GALT A MAN OF GENIUS.

73

him back in his own coin-and we thus have a couple of rather forbidding portraits.

Shepherd. Disagreeable likenesses-eh?

North. Mr Galt is a man of genius, and some of his happiest productions will live in the literature of his country. His humour is rich, rare, and racy, and peculiar withal, entitling him to the character of originality—a charm that never fadeth away; he has great power in the humble, the homely pathetic, and he is conversant, not only with many modes and manners of life, but with much of its hidden and more mysterious spirit.

Shepherd. He's aften unco coorse.

North. True, James, he is not so uniformly delicate and refined as you are in your prose compositions; but lend me your ear, my beloved Shepherd-despise to degrade yourself, even for one moment, by seeming to join the whelps who have been lately snarling at his heels. Let the best of the puppy pack produce anything half as good as the worst of his Tales -and then we shall listen to their barking with less disgust. Shepherd. Wha do you mean, sir?

North. Our inferior periodical literature is much infested by a set of pert puppies, conceited curs, and heavy hounds, on whose hides and hurdies, James, it might not be amiss to try the application of whip-cord. We know how they snarl,-suppose they should be made to let us hear how they howl?

Shepherd. Tak care, sir, they dinna bite you, and gie you the tetanus.

North. They are a set of mangy mongrels, James, and fit but to be flung into some old tan-pit. Their disease originates in the spleen, and in the gall-bladder. In other words, the envy of impotence consumes them, like a cancer in the stomach, or a liver-complaint. Their lean, lank, leathern jaws soon become of a loathsome and leprous yellow-they suffer hideously from the mumps, and the yaws, and the gumscurvy, these, and several other kindred complaints, being all comprehended under the generic name of the Criticals.

Shepherd. They maun be a bonny and a happy set!

North. To leave off metaphor-I must say, James, that these gentry have given me, lately, great disgust.

Shepherd. They are beneath your notice, sir. Scorn to kill them, and leave them to die a natural death.

74

GALT'S LIFE OF BYRON REPREHENDED.

North. The whole pack, as I said, are now yelping at the heels of Mr Galt. The small, insignificant, snotty-nosed, tick-bitten, blear-eyed beagles, were the game they are pursuing so eagerly to turn round upon them, would flee like a frightened flock of sheep.

Shepherd. I agree with you, sir, Galt's genius is great.

North. But, for the life of me, I cannot see the drift of his Life of Byron. I have read it through, James-and the volume, which is far from being a dull one, throws much more light on the personal character of Mr Galt himself than on that of the Noble Childe. Somehow or other, I felt all along, sometimes a painful-sometimes a pleasant inclination to laughter at the bonhomie of the author of the Annals of the Parish. It seems never for one moment to have occurred to him that he was in all things-mind, manner, body, and estate -immeasurably inferior to the mighty creature of whom he keeps scribbling away, sometimes with an approving smirk on his countenance, and sometimes with a condemning scowlboth alike ludicrous in a man so little distinguished either by moral or intellectual majesty as Mr Galt.

Shepherd. You see, sir, Byron was a Lord, and our freen Galt only a supercargo, a step below a skipper,-and low-born and low-bred folk, especially in the mercantile line, are, for the maist pairt, unco upsetting when they chance, by ony accident, to forgather wi' nobility. It's no the case wi' me, for I was born, thank God, in the Forest, and was familiar frae my youth up wi' the faces o' three successive Dyucks. But our freen Galt, when he first fand himsel in the same ship' wi' a Lord, maun either hae swarfed wi' fear, or keepit himsel frae swarfin by pure impidence-and wha can blame him for ha'in adopted the latter expedient? Yet, tak my word for't, sir, he was no sae impident in the packet-ship as in the pocket-volumm, and writes about Byron in a very different style, now that he is dead, than he ever daured till speak to him then when he was leevin, wi' that patrician scowl on his brow, that patrician curl on his lip, before which John Galt must have quailed, as bolder men did, to say naething o' that transcendent genius which must have laid its commands on him, to be silent if not servile, just as a king does to his subjects-I will not say a master to his slaves.

1 In 1809 Galt sailed in the same packet-ship with Lord Byron from Gibraltar to Malta.

North. Perhaps, James, you are stating the case somewhat too strongly; yet, as Byron's rank no doubt protected him, when living, from the possibility of any impertinence from Mr Galt, it, if nothing else, should have been his safeguard also in the grave. People in the humble condition of Mr Galt, and when he first met Lord Byron, it was most humble, -are not, by the rules of society, permitted to approach nobility but in a deferential attitude, and within what is called a respectful distance. This is so universally understood, that no man of proper spirit ever dreams of becoming very familiar with "lords, and dukes, and mighty earls," without possessing some peculiar privilege or title to do so, such as at that time does not seem to have belonged to our ingenious westcountryman. Now-he is Somebody-for his genius has distinguished him above the common herd; and genius in Britain, if it does not level all distinctions, elevates its possessor in the scale of society, and justifies cordial acquaintanceship, though it rarely fosters brotherly friendship, between a lout and a lord. But then-he was Nobody-or rather less than nobody; for it appears, from his own statement, that he had no profession-and therefore, James, you are mistaken in supposing him to have been a supercargo; -he had not been so fortunate as to receive a classical education, a want which, in Byron's eyes, must have seemed almost incompatible with the condition, if not the character, of a gentleman;—he possessed no personal accomplishments peculiarly calculated to win the regard of Childe Harold; but was, in short, merely a passenger in the same packet. Under such circumstances, the courtesy and affability with which Lord Byron seems to have behaved to Mr Galt, showed the native kindness and goodness of his heart; and we are sorry now to know, that the condescension of the illustrious peer, so far from being properly appreciated by the obscure

commoner·

Shepherd. Hoo?

