JOHN

See also:

• GALT
• JOHN GALT (1779-1839)
• GALT, SIR ALEXANDER TILLOCH (1817-1893)

GALT (1779-1839)  , Scottish novelist, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, on the 2nd of May 1779 . He received his early education at Irvine and Greenock, and read largely from one of the public libraries while serving as a clerk in a mercantile office . In 1804 he went to settle in London, where he published anonymously a poem on the Battle of Largs .. After unsuccessful attempts to succeed in business Galt entered at Lincoln's Inn, but was never called to the bar . He obtained a commission from a British firm to go abroad to find out whether the Berlin and Milan decrees could be evaded . He met Byron and Sir John Hobhouse at Gibraltar, travelled with Byron to Malta, and met him again at Athens . He was afterwards employed by the Glasgow merchant Kirkman Finlay on similar business at Gibraltar, and in 1814 visited France and Holland . His early works are the Life and Administration of Wolsey, Voyages and Travels, Letters from the Levant, the Life of Benjamin West, Historical Pictures and The Wandering Jew; and he induced Colburn to publish a periodical containing dramatic pieces rejected by London managers . These were afterwards edited by Galt as the New British Theatre, which included some plays of his own . He first showed his real power as a writer of fiction in The Ayrshire Legatees, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1820 . This was followed in.1821 by his masterpiece—The Annals of tke Parish; and, at short intervals, Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Steam-Boat and The Provost were published . These humorous studies of Scottish character are all in his happiest manner .

His next works were Ringan Gilhaize (1823), a

story of the Covenanters; The Spaewife (1823), which relates to the times of James I. of Scotland; Rothelan (1824), a novel founded on the reign of Edward III.; The Omen (1825), which was favourably criticized by Sir Walter Scott; and The Last of the Lairds, another picture of Scottish life . In 1826 he went to America as secretary to the Canada Land Company . He carried out extensive schemes of colonization, and opened up a road through what was then forest country between Lakes Huron and Erie . In 1827 he founded Guelph in upper Canada, passing on his way the township of Galt on the Grand river, named after him by the Hon . William Dixon . But all this work proved financially unprofitable to Galt . In 1829 he returned to England commercially a ruined man, and devoted himself with great. ardour to literary pursuits, of which the first fruit was Lawrie Todd—one of his best novels . Then came Southennan, a tale of Scottish life in the times of Queen Mary . In 183o he was appointed editor of the Courier newspaper—a post he soon relinquished . His untiring industry was seen in the publication, in rapid succession, of a Life of Byron, Lives of the Players, Bogle Corbet, Stanley Buxton, The Member, The Radical, Eben Erskine, The Stolen Child, his Autobiography, and a collection of tales entitled Stories of the Study . In 1834 appeared his Literary Life and Miscellanies, dedicated by permission to William IV., who sent the author a present of £zoo . As soon as this work was published Galt retired to Greenock, where he continued his literary labours till his death on the 11th of April 1839 .

Galt, like almost all voluminous writers, was exceedingly unequal . His masterpieces are The Ayrshire Legatees, The Annals of the Parish, Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Provost and Lawrie Todd . The Ayrshire Legatees gives, in the

form of a number of exceedingly diverting letters, the adventures of the Rev . Dr Pringle and his family in London . The letters are made the excuse for endless tea-parties and meetings of kirk-session in the rural parish of Garnock . The Annals of the Parish are told by the Rev . Micah Balwhidder, Galt'sfinestcharacter . This work (which, be it remembered, existed in MS. before Waverley was published) is a splendid picture of the old-fashioned Scottish pastor and the life of a country parish; and, in rich humour, genuine pathos and truth to nature it is unsurpassed even by Scott . It is a fine specimen of the homely graces of the Scottishdialect, and preserves much vigorous Doric phraseology fast passing out of use even in country districts . In this novel Mr Galt used, for the first time, the term " Utilitarian," which afterwards became so intimately associated with the doctrines of John Stuart Mill and Bentham (see Annals of the Parish, chap. xxxv., and a note by Mill in Utilitarianism, chap. ii.) . In Sir Andrew Wylie the hero entered London as a poor lad, but achieved remarkable success by his shrewd business qualities . The character is somewhat exaggerated, but excessively amusing .

The Entail was read thrice by Byron and Scott, and is the best of Galt's longer novels . Leddy Grippy is a wonderful creation, and was considered by Byron equal to any

female character in literature since Shakespeare's time . The Provost, in which Provost Pawkie tells his own story, portrays inimitably the jobbery, bickerings and self-seeking of municipal dignitaries in a quaint Scottish burgh . In Lawrie Todd Galt, by giving us the Scot in America, accomplished a feat which Sir Walter never attempted . This novel exhibits more variety of style and a greater love of nature than his other books . The life of a settler is depicted with unerring pencil, and with an enthusiasm and imaginative power much more poetical than any of the author's professed poems . The best of Galt's novels were reprinted in Blackwood's Standard Novels, to volume i. of which his friend Dr Moir prefixed a memoir .