John Galt, Scotch novelist, was born at Irvine, May 2, 1779, and educated at Greenock. He was then placed in the Custom-house, but in 1804 proceeded to London with an epic poem on the battle of Largs in his portmanteau, a poem he printed but soon withdrew from circulation. After a few years his health failed, and he travelled for some time in the Levant, where he met Byron. On his return he published his “Letters from the Levant,” a Life of Wolsey, several plays, and much miscellaneous work; but he first displayed individual power in “The Ayshire Legatees,” which appeared in “Blackwood’s Magazine” in 1820. Its successor, “The Annals of the Parish” (1821), remains his masterpiece. He produced in quick succession “Sir Andrew Wylie,” “The Entail,” “The Steamboat,” and “The Provost.” The historical romances, “Ringan Gilhaize” (a tale of the Covenanters), “The Spaewife,” “Rothelan,” and “The Omen,” although full of striking scenes, were not so successful. Galt was now busily engaged in the formation of the Canada Company; but before he left England he published “The Last of the Lairds.” He departed for Canada in 1826, but three years later returned to England a ruined man, and produced a new novel, “Lawrie Todd,” followed by “Southennan,” a romance of the days of Queen Mary, and a “Life of Lord Byron,” which ran through several editions, but was roughly handled by the critics. In 1834 he issued his “Literary Life and Miscellanies.” He now returned to Scotland, utterly broken in health and spirits, and died at Greenock, 11th April 1839.

Personal

  We are old fellow-travellers, and, with all his eccentricities, he has much strong sense, experience of the world, and is, as far as I have seen, a good-natured, philosophical fellow.

  I first met with this most original and most careless writer at Greenock, in the summer of 1804…. He was dressed in a frock coat and new top-boots; and it being then the fashion to wear the shirt collars as high as the eyes, Galt wore his the whole of that night with the one side considerably above his ear, and the other flapped over the collar of his frock-coat down to his shoulder. He had another peculiarity, which appeared to me a singular instance of perversity. He walked with his spectacles on, and conversed with them on; but when he read he took them off. In short, from his first appearance, one would scarcely have guessed him to be a man of genius.

  Galt seemed to me to be by nature a male Scherazaide. He had the gift of narrative, so rare, so fine, so seemingly simple, but so inexplicably difficult; repartee is nothing to it: the power of relating a story, without affectation, or weariness to your listener, is one above all price…. The last time I saw him he called upon me alone. He came, even in his low and feeble state, and got out of the cab which brought him, and entered the house leaning upon the arm of my servant. He could scarcely walk. When seated, Galt retained little appearance of disease. His complexion was clear, his articulation was then restored, his eyes sparkled; it was when he arose and walked that one saw that the axe had been laid to the root of the tree.

  Galt, with his curious, limited, but very remarkable talent, had always a serious purpose before him, and worked soberly for such modest fame as might be procurable, and the more substantial reward which helped him forward through the mingled course of his career—a little reputation which often helped him, and money which was of still greater use.

  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.

General

  My dear Hodgson,—There is a book entitled “Galt,” his Travels in ye Archipelago,” daintily printed by Cadell and Davies, ye which I could desiderate might be criticised by you, inasmuch as ye author is a well-respected esquire of mine acquaintance, but I fear will meet with little mercy as a writer, unless a friend passeth judgment. Truth to say, ye boke is ye boke of a cock-brained man, and is full of devices crude and conceitede, but peradventure for my sake this grace may be vouchsafed unto him. Review him myself I can not, will not, and if you are likewize hard of heart, woe unto ye boke, ye which is a comely quarto.

  There are pages in the “Annals” and spots in the “Legatees” which would be shining places in the “Pirate.” If he be a young author he may scatter his wild oats about; but if he be anything like a veteran, he should husband his resources and make not more than one great effort per annum.

  Pray read or have read to you by Mrs. Agnes, the “Annals of the Parish.” Mr. Galt wrote the worst tragedies ever seen, and has now written a most excellent novel, if it can be called so.

  The great charm of the work [“Annals of the Parish”] is in the traits of character which it discloses, and the commendable brevity with which the whole chronicle is digested. We know scarcely any instance in which a modern writer has shown such forbearance and consideration for his readers. With very considerable powers of humour, the ludicrous incidents are never dwelt upon with any tediousness, nor pushed to the length of burlesque or caricature—and the more seducing touches of pathos with which the work abounds, are intermingled and cut short, with the same sparing and judicious hand…. Though the conception of the “Ayrshire Legatees,” however, is not new, the execution and details must be allowed to be original; and, along with a good deal of twaddle, and too much vulgarity, certainly display very considerable powers both of humour, invention, and acute observation…. “The Steam-Boat,” which has really no merit at all; and should never have been transplanted from the Magazine in which we are informed it first made its appearance. With the exception of some trash about the Coronation, which nobody of course could ever look at three months after the thing itself was over, it consists of a series of vulgar stories, with little either of probability or originality to recommend them. The attempt at a parallel or paraphrase on the story of Jeanie Deans, is, without any exception, the boldest and the most unsuccessful speculation we have ever seen in literary adventure.

