive justice through his children—Claud Walkinshaw may be considered the Père Goriot of Scottish fiction. And so far the book is fine; but unfortunately, from this point—about midway—the level of excellence is not sustained. In the midst of his woes, Claud is carried off by a shock of paralysis; but the evil he has done lives after him, thus supplying material for the remainder of the novel. But the calculating business-man, the youngest of the three brothers, who now succeeds to the role of principal character, is colourless in comparison with his father. The writing, too, though relieved by the delightful sallies of the 'Leddy Grippy'—one of the very best of Scotchwomen in fiction—becomes diffuse to such a point that we wax impatient for the expiation of the old man's misdeeds by his disinterested grandson. Both Scott and Byron are said to have read this book three times, but the modern reader will probably rest content with a single perusal.

Its shortcomings notwithstanding,The Entailwas favourably received, and by this time the author is said to have been so elated by success as to boast that his literary resources were far greater than those of Scott, or any othercontemporary.[6]Whether in deliberate rivalry or not, certain it is that, by turning his attention to the historical romance, he now entered the field which the Wizard had made particularly his own. In the meantime he had taken up his abode at Esk Grove, near Musselburgh, where, in possible emulation of Abbotsford, he is said to have contemplated building a 'veritable fortress,' exactly in the fashion of the oldest times of rude warfare.

The results of his bold literary enterprise were seen inRingan Gilhaize,The Spaewife, andRothelan—the first two published in 1823, the third in the following year. In an article from the pen of Mr Francis Espinasse, in the Dictionary of National Biography, these books are disposed of as 'three forgotten novels'; but the description lacks discrimination. Forgotten, for aught I know to the contrary, they may be; but at least one of the three deserved a happier fate.Ringan Gilhaizeis, in fact, a very fine historical romance, and one, it may be said in passing, which would well repay resuscitation at the hands of some enterprising publisher. A happy instinct had directed Galt in his selection of a period which is certainly the most important, as it is one of the two most romantically interesting, in Scottish history. For though the War of Independence be the darling theme of Scottish patriotism, what I may call the War of Religious Liberty enjoys the two-fold advantage of a wider sympathy and a deeper intellectual significance. Galt has skilfully conducted us through the entire period of this struggle, for his story, opening during the regency of Marie of Lorraine, concludes with the battle of Killiecrankie, whilst of intermediate historical events whichbear upon the main issue, the greater number receive some notice in passing. Of course the danger of such a proceeding is lest fiction become subordinate to fact, thus making the main interest of the book an historical rather than an imaginative one. But this danger Galt has cleverly avoided. His method is to bring bygone times home to us through the imagination—as, for instance, in the scene of the gathering of devout persons in Gilhaize's house, or the open air preaching near Lasswade—whilst at the same time quickening our interest in historical occurrences—such as the battle of Drumclog, or the march of the Covenanting forces to Edinburgh—by causing his imaginary characters to participate in them. This, I conceive to be the true philosophy of the historical romance. And into the spirit of the particular movement with which he deals, it must be acknowledged that Galt has penetrated further than Scott. For the true aim of the writer of a novel treating of these times in Scotland was obviously to disregard such a non-essential as sporadic insincerity, to penetrate the outer crust of dourness and intolerance, and whilst maintaining the balance of perfect fairness, to compel the reader to sympathise with the best of the Covenanters, not only in their bitter resentment of cruel wrongs, but in their most earnestly cherished and loftiest ideals. And this, which Scott did not care to do, Galt has accomplished, in virtue of which achievement his book is entitled to rank as the epic of the Scottish religious wars.

