SOURCE: Costain, Keith M. “The Community of Man: Galt and Eighteenth-Century Scottish Realism.” Scottish Literary Journal 8, no. 1 (May 1981): 10-29.

In the following essay, Costain investigates Galt's indebtedness to the social, moral, and historical thought of the Scottish Realists.

When, in The Ayrshire Legatees, the Rev. Dr Pringle arrives in London on top of a coach he fears for his clerical dignity. But his fears prove groundless, in more than a literal sense, for, as he reports to his Session Clerk in the village of Garnock: ‘although the multitude of bygoers was like the kirk-skailing at the Sacrament, I saw not a kent face, nor one that took the least notice of my situation’.¹ No longer are the Pringles fully participating members of what Raymond Williams calls a ‘knowable community’, as they were at home in rural Garnock. Now they experience what Dr Pringle's son, Andrew, describes in a...