along with a brother; but this attempt also proved abortive. Sick of merchandise, and impatient to try something else, he resolved to devote himself to the profession of law; and for this purpose entered himself at Lincoln's Inn. He was soon overtaken by a nervous indisposition, that unfitted him for the dry studies of "Coke upon Littleton ;" and, by way of solace, until the malady should pass away, he sat down to write a book. The subject was ready to his hand; for, in a walk with some friends through the colleges of Oxford in 1805, he had felt indignant that Cardinal Wolsey, the founder of Christ Church College, should have been allowed to bequeath such a boon without a fitting commemoration from its learned disciples; and since better might not be, he had resolved, alien though he was, at some time or other to repair the deficiency. That season had now arrived; and accordingly, about the beginning of 1809, he commenced a life of Cardinal Wolsey, and finished it in a very few months. The short time that he took for the necessary reading and research, as well as writing, which such a subject required, will give an adequate conception of the natural impetuosity of his intellect. But with this haste and hurry there was curiously combined the grave methodical arrangement of the counting-house: he transcribed upon one part of his writing-paper the historical facts extracted from Cavendish, Fiddes, and Hume, and wove round them, upon the margin and between the interstices, his own remarks and deductions, until a gay partycoloured web was the result; after which he systematized the whole into a continuous narrative. "I was desirous," he says of it, "to produce a work that would deserve some attention." This work, which he afterwards improved and extended, was not published till three years afterwards. As his health did not improve, he now resolved to try the effects of travel before being called to the English bar; and in 1809 he left England for a tour, which extended over three years. The result of this long journey was two separate works at his return. The first was entitled, "Voyages and Travels in the years 1809, 1810, and 1811, containing Statistical, Commercial, and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, and Turkey ;" and the second, "Letters from the Levant, containing Views of the State of Society, Manners, Opinions, and Commerce in Greece and several of the principal Islands of the Archipelago."

These were not the only works which Galt published on his return to England. His poetical inspiration still haunted him, but so much sobered down, that during his tour he had been employing himself in writing dramas on the plan of Alfieri, where the simplicity of the plot and fewness of the characters were to be compensated by the full force of nature and poetic excellence. This was certainly a great sacrifice in one whose imagination so revelled in plot, and was so fertile in incident. The volume, which was published in 1812, contained the tragedies of Maddalen, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra; and as only 250 copies were printed, the work being published on his own account, it had little chance of undergoing the test of public opinion. Even as it was, however, it was roughly handled in the Quarterly Review, by an ironical criticism, in which Galt was elevated to the rank of a second Shakspeare. Soon after his return, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Tilloch, editor of the "Philosophical Magazine," and proprietor of the "Star," a newspaper on which Galt had been for some time employed. In the same year, also (1812), so prolific in his publishing adventures, he sent through the press his Reflections on Political and Commercial Subjects."

Having now abandoned all thoughts of devoting himself to the bar, Galt was

compelled to have recourse to authorship, until something more stable should occur. He therefore wrote in the "Monthly Magazine," and other periodicals of the day. He also projected, with Mr. Colburn the publisher, a periodical which, under the title of the "New British Theatre,” should publish the best of those dramatic productions which the managers of the great play-houses had rejected. It was hoped that in this way deserving talent would be rescued from oblivion; and "many a gem of purest ray serene" be made to glitter in the eye of a delighted world, instead of being trampled among the dust of the greenroom. It was a most benevolent and hopeful speculation, of which Galt, the proposer, was appointed editor. But little did he anticipate the flood-gates of mud which such a proposal opened. There was an instant jail-delivery of manuscript plays, enough to have converted the country into a literary Botany Bay or Alsatia; and Galt, amidst the heap of dramatic matter, under which he was well-nigh smothered, was obliged to confess at last that the managers of theatres were not such reckless or unjust rejectors as they had been called. The work at its commencement was successful, but soon afterwards fell off, although the plan was improved by the admission of plays that had been written but not presented. Before it expired, Galt possessed and availed himself of the opportunity of inserting some of his own dramatic productions, among which was the tragedy of "The Witness," afterwards performed in several towns with altered titles. After this, his career for some years was one of active business, combined with authorship. During his travels he had conceived the idea of importing British goods through Turkey, in spite of the con. tinental blockade by which Napoleon endeavoured to exclude our commerce; and upon this plan he employed himself diligently for some time both in England and Scotland. But the conception appeared too bold and hazardous to those traders who were invited to the risk; and his efforts ended in disappointment. Another occupation with which he was commissioned, was to superintend a bill through the House of Commons, intrusted to him by the Union Canal Company. As enough of leisure was afforded him in London during the suspense of this bill, he wrote the "Life and Studies of Benjamin West." He also wrote a romance, of which the hero was the Wandering Jew. Of this work two considerable editions were sold, although it had never been reviewed. This neglect the author, who affectionately clung to the remembrance of his Wandering Jew to the last, regarded with some surprise. “How the work," he says, "should have been so long unnoticed, while others which treat of the same subject have attracted considerable attention, I cannot say; but this I know, that many of my own far inferior productions, in originality and beauty, have been much applauded, and yet I doubt if they have sold so well." We suspect that few of our readers have been among the purchasers of this wonderful myth, or have even heard its name till now.

