Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/273

Rh 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 party-coloured 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