  Read “Lawrie Todd” by Galt. It is excellent; no surprising events, or very striking characters, but the humorous and entertaining parts of common life brought forward in a tenor of probable circumstances.

  North.—Mr. Galt is a man of genius, and some of his happiest productions will live in the literature of his country. His humour is rich, rare, and racy, and peculiar withal, entitling him to the character of originality—a charm that never fadeth away—he has great power in the humble, the homely pathetic—and he is conversant, not only with many modes and manners of life, but with much of its hidden and more mysterious spirit.

  Is rather a murder [“Life of Byron”] and the crime is perpetrated with a coarse weapon.

  He has no classic predilections, and sets up no favourite author as a model; he aims at no studied elegance of phrase, cares nothing for formal accuracy of costume, seems not at all solicitous about the dignity of human nature, and thinks chivalry a joke. He leaves all these matters to take care of themselves, and sets to work to read us a chapter of living life, like one sure of securing listeners.

  The “Annals of the Parish,” the supposed journal of a quaint, simple-minded Presbyterian pastor, give us a singularly amusing insight into the microscopic details of Scottish life in the lower classes. Galt’s primary characteristic is a dry, subdued, quaint humour—a quality very perceptible in the lower orders of Scotland, and which in his works, as in the national character of his countrymen, is often accompanied by a very profound and true sense of the pathetic.

  The sphere within which Galt’s genius works most smoothly and profitably is a comparatively limited one. There never was a book written by mortal man which spoke so plainly of unwearied labour, of unremitting care, of painstaking conscientiousness, as “The Omen.” Yet, despite the scrupulously chosen diction and the deliberately-calculated effects, “The Omen” is, upon the whole, a failure; a highly respectable bit of work, no doubt, but one in which there is much effort and little achievement; much cry and scarce sixpenn’orth of wool. The same may be said of almost all the passages in his best works where, so to speak, he goes beyond the instructions of Nature. Neither the burning of the ship in “The Last of the Lairds” nor the shipwreck in “The Entail,” produces any impression proportionate to the pains lavished on it, or worthy to be named in the same breath with that produced by the memorable Windy Yule in “The Provost.”… The creator of Mrs. Mailsetter and of Mrs. Heukbane, of the Mucklebackits, and of John Girder, can assuredly never be surpassed by anyone in the representation of Scottish life and character.

  His literary production was vast and totally uncritical; his poems, dramas, etc., being admittedly worthless, his miscellaneous writing mostly book-making, while his historical novels are given up by all but devotees. He had, however, a special walk—the delineation of the small humours and ways of his native town and country—in which, if not exactly supreme, he has seldom been equalled. The “Ayrshire Legatees” is in main scheme a pretty direct and not very brilliant following of “Humphrey Clinker;” but the letters of the worthy family who visit London are read in a home circle which shows Galt’s peculiar talent. It is shown better still in his next published work, the “Annals of the Parish” which is said to have been written long before, and in the pre-Waverly days to have been rejected by the publishers, because “Scotch novels could not pay.”

  In describing the unromantic detail of provincial or parish life, Galt is hardly inferior to Scott, but the province or the parish is his exclusive dominion; while in the background of Scott’s most vivid pictures of the country-side we are aware of the moving pageant of national life.

  His works were the first of their kind, and have been the model of all those successive works—always curiously popular in England as well as in Scotland, for it is difficult to tell what reason—which have expounded so often, and notably in our own day, the life from within of the Scottish peasant, with its humours and sagacities and roughnesses. We do not compare any of the recent exponents of the native farmer, clodhopper, or shepherd, from his own point of view, with Scott: but we do compare them with Galt, although with reservations, seeing that he is their originator and the chief of their tribe. It was not, however, the Scottish peasant with whom he was chiefly concerned. It was with the middle class, the smaller order of lairds, the rural clergy, the country writers and civic dignitaries, most of them with certain pretentions to gentility, but all with those views—original by force of their extreme limitation, and the quaint incomprehension which mingled with their native judgment—with which an intelligence trained in a village looks out upon the bigger world.

  In 1820, Mr. Blackwood accepted “The Ayrshire Legatees” for 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…. 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 of “The Provost.” But, in fact, this little book possesses the merit, so rare among our author’s writings, of perfection as an artistic whole…. It is not enough to say, as has been said, that in him there were two men, the man of letters and the man of affairs: there were two literary men in him, the creative artist and the book-maker. And the fact that, of these two, the latter had things too much his own way was due to Galt’s defective appreciation of his high calling…. “The Provost” and “The Annals” might almost belong to the age of Tourguenieff and Mr. Henry James, and in this respect his works have been more studied than they have been praised, their influence has been greater than their reputation.