had suffered from his confinement, it was about this time further
affected by the first of a long series of shocks, which are described as
of a nature 'analogous to paralysis.' This sufficed to destroy such
hopes of active employment as remained to him--and he had been, as
usual, hard at work weaving schemes with all his former ingenuity--and
in process of time reduced him to a wreck. Still he clung to his pen,
adding to the already lengthy list of his works the novel of _Stanley
Buxton, or The Schoolfellows_, as well as two political satires entitled
_The Member_ and _The Radical_. Mrs Thomson, authoress of 'Recollections
of Literary Characters,' an old friend, who visited him when he was
growing ever more and more disabled, has left a touching account of his
helplessness. Galt received her without rising from his seat, gave her
his left hand, and pointing to his right, said, 'with a little
quickness, "Perhaps you have heard of my attack? It has fallen upon my
limbs; my head is clear."' Alas! though clear, his mental powers were by
no means what they had been. But, if on some former occasions he had
shown himself too much a prey to moral sensibility, where physical
suffering was concerned his behaviour was that of a stoic. Whilst the
progress of the disease deprived him of the use of one limb after
another, he continued, uncomplaining, to make the most of such powers as
yet remained. Indeed, during the three or four years immediately
following his first seizure, his annual literary output in the
departments of editing, book-making, and story-writing, seems if
anything larger than usual. But among all these undertakings, it is
sufficient here to name the novels of _Eben Erskine, or The Traveller_,
and _The Stolen Child_, with the three volumes of tales collected under
the title of _Stories of the Study_, and the _Autobiography_ and
_Literary Life and Miscellanies_. The lax composition of the latter
works is probably a symptom of mental decay in the author. The book last
named was dedicated by permission to William the Fourth, who in
acknowledgment of the compliment sent Galt L200, which money, together
with L50 obtained for him from the Literary Fund, may be said to
represent the sum of official, or quasi-official, recognition which he
received. For his claims against Government for 'brokerage,' or
commission, on the sale of lands to the Canada Company were refused,
whilst a pension said to have been promised him by the Company was never
paid. The last years of his life were spent in dependence, but it is
pleasing to note that the _Autobiography_ closes with an expression of
satisfaction over the payment of secured debts. He had in the meantime
been removed to the house of a sister at Greenock, where he died on the
11th April 1839, not having yet completed his sixtieth year.
In summing up Galt's position, it may be said that he remains the most
unequal of all writers possessing equal claims to distinction--the man
who _could_ produce _The Provost_ and _Ringan Gilhaize_ and who _did_
produce _The Spaewife_ and _The Literary Life_. For it is not enough to
say, as has been said, that in him there were two men, the man of
letters and the man of affairs: there were two literary men in him, the
creative artist and the book-maker. And the fact that, of these two, the
latter had things too much his own way was due to Galt's defective
appreciation of his high calling. 'My literary propensities,' he writes,
'were suspended during my residence in Upper Canada, not from
resolution, but because I had more interesting pastime. I did then think
myself qualified to do something more useful than "stringing blethers
into rhyme," or writing clishmaclavers in a closet.' And again: 'At no
time, as I frankly confess, have I been a great admirer of mere literary
character; to tell the truth, I have sometimes felt a little shamefaced
in thinking myself so much an author, in consequence of the estimation
in which I view the profession of book-making in general. A mere
literary man--an author by profession--stands low in my opinion.' The
petulance and perversity of the first statement, and the sheer vulgarity
of the second, may be palliated by the fact that the author was in low
spirits and bad health when he made them. It remains none the less true
that these opinions ruled his practice. But they carried their
punishment with them. For who will doubt that Galt would have been a
happier man had he been truer to his vocation, had he resisted the
temptation to fly off at a tangent in pursuit of every commercial
will-o'-the-wisp that might chance to catch his eye, and devoted his
great powers with something more of steadiness and of seriousness to
doing his best at what he was best qualified to do?
