Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/277

Rh 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 V.