LITERARY SPECTATOR.
/ GALT'S LAWRIE TODD.* \ I ran it throneh, even from my boyish days, Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances— Of moving accidents by flood and field, And with it all my travels' history.
hi that all real autobiographies were like this piece of admirable fic- ion! ! would that they were even as true—we might then forgive kittke,,M.forriotbeing.a thousandth part so entertaining. If we were to ' irxpres-the -genuine feelings of delight and admiration with which we have perused this last work of Mr. GALT, we should be thought guilty of extravagance; or worse still, if the heartiness of our tone did • not carry conviction with it, we might be confounded with the professional puffers, who, when the cue is given to praise, exceed in impassioned terms the warmest expressions of sincere applause,—as in a theatre it is the claqueurs who, with their mercenary palms and servile heels, make-their base approbation heard far beyond the modest delight of the true judge. NeverthelessjLisslv say, that Mr. GALT'S various works, and his last iu PartieUlar, have impressed us with so high an opinion of his genius, that it would be with hesitation that we placed any other living poet or fiction-writer, hove him. Sir WALTER Scorr has the suffrage of all the world, an justly; for he has exercised his genius in more popular walks, and, >erhaps enjoys wider sympathies and more enlarged tastes; • but we question whether he even possesses the spring and soul of poetical icreation in an equal degree with GALT,—We mean the power o ,identifying himself with and losing himself in his own creatures, the j characters, fruit of his brain. Neither does the great Sir WaLrEak exceed him in that other main-spring and right law'of the fictionistP hat curious faculty of observation which leads him to pick up all he external indications of mind, character, and disposition ; norti n that felicitous memory which so carefully records the traits of IA bservation, that when they are wanted, they are never otherwis* than forthcoming. One other advantage GALT possesses over Scorr,t :•—it is, that all his materials are drawn from the living fountain or the present age. SCOTT'S imagination has brooded and generated over the remains of antiquity; his genius kindled over fusty parch- ..ment—a worm-eaten ballad inspired him : but it is very different' svitli GALT—We see in him no traces of any other reading than that:1 of the Bible ; his book is the world, and not a very elevated portioni of it. But the corner of an obscure village is a miniature of the great/ cities of the earth, and all nature is even to be found in a borough-7,5 .town 4 Latterly, however, his experience has crossed the .AtlardEl and rith is the harvest of new-wand fancies.
Lawrie Todd, we are given to understand, is not altogether a ficti- tious character :the first patt of his life is moulded upon some original memoirs of an individual known to the author ; and these memoirs have now done more than alone they ever could have done, for they have given rise to one of the completest narrations, one of the most interesting, stories of a new settlement,: and at the same time one Of the most pleasing and instructive works of fiction, as yet existing in our most copious library of invention. They who can, may conceive DEFOE'S air of reality, joined to the vivacity, the wisdom, and the taste of the nineteenth century. Lawrie Todd is the son of a kind of "dome Davie Deans," by the help of the Lord a nailmaker in Dalkeith. His son Law& becomes a member of the Friends of the People ; and for his pains is led to Edinburgh in a string of individuals charged with high treason. Escaping from this charge, he and his brother are sent 1,y their sa- gacious parent to seek their fortunes in America. Lawrie Todd is a rickety youth, who compensates for the shortness of his legs by the length of his head: possessing a character of great shrewdness, sim- plicity, and vanity combined, together with much industry and skill in his paternal art of nailmaking. The progress of such a character —especially such a Scotsman, which implies thrift—in America, is • not dubious. Lawrie wrought and gained, married, set up a Store at New York, made speculations, and after his first wife's death married again, and established a seed-store, and then a seed-farm ; where he ruined himself, by unhappily becoming too confident in his own judgment and somewhat too elated with his prosperity. Nothing was left for his broken fortunes but a settlement in the bush: he starts for the woods, with his wife andfive children, to begin life anew. He finds himself at a new clearing, called Babelmandel, a little beyond the Olympus, not far from the banks of the Hudson, in the Genesee State. Neither the interest nor the curiosity commences with the bush ; but undoubtedly the history of the difficulties of a new settlement in the woods, its dangers, its interests, and the various circumstances which affect its fortunes, are the most useful, and to us the most charming part of the work, Mr. GALT'S experience both in bush- isettling and novel-writing have enabled him to throw all the massive ilights of forest-scenery on this picturesque portion of the history tot' Lawrie. Nothing can be more striking, more vigorous, more grand, than his sketches ; his human creatures bustling in the heart if the bush are animated with true life ; and his skilful pen has lknovvn how to avail itself of the heart-touching contrast between the hive of busy mortals toiling at houses, mills, bridges, and publics, )smidst the sublime solitudes of nature. Amid these scenes, the mall but deep head of Lawrie has space enough to work. Here, from the smallest beginnings, his fortunes take their rise. From a Mere clearer of his own fifty acres, and inspector of the roadmakers f Babelmandel, he becomes the founder of anew and prosperous own, the builder of the first church, the proprietor of valuable and a Lawrie Todd, or the Settlers in the Woods. By John Galt, Esq. F.A.S. Hon. L.S.P. Oil: N.H.S.11. Author of Annals of the Parish, the Ayrshire 1.egateess &c. 8 vols, u,1830. extensive districts, the establisher of saltworks, and the principal partner idthe bank of Judiville, his own town of seven or eight thou- sand inhabitants, so called after Judith, his second wife. Every step of this history is minutely detailed ; but with so much humour—sly and nearly unconscious humour, as regards the supposed writer—with so much character and effect, and at the same time in a language so well adapted to the subject, that it is impossible that any one can think the narrative descends too closely to particulars. This is no hasty sketch, no wild tale of stormy passions, in which the writer dashes through sense and nonsense like the rider of a steeple chase, as if all he wished were to win his wager or cash his check: it is the regular and progressive building up of the fortunes of a truly remark- able character ; and not a brick is laid, or plank fixed down in the construction of his prosperity, that is not duly recorded. The character of Lawrie Todd, the hero, is not the only one fully developed in these volumes. There are several other originals, whose fortunes are connected with those of Lawrie, and whose con- versations and proceedings afford perpetual amusement. The first to whom we allude is a regular old speculating Yankee, Mr. Zero- babel L. Hoskins, of Vermont State, farmer, and given to cod fish specs. (speculations). Of this most extraordinary person we should endeavour in vain to give an idea :. they who have seen MATHEWS'S Trip to America and his Jonathan in England may form some con- ception of his dialect ; but of his strange, yet admirably well-drawn character, the book alone can speak. Bailie Waft, a cunning old Scotsman, given to sly jokes, prying, Meddling, and tormenting, and yet all the while toiling to attain his own ends, is another charming indescribable, that one could swear had existed, by the staring truth of his likeness, but the original of which we never met with before, either in books or in life.
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