He expected that fuller appreciation would come to him after death, and
perhaps this expectation, so fallacious in ninety-nine cases out of
every hundred, was in his case not without plausible grounds. For, from
a literary point of view, Galt, like De Stendhal, was in advance of his
time. Employing the word in its specialised sense, he was more 'modern'
than the greatest among his contemporaries. For example, as has been
already indicated, when most himself he had more of what we are pleased
to consider the characteristically modern qualities of sensitiveness and
imaginative intensity than had Scott. In illustration of this, perhaps
we cannot do better than cite the already quoted _Omen_, with its sombre
and lurid effects, the sense of bated breath, suspense, impending
tragedy, which pervades its every page. Nothing of all this, as I need
hardly say, was in Scott's line; even in the finest and most imaginative
of his shorter pieces, in _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, the tension is
eased by characteristic diffuseness of manner. And Galt's superior--some
will call it morbid--sensitiveness extended also to his style: his use
of words, when he is at his best, is much more interesting than Scott's.
It might possibly even be argued that his Scotch, if perhaps less
abundant, is more remarkable for nice appropriateness of word and phrase
than Sir Walter's. [And, by the way, the failure of Galt's reputation to
cross the Tweed may, perhaps, be partly explained by the fact that,
whereas in Scott's novels the dialogue alone is Scotch, in some of
Galt's best books the entire narrative is interspersed with dialect
words. One can fancy, for instance, the puzzled condition of a southern
reader who is informed by the author himself that 'Mrs Malcolm herself
was this winter brought to death's door by a terrible host that came on
her in the kirk,' or that a certain clock 'was a mortification to the
parish from the Lady Breadland.'] But, to continue our argument, besides
the above, Galt has more of the modern pictorial quality than Scott:
there is more in his descriptive work which is addressed directly to the
eye. Once more, he repeatedly gratifies a modern taste by choosing for
his theme what is fantastic, or occult, or what lies off the beaten
track. In stating all this, we would, of course, guard against being
understood to imply that all these characteristics are points of
advantage possessed by Galt over Scott. On the contrary, some of them
may even be symptoms of an age of literary decadence; what we do
maintain is that, in virtue of these characteristics, his chance of
appealing to a late nineteenth-century audience is improved. As a final
word under this heading, Galt may be called the forerunner of the
Realistic movement in Scottish fiction. _The Provost_ and _The Annals_
might almost belong to the age of Tourguenieff and Mr Henry James, and
in this respect his works have been more studied than they have been
praised, their influence has been greater than their reputation.
Generally, and in conclusion, Galt may be credited with having done to
some extent for Glasgow and the West of Scotland what Scott triumphantly
accomplished for the Borders and the Highlands, and for the trading and
professional classes of his country what Scott did for its gentry and
peasantry.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] _The Crusade._
[4] _Literary Life_, p. 79.
[5] _Autobiography_, vol. i., p. 147.
[6] R. P. Gillies, _Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_, vol. iii., p. 59.
[7] _Autobiography_, vol. ii., p. 157.
[8] 'Journal,' under date January 21st, 1832.
D. M. MOIR
'DELTA'
'After all, how precarious a thing is literary fame! 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_. And in this instance posterity has taken its cue from
contemporary popularity; for it is upon the homely and genial _Mansie
Wauch_, and on that alone, that the once considerable literary
reputation of 'the amiable Delta' rests to-day.
David Macbeth Moir, born on the 5th January 1798, was the son of Robert
Moir and Elizabeth Macbeth, whom Aird describes simply as 'respectable
citizens.' His birthplace was Musselburgh, and to Musselburgh he
remained faithful through life. Indeed, though lives of
men-of-letters--from Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy--afford plenty of
instances of local attachment, there can be few instances I should
suppose of lives more closely associated with a single place. In
Musselburgh Moir's life was spent; Musselburgh he served faithfully,
both in his profession and as a public servant; and in the neighbourhood
of Musselburgh he placed the scene of his most popular work. Gratifying
is it, therefore, to know that Musselburgh has recognised him as her
poet--a minor writer certainly, yet exclusively her own.
