George Douglas

“ Aird has named The Deserted Churchyard as Moir's highest imaginative piece. But Aird is no critic, and description was not Moir's forte. He multiplies touches—each perhaps good in its way—multiplies them, indeed, to excess; but to combine and compose them into a whole is beyond him. And the same defect—the mark either of an inferior talent, or of an untutored one—is noticeable in his critical portraits. Of his poetry generally, then, it must be confessed that it belongs to that class which, finding acceptance to-day, is without significance for the morrow. ”

“ From the very first the reader is brought under the potent spell of the author's imagination, and so perfect is the art that ever as the dark tale unfolds the author's grip gains in strength. There are passages of fervid and gloomy eloquence in the writing which recall nothing in literature so much as Chateaubriand's masterpiece, and it is notable that, whilst in other respects the two stories are entirely distinct, the mysterious and repellent point on which they turn is one. ”

“ But, none the less, every history is life-like, every character consistent within itself—living as with the life of those real people who flourished before our time, and of whom we have all of us heard in fireside stories as children. ”

“ I am aware that to write in this somewhat heavily academic style of a writer than whom no man of equal gifts made ever less pretention, may be to incur the imputation of taking too high a ground, and to draw down criticism upon the critic's head. I can only reply that the extreme excellence, within their own limits, of Scott's literary achievements has provoked me to it, and that had his works shown less surprising merit they should have been treated in a lighter vein. ”

“ Things to which I have bent the whole force of my mind, and which are worth remembering—if any things that I have done are at all worth remembering—have attracted but a very doubtful share of applause from critics; whilst things dashed off like Mansie Wauch, as mere sportive freaks, and which for years and years I have hesitated to acknowledge, have been out of sight my most popular productions.' Thus wrote Moir, under date of April 12th, 1845—six years before his life's labours closed—to his friend and biographer, Thomas Aird, author of The Devil's Dream. ”

“ This insufferable person, imperturbable in his own conceit—with his horse-laugh over his own jocularity, his grossness of manners, his greed for 'augmentation,' and his wounded self-love mingling with overweening vanity at the end of the book—is a piece of life itself, and the description of his luncheon-party is as good as anything accomplished by the authoress. ”

“ The statement—somewhat disquieting to the professed littérateur—that almost any man may if he choose write one good book in a life-time, finds something like confirmation in the case of Thomas Hamilton. Not primarily a writer, and not gifted by nature with any very remarkable talent or grace of the pen, he yet contrived to produce a book for which a few transcripts of military life in peace and war, a few pictures of travel, perhaps a portrait or two drawn from the life, have sufficed to preserve, after seventy years, a portion of the favour with which it was greeted on its first appearance. ”

“ Granting, then, that rarely if ever have more brilliant pictures of more interesting incidents been more lavishly set before a reader than in the pages of Tom Cringle's Log, we are impelled to enquire what are the corresponding weaknesses which have debarred the author from taking the highest rank as a writer. The answer is not far to seek; it is a defect of constructive power. If he possessed much genius, Michael Scott had but little art. ”

“ Whilst human nature remains what it is, traits of such broad and genial humanity as this are never out of date; but when we turn from the writer to the writings, it is to find the case altered, and ourselves brought face to face with the devastations of time. In the sense of great and immediate effect produced by his work, Wilson was unquestionably the most brilliant, as—excepting the too-fertile Galt—he was the most prolific, of the group of distinguished authors who are here associated with the publishing-house of Blackwood ”

“ Probably few 'novels of plot' are so rich in character, few 'novels of character' so strong in plot. It may be that some carping critic of the ungentle sex will be found to object to Lyndsay and to Delmour, the contrasted lovers of the heroine, as to 'a woman's men'—to urge that their demeanour is too consistently emotional, too demonstrative, to be founded upon any very solid base of character or of disposition. ”

“ Finally, we have abundant evidence that in all that she wrote our authoress was actuated by a genuine desire for the moral and religious welfare of her reader; but in comparison to that of Marriage, her tone in this book is as is the influence of a well-guided life to a sententious homily delivered from a pulpit. In one word, there is no single point in her art in which she has not risen from what is crude and tentative to what is finished and masterly. ”

“ The feather-pate Juliana is not of those to whom Time brings wisdom, and a further acquaintance with her surroundings only serves to bring to light fresh disgusts. The gaunt apparitions of the first evening grow no less tiresome as she knows them better, no less hopelessly remote from every habit, tradition or association of her life. But her poison is the reader's meat. ”

“ Personality, or, in other words, genius it is which gives him his power over the reader—a power which makes even the refractory and fastidious to follow him, as a dog follows its master. Constitutionally a reader may have small relish for farce, and a positive distaste for horse-play; and yet when Scott is in the mood for either, the reader will become so too. ”

