Benjamin West, John Galt, and the biography of 1816

61. Coleridge's marginalia in his copy of Galt's The Provost, or Memoirs of His Own Times (1822), in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Marginalia, vol. 12, pt. 2, ed. George Whalley (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 840-41.

62. Ian A. Gordon, John Galt: The Life of a Writer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 142, 8: "Galt wrote too much. The volume of what he had to write has always masked the importance and even the existence of the work he really wanted to write." Two collections of essays provide useful perspectives: Christopher A. Whatley, ed., John Galt, 1779-1979 (Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1979); and Elizabeth Waterston, ed., John Galt: Reappraisals (Guelph, Ont.: University of Guelph, 1985).

63. John Galt, Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811; Containing Statistical, Commercial, and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo, and Turkey (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812), 49-50, 60-61. "Erranti," the Sicilian painter, was Giuseppe Errante (1760-1821). Galt's visit to Albania gave him (as it did Byron) particularly rich material for imagining the evolution of societies, not least, by comparison, that of his native Scotland; see Massimiliano Demata, "From Caledonia to Albania: Byron, Galt, and the Progress of the Eastern Savage," Scottish Studies Review 2 (autumn 2001): 61-76.

64. John Galt, "On the Fine Arts....," Philosophical Magazine 42 (Aug. 1813): 81-91. The word decenere, now obsolete, comes from the Latin root decerno, to decide.

65. Galt (as in n. 10), 224-25.

66. West's encouragement must have meant a great deal to Galt, for he reissued the Sicilian "Discourse" yet again in 1814, characterizing it as so "interwoven with his own ideas" as to be "in some degree an original essay"; Galt, "On the Principles of the Fine Arts," pts. 1, 2, New Monthly Magazine 1 (Feb. 1814): 23-26; 1 (Apr. 1814): 244-46.

67. Galt, The Tragedies of Maddelen, Agamemnon, Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra (London, 1812), reviewed in Monthly Review 73 (Mar. 1814): 264-71; and idem, Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812). Galt conceived the biography of Wolsey in 1805, soon after moving to England, but did not begin that work in earnest until 1809, at the cost of a "considerable sum" for an assistant who transcribed original documents for publication in an appendix; Galt, 1834 (as in n. 58), vol. 1, 77. Galt paid printing costs for each of his books prior to his work on West, but he could not afford to do so in 1816, having by then a family to support: he sold the copyright on The Life of West to Cadell.

68. "Intelligence in Literature and the Arts and Sciences," New Monthly Magazine 1 (Apr. 1, 1814): 262. Galt was an early and regular contributor to this newly launched magazine, which published his third reworking of the Sicilian discourse (as in n. 66) and "Instructions in the Art of Rising in the World--a Satire," in the Feb. 1 (pp. 18-19) and Mar. 1 (pp. 127-29) issues, where it is ascribed to G. Haliton, Esq. Gordon (as in n. 62), 18, made the attribution to Galt.