Having received his schooling in his native town, at the age of thirteen
young Moir was bound apprentice to a physician in practice there. His
apprenticeship lasted four years, during the latter part of which, as
also during the year following, he studied medicine in the Edinburgh
University. In 1816 he obtained his surgeon's diploma. In the following
year he lost his father, and being then eighteen, became the partner of
a Dr Brown of Musselburgh, whose practice kept him so occupied that for
more than ten years to come he is said not to have spent a single night
out of the town.
Meantime, having a facile pen (too facile it has proved!) he had begun
to compose as far back as 1812, about which year he sent two essays to a
Haddington publication entitled _The Cheap Magazine_. In 1816 he
contributed to the _Scots Magazine_, and, further, commemorated the
exploit of Lord Exmouth by publishing anonymously _The Bombardment of
Algiers, and Other Poems_. Despite pressure of work, he did not give up
literature on entering the medical profession, but in time became a
contributor to Constable's and Blackwood's Magazine--to the latter of
which, over the signature '[Greek: Delta],' he came regularly to furnish
not only _jeux d'esprit_ but essays and serious verse as well, his
contributions in all amounting to the large total of nearly four
hundred. In this manner he became acquainted with John Wilson, for
whose showy poetry he entertained an admiration which was doubtless less
uncommon then than it would be now. Other periodicals to which he
contributed were _Fraser's Magazine_ and the _Edinburgh Literary
Gazette_. Between medicine and literature, his life now went on busily
but uneventfully. In the end of 1824 or the commencement of the next
year, he published, under his pseudonym, a volume of verse to which he
gave the title of the _Legend of Genevieve_, which he dedicated to the
veteran author of the _Man of Feeling_. The titular poem is a
sentimental story written in the manner of Byron's Tales, the remaining
pieces being on miscellaneous subjects. About the same time the first
instalments of _Mansie Wauch_ made their appearance in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, the completed story, with additions, being published as a
book in 1828. Moir was a man of an intensely domestic disposition, and
having become affianced in this year, in the following summer he took to
himself a wife in the person of Miss Catherine Bell of Leith, whom he
espoused in the Church of Carham in Northumberland, celebrating the
occasion by a series of Sonnets on the Scenery of the Tweed. By this
lady he eventually became the father of eleven children. His literary
reputation was now established, and in 1829 Mr Blackwood made him an
offer of the editorship of the _Quarterly Journal of Agriculture_,
which, however, he declined. In remaining constant to the medical
profession, he has been credited with purely philanthropic motives; but,
without bating a jot of my respect for the man, the following (his own)
explanation of the case seems to me the more reasonable one. 'In early
youth,' says he, in a letter to David Vedder, the sailor poet of Orkney,
'I had many aspiring feelings to dedicate my life to literature, and to
literature alone; but I thank God--seeing what I have seen in Galt, in
Hogg, in Hood, and other friends--that I had resolution to resolve on a
profession, and to make poetry my crutch and not my staff. I have, in
consequence, lost the name which, probably, with due exertion, I might
have acquired; but I have gained many domestic blessings which more than
counter-balance it, and I can yet turn to my pen, in my short intervals
of occasional relaxation, with as much zest as in my days of romantic
adolescence.' This is the utterance of a sensible man who, having his
way to make in the world, decides on the expediency of a certain course
and adheres to it. Possibly Moir's estimate of his own powers was a
juster one than that of many of his friends; at any-rate it is
satisfactory to learn that, 'in spite of the common distrust of the
literary character,' he succeeded in making his way as a doctor even in
that place where proverbially a prophet is apt to lack honour. Mr
Blackwood and others of his friends also urged him to leave Musselburgh
and to set up in practice in Edinburgh, offering to use their interest
in obtaining patients for him. But these offers he likewise declined.
His next publication (1831) consisted of _Outlines of the Ancient
History of Medicine_, and was intended as the first instalment of a
complete history of the subject, although increased pressure of
professional duties, occasioned first by the events of the next year and
then by the retirement of his partner in the year following, prevented
his further execution of the design.
