John Galt
Published: 2015-07-13
Total Pages: 458
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Excerpt from Annals of the Parish and the Ayrshire Legatees In the course of some remarks upon Sir Walter Scott and his copiousness as a writer, John Galt in his Autobiography makes the not very profound remark that 'unless we keep the quality of excellence constantly in view, we shall fall into a sad error by forming our estimates of authors on the quantity of their productions.' It is impossible but that Galt, as he penned these words in his declining years, should have looked back on his own remarkable literary industry and wondered how far the abundance of his own writings would affect the judgment of posterity upon his place in literature. For there can be no doubt that Galt's fluency in writing, and the apparent ease with which he could produce any kind of book to order, have had much to do with the neglect that has fallen upon him in later days. He had written poetry, voyages and travels, biographies, and treatises on commercial subjects, besides editing and compiling, before ever he discovered the vein in him that was really worth working. John Galt was born in 1779 at Irvine in Ayrshire, the son of a sea-captain. He became in due course a clerk in the custom-house at Greenock, but his heart was already given to literary pursuits, and he early began writing verse and the regulation tragedy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.