Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/395

 and sensitive, fond of ballads and storybooks. At the age of ten his family removed to Greenock, and Galt completed at various schools the desultory education begun at home and at the grammar school of Irvine. He was then placed in the Greenock custom-house to acquire some clerkly experience, whence he was transferred to a desk in a mercantile house in Greenock. He read in the public library and joined a literary society. He wrote a tragedy on the story of Mary Queen of Scots, which was followed by a poem on the ‘Battle of Largs.’ He contributed verses to local newspapers and to an Edinburgh magazine, and wrote a memoir of John Wilson, author of ‘The Clyde,’ for Leyden's ‘Scottish Descriptive Poems’ (1803). In the period of revolutionary excitement Galt already displayed his toryism. He contributed to newspapers quasi-Tyrtean verse and helped in forming two companies of riflemen, which he avers (Autobiography, i. 41) were ‘the first of the kind raised in the volunteer force of the kingdom.’ Though happy enough at Greenock as a clerk, he felt restless. An insulting letter was addressed to his firm by a Glasgow merchant about 1803. Galt, apparently unauthorised, followed the writer to Edinburgh, where he forced him to write a formal apology. Instead of returning triumphant to Greenock, Galt threw up his situation and migrated to London. While looking about him there he published his poem in octosyllabics on the ‘Battle of Largs.’ He suppressed it immediately after publication (extracts from it are printed in the ‘Scots Magazine’ for 1803 and 1804), apparently because poetry might clash with business, and entered into a commercial partnership with a young Scotchman. In its third year the concern came to grief through the misconduct of one of its correspondents.

Galt now entered at Lincoln's Inn (but was never called to the bar), and began a life of Cardinal Wolsey, suggested during a visit to Oxford, where he found materials in the library of Jesus College. His composition was suspended on obtaining employment which took him to the continent in order to ascertain how far British goods could be exported in defiance of the Berlin and Milan decrees. From Gibraltar to Malta he was a fellow-traveller with Lord Byron, whom he also met at Athens. After visiting Greece and Constantinople and Asia Minor he took a house at Mycone in the Greek Archipelago suitable for the purpose of introducing English merchandise. He afterwards formed a connection with the Glasgow firm of (d. 1828) [q. v.], who had formed a similar scheme. The plan collapsed after some further travel, and ultimately Galt returned to London. There he was engaged by Kirkman Finlay to proceed to Gibraltar, apparently with a view to a scheme for smuggling English goods into Spain. The victories of the Duke of Wellington gave, Galt says, a death-blow to his hopes. He would have lingered on at Gibraltar, but a painful disease forced him to return to England for surgical advice. About this time he made a happy marriage with the daughter of, the editor of the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ to which he was an occasional contributor. With the first restoration of Louis XVI in 1814, Galt paid a visit to France and Holland to promote ‘an abortive scheme,’ and then he returned once more to London.

Galt had already published in 1812 (1) ‘Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, containing … Statistical, Commercial, and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo [sic], and Turkey;’ (2) ‘The Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey;’ (3) ‘The Tragedies of Maddalon, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia and Clytemnestra.’ The ‘Voyages and Travels,’ containing some interesting matter, are disfigured by grave faults of style and by rash judgments. He proposed that England should seize and hold for the benefit of her trade all islands anywhere accessible. He attacked continental aristocracies and priesthoods, and was contemptuously noticed in the ‘Quarterly Review’ for June 1812; while his ignorance and faults of judgment and style were pointed out in a bitter article on his ‘Life of Wolsey’ in the same review for September 1812. The latter work contained some curious and previously unpublished matter relating to Scotland. A second edition appeared in 1817; a third, 1846, ‘with additional illustrations,’ formed vol. i. of the ‘European Library,’ edited by William Hazlitt the younger. Galt's tragedies were praised with bitter irony in the ‘Quarterly Review’ for April 1814, and pronounced by Scott to be ‘the worst ever seen.’ In 1812 he also edited for a short time the ‘Political Review,’ and to Stevenson's edition of Campbell's ‘Lives of the Admirals,’ published in that year, he contributed the biographies of Hawke, Byron, and Rodney, that of Admiral Byron being revised by Lord Byron. In 1813 appeared his ‘Letters from the Levant.’ In 1814 he persuaded Colburn to commence a monthly publication, ‘The Rejected Theatre,’ containing dramas which had been refused by London managers, and other unacted dramas. It appeared in 1814–15 as the ‘New British Theatre’ (4 vols.), edited by Galt, who in the preface assailed the mo-