The period at which we have now arrived is one of those which have been
rendered terribly memorable by a visitation of cholera, and in the
commencement of 1832 the town of Musselburgh was attacked with special
severity by the epidemic. So great was the terror prevailing throughout
the country that many physicians are said to have fled from their posts,
but now, as also during a later outbreak, was the time when Moir's
character shone out with peculiar lustre. Rising to the height of the
emergency, he was to be found night and day at his post, endeavouring
both to lessen the sufferings of the sick by his medical skill, and to
comfort the dying with the consolations of religion. His humane
exertions on behalf of the poor were, in particular, remarkable. This is
a period regarding which one would gladly supply further facts, for it
is, no doubt, the most interesting in Moir's life, and it is
consequently with regret that we find it passed over in a few lines in
the accredited biography. When that was written, circumstantial details
of his faithful labours might still have been collected, and these would
have brought the man nearer to us than anything else could do. But Aird
has given us nothing but generalities. During the outbreak, Moir held
the post of Secretary to the Board of Health of Musselburgh, and it was
as an answer to numberless enquiries addressed to him in this capacity
that he now wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled 'Practical
Observations on Malignant Cholera,' which, says Aird, flew like
wild-fire through the country, and which he shortly supplemented by
'Proofs of the Contagion of Malignant Cholera.'
No doubt by way of recruiting after his labours, he this year attended
the Meeting of the British Association, which was held at Oxford, and
afterwards visited London, mainly in order to see Galt, with whom he had
become friendly some years before, and who was now living in broken
health at Brompton. On this occasion he had an interview with Coleridge
at Highgate. The sage, who received him in bed, and treated him to 'two
hours of divine monologue,' talked at first of his own early life,
incidentally reciting part of his early-written Monody on the Death of
Chatterton, and so far all went well. But Moir, who had a constitutional
dislike of mysticism, and who ought to have known better, had the
rashness to put a few questions to the poet, 'relative to his peculiar
speculations in philosophy,' and from that moment, needless to say, he
found himself involved in the intricacies of a labyrinth.
As that of a medical man in the full swing of a large practice, Moir's
life now affords but little material to the biographer. In a letter to
Robert Macnish, his dearly-loved friend and brother in medicine and the
muses, he has himself described his daily existence. 'Our business,'
says he, 'has ramified itself so much in all directions of the
compass--save the north, where we are bounded by the sea--that on an
average I have sixteen or eighteen miles' daily riding; nor can this be
commenced before three or four hours of pedestrian exercise has been
hurried through. I seldom get from horseback till five o'clock; and by
half-past six I must be out to the evening rounds, which never terminate
till after nine. Add to this the medical casualties occurring between
sunset and sunrise, and you will see how much can be reasonably set down
to the score of my leisure.' Still, such leisure as he had, he
perseveringly devoted to literature. When driving upon his rounds, he
would read in his carriage; but his chief time for study was after the
house was shut up for the night, when all was quiet around him, and when
he could, with some degree of comfort, sit down in his library to read
and write. 'Even then, however, from the uncertainty of his profession,
he was never altogether sure of his own time. Often did he remark that,
whether it was the contrariety of human nature, or his own peculiar
sensitiveness to interruption at such a time, he was most liable to be
broken in upon when he was most deeply engaged in writing.' Under such
circumstances we cannot wonder that his literary work lacks finish. The
wonder is rather that he did not give up literature altogether; but we
read that he loved it too well to do this, and that he never seemed so
happy as when his mind was employed upon it. As a doctor of literary
men, he exercised a beneficial influence. Shortly before the death of Mr
Blackwood, that gentleman lay ill in Ainslie Place; whilst Galt, who was
also in bad health, was living in lodgings close by. Relations between
the two had been strained, and illness prevented their meeting. But it
is pleasing to read that their mutual respect and esteem were now
renewed, and that Moir, who was in attendance on both, carried kind
messages between them.