In attempting to embrace within the compass of a single novel the one hundred and thirty years or so of his period, the author ofRingan Gilhaizewas certainly assaying a very hazardous experiment. For one thing, ofcourse it was necessary that he should change his hero more than once, and the risk by so doing of dispersing and losing the reader's interest was immense. But whilst by taking the family instead of the individual as his unit, he has preserved artistic consistency, from this danger he has escaped unscathed. For from the time of the mission of Michael Gilhaize to St Andrews, and his adventures with the wanton Madam Kilspinnie, to that of the death of Claverhouse by the hand of the half-deranged or 'illuminated' Ringan, the interest of the story never flags. It abounds in fascinating passages of adventure—such as the journey of the elder Gilhaize to Eglinton, or the wanderings of Ringan and Mr Witherspoon after the fight at Rullion Green; whilst, having already referred to an advantage possessed by Galt over Scott, I may here add that there are passages in this book evincing a literary style, an intensity, and a delicacy with which Sir Walter could not compete. Such is the passage describing Gilhaize's reflections whilst waiting, in the grey of morning, at the gate of Lord James Stuart's house; the passage which follows, describing the spreading of the news that John Knox has arrived in Edinburgh, and that which describes the dalliance of the Queen of Scots with the Reformer on Loch Leven shore. That Scott was a far greater writer, as he was a far happier man than his contemporary, no reviewer in his senses would venture to deny. But that Galt possessed qualities which Scott did not possess, though less freely acknowledged, is not less true. When the number and extent of his works is considered, it must be owned that the occasions upon which Galt puts forth his full powers, or allows us to praise him without reserve, are sadly few. All the more reason, therefore, that whenhe does give us such an opportunity, we should avail ourselves of it with courage and without stint! It now only remains to add that the book is written in clear and terse old Scots, to which a dash of the peculiar phraseology of the Reformed Church adds a touch of quaintness.

'Surely something must have come over Galt!' is one's involuntary exclamation on reading his next book, for a greater falling off fromRingan GilhaizethanThe Spaewifecan scarcely be imagined. Here even the writing is slipshod; but, alas! these ups and downs are but too characteristic of the author. Like the former work, in the cabals and factions of the rival claimants—or, more properly, aspirants—to the Crown of Scotland during the reign of James the First,The Spaewifehas a promising and powerful theme. But of the treatment of this theme it may be said that it can boast scarcely one redeeming feature. The conduct of the tale is involved and obscure, and abounds in incidents and dialogues which, while tedious and perplexing in themselves, serve neither to illustrate character nor to advance action. Indeed, the reader is heavily taxed to remember the motives and the relations with one another of the different persons presented. Nor is the book appreciably stronger in the department of character-drawing. Upon the poet-king, the romantic ill-fated lover of Joanna Beaufort, one would suppose that a novelist might delight to lavish his best art. Instead of this, the King and Queen of the story are mere blanks. Catherine Douglas is no better, and such originality in character-sketching as the book can show—and that is not much—is to be found in the portraits of Glenfruin, the deep though simple-seeming Highland chieftain, and of the timorous and vacillating Earl of Athol.

Rothelan, a tale of the times of Edward the Third—the historical portions of which are drawn from an interesting work on that period written by Joshua Barnes, an antiquary of the seventeenth century—is unfortunately more nearly on the level ofThe Spaewifethan on that ofRingan Gilhaize. The book is not wanting in spirited scenes, but the welding of history and romance is but imperfectly accomplished, notwithstanding an abuse of breaks and gaps, abrupt transitions and passages irrelevant to the main narrative. Then again, between the machinations of the conscience-haunted Amias and his inscrutable henchman Ralph, and the counter-machinations of the wily Adonijah, the intricacies of the tale are so much too subtle as to end in puzzling the reader himself. In a passage which may perhaps have been intended as a sly hit at Scott, the author expressly disclaims any attempt to reanimate the 'scenes of chivalry, and the pride, pomp, and panoply of war,' or to restore the archaic language, or the 'fashions of the draperies, or the ornaments and architecture in the background.' His concern, he tells us, is not with such subordinate matters as these, but directly with the human heart itself. For a poet or novelist the position is a perfectly tenable one, and it is not to this but to the fact that he lets us see that he does not take his work seriously, that the author's failure is due. For into his lighter scenes an element of burlesque, which had already peeped out in his last book, again obtrudes itself; and burlesque, though a capital thing in its way, is here entirely out of place. Neither could it under any circumstances be supposed by a writer of historical fiction that the illusion which it is his business to produce would be assisted by discussion of suchtopics current at the time of writing as Sir Walter Scott'sRedgauntlet, or the question of the three-volume novel.

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