North. Mr Galt, in recording the slight incidents that accompanied the formation of their acquaintanceship, does not scruple, after the lapse of so many years, to speak haughtily of Byron's haughtiness, and of his unbecoming aristocratical airs in issuing orders about his luggage!

Shepherd. I'se warrant that John himsel was far fiercer and fussier about his ain leather trunks and deal chests than his

76

GALT'S MORTIFIED VANITY.

lordship, and far mair domineerin ower his inferiors, if any such there were on board o' the Gibraltar Packet.

North. No doubt. For Mr Galt tells us that he was very hypochondriacal, and seems to say that he was voyaging for no other purpose than to raise his spirits. Well for him that he could afford to do so-but whatever might have been the tone of his temper then, it says little in favour of it now, that he should have given such a colour to the trifling infirmities or caprices of temper exhibited, as he says, by an illustrious young nobleman, at the very time he was receiving from him the most amiable condescensions.

Shepherd. Was Galt, think ye, ever very intimate wi' Byron ?

North. Never. Still he saw something of him; and it might not have been much amiss to tell us what were his impressions. But-James-it was his sacred duty, before doing so, to sift his own soul, and see that no mean or paltry feeling or motive was lurking there-that he was not wincing under the wound of mortified vanity

Shepherd. Ay, sir, there's the rub. Vanity o' vanities! A' is vanity!

North. It seems that his lordship occasionally, in his letters, laughed at Mr Galt; and that, on one occasion, he expressed himself somewhat contemptuously of our friend's literary achievements. One or two harmless gibes of this kind appear in Moore's Life of Byron; and, though far from bitter, they seem to have enfixed themselves, "inextricable as the gored lion's bite." Mr Galt tries to hide his deep and sincere mortification under a shallow and assumed magnanimity; but it will not do-no, James and John, it will not do-and the recollection of a single splenetic sentence throws a shadow over almost every page of the Biography, and induces Mr Galt, sometimes, we daresay, unconsciously and unawares, to wind up almost every paragraph with some assertion or limitation slightly or severely injurious to the personal character of the Illustrious Unfortunate.

Shepherd. I wunna ca' that wicked-for that's a strang word-but it was weak-weak-weak-and will be seen through by the saun-blin'.1

North. I wish to set my friend Galt right upon this point.

1 Saun-blin'-sandblind.

HIS BOOK IS CLEVER.

77

At the time Byron spoke of his being "the last person in the world on whom he could wish to commit plagiary," not one of our excellent and ingenious friend's many admirable tales had been even imagined—and the few attempts he had then made in literature-though bearing clear and even bright marks of genius-had been rather unfortunate. Mr Galt stood, and deserved to stand, very low as an author. We can sympathise with Byron's horror at being charged with plagiarism from such tragedies. But Galt came to know at last where his strength lay-and his genius has been crowned with fame. All his contemporaries now acknowledge his extraordinary powers; and though at no time can we imagine that the author of Childe Harold and Manfred would have stolen jewels for his crown from that of the author of the Annals of the Parish, the Ayrshire Legatees, the Provost, and the Entail; yet there can be no doubt that he must have recognised the rare, singular, and original genius conspicuously displayed throughout all these admirable productions. Why then should Mr Galt's "fundamental features" have been thrown off their hinges by so slight a shock?

Shepherd. Isna the book clever?

2

North. It is. Some absurd expressions occur here and there, on which dolts and dunces have indulged in the most lugubrious merriment-and which one man of genius has whiled away an idle hour with cramming into a copy of no very amusing verses; and I am sorry to say, that there is much obscure, and more false criticism, obvious to the meanest capacities—and, with the exception of Mr Moore, none but the meanest capacities have been employed in ridiculing or vilifying the book. But sins such as these could easily have been pardoned, had there been the redeeming spirit of the pure and high love of truth. "That amber immortalisation" (the expression of a man of genius), is, alas! wantingand, therefore, there is much corrupt matter, and "instead of a sweet savour a stench."

Shepherd. I've some thochts, sir, o' writin a life o' Lord

1 Galt's earliest publication was a volume entitled the "Tragedies of Maddalen, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra."

2 Thomas Moore, who, on the occasion of Galt's work, published a poor squib entitled "Alarming Intelligence-Revolution in the Dictionary-one Galt at the head of it."