This could well be Galt's masterpiece. He extended his historical scope to analyse the Calvinistic character and the part it played in the Scotland of the 16th to 17th centuries. As John MacQueen suggests, the novel deals with a revolutionary change in social structure and intellectual history, the transformation of the hierarchical Catholic Scotland of the earlier sixteenth century, to the impoverished, obsessed, egalitarian middle class Calvinistic society of the late seventeenth century... It is a well-structured book, with a triple perspective - the author, Ringan Gilhaize (the 17thc Covenanter and Cameronian who calls himself an impartial historian) and, through the latter's conversations with his grandfather, Michael Gilhaize, the 16thc struggles between John Knox (a special creation sent down from heaven...in his life is vast and wonderful)/the Lords of the Congregation and the Queen Regent and her daughter, the fair and faulty Mary. Galt is artist enough to distinguish successfully between the style of Ringan and his grandfather.
It is a powerful, and more compelling antidote to Scott's Old Mortality. Neither James Hogg nor Galt approved of Scott's work, which portrayed the Covenanters as religious fanatics and armed rebels. The latter wrote in his Literary Life that Scott had treated the defenders of the Presbyterian Church with too much levity. Galt researched the background for his novel diligently, visiting the scenes he described (salvaging abandoned weapons at Killicrankie) and reading relevant History books. He lovingly recreated the outdoor meeting of the Covenanters: verily it was a grand sight to see the fearless religious man moving from his house in the grey of the morning, with the Bible in his hand and the sword for a staff, walking towards the hills for many a weary mile, hoping the preacher would be there, and praying as he went, that there might be no molestation. The arch villain (apart from James Sharp) is Claverhouse, whom is not the man Scott writes about: the implacable rage with which Claverhouse persecuted the Covenanters has been extenuated by some discreet historians, on the plea of his being an honourable officer deduced from his soldierly worth elsewhere; whereas the truth is, that his cruelties in the shire of Ayr, and of other western parts, were less the fruit of his instructions, wide and severe as they were, than of his own mortified vanity and malignant revenge. And again: with that scorn of public opinion and defect of all principle, save only a canine fidelity, a dog's love, to his papistical master, dominated with his dragoons, as if he himself had been regnant monarch of Scotland. No wonder, Gilhaizie can exclaim, at the moment of his assassination of Claverhouse, there was a vision in the air as if all the angels of brightness, and the martyrs in their vestments of glory, were assembled on the walls and battlements of heaven to witness the event, and I started up and cried, "I have delivered my native land". But in the same instant I remembered to whom the glory was due, and falling again on my knees, I raised my hands and bowed my head as I said, "Not mine, O Lord, but thine is the victory!" Vengeance writ large; the God all sides worship is the God of the Old Testament - a 'book' which has done untold damage in the history of mankind.
Whilst acknowledging the commendable control of such a sweep of history ((1550s to 1690) and the empathy of the author for his subject, one must also confess the problem for a typical 21st century reader. I taught Calvin and Calvinism to the Sixth Form for many years and was, frankly, repelled by its grim determinism and predestinarianism. One looked in vain for the slightest touch of humour. To read three volumes without the latter can be soul-destroying! I missed the Galtian positives shown in the Annals, The Provost and Sir Andrew Wylie. Ringan is an obsessive who firmly believe that Providence has singled him out to play the role which leads to the assassination of Claverhouse and (with the successful 1688 Revolution) of the destruction of the prelatical House of Stewart. Gilhaizie sees his task as war with the worshippers of the Beast and his Image. Galt does suggest mental derangement as a major part of Gilhaizie's character and he is not averse to paint a near caricature of the narrowness of his (and Calvinism's) approach to life. Fanaticism is hard to admire unless one is on the same wavelength.
Occasionally, the purple passages and paeons to the 'cause' jar with modern sensibilities - Michael Gilhaizie sees numbers of poor men on a journey, his compassion was soon changed into a frame of thankfulness, at the boundless variety of mercies which are dealt out to the children of Adam, for he remarked, that, for the most part, these poor men, whose sustenance was as precarious as that of the wild birds of the air, were cheerful and jocund, many of them singing and whistling as blithely as the lark, that carries the sweet incense of her melodious songs in the censer of a sinless breast to the golden gates of the morning. Hmnn. I must look up 'jocund'.
Galt himself was a Calvinist but he did have a sense of humour and of the ridiculous. Ringan Gilhaize did not really strike a chord with the contemporary reader. I struggled to retain any sympathy for such religious fanaticism (on all sides). A well-constructed but grim story.
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I have been re-reading (8th August) Francis Jeffrey's Secondary Scottish Novels (Edinburgh Review, October 1823) and will quote what is a pretty hostile critique:
...the book is tiresome, and without effect. The narrative is neither pleasing nor probable, and the calamities are too numerous, and too much alike; and the uniformity of the tone of actual suffering and dim religious hope, weighs like a load on the spirit of the reader. There is no interesting complication of events or adventure, and no animating development or catastrophe. In short, the author has evidently gone beyond his means in entering the lists with the master of historical romance; and must be contented, hereafter, to follow his footsteps in the more approachable parts of his career.
Galt obviously ignored Jeffrey and produced The Spaewife that December!
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