488 



GALT. 



and meanwhile, for the sake of his health, in 1809, 

 made a tour of the Mediterranean. At Gibraltar 

 he encountered Lord Byron and Mr Hobhouse, in 

 whose company he sailed to Sicily, and whose ac- 

 quaintance he thus formed. From Sicily, he pro- 

 ceeded to Malta, and thence to Greece, where, at 

 Tripolizza, he conceived a scheme for forming a 

 mercantile establishment in the Levant, to coun- 

 teract the Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon. 

 The conception was instantaneous, and seemed at 

 first so promising as almost to turn his brain. 

 After touching at Smyrna, he returned to Malta, 

 where he found Messrs Struthers, Kennedy, and 

 company, apprised by Mr Kirkman Finlay's house 

 in Glasgow, of a plan similar to his, which had 

 been suggested by one of their partners resident at 

 Vienna. He was astonished at the coincidence, 

 but resolved to wait till the house at Malta should 

 correspond with that at Glasgow respecting his 

 scheme. In the meantime, he proceeded to inspect 

 the coasts of the Grecian archipelago, and to as- 

 certain the safest route to the borders of Hungary. 

 After an exploratory expedition, in which he satis- 

 fied himself of the practicability of introducing 

 goods into the continent by this circuitous chan- 

 nel, he returned by Sardinia and Gibraltar to Bri- 

 tain (August, 1811), landing first in Ireland. He 

 busied himself for a time in applications to the 

 government, on the subject of his Levant scheme, 

 but found great difficulty in attracting any atten- 

 tion. Meanwhile, he prepared and published a 

 quarto volume descriptive of what he had seen in 

 his travels, being his first avowed work. It was 

 not very favourably received, and has long passed 

 out of notice. He never reaped any good from 

 the project which had occupied his thoughts so 

 much, though it was soon after acted upon to a 

 considerable extent and with advantage to those 

 concerned. Mr Kirkman Finlay proposed to give 

 him a principal share in superintending a mercan- 

 tile concern established by his bouse at Gibraltar, 

 and he closed with the offer. At Gibraltar, how- 

 ever, he found himself out of his element : he con- 

 fesses he never could lay his heart to any business 

 in which the imagination was not engaged. His 

 health became bad, and the concern was ruined by 

 the successes of the Duke of Wellington in Spain. 

 He returned to London, and soon after became 

 connected vvith the Star newspaper, and married 

 Elizabeth, daughter of Dr Alexander Tilloch, pro- 

 prietor of that paper, and editor of the Philosophi- 

 cal Magazine, by whom he had a family. He also 

 published about this time the Life of Cardinal 

 Wolsey, 1812, 4to; Reflections on Political and 

 Commercial Subjects, 1812, 8vo: Letters from the 

 Levant, 1813, 8vo; the Life of Benjamin West, 

 1816, 8vo; the Majola, a tale, 1816, 2 vols; and 

 a number of minor biographies and plays, the most 

 of the latter appearing in a periodical work called 

 the Rejected Theatre. But his first really suc- 

 cessful appearance as an author was in a series of 

 articles, which appeared in the year 1820, in 

 Blackwood's Magazine, styled " The Ayrshire Le- 

 gatees." In this work, which eventually formed 

 a separate volume, he snowed a power of delineat- 

 ing a certain line of Scotch characters, that struck 

 the public mind, especially in Scotland, very for- 

 cibly. Sir Walter Scott had already given some 

 admirable pictures; but he had never come so ex- 

 actly into the very heart of a real Scotch matron 

 of the middle ranks, as Mr Gait now did. Mr 

 Blackwood saw that this was a new vein, and he 



encouraged Mr Gait in prosecuting it. A volume, 

 written earlier, but for some years neglected, was 

 now published, under the title of " The Annals of 

 the Parish." It was intended by the author as a 

 kind of Scottish Vicar of Wakefield ; and it cer- 

 tainly possesses much of the household humour and 

 pathos of its admirable model. About this time, 

 the author had come to Scotland, chiefly with a 

 view to the education of his children ; and for some 

 years he lived in Eskgrove House, near Mu>sd- 

 burgh. He now issued in rapid succession, The 

 Provost, The Steamboat (each one volume), Sir 

 Andrew Wylie, and the Entail (each three vol- 

 umes), and the Gathering in the West, which re- 

 lated to the flocking of the west-country people to 

 Edinburgh at the period of the king's visit. In all 

 of these works, the peculiar vein of Scottish char- 

 acter which Mr Gait had hit upon, formed the 

 main attraction, and their merits were upon the 

 whole handsomely acknowledged by the public. 

 It could only be urged by critics of strictly just 

 taste, that there was an unfortunate coarseness in 

 many of Mr Gait's pictures, and a mean style of 

 moral feeling in many of his characters, which 

 could not justly be considered as a fair representa- 

 tion of the people from whom they professed to be 

 derived. Another series, published by Messrs 

 Oliver and Boyd, consisted of Ringan Gilhaize, 

 The Spaewife, and Rothelan. They fell under 

 the denomination of historical romances, and were 

 not generally deemed happy efforts. Upon the 

 whole, any distinctive merit which Mr Gait pos- 

 sessed as an author, may be said to have been ex- 

 clusively in his power of describing a homely speci- 

 men of his countrymen, which he almost always 

 did with truth and effect, though, as intimated, 

 with far too much of the selfish feeling attributed 

 to the character. He generally failed in any 

 higher flight. 



From about the year 1824 to 1830, Mr Gait 

 was occupied in the business of acting manager 

 and superintendant of the business of an emigra- 

 tion company in Upper Canada, which required 

 his almost constant residence in that country 

 and appears to have yielded him a salary of a 

 thousand a year. The company, however, did not 

 at first prosper, and he was discharged at the last, 

 in what appears te have been a very harsh manner. 

 The consequence was an embarrassment in his af- 

 fairs, which obliged him to become bankrupt. In 

 London he again commenced the business of an 

 author, and produced in quick succession, Lawrie 

 Todd (a singularly happy and successful novel), 

 Southennen, Bogle Corbet, Stanley Buxton, and 

 Eben Erskine all of which were in three volumes 

 each with the Life of Lord Byron (written for 

 the National Library), the Lives of the Players, 

 (2 vols. for the same seriesj, the Member and the 

 Radical, political tales in one volume each. In 

 the midst of these honourable exertions for the 

 support of his family and the discharge of his debts 

 for both objects seem to have been in his view, 

 and the latter to a certain extent accomplished 

 he was, in July 1832, struck with paralysis, and 

 was removed to his relations in Greenock, where 

 he remained an invalid till his death, on the llth 

 April, 1839, having been visited by a succession of 

 paralytic shocks to the amount of fourteen, which 

 although they deprived him of the power of his 

 limbs, and latterly even of the power of holding a 

 pen, still left his mental faculties so far unimpaired 

 as to enable him, during his illness, to write or 