Amidst all the toil and struggle of these literary attempts, John Galt had not yet discovered where his strength lay. History, biography, travels, epic and dramatic poetry, romance-he had tried them all, but attained success in none. His over-boiling imagination and erratic fancy were too much even for fiction, whether in prose or verse; and when he attempted sober narrative, his love of originality was ever leading him into some startling paradox, which the facts of history were unable to make good. The eccentricity of his political opinions had also given not a little offence to the still predominant party; for although a Tory in theory, he seemed a very Radical in practice, and had more

than once run a muck against the powers that be, when he found them stopping up his way. On this account he had also brought down upon his head the ire of the Quarterly Review, whose censure was enough to blight the popularity of an author among Tory readers, and throw him out upon neutral ground. Thus, up to 1820, his attempts were a series of literary blunders, and his production of that year, "The Earthquake," a stern, sombre novel, in three volumes, which has shared the fate of his other productions written before this period, should, in ordinary circumstances, have been his last attempt in authorship. But in his long search in the dark he had hit upon the right vein at last. It was not in the wild and wonderful that he was to excel, but in the homely, the humorous, and the caustic. "The hero's harp, the lover's lute," with which he had tried to enchant the world, but to no purpose, were to be exchanged for the vulgar bagpipe and stock-and-horn. His first attempt in this way was the "Ayrshire Legatees"—a work which originated in mere accident. One of his enjoyments was to "show the lions" to such strangers as were introduced to him in London; and of these, as might be expected, were many original characters from the far north, whose sensations among the wonders of the great metropolis were a rich feast to his keen observant eye and quick sense of the ludicrous. It soon occurred to him that these peculiarities might be embodied in particular personages, and illustrated by correspondent adventures. the whole materials were before him like those of a rich landscape, and only needed artistic selection and combination to form a very choice picture. Upon this idea he set to work, and without any formal plot for his story, scene after scene grew upon his hand as it was needed, until the "Ayrshire Legatees" was the result. It was in this way that "Humphrey Clinker" was produced-the best of all Smollett's productions. As fast as the chapters of Galt's new attempt were written, they were published in Blackwood's Magazine of 1820 and 1821, and their appearance excited universal attention, while they continued to rise in popularity to the last; so that, when finished, they were published separately, and eagerly devoured by the novel-reading public. It was a style of writing which had been so long disused, as to have all the charms of originality, while the truthfulness of the different characters was such as to impart to fiction all the charms of reality. Galt found that he had succeeded at last, and followed up his success with the "Annals of the Parish," which was published in 1821. This work, however, although so late in its appearance, was, properly speaking, the first of Galt's Scottish novels, as it had been written in 1813, but laid aside, until the success of the "Ayrshire Legatees" encouraged him to commit it to the press. In this work, also, he had not troubled himself about the construction of a regular plot, and, like its predecessor, it was all the better for the omission. Long before he commenced the "Annals," his ambition had been to "write a book that would be for Scotland what the Vicar of Wakefield' is for England;" and this was the result. He certainly could not have adopted a better model.

No one can imagine that the pen of Galt, so indefatigable when success was against it, would now relapse into idleness. In the " Annals of the Parish" he had exhibited the progress of improvement in a rural district of the west of Scotland; he was now desirous of describing the same progress in a town. Such was the origin of the "Provost," which was published in 1822. He had now learned the true secret of novel-writing, as is evident from the following statement :-" In the composition of the 'Provost' I followed the same rule of art

which seemed to me so proper in the 'Annals of the Parish,' namely, to bring impressions on the memory harmoniously together; indeed, I have adhered to the principle in all my subsequent compositions, and sometimes I fancy that the propriety of doing so may be justified by nature. I think no ingenuity can make an entirely new thing. Man can only imagine the old together; join legs, and arms, and wings as he may, only the forms of previously-created things can be imitated. The whole figure may be outré, and unlike anything in the heavens, or the earth, or the waters under the earth; but the imitations of the human hand in the details will ever be evident. . . . In my youth I wrote a poem called the Legend of St. Anthony,' which I undertook with the intention of depicting comical phantasms; but I had not proceeded far till I was induced to change my mind, by observing that my most extravagant fancies were only things of curious patchwork, and that the same defect might be discerned in all those things in which the 'creative' power of genius was said to be more indisputable. . . . I therefore give up all pretension to belonging to that class who deal in the wild and wonderful; my wish is, to be estimated by the truth of whatever I try to represent."

