Galt, like almost all voluminous writers, was exceedingly unequal. His masterpieces are The Ayrshire Legatees, The Annals of the Parish, Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Provost and Lawrie Todd. The Ayrshire Legatees gives, in the form of a number of exceedingly diverting letters, the adventures of the Rev. Dr Pringle and his family in London. The letters are made the excuse for endless tea-parties and meetings of kirk-session in the rural parish of Garnock. The Annals of the Parish are told by the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, Galt’s finest character. This work (which, be it remembered, existed in MS. before Waverley was published) is a splendid picture of the old-fashioned Scottish pastor and the life of a country parish; and, in rich humour, genuine pathos and truth to nature it is unsurpassed even by Scott. It is a fine specimen of the homely graces of the Scottish dialect, and preserves much vigorous Doric phraseology fast passing out of use even in country districts. In this novel Mr Galt used, for the first time, the term “Utilitarian,” which afterwards became so intimately associated with the doctrines of John Stuart Mill and Bentham (see Annals of the Parish, chap. xxxv., and a note by Mill in Utilitarianism, chap. ii.). In Sir Andrew Wylie the hero entered London as a poor lad, but achieved remarkable success by his shrewd business qualities. The character is somewhat exaggerated, but excessively amusing. The Entail was read thrice by Byron and Scott, and is the best of Galt’s longer novels. Leddy Grippy is a wonderful creation, and was considered by Byron equal to any female character in literature since Shakespeare’s time. The Provost, in which Provost Pawkie tells his own story, portrays inimitably the jobbery, bickerings and self-seeking of municipal dignitaries in a quaint Scottish burgh. In Lawrie Todd Galt, by giving us the Scot in America, accomplished a feat which Sir Walter never attempted. This novel exhibits more variety of style and a greater love of nature than his other books. The life of a settler is depicted with unerring pencil, and with an enthusiasm and imaginative power much more poetical than any of the author’s professed poems.
The best of Galt’s novels were reprinted in Blackwood’s Standard Novels, to volume i. of which his friend Dr Moir prefixed a memoir.
GALT, a town in Waterloo county, Ontario, Canada, 23 m. N.N.W. of Hamilton, on the Grand river and on the Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific railways. Pop. (1881) 5187; (1901) 7866. It is named after John Galt, the author. It has excellent water privileges which furnish power for flour-mills and for manufactures of edge tools, castings, machinery, paper and other industries.
GALTON, SIR FRANCIS (1822- ), English anthropologist, son of S.T. Galton, of Duddeston, Warwickshire, was born on the 16th of February 1822. His grandfather was the poet-naturalist Erasmus Darwin, and Charles Darwin was his cousin. After attending King Edward VI.’s grammar school, Birmingham, he studied at Birmingham hospital, and afterwards at King’s College, London, with the intention of making medicine his profession; but after taking his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1843 he changed his mind. The years 1845-1846 he spent in travelling in the Sudan, and in 1850 he made an exploration, with Dr John Anderson, of Damaraland and the Ovampo country in south-west Africa, starting from Walfisch Bay. These tracts had practically never been traversed before, and on the appearance of the published account of his journey and experiences under the title of Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa (1853) Galton was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His Art of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances in Wild Countries was first published in 1855. In 1860 he visited the north of Spain, and published the fruits of his observations of the country and the people in the first of a series of volumes, which he edited, entitled Vacation Tourists. He then turned to meteorology, the result of his investigations appearing in Meteorographica, published in 1863. This work was the first serious attempt to chart the weather on an extensive scale, and in it also the author first established the existence and theory of anti-cyclones. Galton was a member of the meteorological committee (1868), and of the Meteorological Council which succeeded it, for over thirty years. But his name is most closely associated with studies in anthropology and especially in heredity. In 1869 appeared his Hereditary Genius, its Laws and Consequences, a work which excited much interest in scientific and medical circles. This was followed by English Men of Science, their Nature and Nurture, published in 1874; Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, issued in 1883; Life-History Album (1884); Record of Family Faculties (1884) (tabular forms and directions for entering data, with a preface); and Natural Inheritance (1889). The idea that systematic efforts should be made to improve the breed of mankind by checking the birth-rate of the unfit and furthering the productivity of the fit was first put forward by him In 1865; he mooted it again in 1884, using the term “eugenics” for the first time in Human Faculty, and in 1904 he endowed a research fellowship in the university of London for the promotion of knowledge of that subject, which was defined as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” Galton was the author of memoirs on various anthropometric subjects; he originated the process of composite portraiture, and paid much attention to finger-prints and their employment for the identification of criminals, his publications on this subject including Finger Prints (1892), Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints (1893) and Finger Print Directories (1895). From the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in 1860, he received a royal medal in 1886 and the Darwin medal in 1902, and honorary degrees were bestowed on him by Oxford (1894) and Cambridge (1895). In 1908 he published Memories of My Life, and in 1909 he received a knighthood.
GALUPPI, BALDASSARE (1706-1785), Italian musical composer, was born on the 18th of October 1706 on the island of Burano near Venice, from which he was often known by the nickname of Buranello. His father, a barber, and violinist at the local theatre, was his first teacher. His first opera, composed at the age of sixteen, being hissed off the stage, he determined to study seriously, and entered the Conservatorio degli Incurabili at Venice, as a pupil of Antonio Lotti. After successfully producing two operas in collaboration with a fellow-pupil, G.B. Pescetti, in 1728 and 1729, he entered upon a busy career as a composer of operas for Venetian theatres, writing sometimes as many as five in a year. He visited London in 1741, and arranged a pasticcio, Alexander in Persia, for the Haymarket. Burney considered his influence on English music to have been very powerful. In 1740 he became vice-maestro di cappella at St Mark’s and maestro in 1762. In 1749 he began writing comic operas to libretti by Goldoni, which enjoyed an enormous popularity. He was invited to Russia by Catherine II. in 1766, where his operas made a favourable impression, and his influence was also felt in Russian church music. He returned to Venice in 1768, where he had held the post of director of the Conservatorio degli Incurabili since 1762. He died on the 3rd of January 1785.
Galuppi’s best works are his comic operas, of which Il Filosofo di Campagna (1754), known in England as The Guardian Trick’d (Dublin, 1762) was the most popular. His melody is attractive rather than original, but his workmanship in harmony and orchestration is generally superior to that of his contemporaries. He seems to have been the first to extend the concerted finales of Leo and Logroscino into a chain of several separate movements, working up to a climax, but in this respect he is much inferior to Sarti and Mozart.
Browning’s poem, “A Toccata of Galuppi,” does not refer to any known composition, but more probably to an imaginary extemporization on the harpsichord, such as was of frequent occurrence in the musical gatherings of Galuppi’s day.