A most affectionate parent, Moir had sustained a succession of cruel
bereavements by losing three of his children, who died in early
childhood, within the space of about eighteen months, in the years 1838
and 1839. To relieve his feelings on these occasions, he wrote a series
of elegies, which, after being circulated among his friends, were
published, with a few other poems, in 1843, under the title of _Domestic
Verses_. It is as an elegiac poet--if as a poet at all--that the author
is now remembered, and one of these elegies--called by the
self-conferred name of one of the babes, 'Casa Wappy'--has enjoyed
great popularity and is still included in anthologies, though in my own
opinion a less meritorious composition than the the second of the three
poems on the same subject, entitled 'Casa's Dirge':--
'Now winter with its snow departs,
The green leaves clothe the tree;
But summer smiles not on the hearts
That bleed and break for thee:
The young May weaves her flowery crown,
Her boughs in beauty wave;
They only shake their blossoms down
Upon thy silent grave.'
His elegiac muse is sweet and fluent, and breathes the consolations of
Christianity. But, like Motherwell, he is apt to be over-lachrymose and
to insist upon his grief, which is fatal to pathos. His touch, too, is
uncertain. For instance, in one Sonnet we have this fine line,
'The bliss that feeds upon the heart destroys,'
in near juxta-position with the ridiculous figure,
'Joy's icicles melt down before Time's sun.'
Here as elsewhere, too, he freely repeats himself. 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. But, in justice, it must be remembered that in its own day it
not only pleased the general reader, but also drew warm praises from
such judges as Tennyson, Jeffrey, Wordsworth, and Lockhart. Moir's time,
as we have seen, was not at his disposal, but besides--or perhaps
because of this--he was an impatient composer. He chose--if such things
be determined by choice--to write much rather than to write well. As a
whole his poetry is inferior in style to that of his less prolific
contemporary, Thomas Pringle. And certainly, if poetry is intended to
endure, it must be moulded in some less pliant material than that which
Moir employed.
Not much now remains to tell. In the year after the publication of his
_Domestic Verses_, Moir contracted a serious illness by sitting all
night in damp clothes by the bedside of a patient, and in 1846 his
general health suffered further from the effects of a carriage accident,
which also permanently lamed him. In 1848 he made an excursion, lasting
two and a half days, and meditated during seven previous years, to the
Lake District with Mrs Moir; and in the following year he visited the
Highlands, with Christopher North, who was 'in great force,' Henry
Glassford Bell, and one or two others. In spring of 1851, he delivered a
course of six lectures at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, his
subject being the Poetical Literature of the Past Half Century. On
appearing on the platform, he had a very warm reception, and his
lectures, proving popular, were soon afterwards published; nor have they
quite lost their interest yet. Of course at the present day no one would
be likely to turn to them for an estimate of the genius, say, of Byron
or of Shelley, or for a summing up of the poetical achievement of
Wordsworth, Coleridge, or Keats. It is in the nature of things that
truth in criticism, as in evidence, is arrived at by a slow process, and
abler pens have dealt with these great writers since Moir's day. But
should anyone wish to know the estimation in which they were held at the
date in question, he will generally find a good indication of it here.
And in so doing, as was inevitable, he will come across some curiosities
of criticism--as, for instance, where the lecturer, speaking of Byron
and Wilson together, as the two rising poetic lights of the year 1812,
adds that 'it is difficult even yet to say which of the two was most
distinguished for general scope of mind, for imaginative and
intellectual power.' Also, should any student desire a sketch--descriptive
rather than critical--of such half-forgotten literary figures as 'Monk'
Lewis and his followers, or of the 'artistic artificial school' of
Hayley, the 'Swan of Lichfield,' and the Della Cruscans, or seek for
appreciative observations on the author of _The Farmer's Boy_, on Kirke
White, or on Samuel Rogers, here he will find them. Besides these
lectures and the works already mentioned, Moir's literary undertakings
include an edition of the works of Mrs Hemans, an Account of the
Antiquities of the Parish of Inveresk, written for the Statistical
Account of Scotland (1845), and a few occasional monographs.