The next work of Galt was the "Steam-boat," a novel, published originally in Blackwood, in which he wished to give such an account of the coronation of George IV. as an “abortive bailie" from Scotland might be likely to do. This was followed by "Sir Andrew Wyllie," in which he wished to exhibit the rise and progress of an humble Scotchman in London. In this tale, however, he gave way to his literary besetting sin, a fault of which he was afterwards fully conscious; and he says of it very justly, "The incidents are by far too romantic and uncommon to my own taste, and are only redeemed from their extravagance by the natural portraiture of the characters."

But, indeed, either accurate conception or finished execution could scarcely be expected from Galt in his writings at this period, when we remember that the three last-mentioned works, viz., the "Provost," the "Steam-boat," and "Sir Andrew Wyllie," were all published in 1822. In the following year he produced his "Gathering of the West," which was also published in the first instance in Blackwood's Magazine. The subject was the visit of George IV. to Scotland-an event that appeared in so many ludicrous aspects to the mirthful satirical mind of Galt, that he could not repress his profane chuckling at this great aratar, even when he endeavoured to look the most composed. He therefore says of the "Gathering," and its kindred work, the "Steam-boat”"Notwithstanding the deference for magnates and magnificence under which these works were written, the original sin may be detected here and there peeping out, insomuch that those who consider Toryism as consisting of the enjoyment of at least pensions, must be dreadfully shocked to think even a moderate politician of any sort could be so far left to himself as to speak so irreverently of things which concerned the affairs of empires and burgh towns." We have already alluded to Galt's exuberance in the productions of 1822; but that of the following year was still more excessive, so that it might well be said of him, vires acquirit eundo. Thus the "Entail," "Ringan Gilhaize," and the "Spaewife"-each a three-volumed novel-were published during this year of portentous abundance. The first of these novels was founded upon an incident related by the Lord Provost of Glasgow to Galt. It was in this way that he was accustomed to make the most of everything that he had heard or witnessed, by either laying it down as the groundwork of a tale, or

introducing it as an amusing episode; and in this faculty of adaptation lay much of the excellence of his popular works. Thus his vigorous and picturesque description of the northern coast of Scotland, in the "Entail," was expanded from an interesting account of the locality given to him by a daughter of Sir John Sinclair; while many of the grotesque events and humorous jokes with which his other tales abound, had long previously enlivened the firesides of the peasantry. In him, however, it was no small merit that he should have introduced them so happily, and told them so well. As a proof of the acceptability of his last-mentioned work, Galt tells us, in his "Literary Life and Miscellanies," that Sir Walter Scott had read it thrice, and Lord Byron as often. Of "Ringan Gilhaize," he also tells us that it received the unique and distinguished honour of being recommended from the pulpit by one of the ministers of Aberdeen. This tale, in which the narrator, a persecuted Covenanter, relates the history of his grandfather, gives a sketch of the rise and progress of the Reformation in Scotland, from the days of Knox and Murray to the close of the reign of the Stuarts; and for the purpose of collecting materials, and preserving the accuracy of the narrative, Galt went to Rinsory-house to gather traditions, and collected several relics of the battle of Killiecrankie. The cause which incited him to write such a work was indignation at the popularity of "Old Mortality," in which the Covenanters were held up to ridicule; and he was animated with a chivalrous zeal to vindicate the character of these heroic but much-vilified sufferers in the cause of conscience and religion. But unfortunately Ringan Gilhaize was no match for Balfour of Burley. In this tale Galt very rashly abandoned his own field of broad reality and plain every-day life, for one where nothing but history and imagination could aid him; and therefore it exhibited a marked deficiency both in execution and popular interest. It was still worse, however, with the "Spaewife," where he went back from the Covenanting periods, with which the Scottish public can still sympathize, to the fifteenth century of Scottish history, about which they know little and care still less; and with all his attempts at the sublime, which often swelled into the turgid, he could not interest his readers one jot in the Duke of Albany and his worthless brood, or even in James I., our heroic ministrel king. It was certainly an over-ambitious attempt, and as such it failed. At this period the empire of historical romance belonged to Sir Walter Scott, and to him alone, without peer or rival. But that such an attempt was the opening of a safety-valve, and that the work would have exploded in some fashion or other, is manifest, from the following statement of the author:-"The fate of James I. of Scotland early seemed to me possessed of many dramatic capabilities; and in the dream of my youth, to illustrate by tales, ballads, and dramas, the ancient history of my country, it obtained such a portion of my attention, that I have actually made a play on the subject. In riper life, many years after, I wrote the novel; and my knowledge of the age in which the transactions lie, enabled me to complete the story in such a manner that, merely as an antiquarian essay, it merits consideration." To the "Spaewife" succeeded "Rothelan." This also is a historical novel or romance; and not content with going back so far as to the reign of Edward III., Galt transferred the scene to England, where his great forte as a Scottish novelist had to be utterly laid aside; and "Rothelan" was a failure. Among the manifold aims of the author's ambition, that of being a good musical composer happened to be one; and in "Rothelan," Galt had not only written two songs, but also set them to music. But it unfortunately hap