Almost all of these are worth reading, and to read them is no trouble: but they are of very unequal merit: and only one of them is worthy of being grouped with _The Ayrshire Legatees_ and the _Annals_. _Sir Andrew Wylie_ is extremely good, and much of it shows Galt in his best vein. The more romantic tales, _Ringan Gilhaize_, _The Spaewife_, _Rothelan_, and _The Omen_, have the defects of their qualities, and the more Galt submits to those qualities the less we are pleased. To be romantic was, perhaps, a pardonable compliance with fashion: but Galt had little to make with romance, and idealism was his easiest road to failure. To be Ossianic may have seemed to him a literary duty, but the performance of some duties is hard on the public: as the district-visited might plead, to whom the perfecting of district-visitors appeals less than it ought. Galt had not a rich imagination; what he possessed in a rare degree was the faculty of representation. In his works of fiction we find a gallery of portraits of singular variety and perfection: of all of them he had seen the originals. When he chose to add characters invented by himself his success was not great. It must not, however, be supposed that he could only reproduce with pedestrian fidelity: there can be no doubt that from a mere hint in actual experience he could draw a vivid portrait of absolute and convincing reality. He himself placed _The Provost_ higher than the _Annals of the Parish_ and _The Ayrshire Legatees_, but no one will agree with him. Almost the only interesting thing he tells us in the Autobiography is that the _Annals_, though published in 1821, the year following the appearance of _The Ayrshire Legatees_, were written in 1813, and laid aside and forgotten. Of _The Entail_ he tells us little, except that the scene of the storm was introduced to admit of the description of a part of Scotland he had never seen. He speaks complacently of the praise accorded to that description, but betrays no pride in Watty or the Leddy, whom, indeed, he does not mention. He has plenty to say about _Ringan Gilhaize_, and evidently believes that the book was not accorded its due proportion of praise; chiefly, it would seem, because the thing he tried to do in it was difficult, and success the more meritorious. Probably Watty and the Leddy were thoroughly spontaneous, as they are inimitably real, and Galt thought the less of them on that account. He left England for Canada in 1826, _The Last of the Lairds_ appearing just before his departure. Three years later he came back ruined, and set to work again, his pen being as industrious as ever. _Lawrie Todd_ was followed by _Southennan_, and these two novels by his _Life of Lord Byron_. In 1839, on April 11, he died at Greenock.