“ Here ends what is to be known about Scott's life, and if it is with regret that we accept this fact as inevitable, there is at least a certain consolation to be derived from reflecting that, in this prying age, at least one gallant literary figure stands secure from the mishandling of meddlers. But—the author himself having evaded the biographer—it is scarcely less remarkable that the popularity of his works seems to have won them no adequate eulogy. For, so far as I know, we may search in vain among critical essays for an appreciation of these masterpieces. ”

“ Then we are incidentally informed of the fluctuations of prices, of the rise of new industries, and the change of fashions—information which to the ordinary novel-reader would appear dry, but for the human and personal interest by which it is pervaded. For the history of the parishioners is interwoven with that of the parish, and over the whole is cast the charm of the kindly Doric and the simple and guileless personality of the minister. ”

“ His fellow-countrymen and fellow-craftsmen, Scott and Smollett—with whom, if below them, he is not unworthy to be mentioned—have long since been accorded high rank among the great novelists of English literature: Galt remains in obscurity. And yet it is easy to understand how his qualities have failed of recognition. For though his character was in the ordinary sense of the word exemplary, his genius extraordinary, yet in either there was something lacking. Indeed the study of his life and works reveals almost as much to be blamed as to be praised. ”

“ But a man is what he is at home, and within his own sphere Wilson's sympathies were of the widest and deepest. He was adored by every member of his large family, whilst his own large-hearted affection embraced all, down to—or, as perhaps I should say, remembering his special love for young children, up to the youngest babe in the household. ”

“ Ringan Gilhaize is, in fact, a very fine historical romance, and one, it may be said in passing, which would well repay resuscitation at the hands of some enterprising publisher. A happy instinct had directed Galt in his selection of a period which is certainly the most important, as it is one of the two most romantically interesting, in Scottish history. For though the War of Independence be the darling theme of Scottish patriotism, what I may call the War of Religious Liberty enjoys the two-fold advantage of a wider sympathy and a deeper intellectual significance. ”

“ To his own mother, whom nature had gifted with remarkable mental powers, and in particular with a strong sense of humour and a faculty of original expression, his debt was admitted to be great. Not unnaturally Mrs Galt at first strenuously opposed her son's bookish propensities, though it is recorded that she lived to regret having done so. The father, who by profession was master of a West Indiaman, though, in his son's words, 'one of the best as he was one of the handsomest of men,' does not appear in mind and force of character to have risen above mediocrity. ”

“ But misfortune follows relentlessly upon their traces. Lyndsay dies in disgrace, Margaret's sailor sweetheart perishes by drowning, and one after the other she sees the members of the little group which surrounds her removed by death. Still she does not lose heart. Left alone in the world, she is received into the house of a benevolent young lady, and, there, is happy enough, until the undesired attentions of the young lady's brother compel her to seek another home. Journeying alone and on foot, she seeks a refuge with a distant and estranged relation ”

“ To speak more plainly, if the world of Wilson's tales is a better world than ours, it yet remains an artificial one, his stories develope in accordance with the rules of a preconceived ideal, and a weakening of their interest is the result. For though many a writer has seen life in a way of his own, Wilson seems to have deliberately set himself to see it in a way belonging to somebody else. In fact, throughout this series of little books, he aspires to appear in the character of a prose Wordsworth ”

“ Surely, if he was in truth a competent business man, ill-luck must have pursued him with uncommon pertinacity; and even allowing this to have been the case, he will still stand condemned as a wretched judge of the chances of success inherent in any given business concern. The years at which we have now arrived were the most momentous in his life as a man; but in a sketch of his literary career, such as the present, their place is subordinate.
Haunted by presentiments of evil even at the time of leaving home, Galt had scarcely reached Canada when his troubles began. ”

“ Her love for him has been of such a different nature that she is well-nigh broken-hearted by the discovery. But the faithful Lyndsay stands her friend in need, and the book closes with her reinstatement, long afterwards, as his wife, in the brilliant position which she has already wrongly, though innocently, occupied.
The plot of The Inheritance, of which the above is a sketch, is a model of its kind, whilst from first to last the conduct of the narrative is perfect. Indeed the form of the story could not be improved—a rare merit even in a masterpiece of British fiction ”

“ Dividing his time between Edinburgh and Elleray, the young poet now continued to vary his active open-air life by the plotting and composition of new poems, and in these pursuits, had his affairs continued prosperous, it is quite possible that the remainder of his life might have been spent. For it is a truism that any large measure of happiness is unfavourable to enterprise, and what young Wilson now really stood in need of was some stimulus to exertion from without. ”

“ John Galt was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, on the 2nd May, 1779, in that humbler station of society, which—in so far as it dispenses with screens and concealments, and so brings a child the sooner face to face with life as it is—may be considered favourable to genius. In childhood he was of infirm constitution and somewhat effeminate disposition—defects which were, however, in due course amply rectified. ”

“ She still swims swift, and strong, and deep—and the line goes steady, boys, steady—stiff and steady as a Tory in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal fin—danger in the flap of her tail—and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. ”