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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12fbb2e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #65557 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65557) diff --git a/old/65557-0.txt b/old/65557-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 42d0fdb..0000000 --- a/old/65557-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14314 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Highways of Canadian Literature, by J. D. -Logan - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Highways of Canadian Literature - A Synoptic Introduction to the Literary History of Canada - (English) from 1760 to 1924 - -Author: J. D. Logan - Donald G. French - -Release Date: June 7, 2021 [eBook #65557] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders - Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIGHWAYS OF CANADIAN -LITERATURE *** - - - - - - - [Cover Illustration] - - - - - Highways _of_ - Canadian Literature - - _A Synoptic Introduction to the Literary_ - _History of Canada (English)_ - _from 1760 to 1924_ - - - - _By_ J. D. Logan - M.A. (Dalhousie), Ph.D. (Harvard), Hon. Litt. D. (Acadia). - Lecturer on Canadian Literature, Acadia University, Nova Scotia - - _and_ Donald G. French - Honorary President Canadian Literature Club of Toronto. - Author of _The Appeal of Poetry_; Editor - _Standard Canadian Reciter_, Etc. - - - - M c C L E L L A N D & S T E W A R T - P U B L I S H E R S - - T O R O N T O - - - - - Copyright, Canada, 1924 - by McClelland and Stewart, Limited, Toronto - - Printed in Canada - - - - - TO - COLONEL WILLIAM ERNEST THOMPSON, LL.B. - District Officer Commanding Military District - No. 6 During the World War, - - A Governor of Dalhousie College, - - for - The Gift of His Loyal and - Inexhaustible Friendship. - - - - _There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,_ - _Save laughter and the love of friends._ - —_Hilaire Belloc._ - - - - - Preface - -_Highways of Canadian Literature_ provides teachers and students in -educational institutions and readers in general with a complete history -of the Canadian literature extant in the English language. In very -recent years Canadian universities and colleges have added to their -curricula systematic study of the verse and prose of the chief writers -born in or resident in the Dominion. Also, teachers in Canadian -academies and high schools, as occasion affords opportunity, inform -their pupils about the lives and work of Canadian authors. Further: as -expressive of the new and increasing interest in Canadian Literature, -Literary Clubs, Reading Clubs, and Reading Circles have been formed, and -constantly are being formed, to promote ‘community’ study of the -writings of Canadian men and women of letters. - -Hitherto, however, those who wished to be informed on the literary -history of Canada and the status of Canadian Literature, had to depend -on Anthologies, summary annalistic Sketches, and biographical Compendia. -The earlier anthologies comprise verse either chronologically or -topically arranged, but some of them contain, in an Appendix, -biographical notes on the authors represented in the volumes. The later -anthologies, as, for instance, Garvin’s _Canadian Poets_, contain, -besides the ‘selections,’ biographical and critical introductions. These -anthologies, though comprehensive, informing and delightful -‘source-books,’ do not, by themselves, disclose the _development_ of -Canadian Literature. The annalistic sketches or compendia, on the other -hand, are too sketchy, too annalistic. They do not tell the story of the -development of Canadian Literature with any attempt at perspective or at -disclosing its social and spiritual origins. - -There was, therefore, pressing need for a comprehensive Synoptic History -of Canadian Literature. Such a work would furnish the teacher, the -student, and the general reader with a ‘method’ of reading Canadian -Literature with philosophical insight or with historical and critical -perspective. It would distinguish certain ‘epochs’ and ‘movements’ in -the literary history of Canada, and make clear how Canadian poets and -prose writers are related to one another and have influenced one -another, and how, gradually, they expressed in literature the slowly -emerging consciousness of a national spirit and a national destiny in -the Dominion. - -That is what _Highways of Canadian Literature_ attempts to do. In scope -it is a complete or comprehensive survey of literary ‘epochs’ and -‘movements’ in Canada, beginning with the Puritan Migration from the -American Colonies in 1760 and closing at the end of the first quarter of -the 20th century. In method it is both historical and critical. It -orientates the ‘backgrounds’ of Canadian Literature, traces the social -and spiritual origins of that literature, remarks special ‘influences,’ -demarcates several ‘epochs’ and ‘movements,’ discusses the importance of -outstanding Canadian authors, and supplies critical estimates of -Canadian prose and poetry. - -It is designed for the use of teachers and students in universities, -colleges, academies, seminaries, and high schools, and of general -readers. Together with suitable anthologies or selections it will -furnish teachers and students with adequate equipment for a systematic -study of Canadian Literature, and general readers and members of -literary clubs equally adequate equipment for ‘home’ or ‘club’ study of -the development of Canadian Literature. - -The Chapters on Post-Confederation Fiction (Chapters XVI and -XVII—Novelists and Short Story Writers of the First Renaissance and -Chapter XXI—Fiction Writers of the Second Renaissance) were written, -expressly at my solicitation, by Mr. Donald G. French, whose wide and -intimate knowledge of the forms, technics, and history of Canadian -fiction is recognized throughout Canada. For many years he has been -assiduous, as an essayist and lecturer, in reviewing and promoting the -study of Canadian imaginative prose fiction, and his experience of many -years as reviewer, and later as literary editor for a book publishing -house, has given him special opportunities to study the history and -observe the evolution of Canadian imaginative prose. Moreover, since Mr. -French is also well versed in the forms, history, and technics of -Canadian poetry, and since he has a temperamental patience, which -engenders in him the ‘wise passiveness’ essential to the just critic, I -engaged for the book as a whole his taste and judgment, in regard to -treatment and style, and his knowledge of facts of Canadian literary -history. The text of the book is therefore enhanced in treatment and -style, as well as in critical justice, by Mr. French’s contribution, and -by his critical revision of the whole work. - -I wish, here, specially to remark my ideal and aim in writing _Highways -of Canadian Literature_. It is, I believe, the duty of the literary -historian and critic to respect his subject and to present it under its -most significant and engaging aspects in order that he may win others to -equal respect for his subject. Canadian Literature is important at least -to Canadians; and, whatever be its comparative aesthetic and artistic -dignity, it is an integral part or branch of English Literature. This -book will justify itself if it compels Canadians to recognize the -importance of their own literature, and wins other peoples to a decent -respect for a literature which, while still in its adolescence, shows -evidences of attaining to independent and vigorous adult estate—in the -event of which Canadian literary creation, taste, and judgment will be -based, not on the work of British or of American masters of poetry and -imaginative prose, but on that of Canadian masters. Meanwhile, this book -aims to disclose to Canadians the social and spiritual importance of -their own literature and to determine its place or distinction in -English Literature—in short, to promote in Canada and abroad what may -aptly be called ‘the higher study’ of Canadian Literature. - -To Mr. Newton MacTavish, M.A., Editor of _The Canadian Magazine_, Mr. R. -H. Hathaway, Mr. M. O. Hammond, Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, Mr. John -Murray Gibbon, Mr. S. Morgan-Powell, Literary Editor of _The Montreal -Star_, Mr. John Garvin, B.A., Editor of _Canadian Poets_, _Canadian -Poems of the Great War_, etc., Dr. Ray Palmer Baker, author of _A -History of English-Canadian Literature to the Confederation_, and Mr. T. -G. Marquis, author of _English-Canadian Literature_, I am indebted for -advice, criticism, and much practical aid in preparing the text. To Miss -Annie Donohoe, Librarian of the Nova Scotia Legislative Library and Mrs. -Mary Kinley Ingraham, M.A., Librarian of Acadia University, I am -indebted for assistance in research; and to Miss Laura P. Carten, Editor -of The Children’s Page, Halifax Herald, for reading the ‘galley proofs’ -of the text. To Colonel William Ernest Thompson, LL.B., Honorary -Secretary of the Board of Governors of Dalhousie University, my -indebtedness is great and is acknowledged in the Dedication to this -book. - - J. D. Logan. -Acadia University, Wolfville, N.S. - - - - - Contents - - PAGE - Dedication 3 - Preface 5 - Preliminary Survey 15 - - I. PRE-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE (1760-1887) - - CHAPTER I - Social and Spiritual Bases 33 - The Social and Spiritual Bases of Canadian Literature—The - Puritan and Loyalist Migrations—The Significance of the - Scots Migration—The Primacy of Nova Scotia in the Creative - Literature of Canada—Literary Species in Ontario and Quebec. - - CHAPTER II - Incidental Pioneer Literature 44 - The Incidental Pre-Confederation Literature of - Canada—Alexander Henry’s Travels—Mrs. Brooke’s Novels—Mrs. - Jameson’s Nature-Studies—The Émigré Pre-Confederation - Literature of Canada—Mrs. Susanna Moodie—Adam Kidd—John - Reade—George Murray—Archibald McLachlan—William Wye Smith - and Isabella Crawford. - - CHAPTER III - Joseph Howe 55 - The Nativistic Literature of Canada—Joseph Howe as Founder - of the Independent Prose, Creative Journalism, Political - Literature, Literary and Forensic Oratory—as Patriotic, - Descriptive, and Humorous Poet—and as the Discoverer and - Sponsor of Thomas Chandler Haliburton. - - CHAPTER IV - Thomas Chandler Haliburton 63 - The Nativistic Literature of Canada—Thomas Chandler - Haliburton—First Systematic Humorist of the Anglo-Saxon - peoples—Creator of a New Type of Satiric Humor and Comic - Characterization. - - II. POST-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE - (1887-1924) - - _A. The First Renaissance_ - - CHAPTER V - Romance and Poetry 89 - The Nativistic Literature of Canada—The Historical - Romancers—John Richardson—Rosanna Mullins—and Others. The - Poets—Goldsmith—Sangster—Mair. - - CHAPTER VI - The Systematic School 105 - The First Renaissance in Canadian Literature—The Systematic - School and Period—Roberts and his Colleagues. - - CHAPTER VII - Charles G. D. Roberts 110 - Roberts Sponsor to Lampman—Literary Father of Bliss - Carman—Master of Verse Technique—Forms of his Verse, and its - Qualities. - - CHAPTER VIII - Archibald Lampman 127 - An Interpreter of the Essential Spirit of Canada—Study of - Lampman’s ‘Sapphics’—Power of Humanizing Nature—Excellence - of his Sonnets—Consummate Artist of Natural Beauty. - - CHAPTER IX - Bliss Carman 139 - As a World-Poet—Creative Melodist—Periods of his - Poetry—Singing Quality and its Method—Lyrist of the Sea and - of Love—Treatment of Nature. - - CHAPTER X - Duncan Campbell Scott 159 - Influences on his Work—Old World Culture—Austere - Intellectualism—Music and Painting—Association with - Lampman—Scott, Campbell, and Lampman compared—Influence of - English poets—Technical Excellences—Revelation of the Indian - Heart—Mystical Symbolism. - - CHAPTER XI - Wilfrid Campbell 184 - As an Objective Nature Painter—Humanized Substance of his - Verse—Patriotism and Brotherhood—Dramatic Monody—Poetical - Tragedies and Dramas. - - CHAPTER XII - Pauline Johnson 195 - Her Ancestry and its Influences—Literary and Musical - Qualities of Work—Stages of Development in Spiritual - Vision—Picturesque Color Verse. - - CHAPTER XIII - Parker and Scott, F. G. 210 - Parker as a Sonneteer of Spiritual Love—Origin and Theme of - a Lover’s Diary—Musical and Colorful Lyrical Verse—Scott’s - Poetry a Reflection of his Personality—Distinguished as the - ‘Poet of the Spirit’—Chief Qualities of his Poetry. - - CHAPTER XIV - Minor Poets 219 - The Term ‘Minor’ Defined—Ethelwyn Wetherald—Jean - Blewett—Francis Sherman—A. E. S. Smythe—S. Frances - Harrison—Arthur Stringer—Peter McArthur—Isabel Ecclestone - Mackay. - - CHAPTER XV - Elegiac Monodists 229 - The Elegiac Monodists of Canada—Charles G. D. Roberts—Bliss - Carman—Wilfred Campbell—Duncan Campbell Scott—William - Marshall—James De Mille. - - CHAPTER XVI - Novelists 241 - The Fictionists of the Systematic School—The Historical - Romancers—Lighthall—Saunders—Parker—Marquis—Maclennan and - McIlwraith—Agnes C. Laut—Wilfred Campbell—Charles G. D. - Roberts—The Romancers of Animal Psychology—Thompson - Seton—Roberts—Saunders—Fraser—The Evangelical - Romancers—Ralph Connor—R. E. Knowles. - - CHAPTER XVII - Short Story Writers 258 - The Short Story Fictionists of the Systematic School—E. W. - Thomson—Duncan Campbell Scott—Charles G. D. Roberts—Gilbert - Parker—Ernest Thompson Seton—W. A. Fraser. - - _B. The New Genre_ - - CHAPTER XVIII - William Henry Drummond 265 - The New Canadian Genre of Idyllic Poetry—William Henry - Drummond, Interpreter of the Habitant—Poet of Social - Democracy in Canada. - - _C. The Decadent Interim_ - - CHAPTER XIX - The Vaudeville School 271 - The Decadent Interim in Canadian Literature—The Vaudeville - School of Poets—Robert W. Service, Robert J. C. Stead, and - Others. - - _D. The Second Renaissance_ - - CHAPTER XX - The Restoration Period 280 - The Restoration or Second Renaissance Period in Canadian - Literature—New Forms, Themes, and Social Ideals—The - Poets—Marjorie Pickthall—Robert Norwood—Katherine Hale—and - Others. - - CHAPTER XXI - Fiction Writers 298 - The Community Novel—Montgomery—Keith—McClung—Le Rossignol. - Institutional Fiction—Packard—Sullivan—Duncan—Wallace and - Others. Realistic Romance—Service—Cody—Stead, etc. - Historical Fiction—Snider—Anison - North—Teskey—McKishnie—Cooney. Imaginative - Fiction—Pickthall—Mackay. Miscellaneous - Types—McKishnie—Sullivan—Hémon—Sime. The New - Realism—Salverson—de la Roche Cornell, etc. - - CHAPTER XXII - The Poetic Dramatists 314 - The Poetic Dramatists of the Second Renaissance—Arthur - Stringer—Robert Norwood—Marjorie Pickthall, and Others. - - CHAPTER XXIII - Humorists 322 - The Humorists of Canada: - Pre-Confederation—Haliburton—Howe—De - Mille—Duvar—Post-Confederation—Lanigan—Cotes—Drummond—Ham: - New School—Leacock—Donovan—Davis—MacTavish—McArthur—Hodgins. - - CHAPTER XXIV - National Stage Drama 333 - The Rise of Native and National Realistic Stage Drama in - Canada: The Little Theatre and the Work of Carroll Aikins - and Merrill Denison. - - III. SPECIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS (1760-1924) - - CHAPTER XXV - The War Poetry of Canada 339 - Mrs. Moodie—Annie Rothwell Christie—Isabella Valancy - Crawford—John McCrae—Canadian Poems of the Great War. - - CHAPTER XXVI - Hymn Writers 354 - The Hymn Writers of - Canada—Alline—Clelland—Scriven—Murray—Scott—Rand—Dewart—Walk - er—and Others. - - CHAPTER XXVII - Literary Criticism 362 - Literary Criticism in Canada—Schools, Aims, Methods, and - Defects—New Synoptic Method Applied to Poetry of Overseas - Dominions. - - CHAPTER XXVIII - Essayists and Color Writers 374 - The Essayists and Color Writers of - Canada—Carman—MacMechan—Blake—Katherine - Hale—King—Deacon—Leacock. - - CHAPTER XXIX - Anthologies 380 - Canadian Birthday Book (Seranus)—Dewart’s Selections from - Canadian Poets—Lighthall’s ‘Songs of the Great - Dominion’—Oxford Book of Canadian Verse—Garvin’s Canadian - Poets, etc. - - CHAPTER XXX - Canadian Journalism 388 - Canadian Journalism in Relation to Permanent Canadian - Literature; A Summary Critical History of the Chief Canadian - Newspapers and Magazines. - - CHAPTER XXXI - Narrative Literature 395 - Narrative - Literature—History—Biography—Exploration—Travels—Sport or - Open-Air Life. - - INDEX 405 - - - - - Preliminary Survey - -To write properly a Synoptic History of Canadian Literature, the -historian must first evaluate extant Canadian verse and prose from the -point of view of the Whole. Secondly, he must treat Canadian Literature -as a Whole in respect to its Genetic bases and relations. In presenting -this synoptic history, Canadian Literature is considered not as a -special, isolated, and chance product, but as the definitive outcome of -racial, naturalistic, social, economic, and political conditions within -the vast Dominion itself, and of other conditions brought into existence -by racial affinities and social, political, economic, and spiritual -relations with the people of the United States and the United Kingdom. - -The general treatment proceeds on an _a priori_ presumption and a -critical principle. The _a priori_ presumption is that in Canada where -verse and prose which possess all degrees of worth have for more than a -century and a half been produced in the English language and which had -English poetry and prose for models, there must be a respectable residue -of authentic literature written by native-born and resident _émigré_ -Canadian authors. In a phrase, the _fact_ of a Canadian Literature is -presumed. The critical principle employed in the treatment is this: that -however insignificant, from the point of view of world literature, -Canadian Literature may be, it is _important to Canadians themselves_. -For however unimportant Canadian historical romances, Canadian humor, -Canadian nature-poetry, Canadian poetic drama, Canadian realistic -fiction, Canadian monodies may be when compared with the same _genres_ -in English Literature, they are the representatives of Canadian culture -and of the Canadian creative spirit; if they were not extant there would -be no Canadian Literature at all; and thus the Canadian people would be -spiritually poorer and less significant not only to themselves but also -to the world. - -Some fair show of the fact of an authentic Canadian Literature may be -evident from the following considerations. Let it be granted, as -axiomatic, that verse and prose rise to the dignity of literature when -they express and promote existence ideally—by delighting the aesthetic -senses, by consoling the heart, by inspiring the moral imagination, by -exalting or transporting the spirit. Judged by this four-fold test, the -best Canadian poetry and imaginative prose will compare favorably with -the admittedly authentic poetry and prose of many of the significant -British and United States authors in the mid-Victorian era. In Canadian -verse in English are genuine ‘gems’ of poetry, which, for vision, -imagery, passion, lyrical eloquence, verbal music, and mastery of form -and technique, are hardly, if at all, surpassed by the poetry of -Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Swinburne. - -If this is doubted, in part or in whole, then apply this concrete -pragmatic test:—For exquisite tenderness and simple pathos: with -Tennyson’s _Break, Break, Break_, compare Charles G. D. Roberts’ sweetly -sad lyric, _Grey Rocks and Greyer Sea_. For delicacy or for poignancy in -expressing the passion and meaning of love: with Swinburne’s _These Many -Years_, compare Roberts’ _O Red Rose of Life_, or with Browning’s -_Evelyn Hope_, compare Roberts’ _A Nocturne of Consecration_. For power -to visualize the ghostly and ghastly: with Coleridge’s _The Ancient -Mariner_ compare the vivid, uncanny pictures of a spectral ship and crew -in Bliss Carman’s _Nancy’s Pride_. For beauty of descriptive imagery, -verbal music, and expressive correspondence of emotion with the mood of -the season in nature-poetry: with Keats’ _Ode to Autumn_, compare -Archibald Lampman’s lovely lyric of earth, _September_. For dignity of -thought and mastery of technic: with the finest sonnets of Wordsworth, -compare Roberts’ _The Sower_, or those noble sonnets by Lampman, -beginning, ‘Not to be conquered by these headlong days,’ ‘Come with -thine unveiled worlds, O truth of Night,’ and ‘There is a beauty at the -goal of life.’ For dramatic power in sounding the depths of elemental -passion and emotion: with Tennyson’s _Rizpah_, compare Campbell’s -profound utterance of the heart of woman in _The Mother_, or with the -more subtle of Browning’s dramatic monologues compare Campbell’s -psychological revealments in _Unabsolved_, and in _The Confession of -Tama the Wise_. For the dainty, piquant expression of all those -experiences which delight and console us in our humaner moments of -reflection and reverie, let these pure lyrics be a daily rosary:—F. G. -Scott’s _The Cripple_, _Van Risen_, and _A Reverie_; Campbell’s _The -Hills and the Sea_, _Vapor and Blue_, and _Lake Huron_; Lampman’s _We, -too, Shall Sleep_, _The Weaver_ and _The Passing of Autumn_; Carman’s -_Spring Song_, commencing ‘Make me over, mother April,’ _The Ships of -St. John_, and _The Grave Tree_; Roberts’ _The Lone Wharf_, _Lake -Aylesford_, _Afoot_, _Kinship_, and _Recessional_; Duncan Campbell -Scott’s _The End of the Day_, and _A Lover to His Lass_; and Pauline -Johnson’s _In the Shadows_. Consider, too, that the satiric humor and -comic characterization of Thomas Chandler Haliburton are not only in -some respects unsurpassed by the art of Cervantes, Dickens, Daudet, and -Mark Twain, and that Haliburton’s comic epigrams and moral maxims and -certain of his comic characters have become part of the warp and woof of -English literature. It is also indubitable that the two volumes of short -stories of Duncan Campbell Scott—_In the Village of Viger_ and _The -Witching of Elspie_—are not excelled either in originality of -conception or in technical artistry, and certainly not in spiritual -beauty and pathos, by the short stories of Maupassant in France, of -Stevenson or Hewlett in England, of Cable or Mary Wilkins Freeman in the -United States. - -In two other fields, the elegiac monody and poetic drama, Canadian poets -have produced distinctive and impressive literature. It is admitted by -British and United States critics that the threnodies of Campbell, -Carman, Roberts, Duncan Campbell Scott, Marshall, and De Mille are -distinctly noble in conception and imagery and artistically finished, -and would be worthy of the genius even of Milton, Shelley, Keats, -Arnold, and Emerson, and deserve to be placed in the company of the -other fine threnodies written in the English language. It is also -admitted by British and United States critics that the poetic dramas of -Mair, Campbell, and Norwood, whether embodying Biblical, Arthurian, or -Canadian legends and romantic characters, show authentic genius of -dramatic conception and a notable distinction in technical structure and -artistry while, to their credit, avoiding what Edmund Gosse has called -the ‘violences and verbosities’ of the Elizabethan Tradition and of the -Restoration and later poetic drama. - -In England, at least as early as the ‘nineties’ of the last century, the -fact of a respectable Canadian literature received a sort of spasmodic -recognition. A genuine interest in it, or at least in Canadian poetry, -was evoked in the United Kingdom by the visit of the late Pauline -Johnson to London and her recitals there in 1894. As a matter of fact, -Pauline Johnson’s first volume of verse _The White Wampum_ was published -originally in London in 1895. Again: with the permanent residence of Sir -Gilbert Parker, and other Canadian men and women of letters, as, for -instance, Miss Jean McIlwraith and Miss Lily Dougall, in England, the -interest in Canadian Literature, on the part of the British people and -critics, was very considerably intensified. - -When the World War caused, first, an intenser sense of the unity of the -Motherland and Canada, and, secondly, a plethora of verse and prose, -especially verse, by Canadians in the field in France and in Flanders, -and by Canadians at home, there arose in England a definite and -systematic movement to promote in the United Kingdom the recognition and -study of the literary history and literature of Canada, or at least -Canadian literature written in the nineteenth century and first quarter -of the twentieth century. Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen -College, Oxford, who for some time during the late war was Professor of -Poetry at Oxford, engaged in a serious and sympathetic study of the -literature of Canada, and lectured on Canadian literature at the -Colonial Institute, London, and elsewhere. Moreover, Sir Herbert Warren, -then also President of the Poetry Society of London, had a by-law passed -which stipulated that living Canadian authors should be recognized as -non-resident members of the Poetry Society of London; and Canadian -authors were invited to send copies of their published verse and prose -to the Librarian of the Poetry Society, for cataloguing and exhibition -in the reading room of the Society. Besides Sir Herbert Warren, two -other British lecturers of established reputation—Miss Louise Bagley -and Miss Julie Huntsman—devoted themselves to systematic lecturing on -Canadian literature, verse and prose, in certain notable educational -institutions in London and in provincial centres in England. Moreover, -since the late war the works of Canadian authors have been in increasing -numbers either published in England simultaneously with their -publication in other countries, or have been first published in England -and later republished in Canada, and in the United States. - -In these facts, therefore, we have a kind of empirical proof or -pragmatic test that in the United Kingdom there has existed for a -considerable time a genuinely respectful recognition of the fact of a -Canadian literature in the English language. - -For the purposes of a Synoptic History of Canadian Literature in the -English language a significant year is that of 1760. For that year marks -both the Fall of Montreal (following the Fall of Quebec in 1759) and the -Puritan Migration from New England to Maugerville, on the St. John -River, and to the valleys of western Nova Scotia, in ‘Nova Scotia,’ -which at the time embraced the mainland of what is now Nova Scotia, as -well as New Brunswick, and part of Maine. - -The significance of this date for a History of Canadian Literature in -English will be realized by reflecting that from 1760 onwards until -Confederation in 1867,—that is, a period of one hundred years—the two -pioneer Provinces of the later Dominion, Quebec and the original Nova -Scotia, and, in due time, Ontario, came under the influence of a -specific British and a specific New England and Loyalist civilization -and culture which essentially determined the political, social, and -spiritual ideas and ideals of the English-speaking people in Canada. -These specifically pioneer and pre-Confederation ideas and ideals form -the social and spiritual bases of Canadian Literature in English, from -1760 to 1867. - -More particularly, it is important to note that the struggle of the -British North American Provinces to realize the ideals of Responsible -Government, which the Puritan settlers brought with them and which were -effected in 1848 in three of the Provinces later confederated, caused -the first awakening of the literary spirit, and the actual creation of -the first nativistic literature, in Canada. This struggle for -Responsible Government and of other higher spiritual interests and -ideals before 1848 and afterwards, including the later struggle for -political union (Confederation) of the Provinces, not only incited -Canadian poets and prose writers to literary expression during the -period, but also largely determined the form, substance, and mood or -temper of that literature. - -A distinction must be drawn between (1) the literature written in or -about Canada by British authors, visiting or sojourning in the Canadas -and the Maritime Provinces, as, for instance, Tom Moore’s _Canadian Boat -Song_ (1804) and much other verse and prose down to Louis Hémon’s -realistic romance of French-Canada, _Maria Chapdelaine_ (1922), all of -which will be noted but will be denominated the ‘Incidental’ Literature; -and (2) the literature which was written by permanently resident -_émigrés_ and by native-born citizens in the _separate_ (unconfederate) -Provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas, up to the year -of Confederation, which will be designated the ‘Nativistic’ Literature; -and (3) the literature, after Confederation, written by native-born -Canadians, which will be called the ‘Native and National’ Literature of -Canada. These literary distinctions themselves are demanded by an -important demarcation in the social groups which, from the Fall of -Montreal in 1760 and the Puritan Migration from New England in the same -year up to the last Loyalist Migration, in 1786, from New England and -the other revolutionary States, formed the social and cultural units of -the Anglo-Saxon civilization in what, after the acknowledgment of -American Independence and up to the Confederation of the Canadian -Provinces, was known definitively as British North America. - -Following 1760 and the British Occupation of Montreal and Quebec City, -the civilization and culture of the social groups in these centres and, -later, in the Loyalist centres in Ontario, were on another and lower -level than the culture and civilization in Nova Scotia and New -Brunswick. Moreover, the literature written by the groups of -English-speaking people, sojourning or permanently resident in the -Canadas, neither sprang from the social and spiritual necessities which -created the literature of the Maritime Provinces in their Puritan and -Loyalist period, nor possessed the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of -the literature produced in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the Puritan -and Loyalist period of their history. - -The Anglo-Saxon civilization and culture in Montreal and Quebec, after -the British Occupation (1760), was highly military and practical; that -is to say, materialistic. For the English-speaking people in Quebec were -concerned wholly with the civil and military administration of Quebec -City and Province, and the English-speaking people in Montreal were -concerned chiefly with the development of trade, particularly the fur -trade, under men who were adventurers much more than they were -colonizers and civilizers. Naturally, therefore, Canadian Literature in -English in the Province of Quebec chiefly consisted of chronicles, -annals, and narratives (historical, or of adventure); and, secondly, -whenever it happened to be pure literature, comprised verse and prose -written by cultured visitors from the Motherland; and thus in all cases -this ‘Incidental’ Pioneer Canadian Literature in English in the Province -of Quebec was British in inspiration, form, and aim. - -On the other hand, the Puritan and Loyalist migrations to New Brunswick -and Nova Scotia, particularly Nova Scotia, from 1760 to 1783 and later, -comprised groups of English-speaking people who were intellectually -cultured and spiritually-minded. The literature, verse and prose, which -they produced was the urgent expression of political, social, and -spiritual needs; and, being for the most part satiric, was modelled on -the pre-revolutionary literature of their relatives in New England and -the other Atlantic States, which, in its time, had been modelled on the -satiric neo-classical verse and the polemic and satiric prose of the -eighteenth century in England. - -So that the genius of the literature written in the Province of Quebec -from the British Occupation of Montreal to the triumph of Responsible -Government in 1848, and somewhat later, was pragmatic rather than -literary; whereas the genius of the literature produced in the same -period in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, particularly in Nova Scotia, -was definitively literary in spirit and form. - -The civilization and culture of the Loyalist centres in Ontario, brought -in by the Loyalist Migrations, 1783-1786, and later by the settlements -of British-born _émigrés_, chiefly discharged soldiers, officials, and -mechanics, after the close of the Napoleonic wars, 1815, were -essentially practical and materialistic. On the whole the literature -produced in Ontario, particularly up to the triumph of Responsible -Government was, as in Quebec Province, a literature of annals and -chronicles and narratives. However, during this period and onwards to -Confederation, particularly after the war of 1812 and during the -rebellion of 1837, there appeared in the Canadas some genuinely -aesthetic verse and prose, written by British-born sojourners or -permanent _émigrés_ and by native authors. - -There were, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, several -other migrations of small groups of English-speaking people to Nova -Scotia and the Canadas, notably a group of Scots. The English Migration -in 1749, under Cornwallis, to Halifax was of no significance in the -literary history of Canada; nor were the Swiss and German Migrations to -Nova Scotia of literary significance. On the other hand, the Scots -Migration to Pictou, Nova Scotia, 1773, had a most decided -_intellectual_ influence not only on Nova Scotia, but also on the whole -of what is now known as Canada. It had, however, no influence on -specific _literary_ culture and literary creation, save Journalism, in -Canada as a whole. - -Meanwhile, it must be observed that in literary culture and the -production of literature in the English language in Canada from 1760 to -Confederation, taking these merely as convenient dates, Nova Scotia -(including New Brunswick) during the Puritan and Loyalist period and up -to the triumph of Responsible Government, and even still later, not only -produced the most significant and authentic literature, but also Nova -Scotia is to be regarded as the first home of an originally ‘Nativistic’ -Literature produced in Canada. - -Up to Confederation there could not be, as there was not, any innate and -natural sentiment of Canadian nationality in the hearts of the people. -The motive of Confederation was not based on sentiment but on practical -political vision and expediency. The ideal of Confederation, before it -was achieved, was wholly an intellectual concept. If, therefore, the -Canadian Confederacy were to endure, it was imperative that the -intellectual ideal, for the factual realization of it, should become -powerful over the hearts and imagination of the Canadian people after -the fact of Confederation in 1867—that there should develop, or be -developed, in the souls of the Canadian people a definitive sentiment of -nationality. - -This meant that following the consummation of Confederation the people -of Canada should find themselves pledged to and engaged in a distinctly -new and novel political and social program. This program was chiefly one -of political and social consolidation and of industrial and commercial -expansion. It was most astutely and effectively, though slowly, carried -out. With the ever-increasing political and social unification of the -people and the intellectual and commercial expansion of the country, a -genuine sentiment of Canadian nationality gradually developed, until by -the time of the Great World War, 1914-1918, and largely in consequence -of Canada’s part in that war, the sentiment of Canadian nationality -suddenly acquired a pervasive intensity and evolved into a definite and -profound sense of distinct nationhood. - -Now, with this development in political and social consolidation, and -territorial, industrial, and commercial expansion, and the evolution of -a sentiment of nationality and, later, nationhood, it was inevitable -that there should be not only a change in the literary ideals, -inspiration, and aims of Canadian men and women of letters, but also -that, with this change in aesthetic and artistic conscience, the -literature produced in Canada, after Confederation, should be different -in substance, form, and technical artistry or craftsmanship from the -literature produced prior to Confederation. It was also inevitable that -immediately upon Confederation, when, naturally, political and social -consolidation and the sentiment of nationality were virtually at zero -point or at least were inchoate, the literary ideals of Canadian men and -women of letters should be, in substance and form, for a decade or so, -traditional and derivative, not indigenous and originally Canadian. It -was indeed so: for at least a decade there was hardly any independent or -original native Canadian literature, or in it even a simmering of the -sentiment of Canadian nationality, though there was a considerable -quantity of ‘journalistic’ and imaginative poetry and prose which -possessed distinctive and even engaging aesthetic and artistic -qualities, written both by permanently resident _émigrés_ and by -native-born Canadians. - -In 1868, for instance, Charles Mair, a native-born Canadian, published -his _Dreamland and Other Poems_; and in 1870 John Reade, an Irishman -long resident in Canada, published a volume of verse, _The Prophecy of -Merlin and Other Poems_: but while Mair’s poems contained Canadian -sentiment and color they were the sentiment and color of _objective_ -Nature in Canada; and while John Reade’s volume was written in Canada -and though the poet really felt and was in sympathy with all the -political, social, and spiritual aspirations of Canada, Reade’s poems -themselves were based chiefly upon Arthurian legend and were written in -a derivative English romantic manner of form, music, and color. - -Mair and Reade and others were having an influence, however, in holding -up the ideal of authentic literary creation in Canada while during that -decade and the following decade a group of young native-born Canadians -were growing into manhood, and were having engendered in their hearts -and imagination a distinct innate sentiment of Canadian nationality and -were to become the first native-born group of _systematic_ poets and -prose writers in Canada. Their work, in poetry and prose, may fairly be -signalized as the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature. - -This group, for the purposes of literary history, we have denominated -the Systematic School of Canadian poets and prose writers. For with the -publication of Chas. G. D. Roberts’ _Orion and Other Poems_ in 1880, a -native-born leader for native-born men and women of letters appeared in -Canada; and with the publication of Roberts’ _In Divers Tones_ in 1887 -in Canada (in U. S. 1886), there appeared at length the first ‘Voice’ of -the Spirit of Canada, expressed in poetic literature, artistic in -structure and noble in inspiration. The authentic beginning of strictly -so-called Canadian Literature in English must, therefore, be dated from -1887. Roberts and his colleagues, Lampman, Carman, Campbell, D. C. -Scott, F. G. Scott, Pauline Johnson, Gilbert Parker and Marshall -Saunders are designated the Systematic School of Canadian poets and -prose writers. - -The First Renaissance in Canadian Native and National Literature may be -said to close either with the publication of Pauline Johnson’s last -volume of poems, _Canadian Born_, in 1903, or with the publication of -Robert Service’s first volume of verse, _Songs of a Sourdough_ (1907). -By this is not meant that after twenty years of leadership and influence -the first Systematic Group had not continued to hold up the ideal to the -younger or later Canadian poets and prose writers or that there were no -Canadian poets and prose writers who were continuing the older ideal and -tradition. As a matter of fact, the creative and artistic ideals of the -first group of systematic poets and prose writers had become engendered -in the aesthetic and artistic conscience of the younger or later men and -women of letters in Canada; and the poetry and prose produced by the -younger or later Canadian men and women of letters were notably refined -in sentiment, beautiful in structure and imagery, and noble in spiritual -substance and appeal. They continued, and still continue, as do also -Roberts, Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott and the other living members of -the original Systematic Group, the tradition of aesthetic and artistic -verse and prose. - -But in 1907 another singing voice was heard; and there developed a group -of poetasters and picaresque fictionists whose leader was Robert -Service. Their special literary _métier_ was verse, though Service and -his literary _confrères_ also essayed fiction. This group we call the -Vaudeville School of Canadian Poetry. Its vogue lasted for an -insignificant period of five years, or from 1908 up to the beginning of -the Great World War. - -In 1913 appeared a new group of younger Canadian poets and prose -writers, who may be regarded as having begun the Second Renaissance in -Canadian literature. They inaugurated, as it were, a Restoration Period -in Canadian literature, inasmuch as, with some changes in ideals of form -and craftsmanship, they essentially ‘restored’ the literary principles -and aims of the First Renaissance Group. All these distinctions in -nomenclature and dates are, of course, only used for expository or -pedagogical purposes. Accordingly, it is convenient to mark the -beginning of the Second Renaissance, or the Restoration Period, in -Canadian Literature with the publication of Marjorie Pickthall’s first -volume of verse, _Drift of Pinions_, in 1913. - -This period in Canadian Literature in English is still in process. It is -showing definitive originality in several ways, including original -developments in modernity of theme and moral substance, in formal -novelty, and in fresh expression of neglected or hitherto unessayed -literary _genres_, such as, for instance, poetic and stage drama, and -essays strictly in _belles-lettres_. - -Contemporary with the poets of this period is a group of fictionists, -who have produced and are producing novels, romances, and tales which -are Canadian in theme, in social background, and in color. This group -may be distinguished as the Realistic School of Canadian Fiction. - -These distinctions thus determine the scope of the present work as a -Synoptic History of Canadian Literature. The literature considered or -treated comprises—(I) Pre-Confederation Literature (1760-1887); and -(II) Post-Confederation Literature (1887——?). The Pre-Confederation -Literature, which, for purposes of exposition or treatment, is viewed as -running over into two decades beyond 1867, will be considered under -three rubrics—(1) Incidental Pioneer Literature; (2) Emigré Literature -and (3) Nativistic Literature. Post-Confederation Literature will be -treated under a single rubric—Native and National Literature of Canada; -and this indigenous Canadian literature will, for expository and -pedagogical purposes, be considered under five Schools (or Periods)—(1) -the Systematic School and Period (First Renaissance); (2) the Vaudeville -School and Period (Decadent Interim); (3) the Restoration School and -Period (Second Renaissance); (4) the Realistic School and Period of -Fiction; and (5) the Rise of Realistic Native or National Drama. But -these formal divisions cannot be kept mathematically rigid and there -will necessarily be overlappings and special consideration of both -imaginative and aesthetic Canadian literature, such as poetic drama, -_belles-lettres_, hymnody and literary criticism, journalism, and the -literature of travel, exploration, history, and biography. - -The method of treatment and criticism employed in the present work is -also Synoptic or Philosophical. The synoptic method adopts the point of -view of Canadian literary history and literature as a spiritual Whole. -It has distinct and desirable advantages over the other critical and -pedagogical methods. For the synoptic method assists the imagination to -view Canadian authors and their literature in an inclusive historical -perspective, and thus to discover in Canadian Literature the evolution -of a people’s social and spiritual ideals, their national and world -conceptions, and how and what each individual poet or prose writer, or -each group or school of poets and prose writers, has contributed to the -vision of the people’s social and spiritual ideals and to the evolution -of them in the people’s social conscience. Further: the synoptic method -disengages and discriminates the essential excellences of the poetry and -prose of particular individuals and groups, and enables the critic or -historian rightly to estimate the social and spiritual significance and -value of Canadian authors ideas on Nature, Society, human Existence, and -Endeavor. - - - - - Part I - - - - Pre-Confederation Literature - 1760-1887. - - - - - CHAPTER I - - - Social _and_ Spiritual Bases - - THE SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL BASES OF CANADIAN LITERATURE—THE PURITAN - AND LOYALIST MIGRATIONS—THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCOTS MIGRATION— - THE PRIMACY OF NOVA SCOTIA IN THE CREATIVE LITERATURE OF CANADA— - LITERARY SPECIES IN ONTARIO AND QUEBEC. - -Creative literature in the Provinces which now form the Dominion of -Canada, really or most significantly began in Nova Scotia. The social -bases of this Nova Scotian pioneer literature, its literary forms, and -even its inspiration were of New England origin. It is highly important -clearly to understand all this. In 1760, or two years after the -proclamation of Governor Lawrence and the establishment of a Legislative -Assembly in Nova Scotia, seven thousand Puritans emigrated from -Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut to Maugerville on the St. -John River, and to the valleys of western Nova Scotia. The expulsion of -the Acadians had left the fertile farms of western Nova Scotia deserted. -These lands were naturally attractive to the people of New England, -inasmuch as the soil was not only fertile, but the country itself was, -at the time, part of British North America, as was New England itself. -As soon as the Acadians had been expelled, the Governor of Nova Scotia -set up military control and government. Moreover, the Anglican Church -was the dominant creed. In New England civil and religious liberty were -regarded as absolutely necessary to the life of the people. When, then, -in 1758, Governor Lawrence brought about the formation of a Legislative -Assembly and proclaimed civil and religious liberty for Nova Scotia, the -New England Puritans felt free to come to Nova Scotia, which promised -them an acceptable new home, both for the obtaining of material -possessions and the free expression of their spiritual ideals. - -In 1763 other groups of New Englanders, with their characteristic -ideals, came to Nova Scotia. In 1783, 1785 and 1786, following the War -of American Independence, thirty thousand United Empire Loyalists -emigrated from the Atlantic States and settled in Nova Scotia; ten -thousand settled in Lower Canada (Quebec); and twenty thousand settled -in the district which later became the Province of Ontario. So that, in -a period of twenty-five years, about one hundred thousand _émigrés_ from -the United States coast had become permanent residents of the Maritime -Provinces and the Canadas. That is to say, the bases of Canadian -civilization and culture, following the Fall of Montreal and beginning -with the first Puritan Migration, were definitively the social, -political, intellectual, and literary ideals of New England. - -In 1749 there was a migration of English from the Motherland to Halifax. -They founded the City of Halifax. These English _émigrés_, however, -found conditions of life at Halifax so forbidding by way of hardships -and so socially unsettling that many of them removed to Boston and to -New York. Subsequently their descendants came from New England and New -York to Halifax. It was they, not their fathers, who really founded the -City of Halifax and did most for the development of commerce and culture -in that community. Later, when Halifax became a British Military and -Naval Station, it took on an English ‘air.’ But essentially its culture -and commerce were of New England Puritan origin. - -In 1773 occurred the Scots migration to Pictou, on the North shore of -Nova Scotia. These colonists were but a little band of two hundred; yet -they brought with them two ideals which eventually pervaded the -civilization and culture of Canada. - -Viewed, then, synoptically, the civilization and culture of the Dominion -of Canada, as we conceive and appreciate the significance of Canada -to-day, had their origins in Puritanism and Calvinism—in the ideals -brought into Nova Scotia and the Canadas by the New England and the -Scots Migrations in the 18th century. Specifically, the New England -colonists, especially the Loyalists, brought, with them the literary -ideals which were to become the creative principles of the first -native-born poets and prose writers of Nova Scotia and the Canadas. -Specifically, the Scots colonists brought into Nova Scotia two ideals of -spiritual import; namely, the ideal of the supreme worth of the -individual human spirit and its salvation, and the ideal of sound -intellectual education as the basis of the life of the spirit both for -this world and the world to come. - -To appreciate critically the results of the Loyalist ideals on the -creative literary spirit in Nova Scotia, we must hark back to -pre-Revolutionary times in New England and the other Atlantic Colonies -and to the social conditions and spiritual problems of the people of -Nova Scotia following the Loyalist Migrations. In pre-revolutionary days -in the New England and the other Atlantic Colonies, the weapon used both -by those who were for separation from England and those who were loyal -to the British Crown was a literary weapon—prose and poetry. Naturally -pre-revolutionary literature in the American Colonies was modelled on -the mood and form of the satiric verse and pamphlets of the 18th century -poets and prosemen of England. The American colonies became alive -especially with poetic satirists. When, therefore, the Loyalists settled -in Nova Scotia and the Canadas, and when, in due course, they themselves -had to face the discussion and solution of new social and political -problems, inevitably they adopted the 18th century forms of literary -expression. - -But what of the Puritan settlers in Nova Scotia? They were in the land -for at least a decade before the coming of the Loyalists. They had -social and religious problems for discussion and solution. Did not these -problems of the Puritan _émigrés_ issue in a literature? They did. But -the Puritan literature in Nova Scotia was not in mood, aim, form, or -result at all significant, or as genuinely creative as the Loyalist -literature, and may be shortly noticed and dismissed. The Puritans were -Congregationalists, and brought with them the old New England ideals of -the ‘Town Meeting’—Responsible Civic Government and Religious Liberty. -They were political and religious Democrats. But Church interests were -paramount. Congregationalism, though essentially a democratic form of -Church government, developed all the formalism, of an aristocratically -conducted religion. The inevitable happened. There were -‘fundamentalists’ and ‘modernists’ in those days as in ours. Under -Whitefield a schism occurred in Congregationalism. The leader of the -schism in Nova Scotia was Rev. Henry Alline (1748-84). Under Whitefield -in the American Colonies and Henry Alline, ‘the Whitefield of Province’ -of Nova Scotia, the ‘New Lights’ (as they were called) triumphed over -the Orthodox or Formalistic Congregationalists in America. But, oddly, -this religious schism also resulted in a political schism. It resulted, -in short, in a separation of the Puritans in Nova Scotia from the -Puritans in the New England Colonies. So that the Puritan colony in Nova -Scotia became a community apart, with a new and distinct sentiment of -British connection. They retained, however, their New England ideals of -responsible municipal government and absolute religious liberty. Nova -Scotia thus became the home of a new experiment in Political and -Religious Democracy. - -But since, with the Puritans, Church or Spiritual interests were -paramount, and since the separation between the Nova Scotia Puritans and -the New England Puritans was merely sentimental and followed the -religious schism, the Puritan literature of the period in Nova Scotia -was wholly religious and theological. On the theological side, it took -the form of controversial and polemical literature for the promotion of -the ‘New Lights’ schism. On the religious and creative sides, it took -the form of homilies, sermons, devotional works, prayers, and hymns. - -The chief creative writer of the Puritan period was Henry Alline. During -the conflict between the Orthodox Congregationalists and the ‘New -Lights’ Henry Alline published a polemical pamphlet, _The -Anti-Traditionist_, and five books of _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_. After -his death his _Life and Journal_ was published. It is interesting only -to students of religious psychology and the varieties of religious -experience. - -But Alline’s _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_ is a genuinely creative work. -It contrasts admirably with the too often spiritually inept and -doggerelized hymns and evangelical songs that have found a place in the -hymnody of the Churches. Alline’s hymns and spiritual songs disclose on -his part an authentic lyrical faculty, a sure sense of rhythm and of -decent rhyme, and a respect for dignified diction and imagery. Though -Alline’s work in prose and verse has no significance in the evolution of -Canadian Literature, inasmuch as he did not even ‘influence’ Canadian -hymnography, yet the literary historian must give him the distinction of -being the first of the Pioneer Hymn Writers of Canada. The Puritan -period in Nova Scotia had, however, no importance in the development of -Canadian Literature. - -The literature produced by the Loyalists in Nova Scotia, on the other -hand, was fundamental in the evolution of Canadian Literature. For the -most part, the Loyalists were members of the cultured Tory or -aristocratic families of New England and the other Atlantic Colonies, -and were highly cultured themselves. Many of them were teachers, -clergymen, lawyers, jurists and officials—all graduates of Harvard, -Yale, and other leading educational institutions in the lost colonies. -The Loyalists brought with them their social and cultural ideals; and -many of them were practised in literary expression, after the manner of -the 18th century prose and verse. They were thus fitted by education and -powers of literary expression to reconstruct, as they did, the -civilization and culture of Nova Scotia, and to produce, as they did, -the first Nativistic Literature of Canada. How they accomplished these -creative results is an instructive study by itself. - -During the American Revolution the Loyalists were aristocratic families -with an ardent British sentiment. They wished to retain British -connection and to promote their own institutions, with New World -modifications, modelled upon British institutions. The persecutions they -endured during the whole of the Revolutionary times and their forced -exile to Nova Scotia did but intensify their sentiment for British -connection in their new home in Nova Scotia. Yet the love for their old -homeland remained, and became with them a rather poignant nostalgia. It -was, however, the old _homeland_ they loved; but for the _people_ of the -United States they had no sentiment save scorn and hate. - -All the while, therefore, they retained in their minds and hearts the -so-called ‘United Empire’ ideal. But at length this became a problem -which took the form of an inner debate as to whether they should cast -aside all thoughts of bringing about a re-union of British North America -(that is, the Canadas and the Maritime Provinces) and the United States, -or whether they should promote a _new_ United Empire in the land over -the border from the United States. It must be admitted, however, that on -the side of ardency of sentiment the Loyalists in Nova Scotia really -felt more a nostalgia for their old homeland than they felt a love for -Great Britain and the establishment of a great British nation in the -lands north of the United States. - -It is this nostalgia which first finds expression in the Loyalist -literature produced in Nova Scotia; and it finds its fullest expression -in verse. Several names—Jacob Bailey, Jonathan Sewell, Joseph -Stansbury, Jonathan O’Dell, Adam Allen, James Moody, Mather Byles, -Walter Bates—are noted by literary historians as paramount in the early -Loyalist literature. There is, however, nothing of genuine literary -merit in their poetry, prose narratives, and diaries. Of these early -Loyalist writers Jonathan O’Dell is somewhat significant. He introduced -into Nova Scotia the verse forms and temper of the 18th century poetic -satirists, Dryden and Pope. - -Time, at length, wrought changes in the hearts of the Loyalists, and -they began to look away from the United States and to take a pride in -their new home; to look with affection upon Nova Scotia and to express a -decent regard for England, the Motherland. As it were, the grapes in the -United States had soured, and the Loyalists in Nova Scotia began to look -on the Revolutionists as their inferiors in birth, culture and -civilization. The true ideals, in their view, were in the aristocratic -culture and the political system of the new Provinces and England. Once -this spirit of contempt for United States culture and civilization -became thoroughly engendered, the separation of the Loyalist community -in Nova Scotia from all United States connection was complete. Whereupon -the Loyalists felt that the only right course to pursue was for them to -unite with the Puritan settlers who had preceded them to Nova Scotia, -and to develop a civilization and culture all their own. - -This they proceeded to do by laying the foundations of Journalism in -Nova Scotia. The first journalistic ventures in Nova Scotia happen also -to be the first in Canada. The first newspaper had been founded at -Halifax in 1752: that is, eight years before the Puritan Migration; but -it was a government organ and not a real newspaper. But on March 17th, -1776, when the British troops evacuated Boston, John Howe, Loyalist and -printer, also left Boston and with him went the press of the Boston -_News-Letter_. Eventually it reached Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the -_News-Letter_ was amalgamated with the Halifax _Gazette_. In 1789 _The -Nova Scotia Magazine_ was founded, printed, and edited by John Howe. -This was the first literary magazine published in British North America. -Thus, under Loyalist auspices and literary traditions, journalism began -in Nova Scotia, that is, in Canada. - -Further: Loyalist newspapers and Loyalist magazines, founded at Halifax, -and later at St. John, that is, Loyalist Journalism, laid the -foundations of literary expression and literary creation in Canada. It -is beside the point to animadvert upon the aesthetic values of the -substance and form of the original prose and verse which appeared in the -Loyalist newspapers and magazines. For, up till the time of Joseph -Howe’s becoming sole owner and editor of _The Novascotian_, in 1828, all -the literary work that had preceded was but a preparatory school of -journalism and literature. When _The Novascotian_ was founded by Joseph -Howe, and when Thomas Chandler Haliburton, with Howe himself and others, -began to contribute to it, journalism itself became literature, and the -first Nativistic Literature of Canada was created. - -The Loyalists, we must remember, though they came from a country in -which the social and political ideals were democratic, were themselves -aristocratic. When, therefore, they bethought themselves of founding a -college, their ideal was that of a college which would preserve the -curriculum of Colleges open only to those who were well to do. The -University of King’s College was begun as an Academy at Windsor, Nova -Scotia in 1787, was granted a Collegiate Charter in 1789, and was -formally opened as a College in 1790. It was indeed open to all the -Province—to all those who could _afford_ to attend. But in 1802 this -policy of seeming democratic inclusiveness was abrogated by an Imperial -Government Act which limited the privilege of matriculation to members -of the Church of England. Since seventy-five per cent. of the population -of Nova Scotia were members of other communions, the great majority of -possible students were shut out from King’s College. When, therefore, -the Scots _émigrés_ who settled at Pictou in 1773, found their children -debarred from education at King’s College, they established in 1819 a -new College. Education at Pictou Academy, as it has always been called, -was open to students of all creeds, races, and color, as it is to this -day. From that Academy went forth men and women who held up to the -people of their own country and the rest of Canada the two ideals of the -supreme worth of the individual human spirit and of sound elementary -education as the basis of constructive good citizenship. From Pictou -Academy went forth men and women who became leaders in thought and -practical endeavor in Canada—superior teachers and presidents of -Colleges, eloquent preachers, distinguished scientists, men of practical -vision and achievement in the professions, in government and -statesmanship, and in industry and commerce. Their influence, however, -was intellectual and practical. Save in the field of journalism, they -had no influence on literature and literary creation in Canada. - -In Lower Canada and in the district that became Upper Canada, or -Ontario, the earlier Loyalist Migrations brought with them a lower level -of culture than that which was brought into the Maritime Provinces by -the Loyalists who had migrated to Nova Scotia, which at the time -included the territory that in 1784 became the Province of New -Brunswick. This is not a matter of opinion or prejudice; it is a matter -of fact. For the Loyalists who migrated to Nova Scotia were from the -most cultured families in the Old Colonies, and even the men of the -Loyalist Regiments were of a superior order of character and mind. So -that the Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia formed, as Dr. Baker -phrases it, ‘an educated class seldom found in a pioneer community—a -homogeneous community unique in origin, with a local pride not found in -other sections.’ - -The so-called Overland Loyalists, on the other hand, who moved into the -Niagara Peninsula and into Quebec were on the whole of humbler social -status—agricultural workers, artisans, and a considerable number of -irresponsible adventurers, who joined the Migrations in the hope of -obtaining cheap lands and something for nothing. They were led, of -course, by men of parts, but even these men had neither literary culture -nor literary interests. Their interests were material, and they ‘headed’ -a Loyalist motley so as to have the means and labor necessary to occupy -the lands and clear them for their own materialistic ends. And so it -happened that while in Quebec and in the settlements in the district -which was to become Ontario there were literary activities, and even -newspapers and magazines, the Overland Loyalists did not contribute -constructively to the literary spirit and the creative literature of -Canada. - -The first genuine Nativistic Literature of Canada was created in Nova -Scotia—in the Satiric Comedy or Humor of Haliburton, in the Sketches, -Essays, Legislative Reviews, Speeches and Public Letters and the Poetry -of Joseph Howe, and in the Poetry of Oliver Goldsmith, 2nd, a -great-nephew of the author of _The Deserted Village_. Still, this -pre-eminence given to Nova Scotia is, in a way, based on a half-truth. -It is true that, to put it colloquially, Nova Scotia had her creative -literary ‘innings’ early in the game. It lasted from the publication of -Joseph Howe’s _Western Rambles_, in 1828, or from the publication of -Haliburton’s _Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia_, in -1829, to Haliburton’s last volume, _The Season Ticket_, published -anonymously in 1859—that is, a period of thirty years. - -Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were again to have an ‘innings’ when -Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Marshall Saunders, of the -Systematic School of native poets and prose writers, began publishing in -the late ‘eighties’ of the 19th century. The Maritime Provinces, as a -whole, by the addition of Lucy M. Montgomery to the native prose writers -and William E. Marshall and Robert Norwood to the native poets, had a -still further short ‘innings.’ But, it must be recalled, -contemporaneously with Haliburton and Howe in Nova Scotia, certain -writers in Ontario and Quebec, namely, first, John Richardson, Rosanna -Mullins, and William Kirby, produced historical romances, or a -‘nativistic’ literature in prose, and, later, through the poetry of -Sangster and Mair, Ontario produced Nativistic Literature in verse. -Since the rise of the Systematic School, the centre of literary creation -in Canada has shifted from Nova Scotia to Ontario and Western Canada. - - - - - CHAPTER II - - - Incidental Pioneer Literature - - THE INCIDENTAL PRE-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE OF CANADA—ALEXANDER - HENRY’S TRAVELS—MRS. BROOKE’S NOVELS—MRS. JAMESON’S - NATURE-STUDIES—THE ÉMIGRÉ PRE-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE OF CANADA - —MRS. SUSANNA MOODIE—ADAM KIDD—JOHN READE—GEORGE MURRAY— - ALEXANDER M^{c}LACHLAN—WILLIAM WYE SMITH—ISABELLA V. CRAWFORD. - -Broadly taken, the Incidental Pioneer Literature of Canada was produced -by the wits and _bon vivants_ amongst the officers of the British army -and navy during or after the taking of Louisburg and Quebec, and by -certain ‘birds of passage,’ British-born men and women, who were -sojourning in the Canadas. It was considerable in quantity, embracing -verse, narratives, social and nature studies and sketches, and even -fiction. But it did not affect the life and ideals of the people. It was -simply literature produced in the Canadas—incidentally. - -From Louisburg to Quebec and Montreal the poets in the British navy and -army exhibited a special preoccupation with a species of war poetry. In -1759, for instance, when the British frigate’s guns were breaching the -walls of the French stronghold, Louisburg, Valentine Neville penned his -poem _The Reduction of Louisburgh_. In 1760, George Cockings produced -another war poem for the delight of London—_The Conquest of Canada_, or -_The Siege of Quebec: A Tragedy_. In this species of literature, the -most remarkable performance was Henry Murphy’s _The Conquest of Quebec: -An Epic Poem in Eight Books_. It was published at Dublin in 1790 and -runs to the amazing length of eight thousand lines. Quantity, not -literary quality, was the only distinguishing mark of these early -Canadian poems of heroism in war. - -A really remarkable book, with genuine literary quality was the elder -Alexander Henry’s narrative of his experience as a traveller and -explorer, published in 1809 under the title _Travels and Adventures in -Canada and the Indian Territories_. In point of publication it was -anticipated by narratives dating as early as 1736, when John Gyles wrote -his memoirs of _Odd Adventures_, an account of his experience while -exploring the region through which runs the St. John River. There were -many volumes of narratives, but the most of them lacked literary style -and are of interest chiefly to the antiquarian. - -Two women, however, deserve special notice as contributors to the -Incidental Literature of Canada. These were Mrs. Frances Brooke, who was -the wife of a chaplain of the forces at Quebec in the last quarter of -the 18th century; and Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson. While a resident of -the Province of Quebec, Mrs. Brooke wrote what has been called ‘the -first Canadian novel,’ _The History of Emily Montague_. Published in -1769, it ran into several editions. Mrs. Jameson possessed a rare -pictorial sense of beauty in nature; and while visiting the Canadas she -wrote _Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada_. Published in three -volumes at London in 1838, this work remains to this day the finest -example of ‘color writing’ in the whole range of Canadian Literature. - -With the exception of Mrs. Brooke and Mrs. Jameson, the writers of the -Incidental Pioneer Literature of Canada merely took a passing view of -what had interested them and put it into literary form decent enough for -publication. It was the substance of what they wrote, not the style or -literary art in their books, that interested their public in the -Canadas, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The only faculty -these books satisfied or delighted was the faculty of curiosity; and the -only delights they really gave readers were vicarious thrills of -adventure and wonder. - -The Incidental Literature of Canada, therefore, must be merely noted as -fact. In nowise, whether it be literature or not, had it any real -influence in developing a Canadian sentiment or in awakening a Canadian -literary spirit. Mrs. Brooke wrote her novel, _The History of Emily -Montague_, strictly in imitation of the first English novelist, Samuel -Richardson. But Canadian fiction, in any real sense, did not begin with -Mrs. Brooke. It began with a native-born Canadian, John Richardson, who -wrote historical romance, notably _Wacousta_, after the manner of, -though not in imitation of, Fenimore Cooper. - -By the Emigré Literature of Canada we mean in general the poetry and -prose written in Canada by permanent residents who were not born in any -of the British North American Provinces. It is a moot question whether -the literary historian should class the poetry of Isabella Valancy -Crawford and of William Henry Drummond under the category of Emigré -Canadian Literature. They were born outside of Canada; but they came to -Canada at an age when their minds were young and unformed and readily -susceptible to Canadian influences, naturalistic, social, and spiritual. -Poets like Heavysege and John Reade came to Canada when their minds were -mature and their attitudes to life were fixed. It is certain that -Valancy Crawford and W. H. Drummond did write from the Canadian point of -view and did influence Canadian literature, as well as contribute, -somewhat uniquely, to its quantity and quality. It is equally certain -that several of the maturely minded _émigré_ writers influenced, by -their presence and example, the development of Canadian Literature. - -From the point of view of influence, both of production and example, we -include in the one category of Emigré Literature the poetry and prose of -the permanent residents who came to Canada when mature in mind and of -those who came in childhood. With the exception of the poetry of Miss -Crawford and W. H. Drummond the Emigré Literature of Canada is -derivative in form and substance. In Miss Crawford’s case we discover a -considerable element of Canadian theme and a form of her own. In the -case of Drummond we come upon what Louis Fréchette has called a -‘Pathfinder’—a poet with a new substance and a new form absolutely and -uniquely indigenous to Canada. - -Though Confederation in 1867 sounded the death knell of the Emigré -Literature of Canada, actual production of it continued for a decade or -two past Confederation. It may be said to have lasted for about a -hundred years; or from the Fall of Montreal in 1760 till the publication -of Charles G. D. Roberts’ _In Divers Tones_ (1887) twenty years after -Confederation. - -In the first form, it was strictly pioneer literature, and naturally had -the crudity of thought and structure which belong to literature composed -under unsettled conditions. Gradually it came to have better aesthetic -substance and artistic form. This growth in it from crudity to decent -literary form evolved according to the social and spiritual development -of Canada in the Pioneer and the later Pre-Confederation periods. As -existence in Canada became more and more settled, and education and -culture became more and more distributed and appreciated, the literature -produced in the country was written more and more to appeal to the -aesthetic sensibilities and the artistic conscience. The reason for this -is that when an _émigré_ writer, such as Mrs. Susanna Moodie, undertook -to write social and nature sketches, the substance counted for -everything, and the form and movement were free, unhampered by -traditional laws of expression. It was speech transcribed on paper. But -the _émigré_ poets were bound by English models according to which they -must write, or not write at all. In _émigré_ verse, therefore, rather -than in _émigré_ prose, we observe evidences of an evolution in -substance and artistic structure. - -John Fleming came to Montreal early in the 19th century. Suddenly his -imagination grew poetic wings, and forthwith he produced _An Ode of the -Birthday of King George III_. He made his poem as intellectualized and -stilted with imitative poetic phrases as he possibly could. There was -nothing Canadian about it. In 1830 Adam Kidd, who came to Canada from -Ireland, produced a volume of poetry, _The Huron Chief and Other Poems_, -which is definitively Canadian in theme and is remarkable for really -engaging descriptions of Canadian scenery. It is in a traditional -English form, but from the point of view of its substance it may be -regarded as the first example of a genuinely Canadian poem by an -_émigré_ writer, as distinguished from a ‘nativistic’ writer, as, for -instance, Oliver Goldsmith, 2nd, who was born in Nova Scotia and -published _The Rising Village_ in 1825. - -The names and work of the _émigré_ versifiers might be extended so as to -include several significant poets, such as Charles D. Shanly, James -McCarroll, Alexander McLachlan, William Wye Smith, Thomas D’Arcy McGee -and others down to John Reade, who published _The Prophecy of Merlin and -Other Poems_ in 1870. In their verse we note a constantly increasing -regard for aesthetic substance and artistic craftsmanship. The name and -work, however, of one _émigré_ poet deserves special notice, more -particularly because he is constantly being classified as a Canadian -poetic dramatist. This was Charles Heavysege. - -Heavysege was thirty-seven years of age when he arrived in Canada. The -accident of his having remained in Canada and of having published at -Montreal his _Saul_, which, as a matter of fact, had been conceived in -England, does not give him as much right, if any at all, to be -considered a Canadian _émigré_ poet as attaches to Kidd or Mrs. Moodie. - -_Saul_ was published in 1857. As a poetic drama there is no other poem -which was written in Canada that is so much in the grand manner. Its -theme is Biblical, and it is really treated with epic grandeur and -romantic intensity. But with all its excellences, it had no influence, -by way of example, on subsequent Canadian poetic dramatists, such as -Charles Mair, Wilfred Campbell, or Robert Norwood. The first Canadian -poetic dramatist, native-born, was Charles Mair. Though the theme of his -_Tecumseh_ is not so sublimated as Heavysege’s _Saul_, it is Canadian; -and though its style is not so altiloquent as that of _Saul_, Mair’s -_Tecumseh_ is an original and notable contribution to the ‘nativistic’ -literature of Canada. - -It was really, however, the later _émigré_ men of letters, particularly -John Reade and George Murray, who by their own work in verse and in -literary criticism held up the ideal of native production of worthy -poetry in Canada. They were active in the first and second decade after -Confederation. They did much to awaken the literary spirit in Canada and -to correct the literary or artistic conscience of native-born writers. -But when they had done this, their work for Canadian Literature was at -an end. - -Archibald McLachlan came to Canada in his twenties and he followed, in -much of his writing, the themes, the dialect, and even the stanza-forms -of Robert Burns. Both poets were intensely patriotic, both sang the -gospel of the brotherhood of man. To both life was very much a mystery, -a mystery tinged with pathos. The work of McLachlan which may be -regarded as purely Canadian in tone and subject is found chiefly in the -depiction of scenes of pioneer life, treated objectively: _The Fire in -the Woods_, _The Old Hoss_, _The Backwood’s Philosopher_; and in _The -Emigrant_ he projected a pioneer epic, which opens with an apostrophe to -Canada and traces the progress of the emigrant from the old land to his -arrival and settlement in the new. The cutting of the first tree, the -building of the log-cabin and the Indian battle are successive incidents -of the poem. The style of the poem is rather formal, and recalls Scott’s -_Lady of the Lake_, but is without so much life or color. The poet loved -the spirit of freedom and independence which he found in the new land -and voiced this love in some stirring patriotic lyrics, such as _Hurrah -for the New Dominion_. - -Although William Wye Smith left Scotland in his infancy and was for -almost four score years a Canadian by adoption, almost all his writings -show the influence of the language, the literature, the history, the -religious and philosophic spirit of his homeland. A deep spiritual note -is present in many of his lyrics. Yet he did on occasion enter fully -into the Canadian spirit and show an appreciative understanding of -Canadian conditions, the beauties of Canadian landscape, historic themes -and national aspirations. Some of his best known poems are: _The Second -Concession of Deer_, _The Sheep-washing_, _Ridgeway_, _The Burial of -Brock_, _Here’s to the Land!_, _Canadians on the Nile_. - -There was one _émigré_ poet who deserves detailed appreciation as a -creative interpreter of Western _chevalerie_ and as a lyrist with an -exquisite fancy and delicate artistry. This was Isabella Valancy -Crawford. Born in Ireland in 1850, she came to Canada when but a child -of eight years, her family settling in Ontario, and, later, moving to -the Kawartha Lakes. Her father was a physician and it must be presumed -that the daughter came under cultural influences in her home. More -important is the fact she lived in Canadian districts which must have -peculiarly affected her young, impressionable, and receptive mind. -Undeniably she was born a poet; that is to say, she was born with a -genius for seeing spiritual beauty and meaning in all common things, -natural and human. Thus gifted and thus left free to be impressed by -Canadian Nature and life around her, and also by Nature and life in the -Western prairie regions, of which she had read, Valancy Crawford set -about imaginatively to interpret and express in verse her appreciation -of Nature and life in Canada. - -Whether it was her sheer genius that created her sympathy with pioneer -and cowboy life in Western Canada, or whether it was her imaginative -sympathy with that life that fired her poetic faculty, is a question in -literary psychology that does not here require discussion. The -outstanding fact is that Miss Crawford’s most notable faculty was a -profound sympathy with and a clear vision of the elemental dignity of -the heart of men and women whose lot was cast in rude and -unspiritualizing circumstances. It was out of this sympathy that she was -able to handle her themes of Western _chevalerie_ with a subtle, -veracious, and genuinely human but not coarse humor. Miss Crawford saw, -as no one in Canada before her or since has seen, the poetry and the -poetic or religious significance of life and _chevalerie_ in the early -days in Western Canada. She took the rude material and sublimated it, -not with rhetoric, but rather with verisimilitude of diction and phrase -and imagery, to the dignity and beauty of authentic poetry. - -We may summarize the qualities of her poetry of Western _chevalerie_, as -in her _Old Spookses’ Pass_, under four distinctions. It is noted for -dramatic (not melodramatic) force, rugged but characteristic humor, -graphic character-drawing, and power of conveying to us the sense of the -war of the elements which is felt by the wild creatures, such as cattle -herds, who become the ‘playthings’ of those elements. The extraordinary -fact is that, though all these qualities were, on her part, sheer -imaginative invention, yet they are truer to the facts than if they had -been written by an actual eye-witness. In short, Miss Crawford, as a -poet of Western _chevalerie_, stands out as gifted with sheer and -intense imaginative power and as an authentic imaginative creator. - -Nevertheless, her art is all authentic realism, totally free from crass -and hectic melodrama. Moreover, Miss Crawford achieved, not solely -because she had imagination and a true sense of realistic values, but -also because she saw that _style_ in poetry was the only antiseptic for -picaresque realism and hectic melodrama. She had genius, not merely a -tale to tell. - -Certainly Lowell, Bret Harte, John Hay, and others of their school, -writing in dialect, did no better work than did Miss Crawford in _Old -Spookses’ Pass_; and most certainly Robert Service did nothing so -elementally human and so spiritualizing with his material from rude or -picaresque life in Canada. - -We shall not wait to detail the qualities of Miss Crawford’s art in -other species of verse. We observe, however, that her long poem -_Malcolm’s Katie_ is specially remarkable for fine imagery, colorful -descriptive passages, and for a glowing impressionism which is taken -directly from Canadian Nature. Moreover, it is notable for its lyrical -interludes, which as lyrics, are as dainty and as delicately -constructed, as full of fancy and imagination in small form, as any one -of the kind in English literature. Miss Crawford’s lyrical interlude, -beginning ‘O, Love builds on the azure sea,’ is beyond criticism, and is -‘the gem’ of several Canadian anthologies. We quote the whole lyric:— - - O, Love builds on the azure sea, - And Love builds on the golden sand; - And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud, - And sometimes Love builds on the land! - - O, if Love build on sparkling sea, - And if Love build on golden strand, - And if Love build on rosy cloud, - To Love these are the solid land! - - O, Love will build his lily walls, - And Love his pearly roof will rear - On cloud, or land, or mist, or sea— - Love’s solid land is everywhere! - -As an outstanding example of Miss Crawford’s genius and art in lyrical -impressionism, Canadian Literature contains nothing more colorful and -musical than her ‘Lily-Song’ from _Malcolm’s Katie_:— - - While, Lady of the silvered lakes— - Chaste goddess of the sweet, still shrine - The jocund river fitful makes - By sudden, deep gloomed brakes— - Close sheltered by close warp and woof of vine, - Spilling a shadow gloomy—rich as wine - Into the silver throne where thou dost sit, - Thy silken leaves all dusky round thee knit! - - Mild Soul of the unsalted wave, - White bosom holding golden fire, - Deep as some ocean-hidden cave - Are fixed the roots of thy desire, - Thro’ limpid currents stealing up. - And rounding to the pearly cup. - Thou dost desire, - With all thy trembling heart of sinless fire, - But to be filled - With dew distilled - From clear, fond skies that in their gloom - Hold, floating high, thy sister moon, - Pale chalice of a sweet perfume, - Whiter-breasted than a dove, - To thee the dew is—love! - -When, in 1884, Isabella Valancy Crawford’s unpretentious little volume -of poems appeared, it won high praise from the critics of the London -_Athenaeum_, _The Spectator_, _The Graphic_, and _The Illustrated London -News_. They all noted that she had an excess of riches in fancy and in -imagination, and a poetic style of her own which was distinguished both -by beauty and exquisite artistry. In 1905 her poems were collected and -edited by John W. Garvin, B.A., and published with a critical -Introduction by Miss Ethelwyn Wetherald. This remains the definitive -edition of the poetry of Isabella Valancy Crawford, whom Miss Wetherald -describes as ‘a brilliant and fadeless figure in the annals of Canadian -literary history.’ - -The Canadian Emigré writers in the Pre-Confederation period, are, then, -to be appreciated by the literary historian as men and women who, first, -drew attention to the fact that Canadian life and culture needed -expression and, next, awoke in native-born sons and daughters of the -Dominion the ambition to undertake this expression in verse and prose. -We must, therefore, honor the earlier and later _émigré_ poets and prose -writers of Canada, not for the intrinsic merit of their work, but for -the fact that they engendered in the native-born the ideal of expressing -the consciousness of a Canadian homeland and spirit in literature which -should possess originality in substance, and beauty in form and in -technical artistry. - - * * * * * - -The quotations from Isabella Valancy Crawford’s work in this chapter are -from _The Collected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford_, edited by John -W. Garvin, B.A., (Ryerson Press: Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER III - - - Joseph Howe - - THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—JOSEPH HOWE AS FOUNDER OF THE - INDEPENDENT PROSE, CREATIVE JOURNALISM, POLITICAL LITERATURE, - LITERARY AND FORENSIC ORATORY—AS PATRIOTIC, DESCRIPTIVE, AND - HUMOROUS POET—AND AS THE DISCOVERER AND SPONSOR OF THOMAS - CHANDLER HALIBURTON. - -The epithet nativistic as applied to Canadian Literature marks a -two-fold contrast. On one side, it distinguishes the literature written -by natives of any of the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas (Ontario and -Quebec) from the earlier Incidental or Émigré Literature. On the other -side, it distinguishes the literature written by native-born men and -women _before_ Confederation from the Native and National Literature -written by native-born poets and prosemen _after_ Confederation. -Nativistic Literature is ‘native’ only in the sense of being the -indigenous product of the Unconfederated Provinces; but it is neither -‘native’ nor ‘national’ in the sense of being the product of the -Confederated Provinces which form the Dominion of Canada. But since this -Nativistic Literature was written by native-born sons and daughters of -the Provinces in a period when these Provinces were, so to put it, ‘on -the way’ to political union, and since it has permanent significance, it -is classified retroactively as part of the genuine literature of Canada. -Thus Richardson’s romances (written and set in Ontario), Haliburton’s -satiric comedy (written and set in Nova Scotia), Sangster’s and Mair’s -poetry (written and set in Ontario) belong to the Nativistic Literature -of Canada. But the poetry of Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Campbell, D. C. -Scott, Sir Gilbert Parker, and Pauline Johnson, and the prose fiction of -Miss Marshall Saunders, Roberts, Parker, and Scott, as well as the verse -and prose of later native-born writers, belong to the Native and -National Literature of Canada. Yet both the Nativistic and the Native -and National Literature are equally _Canadian_, inasmuch as each -expresses with beauty or truth the spirit and life of the people and the -physiognomy and moods of Nature in her seasons in Canada. - -The most significant writer, at least by versatility of genius and -variety of achievement, in the history of the Nativistic Literature of -Canada, was Joseph Howe, born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1804. Solely -as a man of letters, Howe must be regarded as having been, from the -point of view of Nova Scotia and of Canada, a man of superior creative -genius. He, along with Haliburton, inaugurated the Epoch of the -Independent Prose Literature of Canada. He laid the foundations of -Canadian Creative Journalism and Canadian Political Literature. He was -the ‘father’ of Canadian Literary and Forensic Oratory. He gave fresh -life and novel humorous quality to the Familiar Sketch or Light Essay, -after the manner but not in imitation of Addison and Goldsmith. He was -the first writer in British North America to attempt the Short Story of -Mystery, and with engaging success. He was a Poet of greater authentic -genius than many other Canadian poets who have a wider reputation. For -he wrote poetry of Nature and the Commonplace with the beauty and -distinction of Goldsmith and Burns. He infused into the Patriotic Song a -new music and what may be regarded as the first expression of the -National spirit in verse of that species. He gave to the Convivial Song -a fresh Western ‘tang’ of breeziness and genial humanity. He -revitalized, with novel originality and piquancy, the Poetry of Humor, -so originally indeed as to make his humorous poetry almost a species by -itself. Finally, he discovered the genius of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, -trained him, sponsored him, and introduced him to the world as the first -systematic humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. - -In 1704, or just one hundred years before the birth of Joseph Howe, the -Boston _News-Letter_, the first New England newspaper, was established. -On March 17th, 1776, or seventy-two years after the founding of the -_News-Letter_, the press of that journal departed from Boston for -Halifax, _via_ Newport, R.I., in the care of John Howe, father of Joseph -Howe; and was set up in the office of the Halifax _Gazette_, founded in -1752, the first newspaper published in any of the Provinces which later -became the Dominion of Canada. The _News-Letter_ was amalgamated with -_The Gazette_. The latter, however, was not a genuine newspaper; it was -a governmental organ which published chiefly military and official -intelligence. The _News-Letter_ was, in our sense of the word, a genuine -newspaper. On the face of the fact, the amalgamation of the New England -and the Nova Scotia newspapers appears as a simple, unmeaningful -_business_ matter. Really, however, it was an important factor in the -evolution of Canadian literature. - -John Howe was a printer, and a cultured Loyalist. He brought to Nova -Scotia two ideals. These were, first, the ideal of the free and -democratic expression of the spirit in word and deed; and, secondly, the -ideal of the expression of thought in strictly literary form. When, -therefore, the Boston _News-Letter_ was amalgamated with the Halifax -_Gazette_, Loyalist culture and journalistic ideals and practice -infected and enhanced Nova Scotian (that is, Canadian) journalism. The -amalgamation changed the scope and quality of Canadian journalism. For -in 1828 Joseph Howe became sole owner and editor of _The Novascotian_, -and proceeded systematically, and with better effect, to put into -practice the social, journalistic, and literary ideals of his father. - -When Joseph Howe assumed absolute control of _The Novascotian_, in the -same year (1828) he also brought together the band of Nova Scotia -writers known as ‘The Club.’ In the twenty years from 1828, when Howe -became active in creative journalism, to 1847, when the struggle for -Responsible Government in Nova Scotia ended and Howe retired from _The -Novascotian_, Howe raised journalism to the dignity of literature. He -achieved this in two ways: first, by publishing in _The Novascotian_ his -own and Haliburton’s original ‘Club’ prose sketches, Haliburton’s first -series of _The Clockmaker_, and the prose and verse of other -contemporary Nova Scotia writers; and, secondly, by establishing, in his -own narrative and descriptive sketches, essays, legislative reviews, -reported legislative speeches, pamphlets, and public letters, a _new -standard of literary prose_. Those twenty years—1828 to 1848—may be -called the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature of Canada. - -The epithet, ‘independent,’ as applied to the literature of that period -in Nova Scotia means that Howe, along with Haliburton, set up standards -of prose which in substance and style broke away from English traditions -and models. Howe’s and Haliburton’s writings were not only an indigenous -product of Nova Scotia, a _native_ literature, but also a _new_ -literature, absolutely independent of other literatures—in matter, -form, and style. Moreover, _The Novascotian_, in which were published -the skits, sketches, essays, and letters of ‘The Club,’ the sketches and -essays of Howe, the first of the _Sam Slick_ humorous sketches, and, -later, the texts of Howe’s literary and forensic orations and public -letters, circulated not only in the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas -but also in the United States and Great Britain. _The Novascotian_ thus -introduced Howe and Haliburton, as creative prose writers, to the -literary world. We may, therefore, mark the twenty years from 1828 to -1848 as the Epoch of the First Nativistic Literature of Canada. - -Howe’s own creative literary work by itself deserves particular notice, -inasmuch as it was a distinct contribution to the genuine Nativistic -Literature of Canada. In 1828 Howe himself began a series of narrative -and descriptive writings, intimate, gossipy ‘genre’ and ‘color’ -sketches, which he published in _The Novascotian_ and which he named -_Western Rambles_. In 1830 he followed these with a similar series which -he named _Eastern Rambles_. In 1838 and in 1839, while he and Haliburton -were in Europe, Howe published in _The Novascotian_ two series of -essay-like sketches, _The Nova Scotian Afloat_ and _The Nova Scotian in -England_, in which it appeared that Howe was developing for himself a -new literary style. For though these sketches are somewhat in the manner -of Goldsmith they have a merely outward essay-like formality, but are -distinguished by an originality of their own, an inward spirit of fresh -humor and a humanity, almost urbanity, which are wholly Howe’s own -creation. - -In another department Howe added creatively to the prose literature of -Canada. He laid the foundations of a political literature, which was not -journalism, but authentic literature. He did this, first, by his -inimitable so-called _Legislative Reviews_, when, in 1830, he began what -is admitted by all critics to be in literary form and style a brilliant -series of discussions of public affairs. Again: Howe enhanced the -political literature of Canada by his pamphlets, public letters and his -speeches and addresses, which were all published in the press. - -It is not, however, by his legislative reviews, pamphlets, essays, -sketches and public letters that Howe must be given a unique status in -Canadian creative prose literature. He wins his unique status by virtue -of his Speeches and Orations. They are really ‘great’—noble in thought, -beautiful in literary style and finish, extraordinarily fine examples of -a Western reincarnation of the rhetorical and literary gifts of such -consummate parliamentarians and statesmen as Edmund Burke, John Bright, -and William Ewart Gladstone. - -Finally: Howe contributed to the Nativistic creative literature of -Canada considerable journalistic verse which, in virtue of its humanity, -and sincerity, its imaginative beauties, pleasing conceits and -sentiments, and flowing rhythms (though it lacks somewhat in original -verbal music) is quite on the plane of the journalistic verse of the -18th century neo-classical school, especially the verse of Goldsmith, -upon which most of the verse of Howe was modelled. Howe wrote -inspiriting Imperial verse, as, for instance, his _Flag of Old England_, -a really fine example of patriotic poetry. He wrote colorful and musical -descriptive verse, as, for instance, his long unfinished poem _Acadia_ -(in the 18th century rhymed couplet). He wrote infectious humorous -poetry, as, for instance, _The Blue Nose_, _To Mary_, _A Toast_ (to -Haliburton), which is as near poetry as that species of verse ever -reaches. - -If Johnson and Goldsmith raised journalistic verse to the plane of -poetry, so did Joseph Howe. Or, concretely, if Goldsmith’s _Deserted -Village_ is authentic poetry, so is Howe’s _Acadia_. Consider this -excerpt from Howe’s _Acadia_:— - - Pearl of the West!—since first my soul awoke - And on my eyes thy sylvan beauties broke, - Since the warm current of my youthful blood - Flowed on, thy charms, of mountain, mead, and flood - Have been to me most dear. Each winning grace - E’en in my childish hours I loved to trace, - And, as in boyhood, o’er thy hills I strode, - Or on thy foaming billows proudly rode, - At ev’ry varied scene my heart would thrill, - For, storm or sunshine, ’twas my Country still, - And now, in riper years, as I behold - Each passing hour some fairer charm unfold, - In ev’ry thought, in ev’ry wish I own, - In ev’ry prayer I breathe to Heaven’s high throne, - My Country’s welfare blends—and could my hand - Bestow one floweret on my native land, - Could I but light one Beacon fire, to guide - The steps of those who yet may be her pride, - Could I but wake one never dying strain - Which Patriot hearts might echo back again, - I’d ask no meed—no wreath of glory crave— - If her approving smile my own Acadia gave! - -Are those lines any less true, human, sincere, winning poetry than the -opening apostrophe of Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_?— - - Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain; - Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, - Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid, - And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delayed: - Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, - Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, - How often have I loitered o’er thy green, - Where humble happiness endeared each scene! - How often have I paused on every charm. . . . - -and so on. ‘Pearl of the West!’—in just as short, apt, and felicitous -poetic phrase as Goldsmith’s apostrophe ‘Sweet Auburn!’ Howe signalizes -Nova Scotia, her natural beauty and magic, her ‘homeland’ thrall over -the heart and imagination of her native sons, a thrall of mountain, -mead, and wood, and flood, of kinship with nature and of pride in her -resources on land and sea. His _Acadia_ is all authentic poetry. - -As a lyrist of the beauty and pathos of the Commonplace, after the -manner of Burns, Howe ranks well, as in his lyrics of this species, _To -The Linnet_, _The Deserted Nest_, and _To the Mayflower_ (trailing -arbutus). It is, however, as a Poet of Humor that Howe must be regarded -as somewhat unique in the literary history of Canada. For in his -humorous verse Howe does not indulge in the ludicrous or in sheer -absurdity, as did George T. Lanigan. Rather Howe employs an -unconventional method of dignifying the human spirit, as in his playful -manner of signalizing the heart qualities of the Nova Scotian in his -poem _The Blue Nose_ and in _A Toast_ (to Haliburton). Seldom did Howe -use satire in humorous verse. But whenever he did so, he employed the -manner of Burns, and in the form of epigram, as in _To Ann_ and in this -smart epigram, _To a Lady (whose Eyes were Remarkably Small)_:— - - Your little eyes, with which, fair maid, - Strict watch on me you’re keeping, - Were never made to _look_; I’m ’fraid - They’re only fit for _peeping_. - -Joseph Howe was a ‘poet frustrate.’ Had he been able to devote himself -wholly to verse, there is no doubt that he would have left a -considerable body of authentic poetry. The bad in his verse is like the -bad in the verse of his superiors, but the best of Howe’s verse is -genuine poetry. Yet however high or low individual critics may estimate -the aesthetic and artistic qualities of his verse, Joseph Howe has a -right to a place in the history of Canadian poetry, and to a distinctive -place in the history of Canadian humorous poetry. - -As the inaugurator of the Epoch of the Independent Nativistic Prose -Literature of Canada, as an authentic creator of Literary Journalism and -Literary and Forensic Oratory, and as a significant, though frustrate -Poet, Joseph Howe was, as Samuel Johnson said of Goldsmith,—‘a very -great man.’ - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - - Thomas Chandler Haliburton - - THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON— - FIRST SYSTEMATIC HUMORIST OF THE ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLES—CREATOR OF A - NEW TYPE OF SATIRIC HUMOR AND COMIC CHARACTERIZATION. - -It is the chief glory of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, born at Windsor, -Nova Scotia, in 1796, that he was _the first systematic humorist and -satirist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples_. This distinction will appear as -almost obvious once its meaning and scope are properly understood. From -the founding of the American Colonies till the American Declaration of -Independence there were no Anglo-Saxon _peoples_. Up to -pre-revolutionary times the colonists in the Maritime Provinces, in -Canada, and in the Atlantic Colonies thought of themselves as British -people merely separated from the people in the Old Country by the main -of the Atlantic. It was a separation only in geographical distribution. -The British ‘family spirit’ was still intact, and the Old Country was -still ‘over home.’ It might be thought that there were two British -peoples on the American continent after the Fall of Montreal (1760). As -a matter of fact, the British people in the Maritime Provinces and -Canada had been, as it were, always ‘under the wing’ of the New England -Colonies, at least in the sense of a military and naval protectorate. So -that after the Fall of Montreal to the Declaration of Independence the -whole of the vast areas occupied by the British in the New World was -definitively British America. - -With the American Declaration of Independence and the revolution, there -resulted in sentiment and aim a political separation between the British -people of one section in America and the people of the Old Country. For -the first time the British ‘family spirit’ was disintegrated. In 1786, -with the granting of the independence of the Atlantic Old Colonies, a -real political separation of the British in North America was -permanently established. There was effected a separate United States and -a separate British North America (Maritime Provinces and Canada). Thus -there were, politically viewed, two Anglo-Saxon peoples in America, and -one in the United Kingdom. For the first time in history the phrase ‘the -Anglo-Saxon _peoples_’ denoted a real distinction in political and -social entities. The process of time, of course, only increased the -sense of separation of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. - -Unless we think of this 18th century division of the Anglo-Saxons into -three separate peoples, politically as well as sentimentally, we shall -regard Jonathan Swift as the first systematic satiric humorist of the -Anglo-Saxon peoples. This is impossible, however, for the reason that -Swift’s satires—_The Tale of a Tub_ and _The Battle of The Books_ -(1704) and _Gulliver’s Travels_ (1726)—were not only written prior to -the revolution in America but also were addressed solely or specifically -to the English people of the United Kingdom. Further, Swift was not a -consciously systematic satirist. He simply wrote, as occasion demanded, -satiric _pièces-a-thèse_. For the same reasons Laurence Sterne cannot be -regarded as the first systematic humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. -Sterne’s _Tristram Shandy_ (1759-67) and _A Sentimental Journey_ (1768) -were published before there was a United States Republic and a British -North America as separate political entities. When Charles Dickens -published his _Pickwick Papers_ (1836-37), the Anglo-Saxon _peoples_ as -such—in the United States, in British North America, and in the United -Kingdom—had been a political fact for more than fifty years. Yet -Dickens cannot be regarded as the first systematic satiric humorist of -the Anglo-Saxon peoples. He definitively addressed the English people in -England. He was a benevolent humorist, aiming by comic characterization -to create sympathy with our common humanity. He also aimed to bring -about certain social reforms, but his method was that of the kindly -humorist. The satirist aims to cause pain as a remedial measure. But, -above all, Haliburton had anticipated Dickens both in time and in -method. For _The Clockmaker_, with Sam Slick as the central comic -character, was published serially in _The Novascotian_ in 1835, or a -year before the publication of the first of _The Pickwick Papers_, and -was in method a combination of humor and satire, with a distinct -political and social thesis, namely, to promote a _zollverein_ of the -Anglo-Saxon peoples. Dickens aimed mostly to entertain his own people. -Haliburton aimed to change the vision of the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the -United States, British North America, and the United Kingdom, and thus, -if possible, to effect a world-wide Anglo-Saxon union or unity. In -short, Haliburton’s works in satiric humor were not conceived and -written primarily as literature, but as social and political propaganda. -The humor in them—the ‘soft sawder’—was introduced to relieve the pain -of the satiric truth just as the comic episodes in Shakespeare’s -tragedies relieve the emotional poignancy of the tragic strain. - -To take this point of view about the aim and significance of Haliburton -as a satiric humorist is the first step towards a proper approach to his -humorous writings, and the only way rightly to estimate his importance -in Canadian, American, English, and world literature. It is a simple -matter to trace the origin of his genius and to show his place and -influences on Canadian, American, and English Literature. - -Briefly, Haliburton’s satiric mood or temper was a recrudescence of the -revolutionary Loyalist mood or temper. He also inherited the Loyalist -love of British connection and an antipathy to republican institutions -and civilization, as in the United States. Further, in his time the -realistic revolt against the historical romance in fiction was under -way. Born with an inherited satiric temper, and finding to hand a great -problem, namely, the effecting of the Anglo-Saxon dream of Imperialistic -unity amongst the peoples of British origin, Haliburton decided to be a -satiric realist, and to have his satiric writings reach and move the -hearts of his compatriots in the Maritime Provinces and Canada and of -the people of the United States and in the United Kingdom. But as a -satirist he saw all the facts with a humorous appreciation, and in -presenting the facts of life, the psychology of society, the -idiosyncrasies of peoples, political institutions and culture and -civilization, as he saw them, Haliburton decided to write with realism -and truth but without rancor. - -He was the _protégé_ of Joseph Howe; and when Howe founded ‘The Club,’ a -coterie of Nova Scotia wits, Haliburton contributed his share of the -skits in political and personal satire for which ‘The Club’ was famous. -These skits were derivative in manner. But in 1835 Haliburton invented a -method of his own and definitively set out on his career as a systematic -humorist, presenting his thoughts, ‘as the sunny side of common sense,’ -in a series of sketches entitled _The Clockmaker; or The Sayings and -Doings of Sam Slick of Slickville_. These sketches were published in -Joseph Howe’s newspaper _The Novascotian_ (1835-36). There were -twenty-three of them. These were augmented to thirty-three, and were -published in book form by Joseph Howe, at Halifax, in 1837, and by -Richard Bentley, at London, in the same year. Bentley published a second -Series in 1838, and a third Series in 1840. Reprints appeared in the -United States, and translations in France and Germany. - -His reputation as a satiric humorist having been made by _The -Clockmaker_, Haliburton became a thorough systematic creative humorist, -publishing _The Letter-Bag of the Great Western_ (1840), _The Attaché_; -or _Sam Slick in England_ (1843-44), _The Old Judge_; or _Life in a -Colony_ (1849), _Sam Slick’s Wise Saws and Modern Instances_ (1853), -_Nature and Human Nature_ (1855), and _The Season Ticket_ (1860). -Besides these works in creative satire and humor, Haliburton applied -himself to editing humorous works, and published _Traits of American -Humor by Native Authors_ (1852), and a sequel, _The Americans at Home_ -(1854). All his creative works and his compilations of humor were -published on both sides of the Atlantic and ran into innumerable -editions and pirated reprints, and _The Clockmaker_ and some others were -translated into French and German. So that, on the face of original -production, Haliburton appears as the first and foremost systematic -satiric humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. - -The core of all his works in creative humor is some problem of the -larger politics—British Connection, Imperial Federation, Free Trade, -the Independence of the British North American Colonies, their -Annexation with the United States, Anglo-Saxon Alliance or Union, -Responsible Government in the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas, -Confederation of the Provinces, Voting by Ballot, Universal Suffrage. -For instance, in _The Clockmaker_ (second series) he presented the -desirability of British connection, but in _Nature and Human Nature_ -declared for the independence of the British North American Colonies as -against their annexation with the United States, because he fancied -independence would be better for them and the motherland. In _The -Clockmaker_ (second series) he advocated Imperial Federation in the form -of a union or alliance of the Anglo-Saxon peoples for reciprocal -security and economic development. But in the same work and in _The -Attaché_ he opposed Responsible Government for the Colonies out of a -fear of mobocracy, a fear that had been engendered in his heart by the -Rebellion of 1837. An inherited prejudice against republican -institutions and a dread of mobocracy caused him to oppose Confederation -of the Provinces and Universal Suffrage. In every one of his works of -humor or satire we find some special thesis, but chiefly satiric -arguments for the union or unity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to which he -bends all his power of humor, satire, ridicule, and epigram. - -Hitherto Haliburton’s originality and greatness have been based on two -claims. He created one of the perduring or unique comic characters of -humorous literature; and he is regarded as the ‘father’ of American -humor. Neither of these distinctions constitutes his real originality -and greatness as a satiric humorist and man of letters. He is really -great on account of his distinct and definable influences on three -literatures. - -Beginning with Canadian Literature, we remark that Haliburton’s -influence in Canada is popularly conceived, not as literary, but as -political. It is true that Haliburton’s themes or theses were highly -social and political. It is also true that, so far as his humor is -concerned, he was unappreciated and even unread in Canada. It is true, -still further, that he has had no successors as a humorist in Canada -(for Stephen Leacock is not a successor, neither being a native son nor -following the method of Haliburton). Nevertheless, Haliburton achieved -two important results for Canadian Literature. Along with Joseph Howe, -Haliburton ushered in the Epoch of the New or Independent Prose -Literature of Canada. Again: he not only produced an original prose -literature but also wrote it with such originality and novelty of matter -and style that Haliburton’s prose, that is, Canadian prose, has a -significant and permanent place in English and World Literature. - -It may sound strange or startling to learn that Haliburton’s work in -satiric humor and comic characterization actually _displaced_ in England -the vogue of such popular American prose writers as Irving and Cooper. -The fact is important, but the reason is more important. Between 1820 -and 1840 Irving, with _The Sketch Book_ and _Bracebridge Hall_, and -Cooper, with _The Spy_, _The Pioneers_, and his _Leatherstocking Tales_, -won popular appreciation in England. By 1840 two Canadian authors, John -Richardson, with his historical romance _Wacousta_, and Thomas Chandler -Haliburton, with _The Clockmaker_ series, also won popular appreciation. -But Haliburton’s work was appreciated for an altogether different reason -from that which caused the vogue of Irving, Cooper, and Richardson. The -English were caught by the _new matter_ in the work of Irving, Cooper -and Richardson, but they felt that it was all in an _old manner_, the -manner respectively of Goldsmith and Sir Walter Scott. They were -reading, they felt, _English_ Literature, done by two Americans and one -Canadian. Save in mere matter and ‘properties’ there was nothing in the -work of Irving, Cooper, and Richardson that might not have been done by -a visiting Englishman who had gone to the United States or to the -Canadas for new material and local color. It was English, not strictly -_original American_, literature. And so it had a mere vogue. - -When, however, the English people read Haliburton’s satiric comedy and -comic characterization, they came, _for the first time_, upon an -absolute or sheer literary novelty—literature that was _not_ English, -_not_ English-American, _not_ English-Canadian, but an original -_American_ species, absolutely new and unique. Here in Haliburton’s work -was literature in the English language, but not English in matter, -manner, or tone. Here were such novel satiric humor, such arresting and -vitalized comic characterization, and such a strange medley of practical -wisdom in moral maxims and epigrams, and all expressed in a unique -lingo, that the like of it never was before in any literature which had -come even from America. - -At once a change took place in the minds of the English people in -England. Hitherto America had looked across to England for fresh -literature, and had based its own literature on English models. But when -Haliburton produced a wholly original American literature, England -looked, for the first time in history, across to America both for fresh -and original literature, and for models which the English writers might -follow. At least in one instance English humoristic literature actually -modelled itself on Haliburton. There is no argument possible in the -matter. For the fact is that Dickens did read _The Clockmaker_, which -appeared serially a year earlier than Dickens’ _Pickwick Papers_, and -that Sam Weller is an English version of Haliburton’s Sam Slick (not -conversely). - -It is a literary phenomenon by itself that Haliburton’s work enjoyed an -‘unprecedented popularity’ in England but also displaced in popularity -the work of Irving, Cooper and Richardson. The popularity of -Haliburton’s work was not a mere vogue. It remains to this day. His Sam -Slick has been admitted to the gallery of the chief comic characters, -not only in English, but also in world, literature—to a place beside -Sterne’s Uncle Toby, Dickens’ Pickwick and Micawber, Cervantes’ Don -Quixote, Daudet’s Tartarin, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It is also a fact -that Haliburton’s epigrams and moral maxims have become part of the -English colloquial speech and at least English popular literature. - -Most remarkable were the influences of Haliburton and his works on -American Literature. Rightly to appreciate these influences, it is -necessary to understand what Haliburton was not. He was not, as has been -alleged, ‘the father (or founder) of American humor.’ He was not ‘the -creator of the American type in literature.’ He was not ‘the first -American in literature.’ His Sam Slick is not ‘the typical American.’ -These alleged distinctions are half-truths and are based on ambiguities. - -There is considerable truth and point in calling Haliburton ‘the Apostle -of American Humor.’ As to progenitorship, the fact is that Benjamin -Franklin is the ‘father’ of indigenous American humor. In 1765 Franklin -sent to a London newspaper what is the first example of that species of -satiric burlesque, that preposterous or extravagant nonsense, said with -a grave air of veracity, which is accepted as the characteristic matter -and manner of American humor. Franklin was versatile in genius and so -variously occupied in his long career that hardly can he be regarded as -systematic in any calling. Yet he was as systematic as a humorist and -satirist as he was in anything else. He began his literary career as a -humorist when, in 1722, he contributed pseudonymously to _The New -England Courant_ the series of imitative Addisonian skits known as the -‘Silence Dogood Papers.’ Seven years later, he continued his humor in -_The Pennsylvania Gazette_ with the sprightly letters of ‘Busybody,’ -‘Anthony Afterwit,’ ‘Alice Addertongue,’ and ‘Bob Brief,’ and with -satiric burlesques in _A Meditation on a Quart Mug_, _A Witch Trial at -Mount Holly_, and other squibs. Quite systematic was the humor of -Franklin’s Prefaces to _Poor Richard’s Almanack_ (1732-1758) and of some -of the aphoristic wit and wisdom in the Almanacks when the epigrams or -maxims were Franklin’s own invention, as, for instance, ‘Never take a -wife till you have a house (and a fire) to put her in.’ Though most of -the proverbial wisdom in _Poor Richard_ was borrowed, the form and -wit—the ‘Yankee smartness’—of it were Franklin’s creation, and he -became the ‘father’ of all those New World humorists who wrote -aphoristic wit and wisdom, down to Haliburton and from Haliburton down -to Westcott (‘David Harum’). Masterpieces in mordant satire worthy of -Dean Swift are Franklin’s _Of the Meanes of disposing the Enemies of -Peace_ (1760), _An Edict by the King of Prussia_ (1773), _Rules by which -a Great Empire may be Reduced to a Small One_ (1773), _Speech of Sidi -Mehemet Ibrahim_ (an ironical justification for the enslaving of the -Christians by Mohammedan Africans, 1790). Also to be mentioned are -Franklin’s _bagatelles_ (1778-80), written during his stay at Passy, -France, of which the most famous are _The Ephemera_, _The Story of the -Whistle_, _The Morals of Chess_, and _The Dialogue between Franklin and -the Gout_. - -The foregoing enumeration of Franklin’s humorous and satiric writings -show that if collected in one or more volumes they would bulk large and -prove that he was very considerable a systematic humorist. But only the -Letter of 1765 to the London Press and the four masterpieces of irony or -satiric burlesque written in 1760, 1773 and 1790 are in the manner which -is recognized as the characteristic American humor—a commingling of -extravagant nonsense and fact, uttered with such an air of veracity as -to make the passage from fact to nonsense and conversely imperceptible -and the detecting of it, on first reading, impossible. On the side of -aphoristic wit and wisdom, the work of Franklin is indigenous, and, -though in substance frequently derived, is original in form and style. -So that while we must regard Franklin as the real ‘father’ of American -humor, we must also see wherein Haliburton is even more original than -Franklin and had an even more important a constructive influence on -American humor than had Franklin. - -What was meant by Artemus Ward and others who distinguished Haliburton -as ‘the ‘father’ (or ‘founder’) of American humor,’ as the ‘creator of -the American type in literature,’ as ‘the first American in literature,’ -and Haliburton’s Sam Slick as ‘the typical American,’ was a three-fold -distinction which these formulae do not truly express. First, Haliburton -‘naturalized’ in America a method of humor in dialect, so that it became -the method of certain of his successors (Ward, Billings, Westcott, -Dunne) and a method of exaggeration or humorous mendacity and comic -characterization, so that it became the method of certain other -successors (notably Mark Twain). Secondly, Haliburton ‘popularized’ his -method of humor in dialect and his comic characterization, especially -Sam Slick, so that they became accepted in England and Europe as -peculiarly American—the one as the indigenously original American -method of humor, and the other as the typical New Englander, whom the -English cartoonists transmuted in caricature into ‘Uncle Sam,’ that is, -into the embodiment of _some_ typical American characteristics. Thirdly, -though American (United States and British North America or Canadian) -authors, Irving, Cooper, Richardson, who were contemporaries of -Haliburton, had a vogue in England, Haliburton had produced satiric -humor and comic characterization which were not only _un_-English in -method and conception, but also so original as to be absolutely unlike -any other humor and humorous characterization in the world. If any -literature was, in substance and manner, strictly American, it was -Haliburton’s humorous writings. - -In short, the ‘naturalization’ of a method of humor in dialect—in -America, and the ‘popularization’ of the chief phases of what became -accepted throughout the world as American, though really New England, -humor of thought, speech, and character—that is what is really meant by -saying that Haliburton is the ‘father’ of American humor, and is also -his great achievement so far as he constructively influenced American -(United States) Literature. But it is not his greatest distinction from -the point of view of creative originality. - -His prime originality lay neither in his dialect nor in the creation of -his chief character, Sam Slick, but in something which is ultimate and -unique in satiric genius, and which entitles him to a place beside Swift -as a subtle creator of mordant satire. As regards the dialect and the -conversational method of narrative of his chief character Sam Slick, the -variations in morphology and phonetics, and the piquancy and liveliness -of it all convince one that Haliburton independently developed the -dialect or lingo of his humorous characters. But there are facts which -prove that he developed it on a groundwork of a real New England -diction. When we compare, on the one side, the ‘Down East’ dialect of -Seba Smith’s _Letters of Major Downing_ in the Portland _Courier_ -(1833-34), which were imitated by Charles Augustus Davis in the New York -_Daily Advertiser_ (1835), and on the other side, the New England -diction in Lowell’s _Biglow Papers_ (Boston _Courier_ 1846-48; _Atlantic -Monthly_ 1862-67), with the diction which Haliburton puts into the mouth -of Sam Slick, we find that Sam Slick’s dialect is more ‘outlandish’ in -morphological and phonetic corruption than the ‘Down East’ diction in -Smith’s and Davis’ _Letters_, but nearer to the New England dialect in -Lowell’s _Biglow Papers_. Lowell, who was a scholar and linguist, and -whose own appreciation of the New England diction is embodied in the -learned disquisitions of Rev. J. Wilbur on dialectical morphology, -certainly would not burlesque and degrade the speech of his fellow -countrymen. The dialect of Lowell’s _Biglow Papers_ must be accepted as -a real, indigenous New England dialect. Haliburton had read Smith’s -_Letters_, which had circulated throughout the Maritime Provinces, and a -New England of ‘Down East’ dialect was familiar in Nova Scotia. -Haliburton’s diction, then, in faithfulness to the real New England -diction, falls midway between the diction in Lowell’s _Biglow Papers_ -and the first journalistic forms of that diction as represented in the -_Letters_ of Smith and Davis. Haliburton’s is his conception of that -diction and his independent development of it into a novel humorous -dialect. - -As to the originality of Haliburton’s chief character, Sam Slick, the -truth is that the humorist created, on a realistic basis, a transcript -of the ‘composite’ order, the main outline being derived from a real -peddler-clockmaker, named Seth, familiar in Nova Scotia, and from -Haliburton’s own coachman, Lennie Geldert, and a friend Judge Peleg -Wiswell, who were ‘smart’ in wit and who were first-rate _raconteurs_. -Haliburton also had as material the stage peddler who had made his -appearance in dramatic literature as early as 1811, and who by 1830 was -a stock character of the acted drama, having the same comic function as -the stage Irishman of the late Victorian age. Neither Sam Slick himself -nor his conversational dialect were absolute inventions of Haliburton, -but were based on a real and living dialect and character. He employed -his creative faculties in giving the one a humorous piquancy and -liveliness and the other the individuality and reality of a real person; -so that Sam Slick remains as one of the immortal characters of fiction. - -But the slightest reflection reveals the fact that Sam Slick is not a -_single_ person of many characteristics, not a _type_ of character, but -a _composite_ creation, the _epitome_ of so many distinct and -contradictory traits that they could not reside in a single person but -only in persons. Sam Slick, in short, was conceived and drawn to -personify _a people_, and his characteristics are an immanent criticism -or satirizing of the virtues and vices of republican democracy. - -What is Sam Slick? He is a disreputable plebeian creature—slangy, -coarse, conceited, boastful, mendacious, irreverent, yet shrewd, wise, -practical, acute in perception of social and political ideals, -courageous, self-reliant, quick-witted, critical of standards and -values, frank in speech, and direct in action. What does he represent? -Haliburton’s conception of _typical Americanism_. What was he designed -to achieve? Haliburton aimed to present in the character, sayings, and -doings of Sam Slick, the _reductio ad absurdum_ of republican culture, -institutions and civilization in America. - -President Felton, of Harvard University, in 1842, writing in _The North -American Review_, and George William Curtis, writing later in _Harper’s -Magazine_, were only partially right in attacking Haliburton for having -burlesqued and caricatured in _The Clockmaker_, and, particularly in the -character of Sam Slick, American culture and civilization. It was -mis-representation by sectional and class typification; the illogic of a -part for the whole. But they were wrong in their fundamental -presumption, namely, that the English people would accept Sam Slick and -his sayings and doings as typical Americanism. Cultivated English people -no more accepted Sam Slick as the typical American than cultivated -American people accepted the London Cockney, Sam Weller, as the typical -Englishman. What really happened was a two-fold result in literary -appreciation. That such an uncultured and socially inferior creature as -Sam Slick should appear as the social and political critic of -Anglo-Saxon institutions and civilization struck the imagination of the -English people as a most novel and daring creation in satiric comedy, -and Sam Slick himself as the most egregiously comic figure in modern -literature. The second result was that since the English people accepted -Sam Slick and his sayings and doings as a novelty in creative comedy and -the American people took it all as a caricature of their culture and -civilization, Haliburton’s satiric humor enjoyed, as it does to this -day, an ‘unprecedented popularity’ in England but had less popularity in -the United States. Haliburton’s unprecedented popularity in England had -also the effect of causing the English people for the first time to look -across the Atlantic to America for novel literary creation and -entertainment. - -Did Haliburton really mis-represent? Did he really present only -sectional and class culture and civilization in America? Was he -justified in choosing an obscure, socially disreputable creature from a -section of American society to be the critic of American institutions -and civilization? Why did he not choose someone socially higher—an -American gentleman—to represent typical Americanism? The truth is -Haliburton actually did represent all phases of American culture and -civilization. There is the interlocutor in _The Clockmaker_—the Squire, -Rev. Mr. Hopewell, and Mr. Everett, who was a real person, a president -of Harvard and a diplomat, and there are pictures of the finer social -and intellectual life of Nova Scotia and the United States. Felton and -Curtis missed all this. How did they happen to miss it? Because -Haliburton’s lesser characters were just bits of _genre humor_, whereas -Sam Slick was such an outstandingly clear and vivid—unique—creation in -comic characterization that Felton and Curtis saw only Sam Slick and -immediately conceived him as a mis-representation of the whole of -American culture and civilization. That they did so is a tribute to the -genius of Haliburton. For it contains the answer as to what is -Haliburton’s real originality as a creative humorist. The answer is -this: The fact that Haliburton created a composite character, uncultured -and socially inferior, to be the supreme critic of his social and -intellectual betters and of American or republican culture, -institutions, and civilization, is an _absolutely original achievement -in creative satire and comic characterisation_. With a single stroke of -genius Haliburton places himself beside Dean Swift as a satirist, and -raises himself to the status of one of the world’s perduring satirists -and humorists. - -Finally: Haliburton influenced not only American humorous literature but -also American _fine_ literature. We note, first, the constructive -influence of his editorial labors in compiling and distributing in the -United States and other countries the best American humorous fiction, as -in his _Traits of American Humor_, and _The Americans at Home_. Too much -has been said of his influence on Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, and other -American humorists writing in dialect in prose. But his influence on -American humor in dialect in _verse_ has hardly, if at all, been rightly -or fully appreciated. Lowell came under the influence of Haliburton in -writing his humorous verse. In his _Biglow Papers_ Lowell not only -imitated, but also actually borrowed, ludicrous conceits and situations -from _The Clockmaker_ series. This fact is important, because in the -last analysis Haliburton produced his humorous effects more by grotesque -conceits and ludicrous situations than by dialect. - -Haliburton had a potent influence also on American journalism of his -time. The newspapers reprinted ‘Yankee Stories’ and ‘Yankee Yarns’ and -‘Letters,’ which were the titles of pirated editions of Haliburton’s -_The Americans at Home_, and American newspaper staff humorists wrote -imitations and burlesques in the manner of Sam Slick. This in turn -influenced other American humorists, and they produced imitations of Sam -Slick, commercializing them as ‘By the Author of Sam Slick,’ knowing -that thus they guaranteed sure and large sales. - -It may be granted that Haliburton’s influence on American romantic -poetry was only accidental and pragmatic. But the fact is that -Longfellow was actually inspired to versify the ‘story’ of the Acadian -maiden Evangeline, not when he heard a mere incident of it from -Hawthorne, or when he heard it more in detail from his own pastor, who -got it from an aunt of Haliburton, but when he read in Haliburton’s -_Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia_ (1829) the full -pathetic tale of the Expulsion of the Acadians. More important is the -fact that Francis Parkman derived from his reading of Haliburton’s -_Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia_ his own romantic -method of writing history. So that, as far as America is concerned, -Haliburton may be called the ‘father’ of the romantic method of writing -history. - -_Versatility_ of powers or genius and _variety_ of literary creation -distinguish Haliburton as a man of letters. He was a first-rate satirist -or epigrammatist, narrative and descriptive writer, anecdotist or -raconteur, character-delineator, nature-painter, and, in one respect, he -was a prose stylist of first rank. Such versatility is unusual and even -exceptional, and seemingly marks Haliburton as a specially gifted -writer. But Haliburton’s versatility also exhibits certain -peculiarities. Oddly, though he is saliently the humorist or satirist or -aphorist or story-teller or descriptive writer or nature-painter or -character-limner in one or another of his works, he is, almost without -exception, all these in any work. More oddly, while a certain gift or -power predominates in a given work, all his works, taken successively, -disclose no development of powers either in invention or in literary -mechanics. There are differences in each successive work, but only of -sheer _variety_ in literary substance, not of greater and still greater -advance in novel conception and artistic handling of his matter. -Summarily: Haliburton’s gifts in humorous story-telling and aphoristic -wit and wisdom are salient in the first and second series of _The -Clockmaker_, _Wise Saws_, _Nature and Human Nature_, and _The Season -Ticket_. His gifts in narration and description are salient in _The -Clockmaker_, _The Attaché_, and _The Old Judge_. His gifts in -character-portraiture and naturalistic description are salient in _The -Old Judge_. But if any work contains all Haliburton’s best -qualities—ingenious and unfailing invention, novel and colorful -imagination, rare perception of the humorous and ludicrous, acute -insight into human nature, and extraordinary powers of vivid narration -and realistic description—that work is _The Old Judge; or, Life in a -Colony_. - -As a satirist Haliburton employed two forms—realistic satire and -humorous exaggeration or mendacity (‘tall stories’ Haliburton called the -latter). A prime example of his realistic satire is his description of a -fashionable wedding in London; another of a ‘rube’ or bucolic wedding in -Slickville, both in _The Attaché_. In this sort of ‘take-off’ Haliburton -has never been surpassed by modern journalistic humorists. A first-rate -example of Haliburton’s gifts in humorous mendacity or burlesque is his -‘tall story’ of the sale of his horse Mandarin as related in _Nature and -Human Nature_. This is the prototype of Westcott’s horse deal burlesques -in his _David Harum_. More in the manner made familiar by Mark Twain is -the humorous mendacity of Haliburton’s tales of ‘The Gouging School’ and -‘The Black Stole,’ both in _The Attaché_. There are anticipations -a-plenty of the Mark Twain manner of ironic exaggeration and mordant -satire in the second series of _The Clockmaker_, _The Old Judge_, and -_The Season Ticket_. - -As a Humorist Haliburton obtained his effects—and won his popularity -with all classes—by character typification, story-telling, aphorisms, -epigrams, and homely moral maxims, jests, waggish conceits, jocular -phrases, and puns, including _double entendres_. He employed two methods -of character typification; one being humorous definition; the other, -humorous classification. Almost all Haliburton’s characters have names -that are essentially what we mean by nick-names, to indicate distinctive -mental or moral qualities of the individuals. It is by this method, -rather than by character-drawing, that Haliburton succeeded in -individualizing each character. It is the method of individualization by -suggestion. The name Sam _Slick_, for instance, at once conveys the type -of individual or character, namely, the kind of person who ‘lives by his -wits,’ who gains profit by subtle or sharp practice. Such a person is -‘slick,’ an epithet derived by a vulgar pronounciation of the adjective -‘sleek.’ Other instances are The Honourable Lucifer _Wolfe_, The -Honourable Alden _Gobble_, General Conrad _Corncob_, Captain Ebeneezer -_Fathom_, Mr. _Pettifog_ the Justice, _Nabb_ the police constable, -Deacon _Flint_, Rev. Joshua _Hopewell_, Dr. _Query_, and Old _Blowhard_. -The moral connotations of these nick-names are obvious, but Haliburton -himself in the proper place always names the character and adds a -summary of moral qualities to show the aptness of the name and its -connotation. The Honourable Alden Gobble is satirically or humorously -thus named because he was ‘dyspeptic and suffered great oneasiness arter -[and from] eatin’.’ A signal example of Haliburton’s method of -typification by humorous classification is found in _The Clockmaker_, -(third series, chapter 13). There he classifies patriots into ‘rebel -patriots, mahogany patriots, spooney patriots, place patriots, and raal -genu_ine_ patriots.’ - -General popular character types which are familiar in American humor -indubitably had their prototypes in Haliburton’s characters. Sam Slick, -as a horse trader, is the prototype of David Harum; and, as an aphorist -and practical philosopher, is the prototype of Mr. Dooley. Mrs. Figg in -Haliburton’s _Letter-Bag_ is the prototype of Shillaber’s Mrs. -Partington. In the same work Haliburton has an ‘enfant terrible’ who is -the prototype of Peck’s ‘Bad Boy’ and of later examples of ‘awful -children,’ down to Tarkington’s Penrod. - -Haliburton was an egregious punster, and he even indulged in _double -entendres_ which were coarse and sometimes obscene, but which may be -excused on account of their humorous point or satiric wit. As an -anecdotist, ‘spinner of yarns,’ ‘tall stories,’ ‘stretchers,’ with a -decided tendency to employ the coarse and irreverent, Haliburton -anticipated similar traits in Mark Twain, as in Twain’s _Roughing It_ -and _Innocents Abroad_. Haliburton’s occasional coarseness and -irreverence are to be explained by his hatred of sham and insincerity, -of conventionalized prudery, of concealed indecency of thought, of the -real evil caused by men and women who are outwardly ‘whited sepulchres.’ -It must, however, be admitted that, traceable to his Border Scots -ancestry, there was in him a love of plebeian or coarse fun for its own -sake. But it must also be said that his coarseness of wit was never -based on impurity of heart, and that he had the highest respect for the -moral beauty and dignity of womanhood. He did remark playfully the -engaging vanities and foibles of women, but for pure love and motherhood -and all the sweet charities of woman he had the finest and tenderest -respect. Unsurpassed in world literature is Haliburton’s tender and holy -sublimation of woman’s spiritual winsomeness and dignity, as in this -immortal metaphor:— - - A woman has two smiles which an angel might envy; the smile that - accepts a lover before the words are uttered, and the smile that - lights on the first-born baby and assures him of a mother’s - love. - -As to the original humor of Haliburton’s ingenious metaphors, similes, -outlandish coinage of expressive word morphology (such as -‘absquotulate,’ ‘spiflicate,’ ‘conflustigation,’ ‘conniption fit,’ -reechoed in Artemus Ward and Josh Billings), and of his wealth of -aphoristic wit and wisdom, so much are they in the permanent warp and -woof of the popular literature of humor and of common speech that they -need not here be specially remarked and illustrated. - -But there is one matter in which Haliburton has not been properly -appreciated, and which demands fresh treatment. He has been charged with -a lack of prose style. The truth is that Haliburton not only wrote with -a positive Theory of Style in mind, but also anticipated Matthew Arnold -and Herbert Spencer by actually publishing his theory or philosophy of -prose style. Those who criticized Haliburton as a stylist did so without -knowing that he had actually applied a definite theory of style to his -structure and color. From that point of view, the critics of Haliburton -as a stylist were irrelevant. But they also missed or ignored the fact -that he was, if infrequently, a master of descriptive prose style. - -Haliburton formulates his theory of prose style in two works—in _The -Attaché_, and in _Wise Saws_ (chapter 19). The first work contains his -‘Apologia’ for his _utilitarian_ style; the second briefly explains the -_psychology_ of his style. The ‘Apologia’ justifies, as Matthew Arnold -would have justified, a certain promiscuity and rise and fall in his -style; the second work anticipates Spencer’s philosophy of the -conservation of mental energies as applied to particular styles. -Haliburton himself distinguishes between his conversational, colloquial, -humoristic—his consciously _utilitarian_—style, and his artificial or -literary—his _aesthetic_—style as in his descriptive prose. - -In _The Attaché_ he points out, in what we have called his ‘Apologia,’ -that his aims, which were utilitarian, did not call for either -architectonic skill or verbal artistry, but that his colloquial, loose, -prolix, promiscuous, repetitious, diffuse, and digressive style in _The -Clockmaker_ and _The Attaché_ was inevitable and was consciously adopted -as best fitted to the heterogeneous themes or matter of these works. -‘Prolixity,’ he adds, ‘was unavoidable from another cause. In order to -attain my [practical] objects, I found it expedient so to intermingle -humor with the several topics as to render subjects attractive that in -themselves are generally considered too deep and dry for general -reading.’ - -In particular, Haliburton justifies his sentential structure on -psychological grounds. In _Wise Saws_ he says that he purposely designed -the structure and rhythms of his sentences so that their length and -abrupt translations would spur the mind to attention, and that he -employed a conversational style and dialogue to create interest and keep -the attention alive. He wished his works, since they had a utilitarian -end, to be read by all classes. He resolved to adapt the style of his -works to assuring their popularity—‘in the parlor and the kitchen.’ His -themes were discursive and therefore he resolved that the stylistic -treatment should be discursive. So Haliburton consciously employed a -style which, by novelty of dress, by being written in natural language -and illustrated with droll humor, and which by colloquial sentential -structure would, like ‘oral chat,’ sustain interest or excite attention, -and inevitably be read in the parlor and the kitchen. ‘Why is it,’ asks -Sam Slick in the _Wise Saws_, ‘if you _read_ a book to a man you set him -asleep? Just because it is a book and the language ain’t common. Why is -it if you _talk_ to him he will sit up all night with you? Just because -it’s talk, the language of natur’.’ - -Haliburton’s humoristic or utilitarian prose style is justified, as he -himself justified it, by its successful adaption of means to end. In his -‘Apologia’ he noted the ‘unprecedented circulation’ of his works on -‘both sides of the Atlantic.’ He wrote _The Clockmaker_ in a people’s -style for people’s ends, and the style, in his own view, admirably -succeeded. We must therefore hold that academic criticism which scores -Haliburton’s humoristic style on the ground that it is loose, prolix, -repetitious, digressive, vulgar, colloquial, that it is not ‘_fine_ -style,’ commits the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. In the writing of -humoristic, utilitarian, conversational style, precisely adapted to its -end, Haliburton was a master. But he was also, at least on occasion or -whenever he essayed fine style, as in his descriptive prose, especially -of Nature, an artist of first rank, worthy of a place beside Ruskin, -Stevenson, and Hardy. - -As regards Haliburton’s aesthetic style we may instance as example of -graphic realism in ‘local color’ his description of the dress and -characteristics of an Acadian people (_Nature and Human Nature_) and of -a Low German people (_The Old Judge_). An example of his fine artistry -in painting social life is his idyllic picture of the home of Captain -Collingwood’s sister, Aunt Thankful (_Wise Saws_). As a picture of the -sweet and gracious social life in old colonial days, it is a -masterpiece. But for sheer pathos of ‘thoughts that lie too deep for -tears,’ Haliburton’s description of the Duke of Kent’s Lodge, against a -background of Nature (_The Clockmaker_, third series), is worthy of -Ruskin or Hardy. - -But Haliburton’s _forte_ in descriptive prose was naturalistic -impressionism. In the technique of nature-painting Haliburton employed -the whole palette of pigmentation, but especially the color-tones of -carmines, yellows, greens, citrons, indigos, with white and black. His -description of a Silver Thaw in February in Nova Scotia (_The Old -Judge_) is unsurpassed in literature, and, if the authorship were -unknown, might be mistaken for a bit of aesthetic prose by Ruskin:— - - This morning I accompanied the Judge and Miss Sandford in their - sleigh on an excursion into the country. The scene, though - rather painful to the eyes, was indescribably brilliant and - beautiful. There had been, during last night and part of - yesterday, a slight thaw, accompanied by a cold fine rain that - froze, the moment it fell, into ice of the purest crystal. Every - deciduous tree was covered with this glittering coating and - looked in the distance like an enormous though graceful bunch of - feathers; while, on nearer approach, it resembled, with its - limbs now bending under the heavy weight of the transparent - incrustation, a dazzling chandelier. The open fields, covered - with a rough but hardened surface of snow, glistened in the sun - as if thickly strewed with the largest diamonds; and every rail - of the wooden fences in this general profusion of ornaments was - decorated with a delicate fringe of pendent ice that radiated - like burnished silver. The heavy and sombre spruce, loaded with - snow, rejoiced in a green old age. Having its massy shape - relieved by strong and numerous lights, it gained in grace, what - it lost in strength, and stood erect among its drooping - neighbors, venerable but vigorous, the hoary forefather of the - wood. The tall and slender poplar and white birch . . . bent - their heads gracefully to the ground under the unusual burden, - and formed fanciful arches which the frost encircled with - numerous wreaths of pearls. . . . The boles of the different - trees and their limbs appeared through the transparent ice; and - the rays of the sun, as they fell on them, invested them with - all the hues of the prism. . . . - -In that passage, besides realistic impressionism or color-writing, we -find first rate _style_ in composition—artistic sentential structure -and rhythmical periods, along with pure and dignified diction. In all -Haliburton’s works we can find passages which show his firm grip on the -technique of prose style, and a special power of vivifying his -description and color-impressionism with psychological suggestion that -enhances the effect on the sensibilities and imagination. In all -literature the allurement of sylvan summer in Nova Scotia or Canada is -not more winningly or colorfully presented than in Haliburton’s -impressionistic idyll ‘A Day on the Lake’ (_Nature and Human Nature_). -In psychological suggestion the acme has been attained by Haliburton in -his descriptive sketches, ‘A Hot Day’ (_Wise Saws_) and ‘Inky Dell’ -(_The Old Judge_). - -Whoever charges that Haliburton lacks style errs either by irrelevancy -or by making the wrong accusation. It is not style that Haliburton -lacks; for he has two styles, each of which is right in the right -place—a conversational style for conveying unpopular practical ideas in -a popular way, and an aesthetic style for conveying ideas which are -delightful in themselves as beautiful pictures of Social Life and of -Nature. What Haliburton really lacked was architectonic skill—the power -of designing artistic structural unity and plot. This is best -illustrated by his character-delineation. His major characters have not -character-unity but characteristics or character-promiscuity. Sam Slick, -for instance, is never _one_ character as Micawber or Swiveller in -Dickens’ gallery is one character, unmistakably and always. Sam Slick is -a ‘mass of contradictions.’ Neither is the Rev. Joshua Hopewell a -unity—speaking and acting, that is, consistently with one character. -Yet they have a unity. How do they get it? It is not a moral but the -_functional_ unity of _Spokesmen_ of Haliburton’s ideas. The reason that -Slick and Hopewell have so much promiscuity of character is that -Haliburton, as he pleased and without any regard to consistency, made -Slick and Hopewell and any other of his major _dramatis personae_ the -Spokesmen of his various thoughts or ideas. He ‘picked on’ Slick for the -mouthpiece of this idea, and Hopewell for the mouthpiece of another -idea, without ever asking if the speech he put into the mouth of Slick -was consistent with Slick’s mental and moral character, or if the speech -he put into the mouth of Hopewell was consistent with Hopewell’s -intellectual and moral character. The result is that Slick, as we read -Haliburton, has ideas, makes speeches, and relates experiences that are -impossible in one of his culture and knowledge; and so with Hopewell and -others. In short, Haliburton’s major characters are _puppets_, -_marionettes_. Back of them is the Showman, Haliburton; and the speeches -we hear are not theirs but ‘their master’s voice.’ - -Oddly, Haliburton himself maintained in _The Old Judge_ that this was -not a defect in character-delineation or in artistry but was made -necessary by his practical aim and the content of his thought. The -promiscuous structure of his themes and composition or style and the -promiscuousness, or lack of unity, in his characters correspond to the -content and movement of his thought—which was swarming with ideas, full -of details of all sorts, loose, and diffuse, bent on expressing at all -hazards his ideas and opinions on matters of practical import, and not -on creating fine literature. The purpose of his writings, he declared, -was to inform and to amuse while informing. His humor was designed and -manufactured as the sugar-coating of his social and political ideas. -Consequently, the only unity his characters have is the thread that runs -through _his_ thought; their speeches, jests, anecdotes, aphorisms, and -moral maxims are but _his_ facts, ideas, opinions, strung on the various -_dramatis personae_. Thus inevitably, so Haliburton submitted, his works -and their style appear prolix, repetitious, diffuse, digressive, and -lack artistic unity. Still they each have their own unity of essential -thought; his characters have unity of function; his style, unity of -propriety—and the whole, unity of purpose, meaning, and achievement. - -Haliburton consciously conceived a noble ideal. As a man of letters he -aimed to bring about an alliance or _zollverein_ of the Anglo-Saxon -peoples. To do this he employed an original method of satiric humor and -comic characterization. He was unmistakably a great satirist, and the -first and foremost systematic satiric humorist of the Anglo-Saxon -peoples. This is his chief glory. But while he thus was the first -native-born writer to bring Canadian literature into a high and -permanent place in English and world literature, he also was coadjutor -with Howe in inaugurating the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature -of Canada. Considered from the sides of versatility of invention, -variety of production in literary species, and of mastery of style, -Thomas Chandler Haliburton remains to this day the Greatest Prose Writer -of Canada. Yet, at the same time, his achievements in creative satiric -comedy and comic characterization stamp his genius and work as not for a -single country or a specific age, but for all time and the world. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - - Romance _and_ Poetry - - THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—THE HISTORICAL ROMANCERS— - JOHN RICHARDSON—ROSANNA MULLINS—AND OTHERS. THE POETS—GOLDSMITH - —SANGSTER—MAIR. - -Nativistic romantic fiction in Canada begins with the historical novels -of Major John Richardson. In 1832 he published his _Wacousta; or, The -Prophecy_; and in 1840 its sequel, _The Canadian Brothers; or, The -Prophecy Fulfilled_. These are authentic novels of the romantic type, -having, as they do, respectably constructed plots, and being filled with -the romance of the passion of love, heightened with thrilling adventure -and incident, and colored with pictures of aboriginal character and life -against a background of Nature in the wild. - -Richardson was born near Niagara Falls, in 1796 (in the same year as -Thomas Chandler Haliburton, and seven years after James Fenimore -Cooper). He spent his childhood and early adolescent days, till he was -sixteen years of age, that is, up to the outbreak of the War of 1812, in -the vicinity of the Falls and in Detroit. Then, although but a mere lad, -he enlisted in Brock’s army. Up to that time young Richardson, during -his most impressionable and receptive years, was entertained by his -grandparents and parents with tales of Pontiac’s siege of Detroit, and -with stories of the thrilling, romantic, and tragic events in the -history of the Niagara and Detroit districts—events which were surely -amongst the most enthralling and stirring in the vividly romantic -history of Canada and the United States. Those early days of -Richardson’s were thus replete with rare and unique formative -influences. They created in him the love of romance, of the heroic past -of his own country, and, later, when he came to write, furnished him -with the inspiration and the material for authentic Canadian historical -novels or romances. - -Two other formative influences, besides those exercised over his heart -and imagination by his grandparents and parents, determined Richardson’s -genius, inspiration, and creative method. In the war of 1812 he had -fought side by side with the noble Indian warrior Tecumseh. Further: -Richardson, on his own confession, had, as he put it, ‘absolutely -devoured three times’ Cooper’s Indian romance, _The Last of the -Mohicans_. Some critics, therefore, hold that Richardson was a mere -imitator of Cooper; that, first, Richardson studied the mind, and -character, and ways of Indians at second-hand in the pages of Cooper’s -romance; and that, secondly, Richardson acquired from Cooper’s novel the -art or craft, the mechanics, of writing fiction. - -For the view that Richardson got his knowledge of Indian mind and -character from Cooper, there is no ground in historical fact. The War of -1812, during which Richardson fought side by side with Tecumseh and his -Indians, began fourteen years before the publication of _The Last of the -Mohicans_ (1826), or long before Richardson could have read a page of -Cooper. Richardson’s imagination was romantically formed in his early -days when, during his association with Tecumseh, he came to know Indian -psychology and character at first-hand. That is indisputable fact. For -the view that Richardson acquired the technique of novel-writing from -reading Cooper, there is some justification. It is highly probable that -by his reading of _The Last of the Mohicans_, Richardson really got some -‘coaching’ in the mechanics of writing romance. But this concession -fails to prove that Richardson was a mere imitator of Cooper and not a -genuinely independent creator. Internal evidences point to independence. -For when we compare the diction, the sentential structure, the -descriptive epithets and imagery, and the general style of the two -romancers, Richardson appears, except as a plot-maker, the superior of -Cooper as a craftsman and stylist. It is proof presumptive that on the -whole the Canadian romancer developed independently his literary -technique. Moreover, in the fine art of character-drawing, Richardson is -more veracious and incisive—a better artist—than Cooper. When we -compare the American novelist’s Indian characters with those of the -Canadian, we discover that Cooper’s are more like ‘studies’ from books -than pictures from real life, whereas Richardson’s Indians are very near -to the real Indian, very lifelike. The heroic in them is heroic enough; -that is to say, human and natural. Richardson’s Indian characters, then, -are original creations—absolutely his own. Also his own are his other -characters (soldiers, fur-traders, French-Canadians, and the rest of the -motley), his plots, all the stirring incidents, and the ‘color’ of the -Canadian background from nature. - -Of his romances, _Wacousta_, and _The Canadian Brothers_, the only -aesthetic criticisms worth while making are that not infrequently -Richardson forces the dramatic in them into the melodramatic, that he -puts into the mouths of his characters utterances which are unnatural or -not in keeping with the position and circumstances of the speakers, and -that he suits his historical facts to his own purposes. Sometimes, too, -construction and development are sacrificed to the ‘theatrical’ in -situation, to over-drawing of character, and to ‘color-writing.’ _The -Canadian Brothers_ has these defects in a larger degree than _Wacousta_. -Yet, on the whole, Richardson’s two chief romances are aesthetically -satisfying, and are clean, strong, wholesome, and engaging—quite -deserving of a place in permanent creative literature. - -Summarily: since Richardson had his genius romantically formed, and had -engaged in the art of fiction, long before he had read Cooper, the only -possible influence Cooper could have had on Richardson was to incite him -to emulate the American romancer. Emulation incited by a contemporary -author does not imply imitation, and has no significance in original -literary creation. Taken, then, by and large, John Richardson had -first-rate powers of invention, and was a respectable literary -craftsman. He was not a great novelist, but he was sufficiently great as -a creator of historical romances to produce novels which have been read -during almost a century since publication, and are still read, along -with Kirby’s and Sir Gilbert Parker’s historical romances of life and -love and heroism in far-off days in Canada. - -Moreover, if not in _Wacousta_, at least in _The Canadian Brothers_ -Richardson embodied in romantic fiction, as Sangster and Mair did in -poetry, the first incipient expression of the spirit of Canadian -nationality. Both on account of the superior inherent qualities of -Richardson’s romances as creative fiction, and on account of their -containing the earliest expression of the embryonic spirit of Canadian -nationality, Richardson must be marked as of first-rate importance in -the literary history of Canada. He was indeed the creator of the -Canadian nativistic historical romance as Haliburton was the creator of -the nativistic fiction of satiric comedy and comic characterization. In -truth it may be said that if all Canadian imaginative prose were lost, -save the romances of Richardson and the satiric comedy of Haliburton, -Canada would still have a literature. - -_The Literary Garland_ (1838-51) had considerable to do with promoting -letters in Canada, especially by encouraging native-born writers. -Amongst those who contributed to _The Literary Garland_ was a young -girl, Rosanna Eleanor Mullins, a native of Montreal, who, in time, -became the wife of J. L. Leprohon, also a native of Quebec. Rosanna -Mullins’ first novel, _Ida Beresford_, was written when the author was -but sixteen years of age, and was published serially in _The Literary -Garland_, in 1848. In 1859 she published _The Manor House of de -Villerai_, and in 1864, _Antoinette de Mirecourt_, and has several other -novels to her credit. Her characters, properties, and settings are -largely Canadian, and she evidently set out consciously to create a -nativistic literature by writing romances which should definitively -portray life and manners in the society of the Old French _Régime_ and -after the Fall of Quebec and Montreal. - -In fact, Rosanna Mullins, much more than Richardson, was inspired by a -desire to express the incipient national spirit of Canada. In _The -Canadian Brothers_ Richardson disclosed an _awakening_ consciousness in -himself of a sense of the spirit of nationality. Miss Mullins, on the -other hand, was the first Canadian novelist to have a _distinct_ -consciousness of that spirit and to desire to express it for its own -sake. It is from this point of view, rather than from the point of view -of intrinsic literary merit, that Miss Mullins’ romances have a right to -a permanent place in the nativistic literature of Canada. Technically -she wrote with a finer pointed stylus than Richardson—with more grace -and a finer limning of character, and with a more engaging urbanity. In -fact, her style was informed by an Irish and French humaneness that made -her work as popular with the French-Canadians (for whom several of her -novels had been translated into French) as with the English-Canadian -people. - -Rosanna Mullins is entitled to another distinction. On the side of -nationality she disputes with William Kirby the right of primacy in -calling the attention of the later Canadian romancers, especially Sir -Gilbert Parker, to the wealth of novelistic material that lay in the -life and manners and culture of society under the old French _Régime_ -and the Occupation. For Kirby was foreign-born, whereas Rosanna Mullins -was native-born. As a matter of fact, however, it was Kirby’s romantic -fiction that opened the eyes of later Canadian novelists to the -abounding material for novelistic treatment that lay in the social and -political history of the Canadian past. - -William Kirby was born in England, but came to Canada in 1832, the year -which saw the publication of Richardson’s _Wacousta_. He was then but -fifteen years of age and his mind unformed. He lived for the greater -part of his life at Niagara. So that from his fifteenth year onwards, -having taken a deep and special interest in Canadian history and -civilization, Kirby really formed his mind and imagination on Canadian -ideals and absorbed the Canadian nationalistic spirit. - -His historical romance _The Golden Dog_, which was published in 1877, or -ten years after Confederation, really belongs to the _émigré_ literature -of Canada. But because of its constructive and inspirational influences -on certain members of the Systematic School of Canadian fictionists, in -particular on Sir Gilbert Parker, and because Kirby, though -foreign-born, was in spirit essentially a genuine Canadian man of -letters, we must regard _The Golden Dog_ as more important in the -_development_ of Canadian fiction than are Richardson’s and Rosanna -Mullins’ romances, and as worthy of a more significant status in -Canadian creative literature. - -Summarily: _Wacousta_ and _The Golden Dog_ were the literary progenitors -of a series of romances which have a Canadian historical basis and which -are Canadian in incident and color. As to his creative and artistic -powers, Kirby was a finer artist than Richardson, in plot-making and -character-drawing. But, in view of certain faults—a somewhat too -theatrical grand manner in character-drawing and a too great indulgence -of his notable gifts in color-writing, Kirby and Richardson may be -classed as equal sinners. - -_The Golden Dog_ is, aesthetically and artistically, that is, in -plot-making, character-drawing, and in sustaining interest, superior to -_Wacousta_ as an historical romance. Still _The Golden Dog_ is a -genuinely great novel—great inherently as an imaginative and artistic -creation, and great as the progenitor of the romantic fiction of Parker, -Roberts, Campbell, Saunders and other creators of the native and -national fiction of Canada. - -James De Mille, who was born in New Brunswick, also must be considered -as a creator of Canadian Nativistic Literature. De Mille was a prolific -writer of mysterious, thrilling, extravagant, and sentimental fiction, -showing the influence of such masters in those genres as Poe and Wilkie -Collins. De Mille certainly possessed a creative imagination of his own, -was considerable of an artist in plot-making and in sustaining interest, -and had a distinct sense of dramatic values, which saves such an -extravagant tale of adventure as his _A Strange Manuscript found in a -Copper Cylinder_ from developing into the merely grotesque and -sensational. But because the settings of his novels and tales are not -Canadian, and because they in nowise express anything of the growing -sense of the Canadian national spirit, they are not, on that side, -significant in the literary history of Canada. They merely increase the -quantity of Canadian Nativistic Literature. - -If we have regard for the historic process in all spiritual and social -achievements, and ask: What was it that, on the psychological or -spiritual side, brought about Responsible Government in the various -Provinces that came to form the original Dominion of Canada, and What -was it that brought about Confederation? we must answer that the people -in the British North American Provinces were gradually coming to see -themselves, their country, civilization, and institutions from the -_Canadian point of view_, and were gradually expressing, with more and -more of conscious fervor and power, in prose and poetry, their growing -interest in and love of Canada and the Canadian point of view. The -nativistic prose writers expressed the growing spirit of ‘Canada First,’ -as in the writings of Haliburton and Howe, and also in the romances of -Richardson, Rosanna Mullins, and Kirby. We turn to observe how the -spirit of national ideals was gradually expressed in the work of the -nativistic poets. - -Nativistic poetry in Canada did not take form till the last year of the -first quarter of the 19th century. In 1825 Oliver Goldsmith, a -great-nephew of the author of _The Deserted Village_, published his -idyll or descriptive poem, _The Rising Village_. Oliver Goldsmith was -born at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1781, and died at Liverpool, -England, in 1861, after a long official service in his native country. -_The Rising Village_, in substance or theme, aimed to describe the -habitat, sufferings, achievements, and prospects of the Loyalist -settlers. As regards its matter, therefore, the poem has the semblance -of a genuine Canadian poem. But the form, the metre, rhythm, and rhyme, -the diction and imagery, the characters and the settings, and even the -‘properties,’ are in slavish imitation of the elder Goldsmith’s idyll of -‘Sweet Auburn’ in Ireland. That is to say, the Nova Scotian’s Muse is -not the Nova Scotian or the Canadian but the British Muse transplanted. -Moreover, _The Rising Village_ is to be distinguished from Howe’s -_Acadia_ in that Howe, though imitating the form and manner of the elder -Goldsmith, expresses his love of his homeland, Nova Scotia, whereas the -younger Goldsmith, though a Nova Scotian, fills his poem with an -unpatriotic nostalgia. He loves the land where there is some ‘Sweet -Auburn,’ not his native land which he describes as ‘bleak and desert.’ -The nostalgia is real and pervasive—so much so that he removes to -England and there dies. But since it is a poem of the habitat and -experiences of the Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia, and since it is -correct in versification and is musical and possesses naturalistic -truth, _The Rising Village_ may be regarded as a genuine poem of -_documentary_ value, and as the beginning of Canadian nativistic poetry. - -The strictly Canadian ‘note’ in nativistic poetry is first clearly heard -in the verse of Charles Sangster. He was born near Kingston, Ontario, in -1822, and published _The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, and Other -Poems_, in 1856, and _Hesperus and Other Poems_ in 1860. The title poem -of the first volume is in the Spenserian stanza as employed by Byron and -is also otherwise imitative. But it is distinctly Canadian in its -lyrical interludes, in which there is a poetic _abandon_, to the beauty -and magic of Nature in Canada, as, for instance, in Sangster’s _Lyric to -the Isles_, beginning:— - - Here the spirit of Beauty keepeth - Jubilee for evermore; - Here the voice of Gladness leapeth, - Echoing from shore to shore - • • • • - Here the spirit of beauty dwelleth - In each palpitating tree, - In each amber wave that welleth - From its home beneath the sea; - In the moss upon the granite, - In each calm, secluded bay, - With the zephyr trains that fan it - With their sweet breath all the day. - On the waters, on the shore, - Beauty dwelleth evermore. - -Faulty as Sangster’s first poems are in versification and derivative in -diction, we must mark his lyrical interludes, as in the foregoing -example, as expressing a _new_ note, _the_ Canadian note in Canadian -poetry. It is, however, a _nature_ note, not or hardly the _national_ -note—clear and confident and strong. In Sangster’s second volume, -_Hesperus and Other Poems_, published just seven years before -Confederation, we hear the Canadian national note loudly vocal and -inspiring. We catch it unmistakably in Sangster’s _Brock_—a really -noble hymn to the memory of a national hero, who had ‘saved Canada’ for -the Canadians, but a hymn that much more expresses the deeply felt unity -of the Canadian people:— - - One voice, one people, one in heart - And soul and feeling and desire. - Relight the smouldering martial fire - And sound the mute trumpet! Strike the lyre! - The hero dead cannot expire: - The dead still play their part. - - Raise high the monumental stone, - A nation’s fealty is theirs, - And we the rejoicing heirs, - The honored sons of sires whose cares - We take upon us unawares - As freely as our own. - -We observe for the first time in Canadian poetry, the consciously felt -sentiment of national unity—the first express utterance of the ideal of -Canada and its people as a political and spiritual entity apart—in -Sangster’s line, ‘A _nation’s_ fealty is theirs.’ Henceforth we shall -often hear this distinction—Canada and its people as a _nation_—in the -verse of Canadian poets. Sangster, then, is important as the poet who, -in aesthetically and artistically respectable verse, first uttered, -_consciously_ and clearly, in Canadian nativistic poetry the people’s -sense of a national spirit and destiny. - -Again: Sangster, in _The Rapid_ and in _The Falls of Chaudière_, is the -first nativistic poet to express in verse that close or intimate kinship -with Nature which we discover much more profoundly expressed in the -poetry of Roberts, Lampman, and Carman. Sangster utters this new -naturalistic note in these authentically inspired lines from _The Falls -of Chaudière_: - - I have laid my cheek to Nature’s, placed my puny hand in hers, - Felt a kindred spirit warming all the life-blood of my face. - -_I have laid my cheek to Nature’s!_ We shall observe Lampman lay his -cheek to Nature’s with more intimacy, with a more profound sense of -spiritual companionship than Sangster. We shall note Carman ‘place his -puny hand’ in Nature’s—and have Nature as Mother April ‘make him -over’—with a far more intimate giving of self to the ‘heart of the -world’ than Sangster. Nevertheless, we must remark Sangster’s -priority—in spirit as well as in actual poetic production—in -expressing that special and singular kinship with Nature which must be -denoted as peculiarly Canadian. Still, in this respect, he is only the -first forerunner of Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Pauline Johnson, Campbell, -and Duncan Campbell Scott. - -A much more lyrically eloquent and influential forerunner is Charles -Mair. He was born at Lanark, Ontario, in 1838, and published, in 1868, -his _Dreamland and Other Poems_. Technically, Charles Mair is a much -finer craftsman than Sangster; for the latter was self-educated, whereas -Mair was a university graduate who was well read in the modern English -poets and had studied the forms of verse and the mechanics of -versification. What, however, really constitutes Mair as the authentic -forerunner of Roberts, Lampman, Carman and Pauline Johnson as nature -poets, is not the fact that he was an artistic poet of Nature in Canada, -but that his _method of treating Nature_ was a _new_ method with -Canadian poets. - -Two ‘features’ mark and distinguish the treatment of Nature in the -poetry of Charles Mair—impressionistic painting of the face of Nature -and the choice of the commonplace or the lowliest creatures in Nature as -the subjects of his poetry. The first may have been inspired by Keats, -and may be regarded as in the manner of Keats. But the second feature of -Mair’s lyrical poetry—his conscious attempt to give distinction to the -Commonplace in Nature in Canada;—that is original with Mair himself, -and appears for the first time in Canadian poetry in Mair’s work. It is -_Canadian_ in and by itself. - -Wilfred Campbell has alleged that Mair influenced Roberts and Lampman as -Nature poets. All three were influenced by Keats, and certainly Roberts -and Lampman knew the poetry of Keats more intimately than that of Mair. -At least, Mair in a sense did but anticipate Roberts and Lampman in -actually treating Canadian Nature. But Mair’s treatment of the -commonplace was objective—being mostly a sort of philosophical or -religious reflection on the meaning of the commonplace, whereas -Lampman’s treatment of the same kind of subject was psychological. Mair -merely looked on and interrogated Nature, Lampman communed with his -lowly companions, such as the trees and the frogs, entered into their -hearts, and spoke out for them, expressing their moods, feelings, and -reflections. - -The passage from the objective treatment of Nature to the subjective -interpretation of the commonplace in Nature by Canadian poets, has its -_termini_ marked by Mair at the one end and Lampman at the other. Mair -merely interrogates and wonders what the answer ought to be to his -questions. Lampman communes with his lowly and animate companions in -Nature, and, by imaginative sympathy, answers for them. - -These distinctions between Mair as an impressionistic Nature-_painter_ -and an objective _interrogator_, and Lampman as a subjective interpreter -of Nature, are nicely illustrated in Mair’s exquisitely beautiful and -sensuously lovely poem, _The Fire-Flies_:— - - I see them glimmer where the waters lag - By winding bays, and to the swallows sing; - And, far away, where stands the forest dim, - Huge-built of old, their tremulous lights are seen. - High overhead they gleam like trailing stars, - Then sink adown, until their emerald sheen - Dies in the darkness like an evening hymn,— - Anon to float again in glorious bars - Of streaming rapture, such as man may hear - When the soul casts its slough of mortal fear. - And now they make rich spangles in the grass, - Gilding the night-dews on the tender blade; - Then hover o’er the meadow-pools, to gaze - At their bright forms shrined in the dreamy glass - Which earth, and air, and bounteous rain have made. - One moment, and the thicket is ablaze - With twinkling lamps, which swing from bough to bough; - Another, and like sylphids they descend - To cheer the brook-side where the bell-flow’rs grow, - Near, and more near, they softly come, until - Their little life is busy at my feet; - They glow around me, and my fancies blend - Capriciously with their delight, and fill - My wakeful bosom with unwonted heat. - One lights upon my hand, and there I clutch - With an alarming finger its quick wing; - Erstwhile so free, it pants, the tender thing! - And dreads its captor and his handsel touch. - - Where is thy home? On what strange food dost feed, - Thou fairy hunter of the moonless night? - From what far nectar’d fount, or flow’ry mead, - Glean’st thou, by witching spells, thy sluicy light? - -Is not that poem _Canadian_ definitively and through and through—and is -it not also authentic poetry, far in advance, aesthetically and -artistically, of any poetry previously written in Canada? They who, with -master artistry, write delineative poetry, shall hardly achieve, in -short and single phrase, so apt and clear and vivid a picture of the -Canadian firefly as Mair’s incisively realistic and genuinely poetical -line:— - - Thou fairy hunter of the moonless night. - -That is masterly, and yet how it fails before such a tremendously -pregnant crystallization of the subjective treatment of Nature as Bliss -Carman’s pervasive thrall of the senses and the imagination in his -imperishable line:— - - The resonant far-listening morn. - -The glory that is Carman’s in pure poetry, is not Mair’s, and the glory -that is Lampman’s in the sympathetic interpretation of the moods and -thoughts of lowly animate Nature, is not Mair’s. Yet unquestionably Mair -is the authentic forerunner of those perfervid Nature-worshippers, -Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Pauline Johnson, Campbell, and Duncan Campbell -Scott, the creative Poets of the Systematic School, who wrote the first -native and national literature of the Dominion of Canada, and wrote it -so that the world heard and has acclaimed them Master Poets and their -poetry authentic Literature! - - * * * * * - -_The Fireflies_ is quoted from _Dreamland and Other Poems_ by Charles -Mair. - - - - - Part II. - - - - Post Confederation Literature - (1887-1924) - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - - _The_ Systematic School - - THE FIRST RENAISSANCE IN CANADIAN LITERATURE—THE SYSTEMATIC - SCHOOL AND PERIOD—ROBERTS AND HIS COLLEAGUES. - -The years 1860, 1861, and 1862 may be regarded as the most significant -in the literary history of Canada. In the year 1860 were born Charles -George Douglas Roberts and Charles William Gordon (_pseud._, Ralph -Connor). In the year 1861 were born William Bliss Carman, Archibald -Lampman, William Wilfred Campbell, E. Pauline Johnson (_pseud._, -Tekahionwake), Margaret Marshall Saunders, and Frederick George Scott. -In the year 1862 were born Duncan Campbell Scott and Gilbert (now Sir -Gilbert) Parker. The most gifted and eminent of Canadian poets and -imaginative or creative prose writers, these ten Canadians comprised a -single group, and they began, under the influence of the awakening -spirit of Canadian nationality, the first systematic writing of poetry -and prose, inaugurating a period of original literary creation, which we -shall term, for expository purposes, the First Renaissance in Canadian -Literature. - -These ten writers were born, bred and educated (intellectually and -aesthetically) in the four Provinces—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, -Ontario, and Quebec—which formed, on the proclamation of the British -North America Act, 1867, or shortly after the birth of this group of -writers, the Dominion of Canada. From the point of view of their -nativity and education the members of the literary group born in 1860, -1861, and 1862, are the first strictly so-called _Canadian_ poets and -prose writers. - -Again: they were the first native-born poets and prose writers to begin, -under the Confederacy, a systematic literary career. The term -‘systematic’ defines their conspectus and aims. To this literary group -the free and impassioned expression, in verse and prose, of beauty and -truth, as beauty is in Nature in Canada and truth in Canadian thought, -activities, and institutions, appeared as their own specific function -and ideal life. They were thus the first Canadians consciously to -undertake a literary career which should be, in its way and degree, -commensurate with the growing spiritual, social, political, and -commercial life of the Great Dominion, and to find their inspiration -chiefly, if not wholly, in the natural beauty and sublimity of their -homeland, and in the spiritual import of their country and of the lives -of their compatriots. In short, their literary conspectus was thoroughly -Canadian; and their inspiration and ideals, too, were Canadian. In fact, -their inspiration and ideals were a moral necessity born of a loyal -obedience to the same creative impulse that was active in other -Canadians who also were bent on constructive achievement in other -spheres of Canadian endeavor. - -Moreover: the literary group born in 1860, 1861, 1862, may be -distinguished as having been the first Canadian poets and prose writers -who, by actual performance, showed the nations, largely the peoples of -the Motherland and the United States, that the political and -commercially lusty young Confederacy was, on its own account, decidedly -active in letters. The truth is that, in the decade following 1887, -which witnessed the publication of the first work in verse and in prose -by the systematic group of Canadian men and women of letters, Canadian -poetry and imaginative prose, though they were derivative in form and -frequently derivative in theme, quite gained the decent regard, and, in -some instances, the admiration, of distinguished men of letters in -England and in the United States, and furnished a pledge of greater -achievement in literature. - -The Canadian poets and prose writers born in 1860, 1861, and 1862, -distinguish themselves and the years in which they were born as the -first systematically creative School and Period in the literary history -of Canada. Their creative activities and their poetry and prose we have -denominated as the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature. - -What is meant by the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature? In 1880 a -young native-born Canadian, Charles G. D. Roberts, published a book of -poems. The critics of England and the United States thought well of the -verse. There was in it a quality that had not been in previous books of -verse by native-born Canadians. The poems were marked by a certain -noteworthy _artistic finish_ in the craftsmanship. - -This was significant. Hitherto native-born Canadian poets had not been -adroit in technique; they had been very careless about it, and some of -them had no respect or feeling for it at all. Poetry was poetry, they -thought, whether it was well dressed or not. With the publication of his -_Orion_, Roberts sounded the death knell of slovenly or indifferent -technique in Canadian poetry. Working with him, and largely under the -influence of his ideal of technical finish in verse, were Lampman, -Carman, Campbell, Pauline Johnson, Duncan Campbell Scott, Frederick -George Scott, and others. They all cared supremely for fine technique in -poetry. - -In the second decade after 1887 there arose in Canada a group of poets -who were not solicitous about the technique of their verse. With them -fine artistry in Canadian verse declined. This Decadent Interim lasted -but a few years. A later band of poets arose who went back to the -‘technical’ ideals which were exemplified in the poetry of Roberts and -his colleagues. This younger band of poets ‘restored’ the ideals of the -first literary group and began the Restoration Period in Canadian -poetry. Collaterally, a similar course of distinction, decadence, and -restoration of technical ideals can be observed in Canadian imaginative -and aesthetic prose. - -In another sense the period which began with Roberts and his _confrères_ -may properly be denoted as the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature. -It happens that the best of the Pre-Confederation Literature, produced -either by _émigrés_ or by native sons of the Province, was the work of -‘old minds.’ Consider, for instance, the historical romances of Major -John Richardson and the satiric humor of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the -poetry of Oliver Goldsmith, 2nd, and of such _émigrés_ as Charles -Heavysege and John Reade, the romantic poetic dramas of John -Hunter-Duvar and the prose tales of James De Mille. We observe that, -despite certain engaging novelty in themes and treatment, it is all the -work of old men; that is to say, of minds which were attempting to -‘transplant’ old traditional methods and the forms of a past literature -in a soil which was naturally hostile to their growth and gave them a -mean and dry exotic existence. - -If we fancy that we discover in the best Pre-Confederation literature -the fresh beauty and vitality of youth, we shall discover, if we look -critically, that this vitality and beauty are the last hectic or pale -flowering of an exotic English literature, and that, commingled with the -beauty, are the wrinkles of sapless age. To be sure, there is the flame -of creative fire in, for example, Richardson and Haliburton. -Notwithstanding, it is the flame which flares up, with a startling -brilliancy, just before it dies out. - -In truth, then, Pre-Confederation Canadian Literature was essentially a -transplanted Old World literature. Inevitably it was alien to the soil -of Canadian life, genius, and ideals. It, therefore, lacks real -vitality, vigor, and truth. Except in Nova Scotia, in the time of -Haliburton and Howe, it was the outcome of personal, not necessary -social expression. - -But, after Confederation, expression of the spiritual and social needs -of the Great Dominion became a national necessity. This expression, -being born out of the spiritual and social needs of Canada, must be -considered, however derivative the mere forms employed, as a genuine -literary Renaissance. The period or movement begun by the systematic -groups of poets and prose writers born in Canada in 1860, 1861, and 1862 -may, then, properly be denoted as the First Renaissance in Canadian -Literature. - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - - Charles G. D. Roberts - - ROBERTS SPONSOR TO LAMPMAN—LITERARY FATHER OF BLISS CARMAN— - MASTER OF VERSE TECHNIQUE—FORMS OF HIS VERSE, AND ITS QUALITIES. - -Whether Charles G. D. Roberts had a genuine formative influence on -Canadian literature, particularly Canadian poetry, or whether he should -be regarded merely as ‘the eldest brother’ of the first systematic group -of Canadian poets and prose writers may, possibly, be a moot question. -Of a certainty he was the first native-born Canadian to take the leading -role in making real and permanent, both by singular influences and by -actual production in poetry and imaginative prose, a native and national -literature in Canada. - -First: Roberts was the literary _sponsor_ of Archibald Lampman. In 1884, -while editor of _The Week_, Roberts published in that periodical the -very first poems which Lampman contributed to the public press (_The -Coming of Winter_, and _Three-Flower Petals_). This is much more -significant than appears on first view. It must be remembered that -Roberts, though but twenty-four years old at the time of his editorship, -had already published, in 1880, his _Orion and Other Poems_, which had -been well received by the critical press in England and the United -States. This distinction, abetted by his editorial connection with -Goldwin Smith, the founder of _The Week_, gave him some of the glory of -a new literary ‘star’ and made him an authority whose good opinion of -another’s verse was very inspiring when it took the form of introducing -a young unknown native poet to the Canadian public. In 1884 Lampman was -a young man, human, sensitive, and shy. Roberts was the first to -recognize Lampman’s authentic genius and the first to give him that -practical encouragement which alone counts constructively—a first and -right start, _per aspera_ indeed, but, for Lampman, _ad astra_. - -Roberts was also the ‘literary father’ of Bliss Carman. In 1885 Roberts -was appointed Professor of Literature at King’s College, Windsor, Nova -Scotia. It was Roberts who really trained Bliss Carman in the poetic -perception of Nature and in poetic technique and who inspired him to -begin a poetic career. It all happened in this way: To Roberts’ home, at -Windsor, came Bliss Carman, a cousin of the elder poet. Here Carman -spent several of his growing, most impressionable, and most receptive -years, coming directly under the pervasive influences—the aesthetic -culture and a tutorship in poetic technique—of the elder poet. Further: -with Windsor as a centre, and Roberts as a companion and guide, Carman -made excursions over the lovely and glamorous scenes and haunts of -beauty near and beyond Roberts’ home. Carman, with Roberts, dwelt and -communed with Nature intimately, visited the hiding places of earthly -beauty, fed his senses with pure delight of stream, lake and marsh, -woodland and sky, tuned his heart to hear, with peculiar meaning and -joy, the cries of the denizens of the woodland, the murmurings, -dronings, and shrillings of insects, and the dulcet lilting voices of -birds. Also, in fancy and peaceful reverie, Carman lived over again all -the rare moments and joys of sensation and spiritual ecstasy experienced -by him in that lovely area of country conscribing Windsor, the land of -Evangeline, the Gaspereau valley, the Basin of Minas, and the Tantramar -marshes. - -Thus the young Carman’s senses and imagination discovered the beauty, -glamor, and glory of land and sea. Inevitably, at length, he was -inspired to emulate the elder poet, Roberts, and to begin the systematic -writing of the winning lyrism which, in the years that followed, has -given Carman a name _sui generis_, not only amongst the poets of his -homeland, Canada, but also amongst the poets of the English-speaking -races. - -Again: two years after taking up his residence at Windsor, Roberts -published his really epoch-making volume of poetry, _In Divers Tones_ -(1887). This was his second volume of verse and, in it, his genius and -art shone with greater glory, especially in the eyes of the critics and -poets of the United States who were not likely to think, at any rate in -that day, that anything could come out of Canada, particularly Nova -Scotia, except pulpwood, coal, fish, and potatoes. Roberts and his -poetic work disillusioned the young Canadian poet’s American cousins and -taught them that Canada produced mind, and even poetic genius. - -Roberts was related to Carman by blood and temperament and poetic -tutorship. These facts of various relationship between Roberts and -Carman became known in the United States; and the light of Roberts’ -literary reputation was reflected on his cousin, Bliss Carman. It was, -therefore, natural that the editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ should, as -actually happened, publish in that magazine Carman’s first significant -poem, _Low Tide on Grand Pré_ (1887), which became the title poem of his -first volume of verse, _Low Tide on Grand Pré: a Book of Lyrics_ (New -York, 1893). All this is more significant than it seems. - -For a young poet, story-teller, or essayist to have his work published -in _The Atlantic Monthly_ is a literary distinction by itself. The -imprimatur of _The Atlantic Monthly_ is as a royal seal in the kingdom -of letters on the American continent. Largely through the sponsorship of -Roberts’ reputation, Carman was favorably known to the editor of _The -Atlantic Monthly_. When, therefore, the magazine published Carman’s -first important poem, the poet was properly and most significantly -introduced to the literary world. For _The Atlantic Monthly_ enters only -the homes of the most cultured readers in the United States, Canada, and -the United Kingdom. The placing of its imprimatur on the verse of Bliss -Carman was a declaration to the world that Canada had produced another -new and engaging poet. - -Once more: at least in one matter Roberts had a considerable influence -on several of the other members of the first systematic group of -Canadian poets. He was the first native-born Canadian poet to be -solicitous about poetic technique, and had thus won the notice and even -commendation of critics and poets in England and the United States. In -his _Orion_ and in his _In Divers Tones_ Roberts held up the ideal of -finished technique in poetry. Roberts’ success from 1880 to 1887 became, -therefore, an inspiration to other poets in the first systematic group, -and inspired them to accomplish a body of verse excellent enough, at -least in technique, for publication in volume form without danger of -discrediting themselves and their country. So, in fact, it happened: -Lampman and Scott (F. G.) published their first volume of verse in 1888; -Campbell his first in 1889; Carman his first in 1893: Scott (D. C.) his -first in 1893; Pauline Johnson her first in 1895. - -Still further: it was Roberts’ two volumes of verse that first called -the attention of the literary public in the United States and in England -to the fact that _systematic_ literary activity was going on in Canada, -and that first awakened critical curiosity about the new Canadian poets -and their verse whenever a volume by Roberts or any of his poetic -compatriots was published. Roberts’ renown obtained for the others a -ready and just ‘hearing.’ This achieved, the quality of their verse, -especially of their nature-poetry, brought them, it is fair to say, very -favorable appreciation from the critics and poets of the United States -and England. - -Finally: Roberts is related to the first systematic group of Canadian -poets and prose writers, not only pragmatically as sponsor, inspirer, -and leader: but also in a special way. He was the ‘Voice’ of the -Canadian Confederacy. Seven years after the publication of his _Orion_, -suddenly the Canadian people heard Roberts trumpeting a new song. In it -there was nothing classical in theme, and nothing cold and correctly -formal in artistic structure and finish. Roberts had changed from an -Artist to a Prophet, from an Artificer in verse to a Voice—the Voice of -one crying in the wilderness and trying to make straight the paths of -the Canadian people. He was still a young man but he had been vouchsafed -vision and he called magniloquently to his compatriots, thus:— - - O Child of Nations, giant-limbed, - Who stand’st among the nations now - Unheeded, unadorned, unhymned, - With unanointed brow,— - - How long the ignoble sloth, how long - The trust in greatness not thine own? - Surely the lion’s brood is strong - To front the world alone! - -He repeated his trumpeting to the Canadian to awake to a national -consciousness of destiny and to achieve that destiny—he repeated the -‘call’ in language even more magniloquent—in his _Ode to the Canadian -Confederacy_. - -Perhaps these were only ‘occasional’ poems, artificially inspired. At -any rate Roberts’ Vision of Canadian nationality and his interest in -expressing it forsook him. A few years after uttering the ‘Call’ he left -his native Canadian habitat (in 1895) for New York. Yet in the fifteen -years from 1880 to 1895 in the homeland, or till his removing to New -York, by his own fine artistry and by the influence, at least of his -example, on his contemporaries in Canada, Roberts was considerably, -perhaps chiefly, potent in raising native Canadian poetry to a degree of -technical finish that was never before reached or even attempted by -native-born Canadian men and women of letters. - -Summarily: as discoverer and sponsor of Lampman, as inspirer and sponsor -of Carman, and as exemplar, at least in technical ideals, to the first -native-born group of systematic poets of the Dominion, Charles G. D. -Roberts wielded a constructive influence on Canadian native and national -poetry. That without his influence there would still have been a -Systematic School of Canadian Poets, of which Lampman, Carman, or D. C. -Scott might have been the most conspicuous creator, is a high -probability. But it is a theoretical probability. We cannot, however, -gainsay the fact of Roberts’ constructive influence on his _confrères_ -in the Systematic School of Canadian Poets. On the grounds, therefore, -of his triple role as sponsor, inspirer, and exemplar, and of his own -creative poetic art, Charles G. D. Roberts is justly to be distinguished -as the Inaugurator of the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature. - -Roberts’ own poetry may be critically appreciated (1) as a recrudescence -of the English classical idyll; (2) as poetry of nature, with special -reference to its distinction from the nature-poetry of Lampman; (3) as -elegiac poetry; and (4) as poetry of modern eroticism. - -At the outset it is important to emphasize two singular facts. First, -with the single notable exception of Roberts’ spasmodic ‘Call’ to the -Canadian people to achieve a national destiny, and with the further -exception of a national or Canadian setting and color in some of his -nature-poetry, Roberts’ verse is anything but Canadian. Secondly, -Roberts’ poetry is signally an example of poetry which is not, to use -Mathew Arnold’s formula, ‘a profound and beautiful application of ideas -to life.’ It is characteristic of the essential Canadian genius that its -attitudes to the universe and to existence are moral and religious, that -it values the fine arts, including literature, as a means for the ideal -enhancement of life, and loves the Beautiful in the fine arts as the -only visible instance of the union of the real and of the ideal, which -is, philosophically viewed, our only pledge of the ultimate supremacy of -the Good. The only really deadly criticism, therefore, that can be -applied against the poetry of Roberts is that he has missed in his own -verse the supreme ethical note or ideal which is in the poetry of one of -his masters, Keats:— - - Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - -and that he did not engage himself to write poetry, with the intent -which was really the aim of Keats, as well as of Arnold, namely, as a -profound and beautiful application of ideas to life. Aware now of the -unethical intent and quality of Robert’s poetry, we can the better and -more justly appreciate his development as a poet and his achievements in -poetic substance and technique. - -It was natural and inevitable that an undergraduate introduced, at -College, into the world of letters through the poetry of the Greek and -Latin classics and the highly lyrical and sensuous poetry of Shelley, -Keats, and Tennyson, should, when he himself felt impelled to write, -produce poetry which, in substance and style, was based on classical -themes, and colored with sensuous images, and that, when critically -estimated, this poetry should be valued as a sincere but finished -academic exercise in verse. Roberts’ first volume, _Orion and Other -Poems_, was just such an academic exercise in verse. Yet it was an -exercise by a lad just out of college who not only informed his verse -with a respectable showing of classical scholarship and with an engaging -Arcadian setting and color but also wrote with so careful a technique -that when his verse was compared with that of earlier Canadian poets, it -was found to be unprovincial in scope and appeal, and more finished in -technique than any previous Canadian verse. It was indeed derivative, -literary, academic. It was vitiated with youthful crudities in thought -and manner and certain borrowings. But, on the whole, it was as -excellent a first book of verse as might be issued by any young Oxford -or Cambridge undergraduate or, conceivably, by Shelley, Tennyson, or -Swinburne in their undergraduate days. Indeed, critics and poets in -England and in the United States, in reviewing _Orion and Other Poems_, -noted the volume as a respectable performance in verse and a fair -promise of excellent future poetry from the Dominion. - -Roberts’ first volume _Orion and Other Poems_ is a significant -disclosure, both positively and negatively, of his essential genius and -art. Positively, the bias or bend of his genius was towards English -neo-classical idyllism and sensuous impressionism. Negatively, his -genius lacked, and has continued to lack, original imagination or -imaginative power. In his first volume, his ‘properties,’ to use a term -borrowed from the stage and employed by Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate, -are the same ‘properties’ as appear in the Keatsian idyll. In Roberts’ -earliest verse masquerade mythical Greek deities and heroes, sylvan -demi-gods and demi-goddesses, Arcadian denizens and shepherds, painted -with rich sensuous color against a background of pastoral or idyllic -landscape, to the accompaniment of impressionistic verbal music; -alliteration, consonance, assonance, and vowel-harmony. All this is a -recrudescence, unmistakably, of the same qualities in Keats, Tennyson, -and Swinburne. In short, Roberts appears as an unoriginal or -unimaginative nature-and-figure-painter and verbal melodist. A single -example from _Orion_ will suffice:— - - For there the deep-eyed night - Looked down on me; unflagging voices called - From unpent waters falling; tireless wings - From long winds bear me tongueless messages - From star-consulting, silent pinnacles; - And breadth, and depth, and stillness - Fathered me. - -In that passage criticism at once notes that Roberts, as a very young -poet, begins his professional career as a clever ‘word virtuoso.’ That -passage certainly suggests, as no doubt it imitates, the sensuous -impressionism of the Choric Song in Tennyson’s _Lotus Eaters_. Its -verbal music carries the same kind of vague impressionism which we hear -in the gossamer tone-painting of Debussy’s orchestral prelude -_L’Après-midi d’un Faune_. No one will doubt the sincere ambition of -Roberts to be a poet, and the sincerity of his choice of themes and -properties, diction, and poetic style. Yet, while noting the -artificiality of it all, one does wonder that a tyro poet could, in a -first volume of undergraduate verse, so consummately simulate, as -Roberts did, the art of the supreme masters of English neo-classical -idyllism and impressionism. - -As yet, then, Roberts’ poetry discloses only talent in him, nothing of -genius, or originality, or imagination. His poetry is, after all, a -cleverly sublimated academic exercise. Literary psychologists cannot -escape the feeling that Roberts deliberately ‘manufactured’ his first -volume of verse—cannot help picturing the young poet diligently -figuring away in his student’s cloister at the properties, forms and -metres of his imitative idyllism and impressionism. It is all Artifice; -all artificial. As yet in Roberts’ verse there is no ‘note’ of -inspiration awakened by the magic and mystery of the great Dominion—no -New World ‘note’ caught from Canadian Nature, or from Canadian romantic -life and contemporary civilization. - -In his second volume of poems, _In Divers Tones_, there is an advance in -variety of inspiration, in his forms and metres, and in finish of -technique. Still, on the whole, the themes and properties, rhythms, -metres, and color are those of English neo-classical idyllism and -impressionism. There is, however, some suggestion of a change away from -his former too imitative adherence to the subject, manner, and style of -the English idyllists. There is, for instance, a suggestion of a -structural, but not ethical, influence from Browning. There is, in this -regard, a Browningesque coinage of unconventional or awkward diction, an -adoption of a Browningesque metre and an introduction of ‘medley’ as -when he inserts, after the Browning manner, a lyrical interlude, -unexpectedly and with no logical justification, into the text of a -broader, more serious movement and more ethically informed subject. His -second volume of poetry, _In Divers Tones_, shows that Roberts has -talent, but is still unimaginative and artificial. Yet his second volume -is much more significant than his first, not by its being more various -in its themes and forms, but by its exhibiting new tendencies in the -bent of the poet’s mind and imagination. There is a tendency towards -ethical influences and to get away from his early preoccupation with -English neo-classical idyllism and impressionism. There is also the -merest show of a tendency to occupy his imagination with ideas of the -Canadian ‘spirit’ and the beauty and wonder of Nature in Canada. There -is, however, no distinctive embodiment of inspirational ideas or moods -awakened by the Great Dominion or the New World. - -Notwithstanding, in his second volume Roberts is taking his first step -on the way to the expression of the essential form and manner of his -creative genius as a poet. He was born to lilt, in simple lyrical and -descriptive verse, the aesthetic sensations and the emotional nuances of -Canadian life and external nature. In short, Roberts was born to become, -as he did become, the most engaging and artistic, though not the first, -native-born Canadian idyllist. _In Divers Tones_ he first appears as a -really significant creative Canadian poet. But whenever, in his later -literary career, Roberts forsakes his light or simple idyllic and -impressionistic treatment of Canadian life and external nature, as he -forsakes it in the monody, in his poetry of city life, and in his poetry -of modern eroticism, he may be engaging or arresting or impressive, but -in nowise is he creatively significant. - -In the same volume, _In Divers Tones_, Roberts exhibits two manners. In -some poems in the volume he clings to his old manner of English -Classical Impressionism. In other poems in the same volume he essays his -new manner of Canadian Impressionism. The first is distinguished by -overweighted sensuousness, by over-burdened luxurious color of -descriptive epithet and verbal music. An impressive example is _Off -Pelorus_, the sensuous quality of which may be suggested by the -following single stanza:— - - Idly took we thought, for still our eyes betray us, - Lo, the white-limbed maids, with love-soft eyes aglow, - Gleaming bosoms bare, loosed hair, sweet hands to slay us, - Warm lips wild with song, and softer throat than snow! - -Roberts’ strictly Canadian Impressionism is colorful and musical, but -the structure of the verse is simple, as, for instance, _On the Creek_, -an idyllic lyric, full of Canadian color, and highly alliterative, -beginning:— - - Dear heart, the noisy strife, - And bitter harpings cease. - Here is the lamp of life, - Here are the lips of peace. - -Roberts developed other ‘manners’ or styles. But, unquestionably, this -Canadian idyllic impressionism, simple in thought and form, yet colorful -and musical, is his natural _forte_—his _natural, characteristic -manner_. It is exemplified, in the same volume, by other Canadian idylls -in the simple style of _On the Creek_, as, for instance, _In The -Afternoon_, _Salt_, _Winter Geraniums_, _Birch and Paddle_; by distinct -and deliberate suffusions of Canadian Nature in dactylic hexameters, as -in _The Tantramar Revisited_, and in the sonnet-form (somewhat -anticipating the nature-poetry of Lampman), as in Roberts’ genuinely -noble sonnets _The Sower_, and _The Potato Harvest_. - -We may turn now to a general consideration of Roberts’ poetic treatment -of Nature. In Roberts’ first volume, in his strictly Arcadian poetry, -there is nothing of Canadian Nature, nothing of Canadian scenery, nor -the color and sentiment of Canadian life in the habitat of the -distinctive Canadian spirit. In the second volume, _In Divers Tones_, -there is a definitive engagement, on his part, with Canadian Nature, or -with Canadian life and sentiment pictured against Canadian backgrounds; -and also a change in the form and style of Roberts’ poetic composition. - -The natural forms of Roberts’ art are light, simple, lyrical, and -descriptive verse, which he treats with charming naturalness, almost -_naiveté_, with simple tunefulness of ballad or folk rhythms, and which -sometimes he delicately suffuses with a contemplative revery, a gentle -melancholy, or a subdued sentimental reflection on the magic and mystery -of Nature and life, somewhat in the manner of Herrick and Tennyson, and -Longfellow. But Roberts’ lyrical idyllism or nature-description is not -always wholly soft or sentimental, pretty, or gentle, or charming, nor -is his new manner always in folk rhythm in form. At times, even when -simple, his verse is picturesque, even brusque, vigorous, and -overweighted with descriptive details as if, in the last matter, he must -‘paint in’ all the features and properties of Canadian Nature and leave -nothing of its physiognomy to be added by the imagination of the reader. - -Roberts, however, has one singular limitation, an innate defect of his -genius. He cannot limn the human person or figure as one of the -properties of his poetry of Canadian woodlands or pastoral scenery and -life. In the matter of human portraiture against a background of Nature -Roberts, as poet, is abstract and faltering in drawing, lifeless, -unveracious, ineffective. Otherwise in the Canadian idyll or in -nature-description he is concrete, veracious, simple but graphic, nearly -always winningly musical and on the whole satisfying. In short, Roberts -discloses in his new manner, in the Canadian idyll and his Acadian -nature-poetry, the sure possession of the secrets of color, movement and -music, and of real Canadian national sentiment, in the presence of life -and nature. He is an adroit nature-colorist and verbal melodist. - -Absent, however, from his genius and art are all gifts in spiritual -portraiture and the fine and noble interpretation of Nature which -Lampman discloses in his nature-poetry and his interpretation of the -essential Canadian spirit from the embodiment of that spirit, as Lampman -discerns it, in Nature in Canada. - -Roberts’ treatment of Nature may be illustrated by examples taken from -his second volume, _In Divers Tones_ (1887), and from _The Book of the -Native_ (1896), in the latter of which are some poems that really -belong, in form, and spirit, to the time when he was changing his -abstract _Arcadian_ manner to his concrete _Acadian_ manner as in his -_In Divers Tones_. Illustrative of Roberts’ change to a Canadian theme -and to the modern simple method of treating Nature, in the -pseudo-classical style, an apt example is _The Tantramar Revisited_, -composed in the dactylic hexameter, a form, suggested, no doubt, by -Longfellow’s pretty story of Evangeline. In this poem Roberts treats -Canadian Nature with an impressive originality in properties, color, and -sentiment, and certainly with a pervasive directness and veracity which -prove his sincerity and which convince the reader that the poet was -moved by the beauty and pathos of his Acadian subject:— - - Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture,— - Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt! - Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland,— - Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,— - Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion, - Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change. - -What a change in Roberts—this change from the abstract, artificial, -academic, over-sensuous treatment of Nature in Arcadia to his direct, -simple, concrete treatment of real nature in Acadia, with his poet’s -eyes directly ‘on the object.’ There we have the real, the genuine -Roberts, the original authentic poet of Canadian Nature and life and -nationality. - -For an example of his colored realism or idyllic naturalism tinged with -a sort of Wordsworthian plainness or austerity of style and ethical -revery, consider his sonnet _The Sower_. It has been called Roberts’ -‘popular masterpiece.’ As a sonnet, it is perfect in artistic structure, -and is as faithful to Canadian Nature and sentiment as, say, Millet’s -paintings, _The Reapers_ and _The Angelus_, are true to French pastoral -life and religious sentiment. - -But this sonnet is a good example of Roberts’ ineffectiveness in human -or spiritual portraiture. How effectively it pictures for us the land, -the sky, the birds, the human properties of the Acadian landscape in -Nova Scotia. The poem visualizes vividly for us all the features and -elements of external Nature; yet it fails to visualize the Sower -_himself_, to limn him effectively, graphically, impressively against -the background of Nature as, on the other hand, Millet has graphically -limned the human figures in his paintings against the French landscape. - -Finally: a poem which is a really fine example of Roberts’ -characteristic genius and art in the authentic Canadian idyll and in -nature-description, and which, perhaps, contains his nearest approach to -graphic figure-poetry, namely, his lyric _The Solitary Woodsman_, is -specially noteworthy. Though published in _The Book of the Native_, it -really belongs to the period of _In Divers Tones_ when Roberts was -changing over to his natural and characteristic manner of Canadian -idyllic impressionism. For it is a gentle, natural, and simple lyrical -idyll of Canadian Nature and life, tinged with a delicate mood of -contemplation and pathos. A touch more of ‘personal detail,’ of moral -characterization, would have made _The Solitary Woodsman_ as universal -and popular a portrait as the genre picture of the hardy, happy village -blacksmith in Longfellow’s poem with that subject. Nevertheless, the -poem has vigor, action, life-likeness; it is veracious and picturesque. -In it Roberts is at his best in the Canadian lyrical idyll and in -figure-portraiture. - -Strict analysis of Roberts’ nature-poetry reveals both the positive -qualities and the defects of his genius and art. As a poet of Nature in -Acadia he hardly more than effects _glimpses_ of Canadian scenery and -pastoral life, colorful, no doubt, and tinged with a homely or even -tender naturalistic sentiment. His pictures of Canadian scenery and -pastoral life are indeterminate _pastels_ of the general features of -Nature in Canada rather than rich, broad paintings done with the -forthright, broad brush-work of a master artist. It is all pretty, or -charming, and faithful to Nature in Acadia. But it is all based on -superficial observation and is devoid of poetic, that is to say, -profound and beautiful application of ideas to life. It is not to be -expected that the Canadian people will treasure these pastels of -Canadian scenery and pastoral life. For though they be beautiful, -simple, and realistic, the ethical element in them is always a -reflection, a moral platitude, from the poet’s own moralizing, or a -recrudescence of some older poets’ moralizings. - -The public is quick to detect insincerity in a poet. While it would not -be just to accuse Roberts of insincerity whenever he attempts to -moralize in his nature-poetry, or to give it a moral or religious -significance, it is still true that Roberts’ nature-poetry is too -superficial, too obviously ‘an effort’ to make pretty or charming -pastels of Canadian scenery and pastoral life, too lacking in thoroughly -humanized treatment of Nature, to be popular or cherished for its own -sake by the Canadian people. - -His pure lyrical pastels, as for instance, _On the Creek_, and _The -Solitary Woodsman_, are more likely to remain permanently popular than -are his Nature poems in other forms, as, for example, the genuinely -important sonnet-sequence in his _Songs of the Common Day_ (1893). In -these sonnets, however, he shows no increase of descriptive power but -only the variety of his word-painter’s palette. Moreover, in these -sonnets there is a felt insincerity of aim. Though fine in structure, -faithful to Canadian Nature, variously treating the aspects of Canadian -Nature, and often sentimental and moralistic, they impress the reader as -having been designed and written deliberately to show forth the poet’s -powers in realistic or naturalistic impressionism, in the philosophical -interpretation of Nature, and in technical artistry. Notwithstanding, it -must be admitted that in these sonnets Roberts, as an impressionistic -painter of Canadian Nature, is a master, and has his analogues, in the -pictorial painting of Nature, in Corot and Millet, and in the tonal -painting of Nature, in MacDowell and Debussy. These sonnets were -consciously designed to be ‘works of art,’ and to impress the -philosophically minded poets and critics of poetic form. Fine and -masterful as they are in technical artistry, and impressive, too, with a -resurgence of moral ideas, nevertheless they appeal neither to the -popular heart nor to the philosophical imagination. For they create in -the heart of the reader the sense only of a splendid achievement in -poetic artistry, but never any sense of the poet’s own enrichment of -life from his interpretation of beauty in Canadian Nature, civilization, -and life. - -Summarily: as an original Poet, Roberts’ _forte_ is the treatment of -Canadian Nature and pastoral life in impressionistic pastels, to an -accompaniment of verbal music in folk rhythms or simple lyric forms. -Thus accepted and appreciated he is a satisfying nature-colorist and -melodist. But, impressive and magnificent, as he is, in more formal or -larger poetic genres, as for instance, the sonnet and monody, he fails -to give us in both a vital application of ideas to life. - -Consideration of Roberts’ poetry of modern eroticism reveals only what -has been called a variety of Roberts’ ‘ethical heterogeneity.’ This, -however, is a defect in the man rather than in the poet, and only -negatively affects Roberts’ significance in the literary history of -Canada. Roberts’ work as a threnodist, romantic novelist, and inventor -of a species of animal psychology in the romance is considered -elsewhere. It is, however, as the inaugurator of the First Renaissance -in Canadian Literature, both poetry and prose, rather than as a poet of -Canadian Nationality and Nature, that Roberts has a right to a supremely -significant status in the literary history of Canada. - - * * * * * - -The quotations from Charles G. D. Roberts’ works are found in the -individual volumes mentioned in the text. There is also issued a -collection entitled, _Poems_ by Charles G. D. Roberts—New complete -edition—(Copp, Clark Co., Toronto, 1907). - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - - Archibald Lampman - - AN INTERPRETER OF THE ESSENTIAL SPIRIT OF CANADA—STUDY OF - LAMPMAN’S ‘SAPPHICS’—POWER OF HUMANIZING NATURE—EXCELLENCE OF - HIS SONNETS—CONSUMMATE ARTIST OF NATURAL BEAUTY. - -In 1887 Charles G. D. Roberts had, with his poem beginning ‘O Child of -Nations’ and again with his magniloquent _Ode to the Canadian -Confederacy_, issued a ‘call’ to the Canadian people to realize a -national consciousness and to achieve a national destiny. He appeared as -the ‘Voice’ of Canada. But he was a mere ‘Voice.’ For aside from simply -uttering the ‘call’ he did nothing else to awaken in the Canadian people -a consciousness of their own native or national spirit and a love of -country, except to publish some impressionistic word pictures of -Canadian scenery and pastoral life. - -Meanwhile Swinburne had told the world that out of Canada or Australia -would come a great New Voice of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In 1889, or two -years after Roberts had trumpeted his ‘call’ to Canadians, Theodore -Watts-Dunton, poet, novelist, and the most far-visioned of British -critics then living, in an article on Canadian poetry made the same -prophecy as had Swinburne. ‘Canada,’ he said, ‘had excellent poets, and -with the development of a national consciousness of the history, -resources and wealth of the country, would produce great poets.’ In -1918, or practically thirty years after the prophecies of Swinburne and -Watts-Dunton and the ‘call’ of Roberts, Sir Herbert Warren, President of -Magdalen College, Oxford, and Professor of Poetry at Oxford, in an -address on ‘Overseas Poetry,’ as he called it, before the Royal Colonial -Institute, London, also confessed to a vision of great poets arising in -Canada and said that, in his view, so far Canada had produced only ‘some -_good_ poets.’ It is probable that the prophecies of Swinburne and -Watts-Dunton were merely generous pleasantries or, possibly, ‘guesses at -the truth.’ In any case what they were really concerned about was the -appearance of a great _Imperial_ poet in Canada or some other one of the -British Overseas Dominions. - -What Canadians themselves should be concerned about is not whether -Canada has produced a significant Imperial poet but whether the Dominion -has produced a signally excellent poet who, if not the prophetic Voice -of the Dominion, is the true _Interpreter_ of the essential Canadian -spirit. - -When Sir Herbert Warren declared that Canada had produced only some good -poets, he had in mind Roberts, Carman, Pauline Johnson, Valancy -Crawford, W. H. Drummond, and Robert Service. But the greatest poet that -Canada has produced, greatest as a nature-poet, and as an interpreter of -the essential mind and heart of the Canadian people and country, is -Archibald Lampman. If Lampman is not great in the sense that Shelley or -Keats or Wordsworth or Tennyson or Browning or Swinburne is great, at -least he is more than a good poet. He is a consummate artist. But more -important, he is a subtle interpreter of the Canadian national spirit by -way of a new and philosophical interpretation of Nature in Canada. He is -_par excellence_ the poet of Canadian Nature and Nationality. - -For inductive proof of ‘nationality’ in literature, consider critically, -and at some length, from Lampman’s poetry, an impressive example of -wholly indigenous expression of the Canadian genius and the Canadian -view of Nature and of Life. Justly it may be held that this example of -interpretative nature-poetry by Lampman, which goes under the name of -_Sapphics_, is, for faultless technic, for spiritual vision of Nature -and for the beautiful application of noble ideas to life, an indubitable -contribution to poetic art, and is peculiarly Canadian. This is not too -high praise; for the poem itself, with analyses of its form and beauty, -together with a commentary on its spiritual meaning, will furnish -sufficient evidence that it must be given a unique place in Canadian -Literature. For easy expository purposes the poem may be divided into -three parts, which contain its three themes and their inspiration:— - - I - Clothed in splendor, beautifully sad and silent, - Comes the autumn over the woods and highlands, - Golden, rose-red, full of divine remembrance, - Full of foreboding. - - Soon the maples, soon will the glowing birches, - Stripped of all that summer and love had dowered them, - Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasure - Ruthlessly scattered: - - Yet they quail not; Winter, with wind and iron, - Comes and finds them silent and uncomplaining, - Finds them tameless, beautiful still and gracious, - Gravely enduring. - - II - Me, too, changes, bitter and full of evil, - Dream by dream have plundered and left me naked, - Gray with sorrow. Even the days before me - Fade into twilight, - - Mute and barren. Yet will I keep my spirit - Clear and valiant, brother to these my noble - Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless, - Grandly ungrieving. - - III - Brief the span is, counting the years of mortals, - Strange and sad; it passes and then the bright earth, - Careless mother, gleaming with gold and azure, - Lovely with blossoms— - - Shining white anemones, mixed with roses, - Daisies mild-eyed, grasses and honeyed clover— - You and me, and all of us, met and equal, - Softly shall cover. - -The pure beauty of that poem, of its spiritual imagery, of its rhythmic -flow and cadences, _andante tranquillo_, and the noble mood and emotion -it induces—how it all affects the heart and imagination like music -heard in dim cathedral aisles, or recalls us from the vulgar -distractions of life to sequestered retreats in the Canadian wildwood, -there to contemplate existence with a subdued joy and tender peace! Nay -more, we rise from communing with the poet, as he did from his communion -with Nature, anointed with a new spiritual grace and with a new strength -to achieve, amidst ten thousand vicissitudes of fortune, a right worthy -destiny—‘grandly ungrieving.’ - -Each of the three parts of the poem has its own theme and inspiration. -The first section gives us the poet’s vision of Nature and of Nature’s -own (as well as the poet’s) autumnal mood. This is an important -distinction. It distinguishes a peculiar Canadian pictorializing and -humanizing vision of Nature. Who can mistake in what land comes that -autumn, ‘clothed in a splendor,’ and ‘beautifully sad and silent,’ in -what land flourish those woods, ‘golden, rose-red,’ and in what land -rise those hills, ‘full of divine remembrance’? Those are indisputably, -unmistakably, Canadian woods and hills, in their precise autumnal garb -and mood. - -Some would contend that this way of pictorializing Nature is Grecian or -even English. Rather is it peculiarly Canadian. It is so for this -reason: The Greeks, as it were, ‘decked out’ Nature solely for the -sensuous enjoyment of a world made lovely to look upon or pleasant to -dwell in. The external beauty of Nature was with them, as with Keats and -Wordsworth, when these two did not assume the moralizing attitude, the -sufficient reason for their impressionistic word-painting. With Lampman, -as with the Kelts (and Lampman was a Gael on his mother’s side), the -physical loveliness of the face and garb of Nature is an essential, -living aspect of earth. For does not Nature herself, as if conscious and -reflective, change her aspect and garb becomingly with her seasons and -moods? Lampman’s attitude to Nature is not the attitude of an -impressionistic landscape painter, but of one for whom physical -loveliness is supremely a spiritual revealment. This, however, might be -wholly Keltic, and not Canadian. But it is Canadian, and not Keltic, -because the interior revealment expresses a special view of Nature and a -special mode of intimate communion between the Canadian heart and the -spirit of Nature in Canadian woods and streams and hills. - -Part second of the poem gives us an altogether novel and original -spiritual interpretation of Nature’s mood and temper. It is a mood or -temper, be it remarked, not expressed by Nature in any land save Canada, -and not to be divined, and sympathized with, by any other racial genius -save by the mind and heart indigenous to Canada, sensitive emotionally -to the varying aspects and manner of Nature in Canada, as children to -the meaning of changes in the facial expression and manner of a mother. - -The uncritical, having in mind that inveterate sermonizer Wordsworth, -may think that Lampman in this poem does but ‘moralize’ Nature. Far from -it, Lampman ‘humanizes’ Nature in a peculiar way, namely, by reciprocal -sympathy. We must mark that—‘reciprocal sympathy’—as an original -Canadian contribution to the poetic interpretation, the spiritual -revealment, of Nature. Lampman, as he says himself, is ‘brother’ to -Nature. Her reflections on her own vicissitudes are as his own on his -fortunes of life. The Poet and Nature, though two physically, are one by -mutual bonds of sympathy. The poet sympathizes with Nature as he himself -feels that she sympathizes with him. Thus does he humanize, not -sentimentally, but nobly, the Canadian maples and birches, which, as he -says:— - - Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasure - Ruthlessly scattered: - - Yet they quail not . . . . - -‘Yet they quail not’—there we have envisaged the mood and temper of -Canadian Nature! The Gael, visioning the maples and birches, with his -racial melancholy sentiment for glories departed, might say of them that -they ‘dream, sad-limbed.’ But only a Canadian, or a Canadian Gael, -apprehending, through sympathy, their inmost mood, could say of them, -nobly, inimitably: ‘Yet they quail not.’ And so Lampman, divining, with -a more than Keltic subtlety of vision, the spirit of the Canadian woods -in autumn, sympathetically responds to their mood, and is heartened to -endure, as they do, ‘silent and uncomplaining.’ - - Yet I will keep my spirit - Clear and valiant, brother to these my noble - Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless, - Grandly ungrieving. - -‘Yet I will keep my spirit clear and valiant!’—Mark that as the -authentic _spiritual_ note of the Canadian genius. It is not Canadian, -however, merely because it is the expression of indomitable courage and -serenity, but because the idea, the inspiration, of a self-controlled -destiny, achieved with clearness of vision and valiant heart, first -comes to the mind and heart and moral imagination of the Canadian poet -_as a gift from Canadian woods_. He, for his part, conveys that gift to -his compatriots, by his poetic envisagement of the ‘brotherhood’ of Man -and Nature in this land of glowing birches, noble elms and maples. That -‘note’ of clear-visioned faith and courage and serenity is in Canadian -poetry of earlier days, long before the Confederacy, as well as in these -days of social and commercial progress. It was in the poetry of Sangster -and Mair in Ontario, and in the Gaelic verses of James MacGregor in Nova -Scotia. But it is most articulate and vocal in the poetry of Archibald -Lampman. - -Considering now the first two parts of Lampman’s poem as a whole, we -become aware that the first distinctively ‘national’ note in the -literature of the Canadian Confederacy is a unique humanizing of Nature, -singularly apparent in the Nature-poetry of Lampman—a sympathetic -identity of mood and temper, a reciprocal sense of brotherhood, between -Man and Nature. This is a psychological phenomenon by itself, belonging -solely to the Canadian genius and expressing itself, with fine art, -solely in Canadian poetry. - -Like other poets, British and American, Canadian poets have notable -pictorializing gifts, and can visualize a scene so vividly as to give a -reader of their verse the intimate view of an eye-witness of the -reality. They can, as aptly as Wordsworth, also moralize Nature and -convey a noble preachment. But of them all Lampman stands alone in -this—_the power to humanize Nature into personality, and -sympathetically identify her spirit with his own, in mood and will_. - -Lampman also stands alone in this—_in his love of local beauty and his -power to individualize and vitalize it_. This, too, is a ‘national’ note -and a psychological phenomenon by itself. His is not a love of Nature’s -beauty abstracted from a particular time and place, but of those very -scenes and haunts where first he beheld Nature in all her physical -loveliness and many moods and became her intimate companion and lover. -Lampman so individualizes and vitalizes his fields and woods, as -Campbell his lakes, Roberts his woods and marshes, and Carman his tide -and mists and April morns, that the reader can localize the region, and -‘time’ the season, of their inspiration with the nicest perception. So -singularly is this quality present, most notably in poetry of Lampman, -though also in the poetry of Roberts, Carman, Campbell, Duncan Campbell -Scott and Pauline Johnson, that a reader can, with absolute surety, say -not only, ‘This is Canadian nature-beauty,’ but also, ‘This is Canadian -nature-beauty in Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick, in Ontario.’ Surely, -then, this peculiar imaginative interpretation of Canadian Nature -whereby Lampman and his _confrères_, first, localize Nature, and, next, -humanize her noblest mood and temper into an identity with their own is -a supreme expression of the national spirit and raises -Post-Confederation poetry to the dignity of authentic literature. - -Canadians are, in the eyes of the older nations, a notably sane and -happy people. They are so because they keep their souls, in the phrase -of Lampman, always ‘clear and valiant,’ having, as Lampman, and even as -Roberts and the other poets of the First Renaissance in Canadian -Literature, a sure vision of the greatness of their country’s destiny -and of the means to it. The peculiar moral qualities of the Canadian -people are an inviolable faith in themselves, an indomitable courage, -and an imperturbable serenity. The ground and inspiration of these -qualities are in Canadian woods and hills and waters, and Archibald -Lampman, in his nature-poetry, interprets these qualities of the -Canadian people and country with sweet reasonableness and genuine -nobility. - -In two of his finest sonnets, rich both in aesthetic and in spiritual -beauty, and worthy both of Keats and Wordsworth, possibly suggesting the -spirit of their finest sonnets, Lampman has summarized his poetic and -philosophical creed. So beautiful in structure and imagery, so noble in -their expression of the courage and serenity and faith which obtain in -his _Sapphics_, and yet so wistful of the heavenly beauty and so infused -with the pathos of life are these sonnets, that they move the soul and -subdue the spirit with ‘thoughts too deep for tears.’ If there is any -genuine meaning to Arnold’s conception of the moral dignity and -spiritual function of poetry as ‘the profound and powerful application -of ideas of life,’ these two sonnets by Lampman quite match the finest -sonnets of the same degree of poetic vision by Keats, Wordsworth, and -Arnold:— - - I - Not to be conquered by these headlong days, - But to stand free; to keep the mind at brood - On life’s deep meaning, nature’s altitude - Or loveliness, and time’s mysterious ways; - At every thought and deed to clear the haze - Out of our eyes, considering only this, - What man, what life, what love, what beauty is, - This is to live, and win the final praise. - Though strife, ill fortune, and harsh human need - Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb, - With agony; yet, patience—there shall come - Many great voices from life’s outer sea, - Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed, - Murmurs and glimpses of eternity. - - II - There is a beauty at the goal of life, - A beauty growing since the world began, - Through every age and race, through lapse and strife, - Till the great human soul complete her span: - Beneath the waves of storm that lash and burn, - The currents of blind passion that appal, - To listen and keep watch till we discern - The tide of sovereign truth that guides it all; - So to address our Spirits to the height, - And so to attune them to the valiant whole, - That the great light be clearer for our light, - And the great soul the stronger for our soul: - To have done this is to have lived, though fame - Remembers us with no familiar name. - -Certainly these sonnets breath a higher spiritual air than do the finest -sonnets of Roberts, as, for instance, _The Sower_ and _The Potato -Harvest_. As certainly, in sustained serenity and moral import, as well -as in profound spiritual beauty, Lampman’s sonnet-sequence _The Frogs_ -surpasses Roberts’ sonnet-sequence in his _Songs of the Common -Day_,—not only technically and in nature-color and music but also in -transporting the spirit with inevitable ‘murmurs and glimpses of -eternity’:— - - And slowly as we heard you, day by day, - The stillness of enchanted reveries - Bound brain and spirit with half-closèd eyes, - In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray; - To us no sorrow or upreared dismay - Nor any discord come, but evermore - The voices of mankind, the outer roar, - Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away. - - Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely, - Rapt with your voices, this alone we knew, - Cities might change and fall, and men might die, - Secure were we, content to dream with you - That change and air are shadows faint and fleet, - And dreams are real, and life is only sweet. - -There we have, not talent cleverly performing an academic exercise, but -serene and noble genius profoundly and finely interpreting and -appreciating Beauty and Good in the universe and in existence. -Indubitably Lampman is a master of the sonnet, a master whom those -greatest masters of the sonnet, Keats and Wordsworth, would welcome to -their company, and of whose company, as a nature-poet working in the -sonnet or the lyric forms, he really is. - -But Lampman is more than a philosophical interpreter of the mystery and -wonder of Nature and Life. He is also a consummate artist in revealing -to others his vision of the natural magic and beauty of Nature in -Canada. He is even a finer colorist and melodist than is Roberts. He is -such because he has finer powers of observation, and notes not merely -the general superficial beauty of the face of Nature but also the -minutest details of Nature’s physiognomy and garb, and the gentler, more -gracious of Nature’s moods. - -Unlike Roberts, Lampman is not a mere sensuous impressionist. He is an -artist with the same gifts as those of Thomas Gray for discerning, -appreciating, and envisaging in lyric verse the subtler and lovelier -beauties of fields and woods and hills and streams and sky, and for -interpreting to the spirit the meaning of pastoral beauty and life in -Canadian woods. Roberts paints charmingly indeed at times the mere face -of Nature. Lampman not only paints exquisitely and daintily the physical -loveliness and garb of Nature but also conveys her most winsome moods -and her daintiest messages for the refreshment and sustenance of the -spirit. Moreover, Lampman has Gray’s gift in limning the human figure, -of adding, with graphic nicety, a humanistic touch to his spiritual -portraits. As a poet who paints and interprets Nature with the intimate -vision and delicate brush of the artist, not with mere impressionism but -with minute and lovely truth and realism, and also as a poet who -humanizes Nature with graphic portraits and interprets Nature subtly and -intimately to the spirit, Lampman is a master by himself. - -Whatever influences Keats may have had on Lampman’s art, it must be -observed that fundamentally, as an artist and as an interpreter of -Nature, with the power to add here and there graphic bits of human -portraiture, Lampman is nearer to Gray than to Keats or even to -Wordsworth. All these qualities are incisively exemplified in Lampman’s -lyric _Heat_. In this poem Nature and pastoral life in Canada, on a day -of sultry summer heat, are painted with the nicest realistic detail; and -in it the bit of human portraiture, the wagoner ‘slowly slouching at his -ease,’ is as graphic and as true to life as Gray’s bit of human -portraiture, the plowman homeward plodding his weary way, is graphic and -true to English pastoral and natural life. - -If any Canadian poet ever entered the sanctuaries of Nature and revealed -the intimate observation and consummate artistry which marks the art of -all the exquisite poets of Nature—that Canadian poet is Archibald -Lampman. He is, however, a greater poet than he is an artist. As a poet -he is the superior of Roberts. As an artist he has no superior save -Duncan Campbell Scott. But as a poet of Nature, interpreting from Nature -the essence of the Canadian spirit, Lampman is superb, -supreme—unmatched, and even unrivalled by any other poet that Canada -has yet produced. - - * * * * * - -The quotations from Archibald Lampman’s work in this chapter are from -_The Collected Poems of Archibald Lampman_, edited, with a memoir by -Duncan Campbell Scott—new edition, 1923 (Musson Book Co.: Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - - Bliss Carman - - AS A WORLD-POET—CREATIVE MELODIST—PERIODS OF HIS POETRY—SINGING - QUALITY AND ITS METHOD—LYRIST OF THE SEA AND OF LOVE—TREATMENT - OF NATURE. - -Bliss carman is the only Canadian-born poet who reasonably and -inevitably challenges comparison with English and United States poets of -admitted distinction. He is, in the continental sense of the term, more -American than he is Canadian; more English than American; and more a -world-poet than Canadian, or American, or English, in the sense that -famous poets writing in the English language, from Chaucer to Masefield, -are world-poets. His genius and poetry, as do the genius and poetry of -no other Canadian poet, challenge criticism to define the qualities of -his mind and art. Unless, therefore, those who have written _con amore_ -about Carman and have denoted him as the greatest Canadian poet -distinguish in what respect or respects he is so to be designated, the -distinction is unmeaning. Carman is not the greatest Canadian poet in -versatility of genius, variety of themes and forms, and perfection of -technic or craftsmanship. He is surpassed by Roberts in versatility of -genius and variety of forms. He is not the greatest Canadian -nature-colorist or impressionistic word-painter in verse. There again -Roberts surpasses him. Carman is not the greatest Canadian poetic -interpreter of nature in Canada and of the Canadian spirit. Lampman is -his equal, and, in one respect, his superior. Nor is Carman the greatest -Canadian artist in narrative verse. Pauline Johnson and Edward W. -Thomson surpass him. Further, Carman is not, save in a special sense, -the greatest Canadian melodist. Pauline Johnson and Marjorie Pickthall -have a more dulcet singing lilt and sensuous music. Finally, Carman is -not the greatest, that is, the nearest to perfection, in technical -artistry, of Canadian poets. Duncan Campbell Scott is his unrivalled -master in that respect. - -Yet indubitably Bliss Carman is the very foremost of Canadian-born -poets. In Carman’s genius and poetry there are an originality and power -and beauty and distinction that, first, make him unique amongst Canadian -poets and that, secondly, compel the critical world to admit that he is -the only Canadian-born poet who, whenever he is the supreme lyrist and -the inspired technician in verse that he can be, has made a distinct, -singular, and enduring contribution of his own to English or world -poetry, and, on that account, is in the direct line of the Chaucerian -succession. Whenever, that is, Carman excels in sheer genius, and as a -nature-painter, nature-interpreter, story-teller in verse, melodist and -technician, he surpasses each and all his Canadian compatriot poets at -their best in their specialty. They each excel in one or two powers. -Carman excels in all their combined powers, to the maximal degree. -Moreover, none of his Canadian compatriot poets is his equal or even -rival in originality and power of imagination, in sheer vision of the -metaphysical meanings of nature and existence, in intensity of passion, -in romantic atmosphere, in satiric humor, in free and potent diction and -inevitable imagery, and in light or ecstatic lyricism. So great is -Carman as a poet of the Sea that he has made a distinct contribution in -this _genre_ to English poetry. As a lyric poet of romantic and -Spiritual Love, he has no superior, if even an equal, in Canada or -America, and few in any other country. His Elegies are lovely lyric -memorials of the Spirit. His poems of sheer joy of living or of satiric -humor have no prototypes. His symbolistic or so-called mystical poetry, -as an interpretation of the universe and as a means of solace and -serenity in the midst of seeming Satanic triumphs, are as noble and -grateful to the spirit and as sustaining as the breath of life from his -own Maritime sea-winds and woodsy zephyrs. But when he sings most freely -and liltingly, then is Bliss Carman the supreme melodist, and Chaucer is -heard again in the land, and the troubadours, and all those upon whom -Nature bestowed the gift of verbal _bel canto_. - -While, then, it is the challenging quality of Bliss Carman’s poetry, as -if he were directly of the strain of Chaucer, Burns, Wordsworth, -Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Masefield, and as if his verse, like -theirs, stood, as it does, upright on its own feet, that gives it its -first and most important general distinction, it possesses other -distinctions, one of which, namely, its special verbal music, of Keltic -origin and form, is unique in Canadian poetry and rare in modern English -poetry. It is these particular distinctions which stamp Bliss Carman as -an extraordinary creative poet and melodist, and as the one Canadian -poet who has a right to an indisputable place beside the finer and more -compelling poets of England and the United States. These claims may be -abundantly substantiated by a study of the texts of what may be called -the Popular Collected Poems of Bliss Carman, namely, _Ballads and -Lyrics_ and _Later Poems_ (with an appreciation by R. H. Hathaway), and -by a study of such interpretative commentaries as Odell Shepard’s _Bliss -Carman_ and H. D. C. Lee’s _Bliss Carman: A Study of Canadian Poetry_, -together with Hathaway’s ‘Appreciation’ in _Later Poems_ by Bliss -Carman. In this chapter Carman is considered and treated from the three -sides in which he is unique amongst Canadian poets: namely, as, in the -light of the history of English poetry, a singularly original and -inventive Vowel Melodist; as a Nature-Poet whose impressionism and -‘readings’ of earth differ from those of Roberts and Lampman; and as a -Philosophical or Mystical Poet who perceives in Beauty the only -manifestation of the union of the Real and the Ideal and regards it as -an intuitive proof of the Supremacy of Good in the universe. - -However well-intentioned the attempts to divide the poetical activity of -Bliss Carman into _Periods_, on the whole they are not pedagogically -successful. Three Periods have been remarked—a so-called Romantic -Period, represented by _Low Tide on Grand Pré_ and the _Songs of -Vagabondia_ series; a Transcendental Period, represented by _Behind the -Arras_, subtitled ‘A Book of the Unseen,’ which indicates its mood, and -_The Green Book of the Bards_; and a Synthetic Period, in which his -appreciation of the beauty of earth is not contrasted with the -evanescence and the mystery of life, but in which there is a joyous -acceptance of both. This Synthetic Period is represented by _The Book of -the Myths_, _Sappho_, and _April Airs_. Yet in each volume, from _Low -Tide on Grand Pré_ (1893) to _April Airs_ (1916), there is in varying -degree the same ‘touch of manner,’ the same ‘hint of mood,’ the same -occupation _both_ with the beauty of earth and with the mystery and -meaning of existence and the universe. Really there is no development of -Carman’s genius and art—no periods of growth—after his first book, -_Low Tide on Grand Pré_, except an increase in ready mastery, not of -technic, but of _clear expression_ of thought and meaning. Some of his -finest verbal melody and some of his most compelling lines are in his -earlier volumes, and with them also embodiments of his essential thought -about life and the universe. But we do note, in each succeeding volume, -a gradual decrease in Carman’s _sense_ of world-pain (_weltschmerz_), -and an increase in _clearer expression_ of his thought about the mystery -of life. To use musical language: in his earlier books Carman heard -_discords_ in the universe. They were really not discords but -_dissonances_. As he grew older and reflected more philosophically, he -was able to resolve these dissonances; and as he gradually achieved -this, the more he combined, with clarity and surety, his fine natural -powers of lyrical utterance with, to use Meredith’s phrase, his ’reading -of earth,’ his intuitions of the ultimate supremacy of the Good. - -Since he fully recovered from the illness which attacked him about 1919, -Carman has entered on what promises to be his greatest, most -constructive period, the keynote of which is his characteristic lyrical -utterance in the expressing of a confident synthesis of Sight and Faith, -of Beauty and Goodness. It is all the same verbal melody and the same -love of beautiful sound, color, and form as in _Low Tide on Grand Pré_, -but all the felt dissonances that existed for thought have been -resolved, and now existence is filled with an ineluctable joy and a -tender peace which are a pure gain for the spirit. The poems which -represent the _new_ Carman or the Carman of the _new_ and final period -exist, for the most part in manuscript, though a few have been published -fugitively. We quote one of these new fugitive poems, _Vestigia_ (1921), -in which the notable qualities, aside from verbal melody and color, are -a confident synthesis of Sight and Faith, Earth and God, and absolute -simplicity and clarity of the diction and images:— - - I took a day to search for God - And found Him not. But as I trod - By rocky ledge, through woods untamed, - Just where one scarlet lily flamed, - I saw his footprints in the sod. - - Then suddenly, all unaware, - Far off in the deep shadows where - A solitary hermit thrush - Sang through the holy twilight hush— - I heard his voice upon the air. - - And even as I marvelled how - God gives us Heaven here and now, - In a stir of wind that hardly shook - The poplar leaves beside the brook— - His hand was light upon my brow. - - At last with evening as I turned - Homeward, and thought what I had learned - And all that there was still to probe— - I caught the glory of His robe - Where the last flowers of sunset burned. - - Back to the world with quickening start - I looked and longed for any part - In making saving Beauty be . . . . - And from that kindling ecstasy - I knew God dwelt within my heart. - -Of the manuscript poems belonging to this fourth period, I may merely -mention the titles, as, for instance, _Wa-wa_, a mystical interpretation -of the wild-goose honk, _The Truce of the Manitou_, and, above all, -_Shamballah_, which is the perfection of Carman’s mystical -interpretations—a poem of - - The City under the Star, - Where the Sons of the Fire-Mist gather, - And the keys of all mystery are. - -Fugitive poems representing this final period are _The Mirage of the -Plain_, _The Rivers of Canada_, _Kaleedon Road_, and _Vancouver_, which -contain mystical interpretations ’suggested,’ as Carman has said, ‘by -the vast spaces of Canada.’ _Apropos_ of the mood, manner, and -interpretations of Nature in this period, Carman has observed: ‘All -Nature poems are more or less mystical.’ - -What we really observe, then, in Carman’s genius and poetry is not -genuine, clearly marked Periods, but rather _Periodicities_—waves of -poetical activity, in which the crest of the wave is either lyrical -ecstasy, the singing of the Beauty of Earth for its own sake and out of -love of beautiful sound and color, or mystical ‘readings’ of Earth, -transcendental interpretations of the meaning of the life of sentient -and spiritual creatures, but below the crest of the wave are poems of -transcendentalism if the crest is lyrical naturalism or poems of lyrical -naturalism if the crest is transcendental. Yet in these periodicities -there is a sure and well-demarcated development, not of technic, but of -clarity of thought and expression—from that earlier so-called mysticism -which was only mystification, to the genuine mysticism which is the -immediate intuition of God in the universe and especially the immediate -perception of the oneness of the spirit of Nature with that of Man and -of God. But all the while, as the development goes on, even to his final -period, Carman remains the superb melodist and colorist. So that Bliss -Carman must be regarded as at once both the most lyrical of Canadian -philosophical poets and the most philosophical of Canadian lyrical -poets. - -Carman’s prototype in sheer singing quality is Chaucer—the first, -freest, and sweetest of the English poets, whom Tennyson apostrophized -in avian metaphor as a ‘warbler.’ So in the same way Carman sings with -the natural lilt, abandon, and melodiousness of the lark and linnet. He -is a ‘warbler.’ It is an irrelevant criticism to say, as has been said, -that Carman ‘sings on and on,’ frequently in his earlier poems, out of -his own ecstasy over hearing the beautiful verbal melody he is making, -whether a given poem makes sense in thought or not. He is not -ecstatically singing on and on from love of beautiful sound, but because -he cannot clearly express what he means in his thinking; and so we hear -the singing as if it were the accompaniment to the thought which we -cannot, any more than he, articulate. But how lovely, how melodious the -accompaniment! - -As a matter of truth, however, we shall get at the secret of Carman’s -unique singing quality if we ask what is the _method_ of his warbling. -It is in his method that he differs from all modern English poets and -has made an original and distinct contribution to English lyrical -poetry. This is the fact: Bliss Carman is a belated troubadour or 16th -century English lutanist or Keltic harpist. Lutanists and harpists -created the text for their songs; and the prime end was melody or at -least melodiousness. The ultimate element or unit in verbal melody with -the lutanists or harpists was the _word_, and the core of the word, for -melodic purposes, was the vowel. Poets arose in England, but more -especially in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland, who aimed to -make the melody of unaccompanied poetry imitate the melody of the -lutanists’ and the harpists’ accompanied verses. The lutanists, -harpists, and melodic poets, who aimed to imitate music, passed, and new -generations of poets substituted metrical and stanzaic structure and -alliterative arrangement of consonants for the old vowel-melody. The -unit in English poetry, after the 16th century, became the _line_, not -the word or the vowel in the word. - -It is the chief glory of Bliss Carman, as a creative poet, that he -brought back into English poetry the _word_ and the pure unimpeded -_singing vowel_, with the same intent as the Italian _bel canto_ -composers, as the unit in verbal melody. Some critics have made -considerable point of the fact that Carman is a ‘great’ poet, _in spite_ -of the fact that he employs chiefly the rhymed octosyllabic line or -measure, or iambic tetrameters and trimeters, with trochaic and -anapaestic substitutions and other metrical mechanics for variety. The -truth is that Carman wrote his poetry as a melodist, not as a technical -musician; that he aimed to _sing_, like the lark or linnet, not to -_compose_, like a musician. His measures were chosen, whenever he meant -to be lyrical, because they were _singing_ measures and his diction was -chosen for the melody inside the words, for the ‘vowel-chime’ in them. -In Carman’s lyrical poetry the word determines the line, or rather the -word alone counts, and the line is insignificant. Dulcet vowel-melody or -delicate vowel-harmony is Bliss Carman’s chief original contribution to -Canadian and English poetry. Examples are innumerable. Consider the -clarion tones in this line, which as a line by itself is perfect:— - - The resonant far-listening morn. - -There are no closed vowels in those words, and the word ’resonant’ is -precisely resonant in vowel-melody and harmony. It is the open vowels -that count melodically in this stanza:— - - _But in the yule, O Yanna,_ - Up from the round dim sea - _And reeling dungeons of the fog,_ - I am come back to thee! - -What a superb singing line is the first, and what booming sonorities are -in the eloquently descriptive third line, ‘the reeling dungeons of the -fog.’ Repeat it orally (for with Carman poetry is an _oral_ art) and all -the melody will be found in the vowels. And what bright vowel-melody -resides in the single words of this line:— - - The glad indomitable sea! - -For an example of just the kind of vowel-melody, dulcet and delicate, -which is of the lutanist or harpist order, all in the words _per se_, -not in the lines as lines, consider this stanza:— - - A golden flute in the cedars, - A silver pipe in the swales, - And the slow large life of the forest - Wells back and prevails. - -This is the music or melody which Pan must have piped and with which he -hushed to peace the wild-creatures of the ancient forests—it is -silvery, pastoral reed music, and in verbal reed melody Carman is a -modern Pan. - -Carman can make beautiful line-melody, line-harmony when he wishes to do -so; and he is a master of alliteration, quite the peer of Tennyson or -Swinburne. For instance, these alliterative lines:— - - The gold languorous lilies of the glade. - • • • • - Burying, brimming, the building billows. - • • • • - Silent with frost and floored with snow. - • • • • - And softer than sleep her hands first sweep - • • • • - And down the sluices of the dawn. - • • • • - And like green clouds in opal calms. - • • • • - Behind her banners burns the crimson sun. - • • • • - While down the soft blue-shadowed aisles of snow - Night, like a sacristan with silent step, - Passes to light the tapers of the stars. - -Carman is as adept as Kipling in employing, for the sake of verbal music -and variety of rhythm, such devices as shifting of accent, slurring, and -elision, and, further, he invents beautiful measures, as, for instance, -the dimeter of _Ilicet_, or the six-line stanza of _The White Gull_ -(Shelley):— - - O captain of the rebel host, - Lead forth and far! - Thy toiling troopers of the night - Press on the unavailing fight; - The sombre field is not yet lost, - With thee for star. - -Carman is also singularly adept in the use of what may be called musical -onomatopœia. In this quality his ear is specially sensitive to -_pianissimi_ in Nature, the soughing of the winds, the sighings and -whisperings of the zephyrs, the fifings and murmurings of the insects -(with Carman the crickets always ‘fife’ and the bees ‘murmur’), and, to -use his own phrase, all the ‘tiny multitudinous sound’ of rustling -leaves, dancing grasses, crooning brooks, tinkling rain, which make the -instrumentation of the Toy Symphony of Nature:— - - Outside, a yellow maple tree, - Shifting upon the silvery blue - With tiny multitudinous sound, - Rustled to let the sunlight through. - -It is, however, in the use of rhythmical onomatopœia that Carman is even -more inventively masterly than in mere sound imitation. An outstanding -example of the imitation of the ‘fife and drum’ marching rhythm, with an -exact imitation of the fife in the word ‘whistle’ and of the rattle-roll -of the drum in the word ‘rallied,’ is Carman’s lovely nature-lyric -_Daisies_, second stanza:— - - Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune - I saw the white daisies go down to the sea - • • • • - The bobolinks rallied them up from the dell, - The orioles whistled them out of the wood; - And all of their singing was, ‘Earth, it is well!’ - And all of their dancing was, ‘Life, thou art good!’ - -Always, from his very first book, _Low Tide on Grand Pré_, to his -latest, _April Airs_, published almost a quarter of a century later, -Bliss Carman has been the master troubadour, the master melodist, -constructing his melody chiefly by an exquisite but subtle use of -vowel-tones, vowel-harmonies. But never has he aimed to be the -consciously meticulous technical musician, laboring at involved and -intricate metrical and stanzaic structure, assonance and alliteration. -His verbal melody is in the word and vowel as his ear naturally picked -these up from everyday speech, and is just as spontaneous and simple. -His melody did not come by ‘working at’ it in the study. We may often -note Roberts, and even Lampman, assiduously busied with constructing the -perfect musical line. Carman’s melody wells out of him in the ‘great -outdoors’—natural and spontaneous as the lark’s or linnet’s. By virtue, -then, of this spontaneous lyrical melodiousness of Carman’s poetry, a -melodiousness _newly based_ on the vowel-tones and harmonies in words, -simple words of actual humanized speech, and not on modern intricacies -of line or stanzaic structure and consonantal systems, Bliss Carman is -one of the master-melodists of English poetry. - -Thus as a melodist in general. Canada, however, has produced no poet who -is Carman’s equal as a lyrist of the Sea and of Love. It is indubitable -that he has made a distinct and superb contribution to the authentic Sea -Poetry in the English language. His sea ‘speech’ is the native speech of -his soul, the expression of an innate personal sympathy with the moods, -powers, and deeds of the Sea, a sympathy which is, in Carman, an -_identity_ of the spirit in Nature with the spirit in the Man or Poet. -Melodiously he declares this personal sympathy and identity with the Sea -in his autobiographical poem, _A Son of the Sea_:— - - I was born for deep-sea faring; - I was bred to put to sea; - Stories of my father’s daring - Filled me at my mother’s knee. - - I was sired among the surges; - I was cubbed beside the foam; - _All my heart is in its verges,_ - _And the sea-wind is my home_. - - All my boyhood, far from vernal - Bourns of being, came to me - _Dream-like, plangent, and eternal_ - _Memories of the plunging sea_. - -No English poet of distinction so often even mentions the Sea or creates -such Homeric epithets for the Sea as does Bliss Carman. A catalogue of -Carman’s original epithets for the Sea, if complete, would be a poetic -phenomenon by itself. Some of the most apt and fetching may be -noted—‘the hollow sea,’ ‘the curving sea,’ ‘the old gray sea,’ ‘the -plunging sea,’ ‘the shambling sea,’ ‘the brightening sea,’ ‘the -troubling sea,’ ‘the lazy sea,’ ‘the open sea,’ ‘the heaving sea,’ ‘the -eternal sea,’ ‘the ruthless noisy sea,’ ‘the misty sea,’ ‘the ancient -ever-murmuring sea,’ and that supreme achievement in English poetry, -Carman’s inevitable, perfect line:— - - The glad indomitable sea! - -For lovers of sea poetry Carman’s _Ballads of Lost Haven: A Book of the -Sea_ (1897) is a genuinely unique anthology by itself—‘one hundred -pages,’ as a London critic has said, ‘of salt sea without a trace of -Kipling, and yet having a sea-flavor as unmistakable as his, and with a -finer touch—with less repetition, less of mere technicality, and a more -varied human interest.’ For Carman the Sea is a _human personality_. Its -moods and deeds embrace all the contradictory moods and deeds of human -beings. But whatever mood or deed of the Sea is expressed by Carman, he -does it with pure and perfect lyricism. Carman is said to have no gifts -for spiritual portraiture. Yet what English or American poet has matched -Carman’s portrait of the Sea as a shambling, fierce, grim, rollicking, -burly, cruel, crooked, old man, and at the same time created such a -brave and lilting song of the Sea, as in _The Gravedigger_, with its -inimitable burly refrain?— - - Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip, - He makes for the nearest shore; - And God, who sent him a thousand ship, - Will send him a thousand more; - But some he’ll save for a bleaching grave, - And shoulder them in to shore,— - Shoulder them in, shoulder them in, - Shoulder them in to shore. - -When a poet gives us such realistic portraiture and such inimitable -lyrical melody and rhythm as does Carman in _The Gravedigger_, it is a -futile criticism to find fault with his sea poems on the side of lack of -dramatic elements, and weakness in narrative, since the _strength_ of -the poems was meant by the poet to be their inherent passional intensity -and melody. Carman’s sea poems were not meant to be strictly dramatic -narrative tales of the sea, but to be ballads or songs of the _romance_ -of the sea. We may remark, as a general observation, that as a balladist -of the Sea, Carman does not aim at dramatic narration, but at singing, -with the freedom and picturesque vernacular and technical slang of -sailors, as they would sing their chanteys, the romance, happy or grim, -of the sea. As songs, his so-called ballads of the Sea are a supreme -achievement in verbal melody, the glory of Canadian sea poetry, and one -of the glories of English poetry. - -As the master melodist or musician of the Sea, Carman brilliantly -achieved, but he is equally the master melodist or musician of Romantic -and Spiritual Love. His Love Poetry is best represented in _Songs of the -Sea Children_ (1904) and in _Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics_ (1904). Earlier -he had written lightly, as it were flirtingly, about love. But in _Songs -of the Sea Children_, while he wrote as daintily or delicately as in his -earlier poems dealing with the passion, he has at last realized the -spiritual intent and meaning of pure devoted love, and has been moved -deeply and inspired by the passion. Though copyright restrictions forbid -full quotation, the spirit or mood or temper, and the pure melody, of -_Songs of the Sea Children_ may be gathered from this single stanza:— - - O wind and stars, I am with you now; - And ports of day, Good-bye! - When my captain Love puts out to sea, - His mariner am I. - -The rhymeless stanzas of the love poems in _Sappho_ are high-minded, but -are a poetical _genre_ by themselves. They are a _tour de force_ in -‘poetical restoration,’ and, perhaps for the first time, we actually -observe Carman at work in the study as the technical verbal artist and -musician. They have a technical perfection, and a quiet beauty of their -own, and though there is in them a large degree of spontaneity, -naturally they are not informed with the characteristic Carman lyrical -ecstasy and melody. They are, as love poems, perfect as the love poetry -of Sappho was fleckless with a Greek perfection of form and grace. - -Bliss Carman is not properly called a nature-_interpreter_. To -understand his point of view we must contrast his with that of Lampman. -For Lampman Nature is one kind of being and Man is another—two -separated entities—and Man may only commune with Nature by ‘reciprocal -sympathy.’ So Lampman goes out to his Canadian maples and elms, fields -and streams, and _talks to_ them, _as if_ they were human, and can -sympathize with him. This is all simulated imaginative sympathy and -communion on the poet’s part. The maples and elms, fields and streams, -are really dumb, and the poet does but attribute to them what speech or -answer he wants back from them for the solace of his spirit. Always with -Lampman, Nature and Man are _two_. He does but humanize Nature for his -own purposes, by conscious, deliberate _objective symbolism_. - -Carman, on the other hand, is a spiritual monist. Nature and Man are not -two. There is, in Carman’s poetical psychology and metaphysic, no mind -_and_ matter. The whole universe is spiritual through and through, and -the vital spirit which is in Nature is the same spirit which is in Man -and which is God. The universe is wholly spirit. We may call this ‘the -higher pantheism;’ but even in pantheistic doctrine, matter does exist -as alien to mind or spirit. Carman has no such attitude. He differs from -Lampman in conceiving himself as able, by spirit or will, to _identify -himself personally with Nature_. This power of personal identification -with Nature begets personal sympathy; and the communion which the poet -has with Nature is a ‘heart-to-heart talk,’ for spirit with spirit can -meet. This new philosophy of personal identity of the human spirit with -Nature is expressly declared by Carman:— - - I blend with the soft shadows - Of the young maple trees, - And mingle in the rain-drops - That shine along the eaves . . . - - No glory is too splendid - To house this soul of mine, - No tenement too lowly - To serve it for a shrine. - -But specially to be noted is the fact that Carman does not stand apart -from Nature, from the woods, and flowers, and hills, and streams, and -become an _interpreter_ of Nature’s moods and emotions. Nay, the poet -enters into the tree or flower and becomes one with their soul or -spirit, their body becomes his body, and their voice, as heard in his -poetry, is but his voice articulating to the world what they are unable -to articulate. Nature, in Carman’s poetry, is become vocal; and the poet -himself is her very Voice. Metaphors in the nature-poetry of Carman are -not metaphors at all; they are direct experiences of spirit:— - - Just where one scarlet lily flamed, - I saw His footprint in the sod. - • • • • - I caught the glory of His robe - Where the last fires of sunset burned. - -This personal identity of the human spirit with the spirit in (or of) -Nature, this personal sympathy with the poet’s _kin_ in wild Nature, and -this taking on as a body the matter and form of a tree or flower or bird -or other creature of Nature, and becoming vocal for them, and thus -uttering _their_ thoughts, and feelings, and emotions, is new in Nature -poetry, and original with Bliss Carman. It is not Greek; it is not -English; but it is Canadian and unique. It is Carman’s most notable -contribution to world poetry. - -This spiritual monism in Carman’s poetical attitude to Nature explains -the seemingly strange commingling of songs of pure delight in the beauty -and bounty of Nature and of joy in existence with poems which are the -expression of a poet who has ‘kept watch o’er man’s mortality.’ It -explains such contradictions as the joyousness of some poems and the -metaphysical questings of others in Carman’s From the _Green Book of the -Bards_ (1903). It explains, in particular, why Carman, who, when he -wishes, can surpass Roberts as a nature-colorist and whose poetry is -actually rich in idyllic impressionism, never seems to set out, with -conscious intent, to be a nature-colorist or word-painter for the sake -of sheer impressionism. No other Canadian poet can make or has made such -a brilliant use of primary colors or such an exquisite use of delicate -tints and evanescent play of light on color as has Bliss Carman. In all -his nature description or impressionism, Carman’s aim has been -two-fold—first, ‘to better the world with beauty,’ and to compel -appreciation of Nature wherever her sweet or solacing spirit abides, to -reveal the haunt where Nature affords spiritual communion and -refreshment. His aim, in short, is to have men go out and meet Mother -Nature. To effect this, not to show how flashily she is dressed, Carman -paints her face and garb sometimes brilliantly, sometimes with a -grey-eyed loveliness. Carman’s poetry of Nature is only Nature herself -‘calling’ to each vagabond to rise and go out to meet her, ‘wherever the -way may lead.’ This two-fold aim of Carman’s nature-painting or poetic -impressionism is compellingly expressed in _A Vagabond Song_:— - - There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood— - Touch of manner, hint of mood; - And my heart is like a rhyme, - With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. - - The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry - Of bugles going by. - And my lonely spirit thrills - To see the frosty asters on the hills. - - There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; - We must rise and follow her, - When from every hill of flame - She calls and calls each vagabond by name. - -The quiet or subdued call of Nature is winsomely uttered in _The -Deserted Pasture_ where - - The old gray rocks so friendly seem, - So durable and brave . . . - - There in the early springtime - The violets are blue, - And adder-tongues in coats of gold - Are garmented anew . . . - - And there October passes - In gorgeous livery,— - In purple ash and crimson oak, - And golden tulip-tree. - -Though the keynote of Carman’s poetry is Joy in the universe, he is no -mere hedonist. The beauty he loves is uranian, the Joy he aims to get -from Beauty and to share with the world through his poetry is -_spiritual_ joy. What he has always been sure of was that the -dissonances in the world and in existence were resolvable, but he -himself gradually had to resolve those dissonances, and win full and -complete joy in Nature, in Love, and in Religion. If we call him a -Philosophical Poet, we must do so only after we understand that his -belief in the supremacy of the Good or of God is intuitively derived. -Carman is not philosophical by virtue of having employed the faculty of -relational thinking for the attainment of his belief in the moral -meaning of life and the universe. He perceived Beauty in the world, and, -after much obfuscation of the immediate meaning of Beauty, Carman at -length perceived it as a symbol and pledge of the union of the Real and -the Ideal. Only in the sense that Beauty is a symbol of perfection does -Carman regard Nature as a symbol of God; and only in the sense that God, -like Beauty, can be directly or immediately perceived, is Carman a -mystical poet. If there is one thing of indubitable ill that science and -philosophy have accomplished, it is their dogmatizing that because -science and metaphysics with their categories cannot find out God as an -actuality, much less can the senses. The pseudo-mystics took science and -philosophy at their word, and said the only way to find God is by the -use of the religious imagination. Whereupon they so strained the -imaginative faculty to achieve what they called mystical union with God -that their mysticism only resulted in mystification. Science, with its -categories, only cast a veil over Truth, over the face of God. -Pseudo-mysticism only placed an opaque void between God and the Sons of -God called Men. - -It is because Carman was in his early manhood caught on the wheels of -agnostic science, transcendental metaphysics and pseudo-mysticism that -in his earlier poems this lover of Beauty sings entrancingly of Beauty -and winsomely paints her dwelling-places, but while doing this he also -mystifies his readers with regard to the meaning of his poetry. The -music is all accompaniment to something that Carman himself does not in -his own soul clearly understand. Hence the wistfulness and melancholia -observable in many of Carman’s earlier poems; hence his sad engagement -with the problem of death, as in _Pulvis et Umbra_ and _The -Eavesdropper_. - -Carman could not have written _Vestigia_ at that period. For that poem -is based on an immediate _sense_-intuition of God in Nature and in the -heart of Man. It was his gradual negation of the categories of science -and metaphysics and vacuous pseudo-mysticism, and an instinctive return -to an intuitive perception of the meaning of Beauty in Nature and Love -and Religion that cleared his vision, and gave him a sure and clear -understanding of the supremacy of the Good or God, and that thus won for -him triumphant spiritual Faith, Joy in existence, and Peace with God. -This is the true mysticism, the true union with God. - -It is an interesting excursion in spiritual history to trace Carman’s -gradual escape from ‘mystical mystification’ into the triumphant faith -of true, earth-born, sense-perceived mysticism, as in _Behind the Arras_ -(1895), _By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies_ (1898), _Last Songs -from Vagabondia_ (1901), _From the Book of Myths_ (1902), _From the Book -of Valentine_s (1905), and _Collected Poems_ (1904). It was a -‘mystified’ Carman who wrote _Pulvis et Umbra_. It was a truly mystical -Carman, possessed of a triumphant faith who a full twenty years -afterwards wrote _Te Deum_, the concluding verses of which follow:— - - So I will pass through the lovely world, and partake of beauty to feed - my soul. - With earth my domain and growth my portion, how should I sue for a - further dole? - In the lift I feel of immortal rapture, in the flying glimpse I gain - of truth, - Released is the passion that sought perfection, assuaged the ardor of - dreamful youth. - - The patience of time shall teach me courage, the strength of the sun - shall lend me poise. - I would give thanks for the autumn glory, for the teaching of earth - and all her joys. - Her fine fruition shall well suffice me; the air shall stir in my - veins like wine; - While the moment waits and the wonder deepens, my life shall merge - with the life divine. - -The immediate sense-perception of God through Beauty and the acceptance -of Beauty as a factual proof of the union of the Soul with Nature, of -the Real with the Ideal, and thus a proof of the supremacy of Good in -the universe—this is the formula of Carman’s philosophical ‘reading’ of -Nature and Existence. Always a poet of fine and assured artistry and of -lyrical eloquence and spiritual power, Bliss Carman stands alone amongst -Canadian poets as a verbal melodist, as a lyrist of love and the sea, -and as a mystical interpreter of the moral and spiritual meaning of -nature and existence. As an original verbal melodist and poetic -impressionist and as an unexampled creator of songs of the sea, Bliss -Carman has added significantly to English and to world poetry and to -him, therefore, we may apply the distinction Great. - - * * * * * - -Quotations in this chapter, with the exception of a few lines, are from -_Later Poems_, and from _Ballads and Lyrics_, by Bliss Carman, -(McClelland & Stewart: Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER X - - - Duncan Campbell Scott - - INFLUENCES ON HIS WORK—OLD WORLD CULTURE—AUSTERE INTELLECTUALISM - —MUSIC AND PAINTING—ASSOCIATION WITH LAMPMAN—SCOTT, CARMAN, AND - LAMPMAN COMPARED—INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH POETS—TECHNICAL - EXCELLENCIES—REVELATION OF THE INDIAN HEART—MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM. - -In the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott there is more and finer -expression of the pageantry of Nature in Canada and of the essential -Canadian spirit than in the verse of any other Canadian poet. But, -paradoxically, the genius and poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott are also -more informed with an Old World culture and art than are the genius and -verse of any other Canadian poet. Unless the reader and the critic of D. -C. Scott’s poetry first realize that the mind and art of the poet are a -product of Canada and of the Old World, a rare commingling of Canadian -and European cultures, they will fail to understand how he is at once -the least prolific and, to give him his outstanding distinction, the -most exquisite artist of Canadian poets, not excepting Lampman and Bliss -Carman. In his poem _Frost Magic_, Scott has written the formula of his -own exquisite artistry:— - - Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art. - -That line, however, rather distinguishes the characteristic excellence -of his poetry on the technical side. It does not disengage the quality -which makes him unique amongst Canadian poets. His _differentia_—the -quality or power which distinguishes his poetic genius and craftsmanship -from the mind and the art of all other Canadian poets—is Style. Duncan -Campbell Scott is the one Canadian poet of whose verse it may be said -that, after the manner of the English tradition, it possesses _Style_. -Lampman’s and Carman’s, Pauline Johnson’s and Marjorie Pickthall’s, -poetry each possess a style. But in their cases the style is imitable; -it is a _manner_, original or ingenious no doubt, but not an essential -and inevitable expression, of their poets’ minds or personalities. -Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry has style, quite as individualistic as -the others’, but it is an essential expression of his personality and -character, and is therefore inimitable, or like the man himself, is in -‘the grand manner’—which is not at all a manner but just that subtle -spiritual quality which distinguishes individuals in species. The genius -and poetry or art of Duncan Campbell Scott, then, impose on us a special -and somewhat recondite study in literary psychology. - -The key to Duncan Campbell Scott’s genius and poetry is this singular, -if not anomalous, spiritual fact that his Art always, corresponds with, -and never contradicts, his Thought and Life. In this ‘tri-unity’ of -complete ‘correspondence’ of Thought, Life, and Art, Scott’s analogue is -Matthew Arnold. The English poet was, above all things, the austere -intellectualist. So, too, Duncan Campbell Scott is the austere -intellectualist. But, unlike Arnold, Scott’s ‘austerities and -rejections’ are not those of the substance of poetry but of its temper -and technic. While it is true that Scott is the remorseless idealist as -man and active citizen, and while the light that chiefly plays on his -poetry is the ‘dry light’ of the intellect or imaginative reason, it is -equally true that in his heart there is the warm fire of love of -humanity and Nature and all the humanizing arts, and that the dry -intellectual light which most notably illumines his poetry is colored, -at times delicately or subtly, at times brilliantly, at other times -magically, with the substance and color of Nature in Canada and of -modern music and painting. As in the man and citizen, as in his Thought -and Life, there is a high plane of refined and serene vision, feeling, -and deed, so in his poetic Art and Style the outstanding qualities are -serene Dignity and exquisite Beauty. It is always a manly and refined -art; and its sensuous Beauty is made spiritual by sincerity, delicacy or -nobility of thought and by imaginative truth. Never in it is there -sentimentality, or vulgarity, but always _humane_ beauty and dignity -which derive from delicacy of spiritual vision and sincerity, and from -restraint in technical artistry. As an example of these excellences in -Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry—of its dignity and beauty, refinement -and restraint—we quote this surpassing compliment to woman’s spiritual -loveliness and charm, _Portrait of Mrs. Clarence Gagnon_ (from Scott’s -_Beauty and Life_):— - - Beauty is ambushed in the coils of her - Gold hair—honey from the silver comb - Drips and the clustered under-tone is warm - As beech leaves in November—the light slides there - Like minnows in a pool—slender and slow. - A glow is ever in her tangled eyes, - Surprise is settling in them, never to be caught; - Thought lies there lucent but unsolvable, - Her curved mouth is tremulous yet still, - Her will holds it in check; were it to sleep - One moment—that white guardian will of hers— - Words would brim over in a wild betrayal, - Fall sweet and tell the secret of her charm, - Harm would befall the world, Beauty would fly - Into the shy recesses of the wood— - Be seen no more of mortals, be a myth - Remembered by a few who might recall - A nerveless gesture, a frail color, a faint stress, - Some vestige of a vanished loveliness. - -This ‘strong and delicate art’ of Scott’s was itself the outcome of -years of training in delicate perception or visioning of Nature and the -human Spirit and in the practice of spiritual refinement and restraint -in art or technical craftsmanship; and also of assiduous cultivation in -the technical appreciation of modern music and painting. Born in 1862, -Duncan Campbell Scott did not publish verse till he was some years past -his majority, and did not publish his first book of poems till he was -thirty-one years of age (_The Magic House and Other Poems_, 1893). For -more than forty years he has been in the Civil Service of Canada, and -for some years has been Deputy Superintendent General (a title and -function equivalent to Deputy Minister) of the Department of Indian -Affairs of the Dominion. Archibald Lampman was a contemporary and a -close friend of Scott. Lampman was a student of the poetry of Keats and -much influenced by the verse of the English poet. In 1894 Scott married -an accomplished lady, who was a violin virtuoso. He had published -fugitive poems in magazines before 1893. (His poetry was later the -subject of a very complimentary critical appreciation by William Archer -in _Poets of the Younger Generation_). He had finished his academic -studies at the public schools and at Stanstead College by his -seventeenth year, and had then entered the Civil Service of Canada. So -that the three influences on his mind and art are, first, that which -began with his friendship with Lampman; secondly, his marriage with a -cultured musician, and, thirdly, his long tenure of office in the -Department of Indian Affairs of the Dominion of Canada. To his -association with Lampman, rather than to his teachers at school and -college, must be attributed his reading of the English poets and the -cultivation of poetic technics. It is not until after his marriage and -after his long association with certain Canadian painters that we find -in his poetry any ‘color’ from music and painting. His connection with -the Department of Indian Affairs resulted in those lyrics and legends -which have for themes the Indian, the French-Canadian, and the Beauty of -Nature. Lampman as co-student of the English poets, especially Keats or -the idyllic impressionists, and as a co-worker in creative poetry, -especially the poetry of Nature, was the most potent or subtle influence -on Scott. This, however, was an influence _ab extra_. The most important -_inner_ influence on Scott was his own intellectual rigorism and austere -respect for chaste or faultless craftsmanship. But for this rare virtue, -which was innate in him, Scott would or might have been a more prolific -poet, and might have been a close imitator of the English impressionists -or Lampman himself as a nature-poet, or of Bliss Carman as a lyrist of -Nature and of Love. - -There is no denying that Lampman had considerable influence, negative -and positive, on Scott, and that the negative influence was the more -important. At any rate, by choice Scott decided to be a poet who, while -caring as much for Nature as did Lampman and Carman, would care -supremely for refined perfection of technical artistry in his verse. It -is easy to observe the general differences between Lampman and Carman -and Scott in attitudes, and in methods of poetic conception. Lampman is -the more subjective, the more interested in his own emotions; Scott is -the more objective, disclosing a delight in the object for its own sake -or a philosophical interest in humanity and life. Lampman is the more -passionate; Scott the more restrained or austere (without being -ascetic). Lampman is the more sensuously luscious (though not always); -Scott the more lucid and luminously colorful. Carman is the more -naturalistically sensuous, and his pigmentation is limited to the -pageant of Spring and Autumn; Scott is the more imaginatively sensuous, -and paints every phase of the pageantry of Nature in the cycle of the -seasons of the whole year. Carman is more a melodist, basing his melody -on vowel-chime in words; Scott is more the musician, the technical -virtuoso—or, in other words, Carman _sings_ or _lilts_, like the lark; -Scott _performs_, like the violin or flute virtuoso, though each in his -way is as entrancingly lyrical. Carman is the more vernacular in -diction, employing considerably the actual speech of everyday life; -Scott is the more recondite, and therefore the more meaningful, in -diction—‘a word virtuoso.’ But it is not true to say, as has been said, -that Scott is a ‘poet’s poet.’ He is, when he aims to be, just as -lyrical, musical, colorful, and simple in diction as Lampman or Carman, -but he is also more delicate or chaste, more fanciful or imaginative, -more lucid or luminous, and always more subtle in diction and exquisite -craftsmanship. So that whenever Scott envisages or interprets Nature in -Canada and the essential spirit of Canada, more than any other -native-born poet he puts more of Canada in it and does it with a -singular and surpassing beauty of diction, imagery, music, color, and -general technical artistry. - -Thus, in outline, as regards the Canadian influences on Scott’s genius -and poetry. It is necessary also to note the influence of Old World -culture on his genius and art. For, like Bliss Carman’s, there is a -challenging quality in Scott’s poetry which compels favorable comparison -of it with the verse of English and United States poets of distinction. -But while influences of certain English poets are remarked, this does -not mean that Scott is derivative in inspiration or method of treatment, -but that the influence was either on his ideals of what poetry is or on -his meticulous practice of technical artistry in verse; or, in a phrase, -their influences have been those of inspiring him to distinction in -Style and Technic. In Scott’s noble monody in memory of his father, _In -the Country Churchyard_, the formal structure and the elegiac elevation -of thought fill the heart with a serene beauty which discloses the -influence of Gray. There is a distinct Wordsworthian spirit and flavor -to _Above St. Irénée_. A haunting beauty, which is of the quality of -Tennyson, pervades Scott’s title poem of his first volume, _The Magic -House_. Unmistakable is the influence of Rossetti on the form and -tone-color of Scott’s sonnet sequence, _In the House of Dreams_, but -there is enough of Scott’s own originality and ingenuity in inventing -Western-world metaphors and in vowel-melody and alliteration to -distinguish it as Scott’s or as Canadian or Western. The sonnet form is -Rossettian, the mediaeval atmosphere and setting are Pre-Raphaelite, as -are also the personages:— - - The Lady Lillian knelt upon the sward, - Between the arbor and the almond leaves; - Beyond the barley gathered into sheaves; - A blade of gladiolus, like a sword, - Flamed fierce against the gold; and down toward - The limpid west, a pallid poplar wove - A spell of shadow; through the meadow drove - A deep unbroken brook without a ford. - -The first line of the octave is, of course, Rossettian, but the fourth -line (‘A blade of gladiolus, like a sword’) is not only Western but the -phrase ‘like a sword’ is a common simile with Scott. In the sestet, -quite Western is the picture in the second and third lines:— - - On the soft grass a frosted serpent lay, - With oval spots of opal over all. - -The extraordinary ingenuity of the tone-unisons (not harmonies) in the -third line (‘With oval spots of opal over all’) must have struck the -fancy of the poet himself, because he repeats the very same vowel -unisons, thus turning art into artifice, in _Spring on Mattagami_ (from -_Via Borealis_, 1906, reprinted in _Lundy’s Lane and Other Poems_, -1916):— - - While like spray from the iridescent fountain, - Opal fires weave over all the oval of the lake. - -Quite Rossettian, at least in word-painting of fabrics and jewelry, is -Scott’s picture of the drowned lady in his poem _After a Night of Storm_ -(from _Beauty and Life_, 1921). It is here quoted, not only to show the -Rossettian influence, but also to furnish an example of how Scott works -as lovingly and as painstakingly as a lapidary at his technic:— - - After a night of storm, - They found her lovely form - They said she was a wondrous thing to see, - All dazzling in her bridal dress, - A miracle of foam and ivory. - Her satin gown was smoothened by the wave, - Her rippled ribbons, all her wandering laces - Set in their places. - Her hands were loosely clasped without a gem, - But clad with mitts of silken net. - Diamonds in the buckles of her shoon - All fairly set, - And one great brooch the color of the moon - Held her lace shawl. - A snood had slipped back from her hair, - Her face was piteous, so fair, so fair, - And gleaming small - Upon her breast there seemed to float - A wedding ring, - Threaded upon a crimson and green string - Around her throat. - -Surely there is the art of a poet who has lingered long in the studios -and ateliers, watching painters, lapidaries, and designers at work on -pigments, precious stones, and delicate fabrics! Again, whose influence -do we find or feel in certain parts of _Spring on Mattagami_ and _The -Anatomy of Melancholy_?—is it the influence of Keats or of Swinburne? -It might be either in these lines from _Spring on Mattagami_:— - - She would let me steal,—not consenting or denying— - One strong arm beneath her dusky hair, - She would let me bare, not resisting or complying, - One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair; - Then with the quick sob of passion’s shy endeavor - She would gather close and shudder and swoon away . . . - -But there is no mistaking the Swinburnian manner of imaginative color -and of alliterative and sensuous music in these lines from _The Anatomy -of Melancholy_ (from _Beauty and Life_):— - - Lifted the dragon-guarded lid—and lo! - Faint and uncertain, - _Frail rose-ghosts of rose-gardens all in blow_ - Haunted the room, - _The spangled dew, the shell-tints and the moonlight_ - Lived in the fume. . . . - -All the English poets mentioned were, however, not formative influences. -At best what seems imitations of the manner of Gray, Tennyson, Rossetti, -Keats, Swinburne are but recrudescences, quite unconscious and original, -in Scott’s poetry. Scott is a nature-colorist, or impressionist, verbal -musician and metrist, romanticist, and philosophical interpreter of -Nature and Life on his own account. The real formative influences in -Scott’s genius and art were the climate, atmosphere, seasons, and the -color and drama of varied Nature and Humanity, of Canada; his compatriot -poet of Nature, Lampman, and perhaps Carman, and these three English -poets, Browning, Arnold and Meredith; and, finally, his appreciation and -knowledge of the technic of music and painting. - -Considering his qualities as a verbal musician and metrist, we may note -that while Scott employs all the technical artifices of other Canadian -and English poets, such as vowel-melody and harmony, alliteration and -consonantal changes, beautiful measures and rhythms, he differs from his -compatriot poets by informing, as did Browning, the substance of his -poetry with an intimate use of the technical language of music, -allusions to musical literature, and the aesthetic values of music. The -texts of his poems show that he is acquainted technically with the music -of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, such romantic moderns as Raff and -MacDowell and such ultra-moderns as Debussy and Ravel. To anyone who has -heard Beethoven’s Fifth (C-minor) Symphony, how arresting and -emotionally impressive is the allusion to the principal motive of that -great work, in these lines from Scott’s _The Fragment of a Letter_!— - - Then quick upon the dark, like knocks of fate, - There fell three axe-strokes, and then clear, elate - Came back the echoes true to tune and time, - Three axe-strokes—rhythmed and matched in rhyme. - -Again: it is not poetical pedantry on Scott’s part when, in his elegiac -monody _On the Death of Claude Debussy_, he rhapsodizes the forms, -content, properties, color, and musical structure—‘the mood -pictures’—of Debussy’s opera _Pellèas et Mélisande_, his orchestral -prelude _L’Après-midi d’un Faune_, and his orchestral sketches _La Mer_. -No musical journalist or critic, writing in prose, has done this so -summarily and with such vividness and veracity as Scott has accomplished -it in twenty-five lines of trimeter and tetrameter unrhymed iambics and -trochaics. It is for the sake of illumination and the substance of true -poetry that Scott thus finely incorporates his knowledge of music into -the text of his poetry. And, as Browning made compelling use of the -technical language and meanings of musical structure, notably in his -_Abt Vogler_, so, in the Debussy monody, Scott twice finely affects the -spirit and illuminates the substance of his poem with such recondite -musical technology as:— - - And under all, the _pedal-point_ - Of the deep-bas(s)ed ocean, - Hidden under the mists, - Chanting, infinitely remote, - At the foot of enchanted cliffs. - Then with a turn of illumination, - An _enharmonic_ change of vision, - Death and Debussy - Become France and her heroes, - As if all her sacred heroes - Were in that one form, - Clasped in the bosom of France, - Enfolded with her ideals and aspirations. - -The felicity of the phrase ‘the pedal-point of the deep-bas(s)ed ocean’ -is apparent to anyone who is musically trained and who immediately hears -the sustained stationary bass of the sea reverberating while mingling -with its thunder are chords and progressions of wave plashings and wind -harmonies, all combining to make the sublime Symphony of the Sea. Still -more remarkable and illuminating is Scott’s use of the phrase ‘an -enharmonic change . . . . Death and Debussy.’ In music an enharmonic -change is but a change in notation of intervals and chords, the sound of -them remaining the same. And so how felicitous Scott’s use of ‘an -enharmonic change of vision!’—Death, Debussy (who died in the last year -of the late war), France, and her war heroes. These terms are all -synonymous of ‘one form,’ the spirit of France; there is only an -enharmonic change in notation or name. - -All this is, on Scott’s part, a brilliant and—as far as Canadian poetry -is concerned—a unique achievement in incorporating musical ideas and -essences and technics to color, illuminate, and enhance poetic meanings. -But Scott surpasses himself in this matter, creating something really -unique in poetic literature, in his _Variations on a Seventeenth Century -Theme_. It is the most ingeniously conceived poem, if not in English -poetry, at least in continental American poetry; and it is a signal -illustration of that Old World culture which was remarked as part of the -challenging quality in Scott’s poetry. The poem is ‘programmatic’ in -scheme, comprising ten sections which are ‘free variations’ on a Nature -theme (the yellow of the primrose), inspired by two lines from Henry -Vaughan (17th century):— - - It was high spring, and all the way - Primrosed, and hung with shade. - -The ten sections or ‘variations’ or ‘movements’ of the poem are such -niceties in imitation of the forms of music that they should be properly -indicated with form or tempi nomenclature, inasmuch as the poet has not -done this at the head of each section or ‘variation.’ Variation I is a -Prelude (in the old style), the diction of which is Chaucerian or early -15th century English. Variation II is a triple-time Vivace movement (old -form of the Scherzo)—a fetching bit of lively ballad-song. Variation -III is a Largo movement, noble and impressive. A short Nocturne follows -in Variation IV, which is succeeded by a movement that may be styled -Dramatico, a short poignant ‘play within a play,’ dealing with the -tragedy of romantic love. Variation VI is an Intermezzo, a contrasting -change on ‘Youth is a blossom yellow at the edge.’ Variation VII is a -Funeral March for fairies, and is fairy-like in imagery and music. By -itself it is as pretty and winning a poem for children as any in our -language:— - - For dead fairies go nowhere, - Leaving nothing in the air. - - Their clear bodies are all through - Made of shadow, mixed with dew. - - When they change their fairy state, - They, like dew, evaporate. - - But we fairies that remain, - The dead fairy’s funeral feign, - - Place within a shepherd’s purse - Primrose pollen; for a hearse - - Lady-birds we harness up - To an empty acorn cup. - - This we bury, deep in moss:— - Then we mourn our grievous loss, - - Mourn with music, piercing thin, - Cricket with his mandolin, - - Many a hautboy, many a flute, - Played by them you fancy mute . . . . - -Variation VIII is a very human Burlesca—a ‘_genre_ picture’ of the -comedy of life in Old London, with the ‘motive’ of a socially outcast -old woman looking at pots of primroses, labelled ‘Only a quarter,’ and -fingering a coin, trying to decide whether to buy primroses or spend it -on beer for herself and ‘dear old Jerry.’ The pathos of its realism is -relieved by the piquancy of the spiritual portrait of the outcast old -woman, in whose soul there is still a fine redeeming loyalty to a real -heart-love. Variation IX is a Folk Song in the manner of Burns. It is -followed by a Finale, which returns to the Vaughan theme, and closes -with its couplet. The Finale is ennobled with tender reflections or -philosophical interpretations of the drama of earth and existence, in -which Scott beautifully maintains and expresses Serene Faith in the -permanence of Beauty and Love. From this magnificent and genuinely -unique poem, we quote Variation IX, as an example of Scott’s gifts as a -song-writer. If it is in the manner of Burns or an imitation of one of -his best-known songs, it is as informed also with the spirit of Herrick, -but it is melodious, by vowel-music, alliteration, and rhythm, in a way -which was not in the power of Herrick or Burns:— - - My Love is like the primrose light - That springs up with the morn, - My Love is like the early night - Before the stars are born. - - My Love is like the shine and shade - That ripple on the wood, - (The shadow is her dark green plaid, - The light her silver snood). - - They never meet with eager lips, - And mingle in their mirth, - They only touch their finger-tips, - And circle round the earth. - - My Love’s so pure, so winsome-sweet, - So dancing with delight, - That I shall love her till they meet, - And all the world is night. - -In that song-lyric we find Scott’s characteristic dignity and beauty. -But fine and beautiful as it all is, the music of it is not the -_natural_ melodiousness of Herrick or Burns, of the lark or linnet, but -the music of the adroit technical musician who is a ready master of all -the resources of modern versification and metrics. - -As regards these technical resources of verbal melody and -music—vowel—‘tone-color’ and harmonies, alliteration, assonance, -rhythm of line and stanza and other metrical structure, and even what is -called in music as such ’suspension’—Scott challenges the art of Keats, -Tennyson, Swinburne, Arnold, and the Laureate, Sir Robert Bridges. In -one instance, Scott has made the most happy and ingenious use of what -musicians call ‘chord suspension’—that is, the retaining in any chord -some notes (or tones) of the preceding chord. Scott achieves it finely -in this cadence:— - - With the thrushes fluting _deep, deep_, - _Deep_ on the pine-wood hill. - -This effect of ‘suspension’ in verbal music is not new in poetry, but it -is infrequent in the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon people. A melodious -example is the opening stanza from Collins’ _Ode to Evening_:— - - If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, - May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, - Like thy own solemn _springs_, - _Thy springs_, and dying gales. - -With Collins the ‘suspension’ is an artifice rather than an inspiration. -With Scott, it is, in the example instanced, an inspiration. No other -modern poet, certainly no other Canadian or American poet, has Scott’s -gift of verbally phrasing, with the utmost concreteness, imitative -realism, and charm the ‘notes’ of bird songs and their meaning. In the -cadence quoted, the effect of the ‘suspension’—‘deep, deep, deep’—is a -happy realistic imitation of the tone-color of the thrush’s flute-like -notes, and the triple reiteration affects the imagination with that -charm which we distinguish as ‘haunting.’ Carman has not this gift of -concreting bird-songs. Carman uses only the general epithet. One bird -simply ‘whistles;’ another ‘flutes.’ Carman would have written the lines -quoted from Scott not only without ‘suspension’ but also without any -concrete, realistic imitation of the thrush’s notes and suspensions, -thus:— - - With the thrush’s fluting - On the pine-wood hill. - -Scott not only makes a masterly and felicitous use of concrete -tone-color epithets in phrasing the songs of birds, but he also knows -how important and eloquent in music as such, as well as in the songs of -birds, are pauses or silences, and uses this appreciation of silences -exquisitely. Scott’s artistry in both these respects is finely shown in -these lines:— - - Hidden above there, half asleep, a thrush - Spoke a few _silver words upon the hush_— - _Then paused self-charmed to silence_. - -Scott, in truth, on the side of exquisite realistic concretion of the -notes and cadences of bird-songs, has the ear of a _naturalist_—and a -better ear than Thoreau or Burroughs. Scott is the ‘bird-musician’ _par -excellence_. Witness the naturalist’s exquisite ear for concrete realism -in these lines:— - - She would hear the partridge drumming in the distance, - Rolling out his _mimic thunder_ in the sultry noons; - Hear beyond the silver reach in _ringing wild persistence_ - Reel remote the _ululating laughter_ of the loons. - -Carman would have stopped with the general word ‘drumming’ in the phrase -‘hear the partridge drumming’—not so Scott; he must realistically -concrete the reverberance of the drumming in the phrase ‘rolling out his -mimic thunder.’ And what realistic concretion is in the phrases ‘in -ringing wild persistence,’ and ‘ululating laughter!’ Carman half hears. -Scott hears with the ear of the naturalist _and_ the musician. - -Again, only the ear of the naturalist and the musician in Scott could -have so exquisitely, veraciously, concreted the ‘note’ of the -white-throat sparrow and the lovely cadences of the vireo as in these -lines:— - - While the white-throat never-resting, - Even in the deepest night _rings his crystal bell_. - -And:— - - A vireo turns his _slow_ - _Cadence_, as if he gloated - Over the last phrase he floated; - Each one he moulds and mellows - _Matching it with his fellows_: - So have you noted - How the oboe croons, - The canary-throated, - In the gloom of the violoncellos - And bassoons. - -Scott knows the ‘voices’ of instruments as intimately as those of birds -and other feathered wild creatures. How finely he combines a concrete -use of his two-fold musical knowledge in this respect in the following -ingenious and original bit of verbal instrumentation:— - - And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl - _Puff at his velvet horn_. - -The reader must be a naturalist and, as well, have been a bandsman or -orchestral instrumentalist to feel the felicitous realism and -descriptive exactitude of Scott’s art, or rather inspiration, in -inventing that figure of the owl as a musician. The humor of it also is -exquisite. - -Scott surpasses all other Canadian poets in a genius for inventing -single and double terminal rhymes, and he excels in this gift, without -ever dropping to impossible or bizarre rhymes, except when the comedy of -life in a subject naturally requires the use of a vulgarism as in this -couplet from the Burlesca movement (VIII) of _Variations on a -Seventeenth Century Theme_:— - - But I keeps my quarter, - Though—perhaps I’d orter. - -As ready and expert as Carman with such other musical resources as -vowel-melody and harmony, assonance, consonantal tone-color and -alliteration, Scott is more lyrically melodious than even Carman. -Melodiousness—dulcet melody of combined vowel and consonant and -rhythm—is the supreme musical quality of Scott’s poetry. Not Tennyson -nor Swinburne have surpassed the melodiousness of this stanza from -Scott’s _The Lover to His Lass_:— - - Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet, - Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight, - Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot - See her for the garments of the light and the night. - -Matching the melodiousness of Scott’s poetry is its inimitable -‘color-music,’ a combination of sensuous color and alliteration, which -quite rivals Swinburne. Scott’s poetry indeed abounds in the most -ingenious and sensuously musical alliterative lines in Canadian verse. -Outstanding examples are these:— - - One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair. - • • • • - Dark with sordid passion, pale with wringing pain. - • • • • - Shall find amid the ferns the perfect flower. - • • • • - With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow. - • • • • - The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns. - • • • • - Rubies, pale as dew-ponds stained with slaughter. - • • • • - See Aldebaran like a red rose clamber. - • • • • - The long, ripe rippling of the grain. - • • • • - Flush and form, honey and hue. - • • • • - Still pools of sunlight shimmering in the sea. - • • • • - Languorously floating by the lotus leaves. - • • • • - Frail rose-ghosts of rose-gardens all in blow. - -Such magical melody and color are not artifice or even art with Scott. -It is all an inspiration, clear spontaneity of genius. If it were -artifice or art it would be confined to mere phrases or lines; but Scott -as readily and as magically fills stanzas with the same magical melody -and color as in _The Voice and The Dusk_:— - - The slender moon and one pale star, - A rose-leaf and a silver bee - From some fool’s garden blown afar, - Go down the gold deep tranquilly. - -There is a sylvan _earthly_ music in the poetry of Carman, Pauline -Johnson, and Marjorie Pickthall. But the music of Duncan Campbell -Scott’s poetry is the melody of a fairy fantasy, an _unearthly_ lyrical -melody suffused with color which is imaginative rather than earth-born. -Yet its vowel and alliterative melody, rhythmical refinement, and -translucent or sensuous color are never unreal but only serve to -etherealize real experience, to transport us with exquisite sensation of -ineffable, unimagined beauty. To figure him under the title of one of -his own most melodious and romantically imaginative poems, Duncan -Campbell Scott is _The Piper of Arll_—and, like Debussy, regales us -with:— - - The complaint of the wind - In the plane-trees, - The far away pulse of a horn, - Ripples of fairy color, - Rhythms of Spain, - The overtones of cymbals, - The sobs of tormented souls, - Cries of delight and their echoes . . . . - Fauns’ eyes in the vapor, - Flutes of Dionysus, - Haunting his ruined fane, - Veils of rain, quenching the tulip gardens, - Sea-light at the roots of islands . . . . - And under all, the pedal-point - Of the deep based ocean, - Hidden under mists, - Chanting, infinitely remote, - At the foot of enchanted cliffs. - -It is a question difficult of settlement whether Duncan Campbell Scott -is greater as a verbal colorist and nature-painter than as a melodist. -But there can be no doubt that as a verbal colorist and nature-painter -he has the eye both of the naturalist _and_ the impressionist. And it is -indubitable that as a colorist or impressionist he has put more of the -pageantry of Nature in Canada into his poetry than has even Bliss -Carman. All the Canadian seasons are in it, and every phase of the -light, color, and sound of the Canadian year is in it—done by ready, -flexible, graphic stroke or exquisite touch, in rich or luminous and -translucent coloring, with romantic eye and fantasy, and with singular -ingenuity and power. It must be confessed that there is a seeming -display of musical theory and technics, of musical learning, which -almost savors of pedantry, in those of Scott’s poems which contain -musical thought and imagery. This would be sophistication, were Scott -not sincere and did he not sincerely use it all to enhance the poetic -effect of his verse on the tonal sensibilities and the imagination. But -there is no sophistication, no mere display of knowledge of pigments and -the technic of painting in his work as a verbal colorist. He is a -word-painter, a nature-colorist, an impressionist,—by innate genius. As -a matter of fact, too, almost all his verbal melody is associated with -color. So that, by genius rather than by art, Duncan Campbell Scott may -be regarded as the supreme verbal colorist amongst Canadian poets. He is -this for three reasons—inclusiveness of the seasons and phases of -Nature in Canada, magic of pigmentation, and novelty and imaginative -power of coloring and description. - -If the poems of Scott abound in arresting and compelling phrases, lines, -and stanzas of alliterative beauty, the number of brilliant and luminous -color phrases, lines, and whole stanzas in his poems is astounding. The -following will serve in illustration:— - - Bright as a sun spot in a globe of dew. - • • • • - The leaves dry up as pale as honeycomb. - • • • • - Or peacock tints on pools of amber gloom. - • • • • - Like the curve of a fragile ivory hand. - • • • • - the light slides there - Like minnows in a pool—slender and slow. - • • • • - Blown on a gold black flute. - • • • • - A miracle of foam and ivory. - • • • • - In loops of silver light. - • • • • - The gold moted wood-pools pellucid as her eyen. - • • • • - Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows. - • • • • - Tawny like pure honey. - • • • • - Fragile as frost pansies. - • • • • - Rubies, pale as dew ponds stained with slaughter. - -How luminous, translucent, yet graphic and vivid, are all those colorful -lines. They are the ‘painting’ of a poet who has, above all things, the -eye of the naturalist and also a fairy fantasy. If in those lines we -find in Scott a genius for exquisite and translucent verbal coloring, -corresponding to the art of Constable or Corot in imaginative vision or -fantasy, we discover the romantic pigmentation of Rossetti (as a -painter) and the rich luminous impressionism of Monet, in the lines -following the final apostrophe to Beauty in Scott’s noble _Ode for the -Keats’ Centenary_:— - - For Beauty has taken refuge from our life - That grew too loud and wounding . . . - Beauty is gone, (Oh, where?) - To dwell within a precinct of pure air - Where moments turn to months of solitude; - To live on roots of fern and tips of fern, - On tender berries flushed with the earth’s blood. - Beauty shall stain her feet with moss - And dye her cheek with deep nut-juices - Laving her hands in the pure sluices - Where rainbows are dissolved. - Beauty shall view herself in pools of amber sheen - Dampened with peacock-tints from the green screen - That mingles liquid light with liquid shadow. - -It is not necessary to illustrate the variety of Scott’s pigmentation. -That is as remarkable as its luminous beauty. What is most compelling in -his Nature-painting is the unique ingenuity, power, and romantic beauty -of his color phrases, metaphors, and similes. The naturalistic and -imaginative intensity of them is a poetic phenomenon by itself. Consider -these phrases: ‘Sun, like a gold sword,’ ‘A blade of gladiolus, like a -sword,’ ‘A burning pool of scent and heat,’ ‘Within the windless deeps -of memory,’ ‘Bent like a shield between the silver seas,’ ‘With gulfs of -blue and summits of rosy snow.’ Consider also these lines:— - - The west unrolled a feathery wind. - • • • • - The poignard lightning searched the air. - • • • • - Stars like wood daffodils grow golden in the night. - • • • • - and dawn - Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces; - -and, finally, consider the compelling romantic fantasy of color and -simile in this stanza from _The Piper of Arll_:— - - There were three pines above the cone - That, when the sun flared and went down, - _Grew like three warriors reaving home_ - _The plunder of a burning town_. - -It was said that there is more of Canada in the poetry of Duncan -Campbell Scott than in the verse of any other Canadian poet. So far this -appears to be true of Scott’s painting of Nature in Canada. Scott, it -must be observed, is a Nature _painter_, never a Nature _interpreter_, -as were Lampman and Carman. Yet there is in Scott’s poetry a decided -interpretative or philosophical element. It is on the side of his -philosophical poetry that Scott’s verse contains more of the Canadian -_spirit_ than does the verse of any other Canadian poet. As a -philosophical poet Scott is, first, an interpreter of humanity and life -in Canada—and his interpretations possess highly novel distinction and -spiritual import. His philosophical poetry is contained in three -volumes, _Labor and the Angel_ (1898), _New World Lyrics and Ballads_ -(1905), and _Via Borealis_ (1906). - -In his _New World Lyrics and Ballads_, Scott aims to reveal the kind of -mind or thought which the strange humanity of the Northwest in -Canada—the Indian heart in the wild North of Canada—contains. In the -volume Indian themes predominate, and the so called Ballads are more -aptly named Legends, because Scott’s Ballads are art and the product of -a reflective mind _thinking into_ Indian mind the thoughts of a -civilized man, whereas the genuine Ballad is a spontaneous story told in -simple verse. Moreover, Scott’s genius is lyrical; but in these so -called Ballads he attempts dramatic situation and emotion. It all lands -him in recondite psychological symbolism, as, for instance, in _The -Mission of the Trees_ or in _The Forsaken_, which is later attempted in -_The Half-Breed Girl_ (from _Via Borealis_), a striking essay in Indian -introspection. What we get from these poems is Scott’s perception and -revealment of spiritual Beauty in loneliness—his half-mystical -intuition that the spirit in civilized man, in the Indian soul, and in -Nature everywhere is one and the same spirit, and that civilization has -only resulted in veiling the face of God and in separating his creatures -from one another and from the Creator. - -This vague mystical intuition of the mystery and yet identity of spirit -in man and Nature is beautifully, perhaps too sensuously, envisaged in -Scott’s _Spring on Mattagami_ (from _Via Borealis_). This poem is -seductively musical and highly impressionistic, but shows the influence -of Meredith (_Love in a Wilderness_) in its interpretation of the -conflict of Love and Law in the universe. What counts and solaces, -however, is the Vision or Light of a higher Love and a deeper Law that -lie behind the seemingly meaningless conflict of the visible love and -law. After all, the poet, like the rest of mortals, can only ‘trust’ in -the supremacy of Good in the universe:— - - Vaster than the world or life or death my _trust_ is - Based in the unseen and towering far above. - Hold me, O Law, that deeper lies than Justice, - Guide me, O Light, that stronger burns than Love. - -This abstract mystical symbolism is Old World, not Canadian, not Scott’s -own philosophy of the spirit for the Canadian spirit. His own is found -in his poem _Labor and the Angel_. It is original and noble in -conception; and, consistently with its serious didactic purpose and -ideas, or symbolism, its diction is vernacular, its form and rhythm are -suited to plain narrative; and the whole is devoid of Scott’s luxuriant -color and sensuous melody. It is a dramatic poem in the sense that it is -designed to affect the heart and the imagination with dramatic force and -truth. As a criticism of life in the Arnoldian sense, we see in the poem -the influence of Matthew Arnold. But its thought and style show more -notably the influence of Browning and Meredith, especially in its -syntactical ellipses, bald and abrupt lines. - -In its way, _Labor and the Angel_ is as finely and as impressively -achieved as Tennyson’s _Princess_. It answers a question which is -particularly pertinent to Canada where work—the gaining of material -subsistence—necessarily is paramount, because inevitable and pressing. -As with Browning, so with Scott, Woman is man’s life-star and -inspiration. In the poem _Labor and the Angel_, the Man and the Girl are -common humanity, but the Girl, who is also the Angel of Labor, is the -man’s companion and helpmate:— - - Down on the sodden field - A blind man is gathering his roots, - Guided and led by a girl; - Her golden hair blows in the wind, - Her garments, with flutter and furl, - Leap like a flag in the sun; - And whenever he stoops, she stoops, - And they heap up the dark colored beets - In the barrow, row upon row. - -Labor, the kind which is mere toil and drudgery, is without meaning and -unspiritual. But Woman was designed by God as the power which shall -inspire men to spirituality in all things. As Man, every man would be -‘blind’ and purposeless and futile. But as Man, companioned and inspired -by Woman and idealizing labor for the end of her companionship and love -and the spiritual fruits of that love, every man, who is obedient to the -ideal, transmutes the lowliest labor into spiritual purpose, meaning and -result:— - - She offers no tantalus cup - To the shrunken, the desperate lips, - But she calms them with lethe and love - And deadens the throb and the pain. - For Labor is always blind, - Unless as the light of the deed - The Angel is smiling behind. - ‘Effort and effort,’ she cries, - ‘Up with the lark and the dew, - Still with the dew and the stars, - This is the heart beat of life, - Feel it athrob in the earth.’ - -Man and Labor, Woman and Love as the star and inspiration of man in all -his work—what nobler dignity could any poet give to Woman, and what -other consolation of philosophy could he conceive and sing that would, -as it does, for men more surely - - Make mortal flesh seem light and temporal! - -_Labor and the Angel_ is unique amongst poems by Canadians, and its -noble philosophy of the spirit challenges poems of similar quality by -Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, and Emerson. - -Duncan Campbell Scott—austere intellectualist, superb verbal musician, -luminous Nature-painter, and impeccable technical virtuoso of verse -amongst Canadian poets—it is by him that we are also given in _The -Height of Land_ the finest expression of the true spiritual mysticism, -the immediate perception of God—an intuition in which Life appears - - As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock: - A Something to be guided by ideals— - That in themselves are simple and serene - Of noble deed to foster noble thought, - And noble thought to image noble deed, - Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate, - Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt - Whether the perfect beauty that escapes - Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing - Mingled of both, a greater boon than either: - Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest - The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain, - And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow. - -Seek we in the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott for the choice and -ineluctable goods of the spirit,—music, color, high thought and serene -philosophy—and we shall always be rewarded with Beauty ‘golden and -inappellable.’ - - * * * * * - -The quotations in this chapter are chiefly from _Beauty and Life_, by -Duncan Campbell Scott, (McClelland & Stewart). - - - - - CHAPTER XI - - - Wilfred Campbell - - AS AN OBJECTIVE NATURE PAINTER—HUMANIZED SUBSTANCE OF HIS VERSE— - PATRIOTISM AND BROTHERHOOD—DRAMATIC MONODY—POETICAL TRAGEDIES - AND DRAMAS. - -In the early nineties of the last century three young Canadian poets, -who were employed in the Civil Service Departments at Ottawa, were -closely associated in a systematic way as men of letters. They were -Wilfred Campbell, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. In the -Toronto _Globe_ they conducted a department of literary criticism and -‘causerie’ under the caption ‘The Mermaid Inn.’ Oddly, these three young -Canadian men of letters were singularly dissimilar in poetic -temperament, attitudes, vision, and ideals. As a poet Lampman was an -interpreter of the inner meaning of the beauty and moods of Nature. He -and Nature communed with each other by reciprocal sympathy, and he cared -greatly for style and craftsmanship in poetry. Duncan Campbell Scott -loved beauty for its own sake as a spiritual delight or source of -ecstasy, but perfection of form, style, artistry—‘art for art’s -sake’—pre-empted all other considerations in poetry. Wilfred Campbell -occupied a middle ground. He was an objective Nature-painter, with -tendencies to be more interested in Nature as a habitat or background of -the human spirit which had come from God and was going to God. He was -solicitous about form and imagery, color and melody in poetry, but for -him these were always a means to an end, never a mere end in themselves. -Or, harking back to influences, we may say that Lampman wrote poetry -with the eye and the spirit of Keats and Wordsworth; Scott with the eye -of Matthew Arnold for naturalistic and moral beauty and chaste artistry; -and Campbell in the spirit of Longfellow and Emerson, and, sometimes, of -Tennyson. - -With Campbell it was the substance or matter,—the ideas, thought, and -meanings for the spirit—not the formal elements or manner of poetry, -that counted for most. It is the substance of poetry, its meanings for -the spirit, that counts always for most with the people. For this -reason, though Campbell is not the greatest of the poets of the first -Systematic School, he is, and will remain, as he has been called, ‘the -poet of the people’s choice.’ - -A distinct evolution—and advance in vision—from objective -nature-painting of the spirit can be observed in the successive volumes -of Campbell’s verse. Naturally, until he had reflected on his aims as a -poet, he did not announce his poetic creed in his first volume of verse. -He did this in his fourth volume, _Collected Poems_ (1905) in his poem -_Higher Kinship_:— - - There is a time at middle summer, when, - In weariness of all this saddening world, - _The simple nature aspects seem to me_ - _As a close kindred_, sweet and kind and true, - _Giving me peace and comfort, and a joy_ - _Not of the senses, but of the inward soul_. - - The restful day, the sunny leaf and wind, - The path of blue like windows shining down, - _Do give to life a beauty and a calm_ - _And a sweet sadness, that this mighty world_ - _And all its myriad triumphs cannot give_. - - O let me live with Nature at her door, - And taste her home-brewed pleasures, simple, glad,— - The beauty of the day, the splendor of the night,— - Not in the great palace halls, great cloister domes, - The smoke of cities and the thronging din, - But out with air and woodlands, shining sun,— - These my companions, this my roof, my home! - -‘Not of the senses’—Campbell is not a lover of impressionism for its -own sake, but he loves the simple, colorful aspects of Nature for the -joy, comfort and peace which they give to ‘_the inward soul_.’ He has -his equals as an impressionistic colorist, but he is supreme when he -paints a phenomenon or aspect of Nature in monotone or in subdued tones -as in pastel, or when he etches a scene with a Whistler-like feeling for -atmosphere, shadow, and chiaroscuro, and for line. In 1888, when he was -in his twenty-seventh year, Campbell published a booklet of twenty -lyrics, _Snowflakes and Sunbeams_. In these first lyrics he disclosed -the eye of monotonist and etcher for the beauty of Nature. The verse in -this rare little volume is marked, too, by a grace and melody which -enhance the pictures. What but a ‘symphony in white’ is his _Snow_— - - Folding the forest. - Folding the farms, - In a mantle of white, - And the river’s great arms, - Kissed by the chill night - From clamor to rest, - Lie all white and shrouded - Upon the world’s breast. - -Thus, through several stanzas, he paints Nature in white, seemingly for -the joy of the senses but really for ‘the inward soul.’ For a moment he -obtrudes the ‘message’ which the snow conveys to the moral imagination— - - Falling so slowly - Down from above, - So white, hushed and holy, - Folding the city - Like the great pity - Of God in his love; - Sent down out of heaven, - On its sorrow and crime, - Blotting them, folding them - Under its rime. - -Beautiful as an original image is the thought of the snow descending -hushed and holy, ‘like the great pity of God in his love,’ but it is a -sentimental obtrusion, out of character with the snow-picture as such. -We find Campbell frequently creating the most engaging Nature pictures, -and here or there in a poem recalling the eye from the pure visual -delights to let the moral imagination reflect on some suggestion, some -similitude, for ‘the inward soul.’ What a pretty pastel, for instance, -he paints with spare use of mere tints, in the first two stanzas of _In -the Study_:— - - Out over my study, - All ashen and ruddy - Sinks the December sun, - And high up over - The chimney’s soot cover - The winter night has begun. - - Here in the red embers - I dream old Decembers, - Until the low moan of the blast, - Like a voice out of Ghost-land, - Or memory’s lost-land, - Seems to conjure up wraiths from the past. - -But Campbell does not continue the strict painting of the objective -picture. He introduces something ‘for the inward soul,’ as he does, in -the concluding stanza:— - - Then into the room - Through the firelight and gloom, - Some one steals,—let the night wind grow bleak, - And ever so coldly,— - Two white arms enfold me, - And a sweet face is close to my cheek. - -This is not a fault in Campbell’s poetry. It is an essential part of his -art. As in Longfellow, so in Campbell the _humanized substance_ of his -verse is consciously designed for the popular heart, and ensures popular -acceptance. Campbell would rather do this than to write always for art’s -sake, as in these sheer pictorial stanzas from _A Winter’s Night_:— - - Shadowy white, - Over the fields are the sleeping fences, - Silent and still in the fading light, - As the wintry night commences. - • • • • - _Calm sleeping night_ - _Whose jewelled couch reflects the million stars_ - That murmur silent music in their flight. . . . - -Yet, he can employ delineative line with swift and sure artistry just to -make a picture for its own sake, disclosing absolute mastery in economy -of means, as in his _Rododactulos_:— - - The night blows outward in a mist, - And all the world the sun has kissed. - - Along a golden rim of sky, - A thousand snow-piled vapors lie. - - And by the wood and mist-clad stream, - _The Maiden Morn stands still to dream_. - -That is an exquisite bit of naturalistic etching with a poetic meaning -intrinsically in the picture of the Maiden Morn standing and dreaming in -the mist. The picture itself delights both the visual faculty and the -imagination. Campbell also possessed the faculty of painting vividly, as -with a single sweep of the brush, as in his _Lake Huron_ (in October) -and its memorable lines:— - - Miles and miles of lake and forest, - Miles and miles of sky and mist; - -and these still more vivid lines:— - - Miles and miles of crimson glories, - Autumn’s wondrous fires ablaze. - -Campbell did not aim or strive to be a word-virtuoso. But what he could -achieve as an artist was to make at will a dainty or a glorious -_picture_, and so _localize_ the picture that one can immediately tell -which section of the Canadian land or waters is delineated. He surpassed -all his contemporaries in the gift of ‘flashing’ a vivid picture in a -single line, as, for instance:— - - The stars came out in _gleaming shoals_ - -or this tremendous line:— - - Where wrinkled suns in awful blackness swim. - -The last line quoted also discloses in Campbell a power which is not in -any other Canadian poet—the Miltonic power of conveying by description -ideated sensations of unending space and movement. Matching almost any -piece of sheer description of immensity by Milton is Campbell’s -compelling panorama of Lazarus in his flight from Heaven to Hell and the -sensations of illimitable depths downward that it creates in the reader, -as in these stanzas from his poem _Lazarus_:— - - Hellward he moved, like a radiant star shot out - From heaven’s blue with rain of gold at even, - When Orion’s train and that mysterious seven - Move on in mystic range from heaven to heaven. - Hellward he sank, followed by radiant rout. - - The liquid floor of heaven bore him up - With unseen arms, as in his feathery flight - He floated down toward the infinite night; - But each way downward, on the left and right, - He saw each moon of heaven like a cup - - Of liquid, misty fire that shone afar - From sentinel towers of heaven’s battlements; - But onward, winged by love’s desire intense, - He sank, space-swallowed, into the immense, - While with him ever widened heaven’s bar. - - ’Tis ages now long-gone since he went out, - Christ-urged, love-driven, across the jasper walls. - But hellward still he ever floats and falls, - And ever nearer come those anguished calls; - And far behind he hears a glorious shout. - -Campbell had a gift, too, for vivid color epithets and for vowel and -alliterative word-melody. Indeed he was a master of color and verbal -melody. Some of his more original and striking alliterative lines are:— - - Flooding the silence in a silvern dream. - • • • • - Low flutes the lake along the lustrous sedge. - • • • • - But dawns and sunsets fell on mute dead faces. - • • • • - Belled with bees, a pollened bevy. - • • • • - Out of the murmurous moods of your multitudinous mind. - • • • • - Dim mists of darkness rise from marsh and mere. - • • • • - The waking world leaps to the day’s desire. - • • • • - The harmonies that float and melt afar. - • • • • - Deep-sounding and surgent, the armies of storm sweep by. - • • • • - -None of Campbell’s contemporaries surpassed him in painting a simple but -vivid _genre_ picture, and enhancing it with verbal melody, as he does, -for instance, in his _Canadian Folksong_, beginning:— - - The doors are shut, the windows fast; - Outside the gust is driving past, - Outside the shivering ivy clings, - While on the hob the kettle sings; - ‘Margery, Margery, make the tea,’ - Singeth the kettle merrily. - -As a poet of humane patriotism, which has regard for international or -world relations, and which is not mere ‘drum and trumpet’ patriotism, -Campbell stands in a class by himself. He had a Keltic love of place or -home. It was a passion with him, but the passion embraced the -Anglo-Saxon peoples. So that his patriotic poetry contains a large -element of the ideal of Anglo-Saxon unity and of the imperialistic -destiny of the British peoples. Thus we find him singing with equal -warmth of Scotland, the homeland of his ancestors (as in _The -World-Mother_), of England (as in his _To England_), of the United -States (as in his _To the United States_), and of Canada, his homeland -(as in _Canada_.) - -A sincere and profound sense and love of brotherhood is the key-note of -his patriotic poetry. There is no magniloquent bombast in it, whereas it -must be admitted that Roberts’ _Canada_ and his _Ode to the Confederacy_ -have at least an air of pomp of words which sound like mere -magniloquence or bombast. But there is in Campbell’s _Canada_ a sincere -sense of history, of historical background and heroic origins, as well -as of a people whom the vastness of their habitat should impel to a -great and noble destiny. Besides, Campbell sings of the homeland in -simple octameter couplets, the very simplicity of which impresses the -spirit with a deep sense of truth and reality. The poem, with a slight -change or two for choral singing would, if set to dignified and sonorous -music, be fitted to be an inspiring and inspiriting National Hymn. It is -a colorful, lyrical poem, a Song, suffused with the qualities of the -Canadian spirit and the beauties of the Canadian habitat. We quote a few -excerpts:— - - O land, by every gift of God - Brave home of freedom, let thy sod - - Sacred with blood of hero sires, - Spurn from its breast ignobler fires. - - Keep on these shores where beauty reigns, - And vastness folds from peak to plains, - - With room for all from hills to sea, - No shackled, helot tyranny. - - Spurn from thy breast the bigot lie, - The smallness not of earth or sky. - - Breed all thy sons brave stalwart men, - To meet the world as one to ten. - - Breed all thy daughters mothers true, - Magic of that glad joy of you, - - Till liberties thy hills adorn - As wide as thy wide fields of corn. - • • • • - And round earth’s rim thine honor glows, - Unsullied as thy drifted snows. - -Wilfred Campbell, then, appears as a lyrist of Nature and poet of the -Spirit, who is an adroit and vivid objective colorist and etcher, but -who, for the most part, tinges his lyricism of Nature with meanings for -the ‘inward soul.’ With equal dexterity and truth he painted an -impressionistic or a _genre_ picture. But in doing this, he was -unexcelled by his contemporaries in Canada in economy of means for -expression. While, however, he was thus given to painting or delineating -Nature in Canada, he also appears as a poet who ‘hath kept watch o’er -man’s mortality.’ He gave proof of this in a singular way. Whatever -other distinctions belong to him, Campbell has never been equalled, by -another Canadian poet, in the Dramatic Monologue. Perhaps, in view of -the special meaning which Browning has given to this species of poetry, -it were better to use the formula Dramatic Monody. For this phrase -better describes Campbell’s poignant, compelling _Unabsolved_, _The -Mother_, and _Lazarus_. But however categorized, these poems reveal the -fact that Campbell’s genius was essentially dramatic. This dramatic -instinct in him, Campbell developed to a high degree until he essayed -the five-act poetic drama. It is as a Poetic Dramatist that Campbell -achieved a distinct and fixed place in Canadian creative poetry. - -The first poet to attempt nativistic or native poetic drama in Canada -was Charles Mair, who published at Toronto, in 1886. _Tecumseh: A -Drama_. Many of its characters are Canadian and much of its setting and -color are Canadian. Mair had created a work of real interest, of -excellent structure and dramatic development, and had used impressively -Canadian properties, character, and environment. The verse is genuinely -artistic and colorful and dramatic, and the poem as a whole is worthy of -critical consideration; but only as the first example of Canadian native -poetic drama is _Tecumseh_ to be regarded as significant in the literary -history of Canada. - -Much superior to the dramatic poetry of Mair is that of Wilfred -Campbell. It is considerable in quantity, comprising the following (as -he called them) ‘poetical tragedies and dramas:’ _Mordred_, -_Hildebrand_, _The Brockenfiend_, _Robespierre_, _Daulac_, _Morning_, -_Sanio_, and _The Admiral’s Daughter_. The quality of his poetical -tragedies and dramas distinguishes him as the first really important -creator of poetic drama in Canada. - -The titles of his poetic tragedies and dramas clearly indicate that, -with one exception, his subjects were derivative and his treatment -traditional. With the exception of his _Daulac_ he took his subjects -from Arthurian legend and European romantic history. He was considerably -under the influence of Tennyson. Though he gave us an interesting and -arresting poetic drama with his _Daulac_, it is specially notable as a -drama which is Canadian in subject, character, and setting. He was not -so successful with it as with his poetic drama based on Arthurian legend -and romantic history. The reason is that in a large degree he possessed -an ‘Old World,’ a Keltic imagination, and his imagination was deeply -impressed and moved by the romance of mediaeval heroic exploits:— - - Old, unhappy, far-off things, - And battles long ago. - -The heroism of Daulac, his combats and other heroic exploits were so -near in time to the age of Campbell himself that they could not affect -the poet’s imagination so pervasively and compellingly as do the older -mediaeval romances of heroic exploits. Campbell did not feel the -_Daulac_ story as he had felt the Arthurian or romantic legends of -Europe. He, therefore, did not, because he could not, put into his -_Daulac_ the same power of imagination and dramatic characterization and -reality that he put into his other dramas. But _Daulac_, -notwithstanding, is a noble poetic drama; and since it is Canadian -through and through, in subject, in setting, and in authorship, we may -estimate it as the first native poetic drama of genuine art and power in -the creative literature of Canada. - - * * * * * - -The quotations from Wilfred Campbell’s work in this chapter are from -_The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell_ (Hodder & Stoughton, Limited: -Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER XII - - - Pauline Johnson - - HER ANCESTRY AND ITS INFLUENCES—LITERARY AND MUSICAL QUALITIES OF - WORK—STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN SPIRITUAL VISION—PICTURESQUE COLOR - VERSE. - -The name, life, and poetry of Pauline Johnson affect the heart and -imagination with the arresting pathos which attaches to the imperishable -memory of a belated and beautiful spirit who came singing new and -winning music of earth, and man, and love. She was the most elementally -human of all Canadian poets. In some respects Pauline Johnson was the -most original and engaging singer in the company of the Canadian lyrists -who were born in 1860, 1861, and 1862—Roberts, Carman, Lampman, -Campbell, and Duncan Campbell Scott. - -Pauline Johnson’s grandfather, who attained special glory for his -valorous deed of setting fire, with his own hands, to the city of -Buffalo in the War of 1812, was distinguished, in times of peace, by his -tribesmen with the honorable and poetic sobriquet, ‘The Mohawk Warbler,’ -not because he could actually ‘warble’ like a present-day lyric tenor, -but because he possessed a ready flow of language which he used with -impassioned and dramatic eloquence. The old warrior’s granddaughter, in -her ballads and poems of Indian wrongs and Indian heroic deeds, wrote -with the same dramatic intensity and the same gift for dramatic picture; -and in her songs of Nature and of love sang with a lyrical lilt as -natural, musical, free, and passionate as the warblings of the thrush or -lark or linnet. - -The distinctive qualities of Pauline Johnson’s genius and poetry are -here noted summarily. In general: As a story-telling balladist she must -be ranked with the best Canadian poets who have essayed the same -_genre_, though in some of her ballads there are lines which are -rhetorical and melodramatic. On the whole, however, her story-telling -ballads are unsurpassed by her Canadian _confrères_, in emotional -intensity, rapid movement, terse phrasing, and dramatic pictorial -vividness. - -As a verbal musician, and as a nature-painter and etcher, Pauline -Johnson again must be given a very high place. Some of her poems are -marked by absolutely avian _abandon_; others by haunting melody; and -others by sweetly flowing rhythm and winning cadences, and by sensuous -vowel-harmonies and faultless rhymes. Many of her poems disclose the -gift to paint in words a picture from Nature with the impressionist’s -mastery of sensation and color. Some of them are low-keyed and full of -shadows, suggested sensations, and mystery. Others are dainty -word-etchings, picturesquely or subtly drawn and subdued in tone. - -In particular: Pauline Johnson has yet, by other Canadian poets, to be -equalled as a lyrist of the passion and pathos of romantic love, and as -an inventor of picturesque, veracious, vivid, beautiful, and compelling -poetic figures and images. Her love poems are full of the most poignant -passion and pathos. It would be easy to make a catalogue of a half -hundred or more poetic figures and images which are unique in -descriptive aptness or in emotional ‘tang.’ - -In short, the supreme spiritual and aesthetic qualities of Pauline -Johnson’s poetry are its real sincerity, its naiveté of thought, its -simplicity of structure, its lovely color images, its winning music, its -passion, pathos, and womanly tenderness. But first place must be given -to its dulcet and insinuating music and to its original and arresting -poetic figures and images. - -Pauline Johnson, taking the date engraved on the monument to her memory -at Vancouver, was born in 1861. She died at Vancouver in 1912. She was -the youngest child of a family of four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson -(Onwononsyshon) of Brantford, Ontario, Head Chief of the Six Nations -Indians, and his wife, Emily S. Howells, who was of English parentage -and born at Brixton, England. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) was born on -her father’s estate, which is on the Reserve apportioned the Mohawk -Tribe by the Canadian government. It must, therefore, pique the -imagination to know that Pauline Johnson was of pure Indian and pure -English descent, but that though she travelled from coast to coast in -Canada and the United States and twice to England, her freedom of -movement was ‘privileged’ and she was always, wherever she went, a -‘ward’ of the Canadian government. - -In Pauline Johnson’s case there are nice, though not recondite, problems -in literary psychology and interpretive criticism. For instance: Was -Pauline Johnson’s genius Indian, or English? Was it inherited, or was -she a ‘born’ poet, or how else may her gifts and tastes be explained? -The poet herself always insisted, with considerable pride, on her Indian -origin. Some critics, reasoning by quasi-inductions, abetted her in this -belief. Yet, so far as her genius is concerned, the only one of her -Indian ancestors who had anything like literary gifts was her -grandfather, ‘The Mohawk Warbler,’ and his gifts were those of the -‘tongue’ in compelling eloquence rather than aesthetic sensibility and -the power of expressing in words the beauty and the music in Nature. On -the other hand, Pauline Johnson’s English ancestors were a family who -possessed distinct literary tendencies and habits. The most -distinguished member of the branches of that family was W. D. Howells, -the American novelist, poet, and essayist. It is most probable that she -inherited her literary gifts from her English ancestors. For in _Flint -and Feather_—her complete poems—there is not one concept, or bit of -color, or rhythm, or anything else, that may be described as -specifically Indian. Rather it is all British or Universal. We do find -in her poems Indian themes, protests against British ruthlessness in -governmental treatment of the Indian, and the celebration of Indian -valor and love. But these are human utterances. Moreover, of the ninety -poems in _Flint and Feather_, only eight concern the Indian, and these -only on the side of episodes which formed good material for romantic -story-telling in verse. In these fine ballads Pauline Johnson became -indeed the ‘Voice’ of her inarticulate Indian fellows, but the voice -itself was that of a woman cultured in the forms and music of English -poetry. Pauline Johnson’s loyalty to the Indian side of her ancestry, -and her pride in it, were admirable; but, if heredity is to be accepted -as a real cause of genius, her taste for literature, and her bent -towards literary expression, must have come from her mother’s side. For -her mother was both a cultured and a romantically-minded woman. If, -however, we are to grant the poet any gift from her Indian ancestry, we -must remember her brilliant career as a reciter or dramatic reader. If -she inherited this dramatic gift, then she got it from her eloquent -grandfather, ‘The Mohawk Warbler.’ Though she used it conspicuously in -her dramatic readings, the gift is also observable in the vividly -graphic qualities, and in the emotional intensity, of her story-telling -ballads. - -Pauline Johnson was the first genuinely Canadian ‘daughter of the soil’ -who indubitably was born a poet; and her poetic development was one not -in artistic craftsmanship, but in vision. The first important fact in -her spiritual history is that at a very early age the future poet -evinced an original and intense taste for verse, expressing this taste -both by a fondness for memorizing verses read to her and for composing -childish jingles about familiar domestic objects. A pretty illustration -of Pauline Johnson’s early predilection for poetry is furnished in the -Biographical Sketch to _Flint and Feather_, in which it is related that -when she was but four years old (1865) she was asked by a friend who was -going to a distant city what he should bring her as a gift, and that the -child-poet replied, ‘Verses, please!’ - -The second important fact in Pauline Johnson’s spiritual history is that -from the time she could pen words intelligently up to the close of her -public-school days she devoted much of her leisure to self-cultivation -in the appreciation and the writing of verse. Before she was twelve -years old (1873), Pauline Johnson had thoroughly read Shakespeare and -the British romantic poets, Scott and Byron, and with their texts -cultivated her native sense of poetic diction and imagery, of verbal -rhythm and music (vowel-harmony, rhyme, consonance, assonance, -alliteration), and of color-epithets for brilliant and subtly -impressionistic word-painting. - -Pauline Johnson, with rare good sense, did not publish any of her verses -till considerable time after she had completed her formal schooling and -her personally conducted studies of versification, verbal music, and -poetic imagery. But as soon as she began to offer her verses to editors, -she seems to have found ready acceptances. The first periodical to -welcome her verse was a small New York magazine, _Gems of Poetry_, -published, presumably, in the early ’80’s of the last century. This, -however, can not be regarded as a significant event. Really significant -was the fact that _The Week_ (founded by Goldwin Smith) was the first -Canadian magazine to publish her verse. This fact assured her the -recognition and sponsorship of Goldwin Smith, himself an eminent -man-of-letters and a poet, and also, possibly, of Charles G. D. Roberts, -who was literary editor of _The Week_ in 1883-1884, and who was the -first editor to stand sponsor for Archibald Lampman. The imprimatur of -_The Week_, or the sponsorship of Goldwin Smith and Roberts, -automatically elected Pauline Johnson to the company of the Systematic -Group of Canadian poets born in 1860, 1861 and 1862, and introduced her -to the English-speaking world as a new and authentically gifted singer, -in whose music, though formally composed in the English manner of -versification, would, in due time, be heard the hitherto unheard -melancholy over-tones and wildwood notes of the aboriginal Canadian -spirit. - -The next important date in Pauline Johnson’s history is the year 1892, -when a happy social and literary _soirée_ launched the Indian poet on a -public career which, seemingly, would not affect, save negatively, -Pauline Johnson’s function and art as a lyrist. From that date and for -sixteen years (1892-1908), Miss Johnson assiduously applied her gifts as -a reciter and dramatic reader in Canada, the United States, and England, -all the while publishing intermittently in the periodical press her best -verse. - -In 1895, simultaneously at London, England, Boston, and Toronto, -appeared her first volume of poems, _The White Wampum_. In 1903 her -second volume of poems, _Canadian Born_, was issued at Toronto. In 1912, -also at Toronto, there was published the definitive and inclusive -edition of her collected poems, _Flint and Feather_. All three, upon -their appearance, were highly praised in reviews by the critics of -England, the United States, and Canada. - -It is important to appreciate the significance of Pauline Johnson’s -sixteen years of travelling over Canada, the United States, and England, -as a reciter and dramatic reader. Possibly they reduced the amount of -her poetic output. But there are no evidences in _Flint and Feather_ -that the experiences gained during these years diminished or increased -her powers of poetic vision or craftsmanship. Pauline Johnson was -self-deceived when, in a letter, she expressed her belief that the -fugitive verses published in _Flint and Feather_, pages 135-156, surpass -her poems in _The White Wampum_ and in _Canadian Born_. ‘My later -fugitive verse,’ she declared, ‘is, of course, my best work, as it is -more mature.’ There are only fifteen of these so-called fugitive poems; -but imaginative, musical, and tender as they are, notably _In Grey -Days_, _Autumn’s Orchestra_, _The Trail to Lillooet_, _The Lifting of -the Mist_, _The King’s Consort_, and _Day Dawn_, they are all in the -early manner of the poet. They are lovely and winning poems, pervaded -with seductive music, tone-color pictures of nature and of life, tinged -with a tender pathos. But they show no advance in technique, verbal -music, imagery, or emotional nuance—no lately acquired powers to -express rhythmic ecstasy with a newer and more musical lilt than obtains -in _The Song My Paddle Sings_ (1892); or to paint with more suggestive -impressionism a nature picture full of color, half-lights, or mystery, -or more finely to etch a verbal portrait than she has done in _Erie -Waters_, _Marshlands_, _Shadow River_, and _Joe_; or to catch and -envisage a mood or emotional nuance with subtler spirituality than she -accomplished in _The Camper_, _Lady Lorgnette_, _Lullaby of the -Iroquois_, _Prairie Greyhounds_, _Lady Icicle_, and _The Prodigal_. - -All these poems, whose titles have just been quoted, were composed in -the decade from 1892 to 1902, and belong to Pauline Johnson’s first two -volumes which together contained sixty-seven poems of indubitable lyric -and imaginative quality. Of the poems composed by Pauline Johnson in the -decade from 1902 to 1912, only twenty-three were deemed by the poet -worthy to stand beside her poems from _The White Wampum_ and in -_Canadian Born_ which, with the later twenty-three, form the contents of -the original edition of _Flint and Feather_. Five posthumously published -poems were added to the later editions. - -If, then, in _Flint and Feather_ we discover no advance in the technique -of Pauline Johnson’s art, wherein did her new experiences gained by -travel, by meeting men and women of foreign lands and by learning the -ways of the world, work changes worth while? Solely in the poet’s heart -and imagination. Here was a development, not in craftsmanship and art, -but in spiritual vision. It was, too, an evolution simple and natural in -its stages, and is readily traceable in the poems contained in _Flint -and Feather_. Mr. Melvin O. Hammond, an observant and judicious Canadian -critic, in a review of _Flint and Feather_ (_The Globe_, Toronto, Nov. -9th, 1912), was the first to disclose these stages of Pauline Johnson’s -development in spiritual vision. They are four:— - -First, Pauline Johnson appeared as the ‘voice’ of the Indian people, who -before her coming had been dumb or inarticulate. Her point of view was, -at this stage, Indian, and she passionately protested against the abuses -the Indians of Canada have suffered (as in _The Cattle Thief_ and _A Cry -from An Indian Wife_) or, as passionately, sang of Indian valor and love -(as in her _Ojistoh_). - -Next, her point of view became Canadian. She turned from lamenting the -free and glorious past of her Indian ancestors to paint in verse the -land of her birth, ‘Canadian life and scenery in the broad outdoors of -the North and West,’ not merely impressionistically picturing woods, -skies, plains, but also apostrophizing and humanizing both natural -creatures and objects, as if they were conscious of their estate, -function, and value to man, and had moods of their own, as, for example, -_The Sleeping Giant_ (Thunder Bay), and the dainty, fetching lyric _The -Homing Bee_. - -The third stage in Miss Johnson’s development in vision was also -Canadian. But, in this stage, her point of view became broadened in -scope. She turned to remark the progress of the Canadian national spirit -and the civilization which binds the Dominion from ocean to ocean. This -she accomplished with extraordinary virility in rhythm, with apt -descriptive epithet, and with pictorial suggestiveness in her _Prairie -Greyhounds_—a song represented as sung by the trans-continental trains -in their passage from East to West, and West to East. The poem gives the -reader vivid ideated sensations of the swish and roar and onward rush of -the trains, the sweep of the vast territory of the Dominion, and the -vision of the Greater Canada that is to be. - -The final stage in Pauline Johnson’s increase in scope of spiritual -vision was marked by cosmopolitanism, pure humanity, and by mysticism. -She had lost the Indian and the Canadian points of view when she -composed _Give us Barrabas_ (commemorative of the exile of Dreyfus). She -was wholly a human being and sexless when she composed her subtly -sympathetic _The City and the Sea_, and _Fasting_. She was genuinely -mystical when she composed her _Penseroso_ wherein she sang -persuasively:— - - Soulless is all humanity to me - To-night. My keenest longing is to be - Alone, alone with God’s grey earth that seems - Pulse of my pulse and consort of my dreams. - -To authenticate the claim that Pauline Johnson’s genius, art, and poetry -are highly original and sometimes unique, it is only necessary to cite -such of her poems as represent the stages of her development and the -special qualities of her poetic vision and artistry. - -Beginning with the first stage, we must observe that her passionate -protesting against the abuses which the Indians of Canada had suffered -as, for instance, in her poems _The Cattle Thief_, and _A Cry from an -Indian Wife_, is no proof that the fierce intensity of her utterance is -a recrudescence of ancestral Indian fire of spirit or ferocity in -herself. The poems in which this so-called Indian emotional intensity -was expressed by her did, no doubt, spring out of imaginative sympathy -with her father’s race, but these poems could have been written with the -same show of emotional intensity by any other poet who realized with -equal imaginative sympathy the wrongs that the Indians of Canada had -suffered and who had the gift of fiery expression. - -Pauline Johnson is fundamentally Indian when she is most pagan; that is, -when, first, she realizes and expresses poignantly her racial sense of -haunting presences in the natural world, and when, secondly, she -expresses a melancholy regret for the passing of her Indian race and a -yearning for free and pagan communion with the moods of Nature, with the -wild creatures of Nature, and with the spiritual presences, which, to -the imagination of the aboriginal Indian, haunted the woods, the -streams, the mists, the clouds, and the sunsets before the hated British -race destroyed the Indian’s ancestral habitat and robbed him both of his -material and spiritual birthright. Moreover, in the two or three poems -in which she protested against the wrongs which the Indians of Canada -had suffered, Pauline Johnson was really, if unconsciously, _affecting_ -to be the ‘voice’ of her Indian race. For she soon turned from such -affected poetic frenzy to expressing her admiration of the British and -her love of Canada as a free commonwealth under British allegiance and -protection, and to revealing in colorful and musical verse the spirit -and beauties of the land of her birth. - -Pauline Johnson, then, is essentially Indian, not when frenzied, but -only when she expresses in verse the inner secrets of the joy and the -pathos of her imaginative communion with past and contemporary Nature in -Canada,—when she sings, with free and infectious lilt, outdoor life in -Canada or impressionistically paints Canadian woods, skies, plains, -snow, waters, or apostrophizes and humanizes the creatures and objects -of nature as if they had a psychology of their own. - -All the world knows Pauline Johnson’s lilting and infectious lyric of -Canadian outdoor life, _The Song My Paddle Sings_. It is unsurpassed for -suggested or ideated sensations of wind and stream, of the spirit of -motion, of free life in the open, and wins one both by its vivid -pictures of outdoor life and by its simple but musical _abandon_. After -a two-stanza apostrophe to the West wind, closing with - - Now fold in slumber your laggard wings - For soft is the song my paddle sings— - -we hear the poet lilting the inspiriting song itself, opening - - August is laughing across the sky, - Laughing while paddle, canoe and I, - Drift, drift, - Where the hills uplift - On either side of the current swift. - -Specially to be noted in this poem is the descriptive and musical -realism which the poet effects by a sort of refrain in the third line of -each stanza, a monosyllabic accent which precisely conveys to the -sensibility the actual sensations experienced in canoeing through -slow-moving and rushing or weltering waters—‘drift, drift,’ ‘dip, dip,’ -‘swirl, swirl,’ ‘dash, dash,’ ‘reel, reel,’ ‘sway, sway,’ ‘swings, -swings.’ This is supreme in descriptive and imitative naturalism. - -For examples of Pauline Johnson’s poetic power to humanize objects and -creatures in Nature _The Sleeping Giant_ and _The Homing Bee_ may be -cited. The latter is also notably suffused with delicate color, moves -with a light, tripping music, and is dainty in structure, thus -exemplifying several of the other qualities of her art. The opening -lines indicate the ‘key’ in music and color:— - - You are belted with gold, little brother of mine, - Yellow gold, like the sun - That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine - When feasting is done. - -In the Canadian idyll, Pauline Johnson displayed a delicate sense of -color values, and sang as well of airy things in Nature with an airy -music, sometimes touched with a reflective melancholy, as, for instance, -in _Shadow River_. - -The tones of melancholy, of sadness, observed sometimes in Pauline -Johnson’s poetry were not all born of a mystical yearning for union with -Nature. Sometimes they were the expression of a poignant sense of the -defeat of romantic love. Hers was a simple, warm or passionate, -confiding, sensitive, but strong nature; and sensitive and passionate -but strong natures, if they belong to poets, tend to express poignantly, -rather than bitterly, any spiritual cataclysm in their lives, and, for -solace or support, to turn to Nature or to religion. It was so with -Pauline Johnson. - -Charles Mair, author of _Dreamland and Other Poems_, and _Tecumseh: A -Drama_, is the authority for the belief that Pauline Johnson went -through an experience of romantic love which, in its joy, gave wings of -ecstasy and a warm emotional coloring to her nature-poetry, but which, -when her love suffered a defeat that meant a spiritual cataclysm for -her, drew from her the most poignant expression of yearning for union -with Immortal Love. The important truth is that whichever emotion she -expresses, she remains unequalled as a lyrist of the ecstasy and the -pathos of romantic love. But her poems of the ecstasy of love are never -merely the expression of subjective emotions. They also have an idyllic -or nature setting which so colors her nature-poetry itself with the -passion of love as to distinguish it, both as nature-poetry and as love -poetry, from anything else of the kind in Canadian Literature. The -ecstasy is somewhat subdued in _Idlers_; but is passionate and -transporting, warmly colored with the light and tints of Nature, and set -to verbal music in perfect harmony with the emotion and the -nature-setting in _Wave-won_. - -The fact of the defeat of love, in Pauline Johnson’s case, may be -observed in her _Overlooked_, a poem which is notable for the invention -on her part of a metaphor that, for originality and beauty, is worthy of -the Greek idyllists or of Catullus, namely:— - - O Love, thou wanderer from Paradise. - -At length Pauline Johnson’s merely human passion of yearning for union -with the mortal companion is transmuted into a spiritualized -yearning—which, however, has not in it the sad wistfulness of the -poetry of Marjorie Pickthall—for union with Immortal Love. Defeat of -romantic love in Pauline Johnson’s case passed, first, into -renouncement, and, at last, into resignation and the total giving of -self to Immortal Love, as in _Brier_— - - Because, dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm - Bends back the brier that edges life’s long way, - That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm, - I do not feel the thorn so much to-day. - - Because I never knew your care to tire, - Your hand to weary guiding me aright, - Because you walk before and crush the brier, - It does not pierce my feet so much to-night. - - Because so often you have hearkened to - My selfish prayers, I ask but one thing now, - That these harsh hands of mine add not unto - The crown of thorns upon your bleeding brow. - -Pauline Johnson possessed extraordinary, if not quite unique, gifts as a -story-telling balladist. Examples of her art in this species are her -compelling story of Indian love and revenge, _Ojistoh_, her melodramatic -Indian tale, _The Cattle Thief_, and her _Wolverine_, a poem of Western -_chevalerie_, in which species, however, she does not rank with Isabella -Valancy Crawford. - -Her poetry of the development of the Canadian national spirit and -civilization, by which she marks a broadening in her own spiritual -vision, is notably exemplified in two poems, _The Riders of the Plains_ -and _Prairie Greyhounds_. In the former, however, she is more British -than Canadian. But she is Canadian in her _Prairie Greyhounds_. In this -poem she achieves an extraordinary virility of rhythm, employs apt and -dramatic epithets and fills the picture with a vivid suggestiveness of -the vastness of Canada and the vision of the greater autonomous and -powerful Dominion that is to be. _Prairie Greyhounds_, moreover, is a -supreme achievement in suggested or ideated sensations of motion. The -reader feels himself as if actually aboard the west-bound and east-bound -Canadian Pacific trains, experiencing, as does a living passenger on a -‘fast express,’ the swish, and roar, and onward rush of the trains. - -As a verbal musician Pauline Johnson must be given a very high place -amongst Canadian poets. There is an avian _abandon_ and ecstasy, an -avian lilt and warbling, in _The Birds’ Lullaby_ and in _The Songster_. -There are flowing rhythm and haunting melody of rhyme, vowel-harmony, -alliteration and cadences in _The Trail to Lillooet_:— - - Song of fall, and song of forest, come you here on haunting quest, - Calling through the seas and silence, from God’s country of the west. - Where the mountain pass is narrow, and the torrent white and strong, - Down its rocky-throated canon, sings its golden-throated song. - - You are singing there together through the God-begotten nights, - And the leaning stars are listening above the distant heights - That lift like points of opal in the crescent coronet - About whose golden setting sweeps the trail to Lillooet. - -Pauline Johnson has also achieved what may be noted in literary history -as the first strictly Canadian ‘cradle-song’—Canadian in music and in -setting—her _Lullaby of the Iroquois_. - -As a nature-colorist and etcher Pauline Johnson again must be given a -very high place. For a _genre_ etching of the human figure against a -background of nature her _Joe_, which she herself sub-titles ‘An -Etching,’ is as vividly presented and as fetching as a _genre_ drawing -by Murillo. Her _Lady Lorgnette_ is as daintily graphic and colorful and -piquant and romantic as anything done by the brush of Romney or -Gainsborough or by the later modern ‘society’ miniaturists. She had the -pictorial artist’s eye to spy out a picture in Nature, as in _At Husking -Time_. She had the impressionist’s mastery of sensuous pigmentation, as -in _Under Canvas_. She could make a picture low-keyed, full of shadows -and suggested sensations and mystery, as in _Nocturne_ and in _Moonset_. - -Finally: Pauline Johnson is certainly not surpassed, if equalled, by any -other Canadian lyrist as an inventor of beautiful color epithets and of -picturesque, vivid, and compelling metaphors. They are to be found -everywhere in her poetry. Consider these as examples—‘Russet needles as -censers swing to an altar,’ ‘The sea-weeds cling with flesh-like -fingers,’ ‘Beaten gold that clung like coils of kisses love inlaid,’ -‘The brownish hills with needles green and gold,’ ‘O Love, thou wanderer -from Paradise,’ ‘Swept beneath a shore of shade, beneath a velvet moon,’ -‘Like net work threads of fire,’ and this, - - Purple her eyes as the mists that dream - At the edge of some laggard, sun-drowned stream - -and many more as novel, colorful, musical, veracious and compelling. - -As a woman Pauline Johnson was a rare and beautiful spirit. As a poet -she was of all Canadian poets the most pervasively true to her Canadian -origin and habitat. She is not to be given always the status of Lampman -and Carman and Duncan Campbell Scott, yet to her unquestionably belongs -a place beside these Canadian singers. Her poetry had a magic of music -and a color of leafy lawns and lovely grey-eyed and tawny dusks and -clear ecstatic morns, which were all her own. She was indeed a ‘Mohawk -Warbler,’ and her songs are - - Free and artless as the avian lays - Heard in Canadian woods on April days. - - * * * * * - -The quotations in this chapter from Pauline Johnson’s poems are from -_Flint and Feather_, by E. Pauline Johnson, (Musson Book Co., Limited: -Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER XIII - - - Parker _and_ Scott (F. G.) - - PARKER AS A SONNETEER OF SPIRITUAL LOVE—ORIGIN AND THEME OF A - LOVER’S DIARY—MUSICAL AND COLORFUL LYRICAL VERSE—SCOTT’S POETRY - A REFLECTION OF HIS PERSONALITY—DISTINGUISHED AS THE ‘POET OF THE - SPIRIT’—CHIEF QUALITIES OF HIS POETRY. - -It was as a poet, not as a creator of historical romances, that Sir -Gilbert Parker first appeared as a man of letters and first appealed to -the literary public. As a poet he was appreciated in Australia and in -England, but not in Canada. That as a poet he has been unknown and -unappreciated in his homeland, Canada, is due to the fact that he was -expatriate when he published his two volumes of poems, the second of -which was ‘privately printed,’ and that his greater reputation as a -novelist, particularly of old romantic Canada, made him known in the -Dominion exclusively as a writer of fiction. Sir Gilbert Parker, -however, ranks high as a sonneteer of spiritual love, and as lyrist in -_genre_ verse which has attained special reputation, particularly as -texts of songs for _salon_ and recital repertory. - -Sir Gilbert Parker was born in Ontario, in 1862. Never robust, he left -Canada in 1886 to seek recovery of health in the warmer and more -salubrious climate of Australia. While in Australia he began publishing -sonnets and lyrics in magazines. The sonnets were collected and -published in a volume entitled _A Lover’s Diary_; first edition, 1894; -second edition, 1898. Before the publication of _A Lover’s Diary_ Parker -had removed to London. While in England he privately printed a volume of -lyrics entitled _Embers_. These two volumes, the first revised, and -enlarged with twenty-five sonnets, and the second, with the addition of -other lyrics, were collected and published as Volume 17 of _The Works of -Gilbert Parker_ (1913). The volume containing his collected poems is -distinguished by a critical Introduction by Sir Gilbert Parker himself. - -In the Introduction Parker explains the origin and theme of _A Lover’s -Diary_. It is a sonnet-sequence, the composition of which was begun when -the poet was twenty-three and still resident in Canada. The sequence is -a ‘hopeless love, in form of temptation, but lifted away from ruinous -elements by self-renunciation, to end with the inevitable parting, -poignant and permanent, a task of the soul finished and the toil of the -journey of understanding paid.’ He adds: ‘The six sonnets . . . -beginning with _The Bride_, and ending with _Annunciation_, have nothing -to do with the story further than to show two phases of the youth’s mind -before it was shaken by speculation, plunged into sadness of doubt and -apprehension, and before it had found the love which was to reveal it to -itself, transform the character, and give a new impulse and direction to -personal forces and individual sense.’ - -As a poet of romantic love Parker is concerned with the spiritual -_meaning_ of it. _A Lover’s Diary_ is not concerned with the mere -emotions of romantic love but with its spiritual thrall, and with it as -a process of spiritual redemption and exaltation. As an interpreter of -spiritual love, Parker contrasts with Robert Norwood whose sequence, -_His Lady of the Sonnets_ (1915), though having a spiritualizing intent, -is highly sensuous and impressionistic in diction and imagery. Parker -breathes a less earthly air. His sonnet-sequence is addressed more to -the imaginative reason than to the aesthetic imagination. It is much -more mystically conceived and much more chastely lovely with the ‘white -beauty’ of the spirit than is Norwood’s sequence. Both sequences, -however, are authentic and noble poetic creations. - -In pure beauty of conception, imagery, and artistry, and in the -spiritual exaltation of love, the following sonnet from Parker’s _A -Lover’s Diary_, is characteristic of the whole sequence:— - - It is enough that in this burdened time - The soul sees all its purposes aright. - The rest—what does it matter? Soon the night - Will come to whelm us, then the morning chime. - What does it matter, if but in the way - One hand clasps ours, one heart believes us true; - One understands the work we try to do, - And strives through Love to teach us what to say? - Between me and the chilly outer air - Which blows in from the world, there standeth one - Who draws Love’s curtains closely everywhere, - As God folds down the banners of the sun. - Warm is my place about me, and above, - Where was the raven, I behold the dove. - -Parker’s lyrical verse, like his sonnet-sequence, is the poetry of a -young man who still possesses the enthusiasms of youth for all the -lovelier and happier things in existence, and who rejoices in living. -From the text of Parker’s lyrics it is plain that he had the gifts of a -lyrist in the original Greek meaning, of one who wrote poems to be -_sung_ to the accompaniment of the lyre. He was gifted to turn a -sentiment either seriously or playfully with simplicity and directness -of diction and with winning musical lilt. - -In truth, if he had turned to song composition, he was more ideally -equipped to write the texts of poems for songs than was the greatest of -American song composers, the late Edward MacDowell, who, for lack of -singable lyrical texts, was compelled to compose his own poems as well -as their musical settings. - -There is a spontaneity of lyrical lilt, lyrical verve, in Parker’s -lighter poems, which he composed both in literary English and in -‘Irishy.’ As an example of the musical and colorful qualities of his -lyrics in literary English, the following poem from _Embers_ will aptly -serve:— - - I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still— - There was winter in my world and in my heart; - A breath came from the mesa, and a message stirred my will, - And my soul and I arose up to depart. - - I heard the desert calling, and I knew that over there - In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, - Was a woman of the sunrise with the star-shine in her hair - And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. - - I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still— - There is summer in my world, and in my heart; - A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will - Blinds my footsteps as I rise up to depart. - -As an example of his musical quality and humor in ‘Irishy,’ the -following lyric from _Embers_ is apt and fetching:— - - It was as fine a churchful as you ever clapt an eye on; - Oh, the bells was ringin’ gaily, and the sun was shinin’ free; - There was singers, there was clargy—‘Bless ye both,’ says Father - Tryon— - They was weddin’ Mary Callaghan and me. - - There was gatherin’ of women, there was hush upon the stairway, - There was whisperin’ and smilin’, but it was no place for me; - A little ship was comin’ into harbour through the fair-way— - It belongs to Mary Callaghan and me. - - Shure, the longest day has endin’, and the wildest storm has fallin’— - There’s a young gossoon in yander, and he sits upon my knee; - There’s a churchful for the christenin’—do you hear the imp a-callin’? - He’s the pride of Mary Callaghan and me. - -As a composer of song texts, Parker is rivalled only by his Canadian -compatriot, Arthur Stringer, whose poems in ‘Irishy’ have been most -winningly and humorously set to music by their compatriot, Gena -Branscombe (Mrs. J. F. Tenney). It is indeed as a poet, whose lyrics are -inevitable texts for songs which have literary charm and simple humanity -that Sir Gilbert Parker has been most admired and appreciated. - -For this view we have the authority of Sir Gilbert himself. In the -Introduction to the volume of his poetry in his Collected Works, he -says: ‘_Mary Callaghan and Me_ has been set to music by Mr. Max Muller, -and has made many friends, and _The Crowning_ was the Coronation ode of -_The People_, which gave a prize, too ample I think, for the best -musical setting of the lines. Many of the other pieces in _Embers_ have -been set to music by distinguished composers, like Sir Edward Elgar, who -has made a song-cycle of several, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Mr. Arthur -Foote, Mrs. Amy Woodforde Finden, Robert Somerville, and others. The -first to have musical setting was _You’ll Travel Far and Wide_, to which -in 1895 Mr. Arthur Foote gave fame as _An Irish Folk Song_. Like _O -Flower of All the World_, by Mrs. Amy Woolforde Finden, it has had a -world of admirers, and such singers as Mrs. Henschel helped to make Mr. -Foote’s music loved by thousands, and conferred something more than an -ephemeral acceptance of the author’s words.’ - -Both, then, as a poet of mystical vision and sublimated emotion, and of -human sentiment and instincts which add to the humanity and gaiety of -life, Sir Gilbert Parker appears as a poet who has authentic creative -gifts and who is a master craftsman in the ‘art’ of verse. In novelty -and variety his sonnets and lyrics have significantly enhanced the -quality of Canadian poetry, and have in their own degree and way given -the work of the poets of the Systematic School and Period the character -of a genuine ‘renaissance.’ - - - -Another poet who rightfully belongs to the Systematic School and Period -of Canadian Literature is Frederick George Scott. In 1888, or in the -year following the publication of Roberts’ _In Divers Tones_ (1887), -Canon Scott published his first book of verse, _The Soul’s Quest and -Other Poems_. This volume was succeeded by five other volumes of verse, -up to 1907, in which year he published _The Key of Life: A Mystery -Play_. In 1910 appeared his _Collected Poems_. During the World War he -published a booklet of war verse, _In the Battle Silences_ (1916). - -The forms and qualities of Canon Scott’s poetry were determined by his -own moral personality and by his conception of the ‘end’ of poetry. It -is a fact that in no other verse written by a Canadian is there such an -absolute identification of the man and the poet as in the poetry of -Canon Scott. The poetry reflects the whole personality of the man. In -the world, Canon Scott is a distinguished example of the ‘Christian -gentleman’—‘a man of liberal culture and wide sympathies whose life has -thrilled with the larger life, political, social, and religious, a man -of strong courage born of reverent unquestioning faith.’ To Canon Scott, -therefore, the aim of poetry is not ‘art for art’s sake,’ but the -inspiration and consolation of the people in their hour of doubt or -darkness. His conception of the ‘end’ determined the forms and manner of -Canon Scott’s poetry. For if, like the ancient Hebraic poets, he was to -inspire and console his people, he must present his thoughts in simple -forms and in diction and imagery readily understood by the people. - -Canon Scott stands out from the rest of the members of the Systematic -School and Period as _par excellence_ the Poet of the Spirit; and his -verse is distinguished from the bulk of the verse of his colleagues in -the Systematic School as the Poetry of Faith and Consolation. There is -nothing original and distinctive in his forms: they are traditional and -simple. There is nothing original and distinctive in his message: it, -too, is traditional and simple—a message of faith and courage and of -joy in existence. His distinction is in his ‘art,’ his power to convey -beautifully, sweetly—and above all, convincingly—to the human soul -noble or profound thoughts for its sustenance, refreshment, and -consolation. But while the ethical and spiritual ‘notes’—which must be -distinguished from didacticism—are supreme in his poetry, Canon Scott -is also solicitous about the craftsmanship in his verse. Though his -verse forms are thoroughly socialized and though he never aims to be a -‘word virtuoso,’ nevertheless he is always the ‘artist’ in verse -technique. - -The chief qualities of Canon Scott’s poetry are piquant phantasy rather -than imagination, ingenious imagery, sympathy with his kind, tenderness, -wistfulness, simple or profound thought expressed in simple diction and -in simple but dulcet verbal melody. Also in his verse is a two-fold -_Canadianism_. The self-reliant faith and courage in it is Canadian, and -the color and the naturalistic imagery are derived from the woods, and -fields, and streams, and hills of his Canadian homeland, more -particularly from Nature in the Laurentian district. Indeed, Canon Scott -has been given the sobriquet of ‘the Poet of the Laurentians.’ But while -he impregnates and suffuses his verse with color and naturalistic -imagery from Nature in the Laurentians, he always transmutes his -naturalistic perceptions into spiritual imagery and import. He does not -do this with bald and stark didacticism, but with exquisite artistry, -and yet with an intimacy, apt felicity, and naturalness that make it all -an achievement in winning a reader to see the beauty and dignity of the -familiar and commonplace in Nature. Canon Scott’s poetry, in a phrase, -is the acme of _spiritual realism_. - -Of his diction, rhythm, and melody, and his Canadian imagery in verse, -Scott’s _Dawn_ furnishes a short and impressive example:— - - The immortal spirit hath no bars - To circumscribe its dwelling-place; - My soul hath pastured with the stars - Upon the meadow-lands of space. - - My mind and ear at times have caught - From realms beyond our mortal reach, - The utterance of Eternal Thought - Of which all nature is the speech. - - And high above the seas and lands, - On peaks just tipped with morning light, - My dauntless spirit mutely stands - With eagle wings outspread for flight. - -How lowly, and yet how beautiful and compelling, are these figures in -the first stanza of that poem—‘pastured with the stars,’ ‘meadow-lands -of space.’ But both are derived from Canon Scott’s boyhood days in his -homeland. They are Canadian. - -There is a Wordsworthian humanity in his poem _The Cripple_, a sympathy -with his kind and a tender wistfulness in his _Van Elsen_. There is -nobility of thought in his _Samson_, and in _Thor_, and a grandeur of -vision in his _Hymn of Empire_, which is a Canadian imperial and -patriotic poem in a kind by itself. But in one poem—a sonnet—Canon -Scott has achieved what is perhaps the most ingenious imagery in -Canadian poetry, and one of the most extraordinary in English -literature. This is his sonnet _Time_:— - - I saw Time in his workshop carving faces; - Scattered around his tools lay, blunting griefs, - Sharp cares that cut out deeply in reliefs - Of light and shade; sorrows that smooth the traces - Of what were smiles. Not yet without fresh graces - His handiwork, for oftimes rough were ground - And polished, oft the pinched made smooth and round; - The calm look, too, the impetuous fire replaces. - - Long time I looked and watched; with hideous grin - He took each heedless face between his knees, - And graved and scarred and bleached with boiling tears. - I wondering turned to go, when lo, my skin - Feels crumpled, and in glass my own face sees - Itself all changed, scarred, careworn, white with years! - -So far as derivative influences may in general be observed in the poets -of the Systematic School and Period of Canadian Literature, Roberts, -Lampman, and Carman are Hellenistic and impressionistic in feeling and -thought. They were devoted to creating poetry that would delight the -aesthetic senses and sensibilities. But Frederick George Scott is -Hebraic in feeling and thought. He created poetry to satisfy the heart -and the religious imagination, and to sustain and console the human -spirit in its sojourn on earth. He achieved these ends simply yet -beautifully. His poetry is pervaded with the most elemental and enduring -‘heart’ qualities. They give it such a direct and compelling human -appeal as to win a significant and distinctive place for it in the -authentic native and national poetry of Canada. - - * * * * * - -The quotations in this chapter are from _A Lover’s Diary_ and _Embers_, -by Sir Gilbert Parker, (Copp, Clark Co., Limited: Toronto); and from -_Poems_, by Frederick George Scott, (Constable & Co.: London). - - - - - CHAPTER XIV - - - Minor Poets - - THE TERM ‘MINOR’ DEFINED—ETHELWYN WETHERALD—JEAN BLEWETT— - FRANCIS SHERMAN—A. E. S. SMYTHE—S. FRANCES HARRISON—ARTHUR - STRINGER—PETER MCARTHUR—ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY. - -It is proper to distinguish Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Campbell, Duncan -Campbell Scott, Frederick George Scott, and Pauline Johnson as the -‘major’ poets of the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature. Though of -necessity with them the writing of verse was in a sense an avocation, in -another sense it was a vocation. They were systematic both in the -writing and the quantitative publishing of it. Contemporary with them, -but, for the most part, later in production and publishing, were other -poets who wrote with beauty and distinction in poetic style. They -followed the aesthetic and artistic ideals of the ‘major’ poets, but -they were not as systematic as Roberts and his _confrères_ in writing or -in quantitative publishing. These are denoted in this work the ‘minor’ -poets of the Systematic School or Period. But nothing invidious as to -quality of verse is intended by the distinction. For a few of these -so-called ‘minor’ poets of the Systematic Period wrote some poetry as -fine in aesthetic substance and artistic finish as the poetry of Roberts -and his colleagues. The term ‘minor’ is meant to distinguish these poets -as being, first, _later_, for the most part, than Roberts and his -_confrères_, and as being, secondly, _less eminent_ than the early -systematic group of Canadian poets. The number of these so-called minor -or later poets is legion. They ‘flourished’ from 1887 to 1907, or from -the publication of Roberts’ _In Divers Tones_ to the appearance of -Robert Service’s _Songs of a Sourdough_ (the beginning of the Decadent -Interim). Detailed appreciation of the minor poets of the Systematic -Period would, therefore, require a volume by itself. Here we may only -recall the salient names, and specially remark the verse, of some of the -minor poets whose lyrical poetry is particularly representative or -noteworthy, or has become genuinely popular. - -Worthy of a place beside the major poets of the Systematic Period is -Ethelwyn Wetherald. In 1895 she published _The House of the Trees and -Other Poems_; in 1902, _Tangled in the Stars_; in 1904, _The Radiant -Road_ and in 1907, an edition of her collected poems, _The Last Robin_; -_Lyrics and Sonnets_. Perhaps the outstanding aesthetic quality of her -poetry is a tender, subdued, melancholy, spiritual grace, ‘a grey-eyed -loveliness,’ which undoubtedly derives from the characteristic -pensiveness of her Quaker ancestry. But in all her verse, which is -authentic poetry, she discloses pretty sentiment, reflective beauty, -ingenious imagery, and fine craftsmanship. _The Hay Field_, which is -Canadian in inspiration, setting, and color is an apt example of -Ethelwyn Wetherald’s art:— - - With slender arms outstretching in the sun - The grass lies dead; - The wind walks tenderly and stirs not one - Frail, fallen head. - - Of baby creepings through the April day - Where streamlets wend, - Of child-like dancing on the breeze of May, - This is the end. - - No more these tiny forms are bathed in dew, - No more they reach - To hold with leaves that shade them from the blue - A whispered speech. - - No more they part their arms and wreathe them close - Again, to shield - Some love-full little nest—a dainty house - Hid in a field. - - For them no more the splendour of the storm, - The fair delights - Of moon and star-shine, glimmering faint and warm - On summer nights. - - Their little lives they yield in summer death, - And frequently - Across the field bereaved their dying breath - Is brought to me. - -A poet who has won a distinct and fixed place in the popular heart and -imagination of Canadians is Jean Blewett. Her first volume, _Heart -Songs_, appeared in 1897 and immediately won a wide popularity. This was -increased by her next volume, _The Cornflower and Other Poems_ (1906). -Her Collected Poems were published in 1922. Jean Blewett is essentially -a ‘woman’s poet.’ By this is meant that she appeals to the domestic -heart and the imagination, that she sings of the joys of home, the ways -of children, the love of husband and wife. But Jean Blewett does this in -an extraordinary way. She treats homely subjects indeed, but while she -treats them in a homely or rather home-like way she does it with a -simple and ingratiating sincerity and charm of sentiment and artistry -which are quite her own and in the employment of which she is alone in -Canada. If her poems deal with homely subjects, her artistry is by no -means bourgeois. She rises and falls with the inherent dignity of her -subject. But her human treatment of a homely subject never issues in -vulgarity, or vivid ‘vaudeville’ verse. As an example of her genuine -artistry and dignity of treatment in a high or serious subject we quote -her _Quebec_:— - - Quebec, the gray old city on the hill, - Lives with a golden glory on her head, - Dreaming throughout this hour so fair, so still, - Of those days and her beloved dead. - - The doves are nesting in the cannons grim, - The flowers bloom where once did run a tide - Of crimson when the moon rose pale and dim - Above a field of battle stretching wide. - - Methinks within her wakes a mighty glow - Of pride in ancient times, her stirring past, - The strife, the valour of the long ago - Feels at her heart-strings. Strong and tall, and vast - She lies, touched with the sunset’s golden grace, - A wondrous softness on her gray old face. - -When her subject gives her a chance for sweep of imagination and for a -pearly beauty of imagery, Jean Blewett rises brilliantly to her theme, -as in _What Time the Morning Stars Arise_, a really splendid war poem -commemorating the heroic deed of Lieutenant Reginald Warneford, aviator, -who unassisted destroyed a German armed Zeppelin, containing 28 men, on -June 7th, 1915. We quote the first and last stanzas:— - - Above him spreads the purple sky, - Beneath him spreads the ether sea, - And everywhere about him lie - Dim ports of peace and mystery. - • • • • - He sees the white mists softly curl, - He sees the moon drift pale and wan, - Sees Venus climb the stars of pearl - To hold her court of Love at dawn. - -Jean Blewett is chiefly loved by the people for her _forte_—her -sincere, simple singing of true love and faith, of childhood, and the -field flowers, and the joys of the Canadian Spring and Winter. But, as a -_genre_ poet, she is gifted with a whimsical humor which is quite unique -in the poetic literature of Canada. _For He was Scotch and So Was She_ -is a fetching example of Jean Blewett’s humor and humorous treatment of -a simple or homely subject and is to be found in many Canadian -anthologies. - -Francis Sherman, one of the truest and most individual poets that Canada -has produced, is a relative of Charles G. D. Roberts and Bliss Carman. -His literary output has been meagre, comprising only one regularly -published volume, a small, thin booklet, _Matins_ (1896), and three or -four privately printed pamphlets of verse. But the quality is sufficient -to fix his place in the company of the authentic Canadian poets of the -First Renaissance. - -Sherman’s poetry shows a distinct tendency to mysticism. He was, -evidently, influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite School. But he had an -independent individuality. He possessed, as a poet, eyes and feelings of -his own; and could express what he saw and felt, with ready and -confident artistry. The Pre-Raphaelite influence on Francis Sherman and -his own natural gifts for individual expression are disclosed in -_Between the Battles_ (from _Matins_):— - - Let us bury him here - Where the maples are! - He is dead, - And he died thanking God that he fell with the fall of the leaf and - the year. - - Where the hillside is sheer, - Let it echo our tread - Whom he led; - Let us follow as gladly as ever we followed who never knew fear. - - Ere he died, they had fled; - Yet they heard his last cheer - Ringing clear,— - When we lifted him up, he would fain have pursued, but grew dizzy - instead. - - Break his sword and his spear! - Let his last prayer be said - By the bed - We have made underneath the wet wind in the maple trees moaning so - drear: - - ‘O Lord God, by the red - Sullen end of the year - That is here, - We beseech Thee to guide us and strengthen our swords till his slayers - be dead!’ - -Many of Sherman’s poems have the ‘great out-of-doors’ world in Canada as -their theme, and are marked by grave, meditative beauty, disclosing, on -his part, intimate communing with and brooding on Nature’s moods. These -qualities of Francis Sherman’s mind and art are observed in the -following sonnet, quoted from his _In Memorabilia Mortis_:— - - I marked the slow withdrawal of the year, - Out on the hills the scarlet maple shone— - The glad, first herald of triumphal dawn. - A robin’s song fell through the silence—clear - As long ago it rang when June was here. - Then, suddenly, a few grey clouds were drawn - Across the sky; and all the song was gone, - And all the gold was quick to disappear. - That day the sun seemed loth to come again; - And all day long the low wind spoke of rain, - Far-off, beyond the hills; and moaned, like one - Wounded, among the pines; as though the Earth, - Knowing some giant grief had come to birth, - Had wearied of the Summer and the Sun. - -A rare spirit and exquisite craftsman, as a poet, is Albert Ernest -Stafford Smythe. He was born in Ireland in 1861. He is Keltic through -and through; and because he is Keltic in his reactions to the universe, -in his perceptions of spiritual meanings in all things, he divines God -in men and God in Nature, or God _as_ man and God as Nature—spiritual -presences everywhere. In a word, Albert E. S. Smythe exemplifies in his -genius and art, as notably and profoundly as Lampman in his, but in a -different way, what Wordsworth called _natural piety_. Smythe’s -spiritual perceptions of divinity everywhere rise to a refined mysticism -which he expresses with a ‘white beauty’ in exquisitely finished verse. -As contrasted with other Canadian mystical poets Smythe is the poet of -the _Cosmic_ Spirit and Beauty. - -In 1891 he published _Poems; Grave and Gay_, and in 1923, _The Garden of -the Sun_. A sonnet (_The Seasons of the Gods_) and a lyric (_Anastasis_) -from the second volume suffice to disclose his qualities in his role as -the poet of the Cosmic Spirit and Beauty. As a sonneteer, Smythe is not -surpassed by any of his older or younger contemporaries. _The Seasons of -the Gods_ is lofty in conception, noble in thought, rich in naturalistic -imagery, dulcet in verbal melody, and perfect in formal artistry. It is -music of a soul ‘in tune with the Infinite’:— - - I sat with May upon a midnight hill - Wrapped in a dusk of unremembered years - And thought on buried April—on the tears - And shrouds of March, and Youth’s dead daffodil - All withered on a Mound of Spring. And still - The earth moved sweetly in her sleep, the Spheres - Wrought peace about her path, and for her ears - Climbed the high music of their blended will. - - The God who dreamed the Earth, as I this frame - That makes me thrall to death and coward of birth— - Dreamed He not March below some vanished Moon— - Under an earlier Heaven’s auroral flame - The cosmic April flowering into mirth - Of May and joy of Universal June? - -With what lyrical eloquence, subdued, yet direct and compelling, Smythe -calls the soul, in pure poetry, to achieve its spiritual destiny, in -this lyric, simple in diction and structure, but sublimated, in -thought:— - - What shall it profit a man - To gain the world—if he can— - And lose his soul, as they say - In their uninstructed way? - - The whole of the world in gain; - The whole of your soul! Too vain - You judge yourself in the cost. - ’Tis you—not your soul—is lost. - - Your soul! If you only knew— - You would reach to the Heaven’s blue, - To the heartmost centre sink, - Ere you severed the silver link, - - To be lost in your petty lust - And scattered in cosmic dust. - For your soul is a Shining Star - Where the Throne and the Angels are. - - And after a thousand years, - With the salve of his bottled tears, - Your soul shall gather again - From the dust of a world of pain - - The frame of a slave set free— - The man that you ought to be, - The man you may be to-night - If you turn to the Valley of Light. - -The number of women poets in the period under review is noteworthy. -Along with Ethelwyn Wetherald and Jean Blewett must be mentioned -appreciatively the names and poetry of Virna Sheard, Helena Coleman, -Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald (sister of C. G. D. Roberts), Helen M. -Merrill, Annie Campbell Huestis, Agnes Maule Machar (_pseud._ -‘Fidelis’), Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, Alma Frances McCollum, and S. -Frances Harrison (_pseud._ ‘Seranus’). Their outstanding contemporaries -amongst the men were Arthur Stringer and Peter McArthur. It is -impossible to review in detail the poetry of all these lyrists. They -followed the ideals of the older systematic group as regards original -inspiration and artistic craftsmanship. But the work of some of them may -briefly be remarked. - -In 1891 S. Frances Harrison published _Pine, Rose, and Fleur de Lis_, a -volume of really poetical verse. She is, however, more to be noted as -the compiler of the first noteworthy anthology of Canadian verse (_A -Canadian Birthday Book_, 1887), which is distinguished by the fact that -it contains a poem by the Indian Chief Tecumseh, the first -French-Canadian poem, and some of the earliest poems of Bliss Carman (a -series of quatrains). Arthur Stringer is a lyrical poet and a poetic -dramatist. His art in the latter respect is appreciated in another -chapter. In 1907 he published _The Woman in the Rain and Other Poems_, -and in 1911, _Irish Poems_. His lyrical poetry in general is -distinguished by a warm humanity and by careful craftsmanship. But he -achieved a special distinction with his poems in ‘Irishy.’ Many of them -have been set to music, and, amongst Canadian-born poets, his only rival -in that field is Sir Gilbert Parker. By themselves Stringer’s poems in -‘Irishy’ are a novel and real, if not important, contribution to the -_genre_ and humorous poetry of Canada. In 1907 Peter McArthur (‘The Sage -of Ekfrid’) published _The Prodigal and Other Poems_. He is never a mere -aesthete in form, but he is a rare Nature and humorous poet—with the -lightest and happiest touch in both departments, as in his -_Corn-Planting_ and in _To the Birds_. He humanizes Nature in a way -altogether different from other Canadian poets, perhaps whimsically but -always with an intimate, colloquial quality of diction, and a piquancy -which makes his Nature poetry spiritually refreshing, even to formalists -and dilettanti. - -Properly Isabel Ecclestone Mackay belongs to the minor poets of the -Systematic Period. For in 1904 she published her first volume of verse, -_Between the Lights_. But with that, she turned to writing fiction, and -did not publish any books of verse till the appearance of _The Shining -Ship and Other Poems_ (1919) and _Fires of Driftwood_ (1923). Her first -venture in verse was not better than passable or than good journalistic -verse. But in _Fires of Driftwood_ she disclosed a real mastery of form, -color, and music, along with a spiritual sentiment which is new in -Canadian poetry. She is occupied most with the vicissitudes and meaning -of life, but occasionally she paints objective Nature with winning color -and music. It is, however, in her poetry _of_ childhood (rather than -_for_ children), as in _The Shining Ship_, that Isabel Ecclestone Mackay -most displays original genius and has achieved genuine distinction. The -poems in _The Shining Ship_ are marked by the rarest of psychological -gifts in a poet—insight into the real heart and mind and imagination of -children, and by a diction and phrasing which appeal to the child mind -as immediately and as winningly as do the child poems of Eugene Field -and R. L. Stevenson. In fact, as Stevenson’s _A Child’s Garden of Verse_ -is to English Literature, so Isabel Ecclestone Mackay’s _A Shining Ship -and Other Poems_ is to Canadian Literature. - - * * * * * - -Sources of quotations in this chapter: - -_The Hayfield_ is found in _The Last Robin_, by Ethelwyn Wetherald -(Ryerson Press: Toronto). - -Quotations from Jean Blewett’s work, in _Jean Blewett’s Poems_ -(McClelland & Stewart: Toronto). - -From Francis Sherman’s _Matins_ (Copeland and Day: Boston). - -From Albert E. S. Smythe’s _Grave and Gay_; and from _The Garden of the -Sun_ (Macmillan Co.: Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER XV - - - Elegiac Monodists - - THE ELEGIAC MONODISTS OF CANADA—CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS—BLISS - CARMAN—WILFRED CAMPBELL—DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT—WILLIAM MARSHALL - —JAMES DE MILLE. - -Canadian Literature is rich—not relatively but absolutely—in Dirges, -Epicedes, Elegies, Threnodies, and Elegiac Monodies. That Canadian -Elegiac Monodies, or long ‘In Memoriam’ poems inspired by the death of a -real, not a mythical or imagined, person, have genuine distinction, is -indisputable. In number they equal the monodies of English Literature; -and in manner, in variety of form, and in several qualitative -excellences they surpass the monodies of American Literature. Modern -English literature possesses five great threnodies or monodies; Milton’s -_Lycidas_, Shelley’s _Adonais_, Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_, Arnold’s -_Thyrsis_, and Swinburne’s _Ave atque Vale_. American Literature has to -its credit two fine and noble monodies: Emerson’s _Threnody_ (for his -son) and Whitman’s _When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d_ (for -Lincoln). Canadian Literature boasts of six threnodies or monodies, -which all enhance New World Literature and at least two of which are a -distinct contribution to the elegiac poetry of English Literature. The -Canadian monodies are Roberts’ _Ave!_ (to Shelley), Carman’s _A Seamark_ -(to Stevenson), Campbell’s _Bereavement of the Fields_ (to Lampman), -Duncan Campbell Scott’s _Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris_ (a Canadian -painter), William E. Marshall’s _Brookfield_ (to R. R. MacLeod), and -James De Mille’s _Behind the Veil_ (which is sort of Dantean ‘Vision’ of -the Beloved in Heaven). - -That Canadian poets should have essayed the Elegiac Monody and have -excelled in it is consistent with the genuine, the essential mood, the -spiritual attitudes of the Canadian people. For while the literary -traditions, forms, and methods of Canadian poets are English, the bases -of Canadian culture and civilization are much more New England and Scots -than English, or, in short, Puritan and Calvinistic. It was as natural -for the 19th century native-born Canadian, as it was for an 18th century -New England Puritan and Loyalist and a Scots Calvinist, to be -preoccupied with thoughts of ‘otherworldliness.’ The meaning of life and -death is almost a _congenial_ subject of reflection to the -characteristic Canadian. Fortunately the _habitat_ of the Canadian mind, -Nature in Canada, recalled Canadian poets from exclusive occupation with -spiritual prosperities and great departures to thoughts of ‘the soul’s -inherent high magnificence’ in daily mundane life and to the joys, -consolations, spiritual transports, and peace which Nature affords the -distracted human spirit. Another factor saved Canadian poets from -moralistic preachments when they were moved to express in verse their -sorrow over some great departure. They had the example of the form and -color of the English elegies, from Milton to Swinburne, to save them -from chill gravity and barren moralism. The Canadian monodists, on their -own account, also loved fine technic in verse, and strove to achieve it -according to their capacity. It was therefore natural that Canadian -poets not only should essay the elegiac monody but also write that -species of poetry with genuine distinction. - -The subjects of all Canadian elegiac monodies are either presented -against a background of Nature or are suffused with ‘the color of life’ -and the beauty of Nature. The first, and in many ways the noblest, -Canadian monody is Charles G. D. Roberts’ _Ave!_ (sub-titled _An Ode for -the Centenary of Shelley’s Birth_). It is a poem of thirty-one ten-line -stanzas, in decasyllabics, closing with a rimed couplet, iambic -pentameter. The poem is not so much, as Roberts called it, an ‘ode’ as -an elegiac monody, with the subject presented against a pastoral -background. That it was written ostensibly to commemorate Shelley’s -birth, not his death, must not cause us to conceive the poem as other -than an elegy. The centenary of Shelley’s birth occurred in 1892, when -Roberts was 32 years of age. Naturally he seized the opportunity to -memorialize in verse the spirit of one of his masters, but he also -laments the passing of Shelley and his influence, after the manner of -the true elegiac monody. The poem divides not strophically but -symphonically. The first theme is a picture of the naturalistic beauties -of the Tantramar marshes and the tides that rush in over it from the Bay -of Fundy, and the influences that Nature about Tantramar had on Roberts -as a poet. He develops this theme by marking how ‘strangely akin’ -Tantramar’s marshes seem - - to him whose birth - One hundred years ago - With fiery succor to the ranks of song - Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong; - -and how, like these marshes, with the incoming and the outgoing floods -of Fundy’s tides, Shelley’s - - compassionate breast, - Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace, - Was tortured with perpetual unrest. - Now loud with flood, now languid with release, - Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife - Of tides from the salt sea of human pain - That hiss along the perilous coasts of life - Beat in his eager brain; - But all about the tumult of his heart - Stretched the great calm of his celestial art. - -A few stanzas are devoted, as they say in symphonic music, to the -‘working out’ of this similitude in all its aspects. Then in stanza XXII -Roberts formally announces the elegiac theme as such:— - - Lament, Lerici, mourn the world’s loss! - Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon! - -Roberts develops the lyrical genius of Shelley in eight stanzas, and in -the final two stanzas returns to the original theme of the Tantramar -marshes where on the inner ear of the Canadian poet - - once more - Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar. - -It was remarked, in a preceding chapter, that we miss the ethical note -in Roberts’ genius and poetry. Here is the exception. In his _Ave!_ he -became morally or religiously, as well as imaginatively, sublimated. In -that poem he treats life and death with the moral beauty and -significance of his exemplars and models, Shelley’s _Adonais_, Arnold’s -_Thyrsis_, and Swinburne’s _Ave atque Vale_. In form and substance -Roberts’ _Ave!_ is a true elegiac monody. - -But is it a great poem? Fault has been found with it on the side of -structure or coherency. The poem appears coherent when it is remembered -that the structure is symphonic rather than strophic. For though the -poem begins with a Canadian setting, which on the face of it is as far -away as possible from Shelley and Shelley’s England where he was born -and the Italy where he died, it is the thought of the Canadian marshes -and the floods and unrest of the tides that suggests to Roberts the -inner spirit and genius and life and death of Shelley. So that naturally -Roberts passes from the Canadian setting and its suggestions to the -subject proper of his poem, namely, Shelley; then to memorializing -Shelley’s genius and lamenting his passing, and, finally, back to the -Canadian setting which suggested the whole poem. Surely that is coherent -logic, unity in variety of structure! - -Nor is there any real contradiction between the diction and imagery of -the poem and the high magnificence of the soul which the poem -commemorates. The ‘properties,’ of course, are not classical—heroes and -nymphs, and all the mythical personages of the Greek pastoral poets. -There is genuine spiritual dignity in the Canadian setting of the -_Ave!_—the atmosphere and color of the grassy Canadian flatlands, and -tides, and mists, and air, and life, and sky. The poem, too, is in the -grand manner and is marked by a spiritual sweep and lyrical eloquence -which convey to the heart and the imagination of the reader the sense of -profound emotion and of sincerity on the part of the poet. So that, in -spite of alleged structural and dictional faults, Roberts’ _Ave!_ is -distinguished by sensuous beauty and splendor, by imaginative sweep, by -emotional intensity and moral and spiritual dignity. But above all it -is, as a pastoral elegy or monody, much more Canadian than English. As -such, it is a really fine and distinctive contribution to Canadian -creative literature. If it is not a great poem, it is a magnificent, -compelling, and noble achievement in great poetry—a poem which -surpasses any monody in American Literature and which indubitably takes -an important status amongst the elegiac monodies of England. - -In 1895 Bliss Carman published _A Seamark_[1] (sub-titled _A Threnody -for Robert Louis Stevenson_). It is a poem of thirty-eight stanzas in -rimed iambic tetrameter. It is all in the inimitable lyric manner of -Carman, and commemorates Stevenson as ‘the master of the roving kind.’ -Altiloquence is never a quality of Carman’s poetry, as it is of -Roberts.’ Subtlety in simplicity is the formula of Carman’s genius. And -he will color all his homely or simple images with the most apt felicity -of phrase and the most insinuating verbal melody. For this reason, some -miss the high spiritual, mystical, and religious note in poems which are -even more sublimated, though less grandiloquent, than Roberts’ verse. On -the face of _A Seamark_, it seems as if Carman, in commemorating the -death of Stevenson ‘as the master of the roving kind,’ composed a -colorful musical lyric, but not a highly spiritualized poem. How simple -or homely, and yet how felicitous and colorful, are the images in -Carman’s musical lines, announcing the death of Stevenson on the island -of Vailima:— - - Our restless loved adventurer, - On secret orders come to him, - Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef, - And melted on the white sea-rim. - -The hasty reader does not suspect or surmise the deeper meaning that is -to come. But Carman and Stevenson were kin of mind and heart, and their -kinship was a kinship of the love of searching out the haunts and ways -of the joy and beauty that are on the face and in the heart of Nature. -So that these master rovers are not careless, irresponsible vagabonds, -but are spiritual nomads with a spiritual function and bent on a divine -errand. Thus does Carman magnify their office:— - - O all you hearts about the world - In whom the truant gypsy blood, - Under the frost of this pale time, - Sleeps like the daring sap and flood - - That dream of April and reprieve! - You whom the haunted vision drives, - Incredulous of home and ease, - _Perfection’s lovers_ all your lives! - -What it was given to Carman to discern in the universe was the eternal -meaning of youth and to hear the ever-young voice of earth singing in -the heart of man and in the earth, in everything, and to be himself the -lyric voice of the world. Stevenson was also such a lyric voice of -earth. Carman, then, does highly spiritualize his subject when he first -presents Stevenson in the manner of the outward aspect by which he was -commonly conceived, a restless loved adventurer, who when he died was -laid down, as Carman puts it in novel and arresting paradox:— - - Beyond the turmoil of renown, - -and, next, discloses the inner meaning of the ‘wander-biddings’ that -were in the soul of Stevenson who, even in death, still kept - - The journey-wonder on his face. - -For when Stevenson died, men sorrowed and surmised not why they grieved. -But Carman in _A Seamark_ reveals why. Men thought a prince of joy had -passed forever. But Carman discloses the higher spiritual truth:— - - He ‘was not born for age.’ Ah no, - For everlasting youth is his! - And part of the lyric of the earth - With spring and leaf and blade he is. - -In form, and in musical, colorful, simple yet subtle, spiritualization -of the meaning and value of men in whom the lyric spirit of earth is -supreme and vocal, there is not another elegiac monody in English like, -or comparable to, Carman’s _A Seamark_. It, too, like Roberts’ _Ave!_ -enhances both the quality and quantity of the Canadian and the English -elegy. - -Wilfred Campbell was a myriad-minded man and had an inherited Keltic -imagination which felt acutely the magic and mystery of earth and -existence. He conceived, most beautifully and nobly, the passing of -Archibald Lampman not as a bereavement suffered by mere persons but -rather by the great and constant ‘companion’ of Lampman, namely, Nature. -With a peculiar and lovely sense of the poetic significance of death, -Campbell ennobled the spirit of Lampman, and perpetuated the meaning of -his poetry, in an elegiac monody which bears the felicitous title -_Bereavement of the Fields_. - -The poem is in a seven-lined pentameter stanza, and is infused with -Canadian Nature-color throughout. The diction and the structure are -simple, and there is no attempt at sublimated imagination. The poem is -rather in the subdued and gentle manner of Lampman himself. That is to -say, there is a gentle melancholy running through the poem, but the -melancholy is relieved by a simple spiritual beauty which conveys the -rare essence of the spirit of Lampman, who passed from earth:— - - Leaving behind him, like a summer shower, - A fragrance of earth’s beauty, and the chime - Of gentle and imperishable rhyme. - -If poetry can be accepted as literary criticism, then Campbell has -estimated better than the best prose critic the significance and worth -of Lampman as a poet and his place in the company of the great:— - - Outside this prison-house of all our tears, - Enfranchised from our sorrow and our wrong, - Beyond the failure of our days and years, - Beyond the burden of our saddest song, - He moves with those whose music filled his ears, - And claimed his gentle spirit from the throng,— - Wordsworth, Arnold, Keats, high masters of his song. - -Campbell’s threnody is simple, sensuous, and impassioned, without being -impressionistic and rhetorical. It is a sincere and noble affirmation of -the supremacy of the spirit of beauty in the world, wherein, as -Lampman’s exemplar, Keats, once said, imperishably:— - - Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. - -Altogether in another form and with a fresh and novel poetic conception -and impressive artistry, Duncan Campbell Scott wrote his _Lines in -Memory of Edmund Morris_[2]. Scott’s art is singularly informed by a -color and beauty derived from his intimate and exquisite appreciation of -the fine arts, especially music and painting. More than any other -Canadian poet, Scott is the ‘artist in words.’ He is concerned above all -things to employ poetic diction and imagery with the same love of -refined expressiveness and emotional nuance as inspired such musical -composers or tone-painters as Ravel, Debussy, and MacDowell, and such -painters as Constable, Watteau, and Monet. Or to borrow from musical -criticism, Scott loves his performance, his executant artistry with -words and imagery, more than he loves his poetic ideas. - -Edmund Morris was a Canadian painter and his spirit perceived in -Canadian Nature and in the Indian aborigines in Canada something which -no other painter had perceived or attempted to envisage. Scott and -Morris were companions and kindred spirits—the one an artist in words; -and the other an artist in pigments. It was natural, then, that Scott, -on the tragic death of his friend, should commemorate the loss which -both the living friend and the country suffered by the passing of Edmund -Morris. But it was impossible for Scott to write any conventionalized -elegiac monody. Under inner compulsion, he wrote of life and death with -all his original genius for conceiving, as he phrases his mode of -conception, - - Meanings hid in mist; - -and with all his gifts in exquisite craftsmanship:— - - Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art. - -Scott’s _Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris_ is in some respects unique, -but particularly in form, and its simple, intimate, direct address to -the spirit. It is not a pastoral elegy in the third person but a -dramatic monologue, or an epistle in verse from one spirit to another. -There is nothing like it in all English Literature, not even in -Browning. But intimate, even familiar, and colloquial as it is, the poem -is radiant with a ‘white beauty’ of imagery and chaste artistry. More -notably still, it subdues the turbulence of our souls in the presence of -a great loss by death, transports the imagination to the mount of -spiritual vision, refines faith, sustains hope, and fills the spirit -with a serene peace. It leaves upon us imperishably the inward sense -that ‘it is not death to die’:— - - Just as the fruit of a high sunny garden, - Grown mellow with autumnal sun and rain, - Shrivelled with ripeness, splits to the rich heart - And loses a gold kernel to the mould, - So the old world, hanging long in the sun, - And deep enriched with effort and with love, - Shall, in motions of maturity, - Wither and part, and the kernel of it all - Escape, a lovely wraith of spirit, to latitudes - Where the appearance, throated like a bird, - Winged with fire and bodied all with passion, - Shall flame with presage, not of tears, but joy. - -All through this elegiac monody there is a singularly sweet humanity and -yet in it are heard the constant overtones of ‘the soul’s inherent high -magnificence,’ and the whole is suffused or informed with the color of -Canadian Nature and character and life. So that the poem is a novel and -important contribution to the elegiac monody in English. - -In another style and with another but winning effect upon the heart and -the imagination, is William Edward Marshall’s monody _Brookfield_. It is -a poem of forty-five stanzas in the Spenserian form. Structurally -viewed, however, his _Brookfield_ is considerably an achievement in that -form. Its theme is the heart and mind of a simple man, a friend of the -poet, who taught the poet to love communion with the simple creatures -and the life of Nature, and to observe in Nature, not the garment, but -the very spiritual presence of God. There is no metaphysic of Nature in -_Brookfield_. There is but the apprehension of divinity in the little -wild creatures and in the streams and hills, and in the mists, and in -all the varied life of the universal mother. Marshall’s master was -Keats, and while _Brookfield_ cannot critically be called an example of -sensuous impressionism, yet it is warmly colored with pigmentation from -the palette of Nature. But the loveliest strands running through the -warp and woof of the poem are those of love and the heavenly vision. The -sweet, gentle, even tender, Nature-quality as well as the spiritual note -in the poem, may be apprehended from the following stanza:— - - Ah, he was richly dowered of the earth! - The grain of sand, the daisy in the sod, - Awoke his heart; and early he went forth, - Through field and wood, with young eyes all abroad; - And saw the nesting birds and beck and nod - Of little creatures running wild and free, - (Which know not that they know, yet are of God) - And kept his youth, and grew in sympathy, - And loved his fellows more, and had love’s victory. - -Literary critics in the United States, in reviewing Marshall’s -_Brookfield_ signalized both its sensuous and spiritual beauty as -extraordinary, and in line with the quality of the best English elegiac -monodies. In Canada it received high praise from Sir Andrew MacPhail, -who sponsored it by publishing it in _The University Magazine_, and from -Dr. Archibald MacMechan. ‘No such poem,’ said the latter, ‘has appeared -in Canada since Roberts’ _Ave!_ In dignity and depth of feeling the -_Ave!_, De Mille’s _Behind the Veil_, and _Brookfield_ stand together—a -noble trio.’ Marshall’s _Brookfield_ is Canadian in subject and setting -and is indeed a beautiful and noble application of ideas to life—a -genuinely original contribution to the creative poetic literature of -Canada. - -James De Mille’s _Behind the Veil_, published posthumously in 1892, is a -kind of elegiac monody. The poet himself does not so sub-title it. He -designates it simply as ‘A Poem.’ Whether the ‘Loved One’ who has been -lost to the poet was a real person or an imagined companion of the -spirit, it is impossible to surmise from the poem. But the poem itself -is concerned with life and death and yearning for union with the Beloved -in Heaven, and is thus a spiritualized elegy. Essentially, however, it -is a reflective or philosophical poem. If it is reflective, it is also -highly melodramatic both in substance and in form. Part of its -melodramatic quality derives from its metrical structure which suggests -Poe’s _Raven_. It is written in stanzas of five lines in trochaic -tetrameter—a form totally unsuited to its intended high spiritual -dignity of theme. A taste of its quality is afforded from the following -stanzas:— - - Through the darkness rose a vision, - Where beneath the night I kneeled, - Dazzling bright with hues Elysian— - Congregated motes of glory on an ebon field - And a form from out that glory to my spirit stood revealed. - - ‘Son of Light’—I murmured lowly— - ‘All my heart is known to thee— - All my longing and my yearning for the Loved One lost to me— - May these eyes again behold her?’—and the Shape said, ‘Come and see.’ - -It is impossible to read one hundred and twenty-five stanzas or 625 -lines like the preceding, in which the feminine endings make fixed -caesural pauses that prevent enjambement and thus inhibit rhythmical -variety, without the reader’s feeling himself in the realm of the -musically melodramatic. So that the high seriousness of the poem suffers -a loss in impressiveness because of the metre and rhythm of the poem. It -is plain that De Mille was not an adroit verbal musician. The spiritual -dignity and seriousness of the poem can be commended, but on the whole, -it is not poetry, and is not a significant contribution to the Canadian -monody. - ------ - -[1] _A Seamark_ is found in the collection _Ballads and Lyrics_, by -Bliss Carman (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto). - -[2] _Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris_ is from _Lundy’s Lane and Other -Poems_ (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER XVI - - - Novelists - - THE FICTIONISTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC SCHOOL—THE HISTORICAL ROMANCERS - —LIGHTHALL—SAUNDERS—PARKER—MARQUIS—MACLENNAN AND McILWRAITH— - AGNES C. LAUT—WILFRED CAMPBELL—CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. THE - ROMANCERS OF ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY—THOMPSON SETON—ROBERTS—SAUNDERS - —FRASER. THE EVANGELICAL ROMANCERS—RALPH CONNOR—R. E. KNOWLES. - _I. The Historical Romancers._ - -When William Kirby published, in 1877, _The Golden Dog_, he led the way -in Canadian historical romance. Major John Richardson had written -historical novels years before, but Richardson’s material was largely -first hand, from contact with a life and with a setting similar to what -he described. We might argue that Kirby ‘discovered’ to the fictionists -who were to come after him the wealth of material that lay in the -unknown and almost forgotten Canadian past, for he founded his work on -Canadian history and infused it with Canadian incident and color; and -although Mrs. Leprohon’s romances had a considerable vogue both in -English and in French, the circulation of her novels was chiefly local -and not anything like so widespread as that of Kirby’s single -masterpiece. Yet it is problematic just how much the historical or -romantic fiction of the Post-Confederation period (beginning, say, in -1888) owes to Kirby and how much it owes to a stirring impulse of -nationality. That impulse produced tangible evidences in our literature -because of a conscious realization of national ideals and a sensing of -the spirit of a courageous and romantic past in a country that, -superficially viewed, had barely reached the stage of ‘growing pains.’ - -In 1888 William Douw Lighthall published _The Young Seigneur_, a -socio-political study of life and institutions in Canada, which -according to the author himself; ‘arose out of my ideas as a young man -concerning an ideal of Canadian nationality to which I gave the color of -this province (Quebec) as I knew it in the old Seigneuries.’ Possibly -the ‘thesis’ overpowered the romantic or novel elements, for this book -is not regarded as equal in literary merit to its successors. _The False -Chevalier_ (1898) was a historical romance set partly in Canada and -partly in France. It is an attempt to depict an actual romance found in -a packet of documents at the house of the De Léry’s at Boucherville near -Montreal. It is rich in atmosphere and color both of the old land and -the new and is filled with engaging incident, but lacks somewhat in -effective novel construction, and in convincing characterization. It is -in _The Master of Life_ (1910) that Dr. Lighthall has produced a unique -and masterly piece of fiction. With Hiawatha as its hero, it is purely -aboriginal in setting and color and exhibits the author’s wide knowledge -of Indian history and archaeology. It was the result of Dr. Lighthall’s -sympathies with the Iroquois Indians, derived originally from the -ancient family records of the Schuylers (from whom the Lighthalls are -descended). They, as leading British officers and statesmen, had much to -do with keeping the Iroquois steadfast to the British Crown. Although -the impetus to its writing originated in this way, _The Master of Life_, -in its development is an example of rare constructive imagination and is -pervaded with a richly poetic interpretation that apprehends nature as -filled with spiritual presences and nature’s beauty as the garment of -the Great Spirit. - -The year 1889 saw the publication of a work of pure romance in _My -Spanish Sailor_ by (Margaret) Marshall Saunders. This was a love story -of the sea in which a Nova Scotian girl and a Spanish sea-captain are -the leading characters. Again in _Rose à Charlitte_ (1898), afterwards -published as _Rose of Acadie_, Miss Saunders essays romance, colored, it -is true, by a seemingly historic atmosphere, but yet rather a record -than a history, for the Acadian habits and customs which one might think -of as belonging to a past age were current among the people in the Bay -of St. Mary settlement when visited by Miss Saunders in the summer of -1897. Here the descendants of the Acadians had lived apart from the -English and preserved their language, traditions, customs, and their -unique manner of life. ‘The elements of strength and weakness of the -people, their patient devotion, their openness, simplicity and -generosity, their love of gossip and light-heartedness, with the shadows -of the tragic past brooding over them, are all caught in a true -perspective.’ Thus it is not until the year 1896 that we come upon a -truly legitimate successor to _The Golden Dog_. In that year appeared -Gilbert Parker’s _Seats of the Mighty_, which became one of the most -popular of his novels. The story has a strong and fairly unified and -coherent plot. It exhibits Parker’s powers of characterization and -presents to us a gallery of vividly limned historic portraits—Robert -Moray, Doltaire, Gabord, De la Darant, Bigot, Vaudreuil, Montcalm, -Wolfe—in the main true to type, human, and universal. There is not, -however, an unerring accuracy in atmosphere and color and -characterization. The writer was not sufficiently saturated with his -subject and occasional touches of modernity and tinges of contemporary -color subtract from the excellence of artistry. - -But Parker’s fiction really began with his short stories of ‘Pretty -Pierre’ in 1890. It is related that upon coming to London from Australia -he brought to Archibald Forbes, then noted as a war correspondent, a -collection of stories. Forbes’ comment was: ‘You have the best -collection of titles I ever saw.’ Parker took his manuscripts home and -promptly burned them. A day or so afterwards, while passing a shop -window filled with armor and other curios, he noticed the leather coat -and fur cap of a trapper. He went at once to his room and began to write -_The Patrol of the Cypress Hills_, the first story in the series _Pierre -and His People_. These stories dealt with the life of early Western -Canada and were followed from time to time by other volumes: _A Romany -of the Snows_, published in England under the title, _An Adventurer of -the North_, picturing French-Canadians in the woods and rural -settlements; _The Lane That Had No Turning_, stories of that Quebec -settlement which is the background of the novel _When Valmond Came to -Pontiac_; _Cumner’s Son_, sketches of life in the South Seas and in -Australia; _Donovan Pasha_, tales of Egypt and the Soudan; _Northern -Lights_, more modern stories of Western Canada. - -Parker became a prolific writer of novels and his settings range from -Canada and the South Seas to England, Egypt, and South Africa. The -treatment varies from an almost immediate transcript of near present -conditions as in _The Judgment House_ to the re-creation of the historic -past in _The Battle of the Strong_, from the delicate imaginative -romance in _When Valmond Came to Pontiac_, to a pathological study in -_The Right of Way_; he gives us a combination of melodrama and mysticism -in _The Weavers_, the revealment of innate greatness of character in -_The Translation of a Savage_, while in _You Never Know Your Luck_, he -cleverly expands a tenuous short story thread to the full proportions of -a novel. - -Besides _The Seats of the Mighty_, the novels of Gilbert Parker that -will be likely to command most attention because of intrinsic worth are: -_The Right of Way_, _The Battle of the Strong_, _When Valmond Came to -Pontiac_, _The Weavers_, and _The Judgment House_. _The Right of Way_ is -a compelling study in abnormal psychology. There may be improbabilities -in the development of the story of Charley Steele, but there is a living -force in his character and he stands forth as one of the realities of -fiction. _The Battle of the Strong_ depicts the Channel Islands in the -eighteenth century, and was written in a mood of defiance. Parker was -going to get away from a Canadian background. He would write no more -novels of Canada. But, as Sherlock Holmes ‘returned,’ so Canada was too -much a part of Gilbert Parker’s life to remain out of his writings, and -he found, himself unable to get away from it for very long. _The Battle -of the Strong_, however, was based on a thorough and sympathetic study -of the country and people of the Channel Islands and the characters and -incidents are colored with a simple, engaging humor. _When Valmond Came -to Pontiac_ is a delightful excursion into romance in which the -Napoleonic tradition shows its influence in a little out-of-the-way -village of Quebec. It has much of the charm of Booth Tarkington’s -_Monsieur Beaucaire_ and is structurally the nearest to artistic -perfection of any of Parker’s novels. _The Weavers_ rises to a more -Imperialistic sweep, dealing as it does with internal and international -politics of Egypt, while _The Judgment House_, a novel of London and -South Africa, is his greatest literary conception; in it his imaginative -vision has apprehended big interests, big business, big ideals, big -expansion, Imperial ends, conceived and carried out by big men, -struggling and striving and achieving in a big world. His more recent -novels, although some of them, as _The Money Master_, show considerable -skill in characterization, are largely novels of incident and of -accidental circumstance and have not the broad grasp of men and events -nor the innate emotional depth and power of those just outlined. - -The outstanding qualities of Parker’s work are:— - - - -(1) The strong dramatic quality. It is no surprise to us to learn that -he was in his college days a most enthusiastic Shakespeare student and -an ‘elocutionist’ of some reputation. The power to portray dramatic -situations is exhibited in his very earliest writings. One need but open -almost any of his novels and read the first paragraph to find that one -is projected into an imaginative world of action, although the story may -begin with a sentence of pure narration or description. - - - -(2) Skill in descriptive characterization. How effectively action, -explanation, and description are combined to make his characters vivid, -cannot be better exhibited than in the introduction of Valmond in _When -Valmond Came to Pontiac_. Yet there is a tendency to cast some of his -characters in moulds, so that they become types rather than individuals. -‘Donovan Pasha’ is but ‘Pretty Pierre’ amid new conditions and -circumstances. ‘Krool’ of _The Judgment House_ recalls forcibly -‘Soolsby’ of _The Weavers_. - - - -(3) His versatility is apparent from the survey already made of his -works. And to the list of poems, short stories, and novels, might be -added his book on the Great War—_The World in the Crucible_—and his -articles on agricultural questions and land settlement. - - - -(4) His breadth of literary canvas. It may seem a simple matter to place -one part of a story in England and another in Africa, or part in Canada -and another part in the South Seas, but it requires a very broad grasp -of material and a wide knowledge of people, and a keen sense of -atmosphere to do it effectually. He has been described as the product of -the British Empire, and there is little doubt that the breadth of his -experience is the basis of his breadth of literary vision. - - - -(5) A sense of the supernatural and touches of mysticism are consequent -to his strong dramatic powers and show in many of his short stories, -e.g. _The Tall Master_ and _The Flood_ in _Pierre and His People_, and -in some of his novels, notably in _The Weavers_. - - - -Summing up our impressions of Sir Gilbert Parker, we find that he has a -breadth of vision not excelled or even equalled by any other Canadian -writer. Comparing him with Norman Duncan, we see that Duncan is a finer -workman but in a narrower range. Parker comes close to taking a place -with the front rank modern British novelists and yet he does not quite -do it. Why? Perhaps because of the fact that a man’s excellences are -very often the cause of his defects. He is nothing if not dramatic. He -reaches always for the spectacular climax where nature is often -satisfied to take things quietly. He has just a little too much of a -tendency to play to the gallery. He verges nearer to the melodramatic -than do his contemporary British novelists—in fact, he frequently falls -to it. There is not enough innate value in his incidents, there is more -stage play. - -Yet on the whole, Parker’s work is fresher. There is more of the clear -air of the out-of-doors. There is not the morbidity of tone, nor the -feeling of helplessness that is found in the fiction of Hardy, Meredith, -Bennett, Galsworthy, Philpotts, Trevena and other leaders of the modern -British novelists. We can forgive Parker many lapses because at the -end—the total effect is the feeling that the good comes uppermost. Take -even Pierre, half-breed gambler, a sort of half-Ishmaelite, yet with a -sense of fair-play, a chivalry, a kindness that never leaves him. And so -nearly all his characters and most of his books inspire us finally with -divine lessons of hope and encouragement. - -The historical romances of Charles G. D. Roberts—_The Forge in the -Forest_ (1896), _A Sister to Evangeline_, _The Prisoner of -Mademoiselle_, _The Raid From Beauséjour_—while they are Canadian in -setting and color, do not show the same imaginative reach and the same -emotional power as the romances of Parker. The themes and settings of -Roberts’ romances are rather narrow. They are concerned chiefly with -minor incidents of the early history of Acadia, or we might say rather -with a minor treatment of these incidents, for the historical episodes -about which these stories are centered were, no doubt, of themselves -important enough to the early French colony. The difficulty is that, -despite the skill of Roberts in depicting local color and reproducing -atmosphere in exquisite smooth flowing prose, he evinces little gift of -characterization and the personages of the story are more or less -mechanical puppets speaking by the will and with the words of the -showman. - -Somewhat unique in early romantic fiction is _The Forest of Bourg -Marie_, by S. Frances Harrison (‘Seranus’), first published in 1898. The -bygone civilization of the old seigneuries casts its glamor over a newer -and more sophisticated Quebec, in its turn influenced by the hectic -glitter of great cities of ‘the States,’ to which were attracted -restless youth of French-Canada. Thus Mikel Caron, forest-ranger for the -county of Yamachiche, links to the present the past grandeur of the -Seigniory of Bourg Marie, while Magloire le Caron (Mr. Murray Carson in -the States), villain of the piece, is the hybrid product of three -civilizations. The writer’s style alters itself to harmonize with the -varying spirit and mood of her story—stately and poetic in its -descriptions of departed greatness; nervous and gauche in the passages -where the turbulent current of a fevered modernity breaks through. - -In _Marguerite de Roberval_ (1899), T. G. Marquis turned back to the -times of Jacques Cartier and applied his constructive imagination as -well as his industry in research to building a story of Old France and -the New around a most romantic and dramatic love episode. - -In the same year appeared _The Span o’ Life_ written in collaboration by -William MacLennan and Jean N. MacIlwraith. Its historical basis is found -in the memoirs of a Scottish Chevalier, who shared in the ill-starred -rebellion of Prince Charles and afterwards became a soldier of fortune -in the army of France, thus being present at the siege of Louisbourg and -afterwards escaping to Quebec and joining the French forces there. The -plot element of the story is somewhat weak and it is of value chiefly -for its inside history of the siege conditions in the two greatest forts -of New France. - -So far the concern of Canadian historical fiction, as we have seen it, -has been chiefly with New France and the conflicts between the French -and English in North America. It remained for Agnes C. Laut to realize -quite independently the amazing wealth of romantic history that lay back -of the opening up and exploiting of the middle and far West of Canada. -While yet a schoolgirl and knowing only the formal, conventional, and -statistical outlines of Canadian history as then taught, she came -accidentally upon a copy of Gunn’s _History of Manitoba_ and sat up all -night thrilled with the story of the Selkirk settlers. Thus originated -the impulse, fulfilled later (1900), in _The Lords of the North_ and -(1902) in _Heralds of Empire_, to reveal what she felt, to show that -Canada’s history was one page of glory. It had never been told in a way -that the youth of the land would realize this, and she felt that, -lacking this realization, we lacked a truly national spirit. - -_Lords of the North_ presents a vivid picture of Canada’s fur trade at -the most flourishing period of that industry. It follows the conflict -between the rival fur companies—the North-West and the Hudson’s Bay -Company. Across its pages flit the voyageur, the trader, Indians, -missionaries, settlers, buffalo hunters—all the romantic figures of the -Canadian West of the period of 1815 to 1821. _Heralds of Empire_ will be -remembered for its characterization of Pierre Radisson, the man of -action—the man who dared and who did—the man with the true pioneer -spirit. Miss Laut’s style is forcible and direct. Her sentences are -brief and crisp. The story runs on without effort. Description never -wearies because it is the natural and necessary setting, painted with -quick, bold vivid strokes. Of the larger matters of plot structure—the -architectonics of fiction, she can hardly be said to have achieved -mastery, but she writes with such energy and enthusiasm for her subject -that in a measure this defect may be overlooked. - -Wilfred Campbell also essayed the historical romance but with -indifferent success. His _Ian of the Orcades_ with its historical -Scottish setting was more congenial to his genius than _A Beautiful -Rebel_. It has arresting incidents, vigorously drawn characters, and -considerable intensity of emotions, but it wins us rather by Campbell’s -power to suffuse the text with what Matthew Arnold called ‘natural -magic.’ It is more in keeping with the ‘old world imagination’ of -Campbell which has been defined in the study of his poetry. _A Beautiful -Rebel_, a story of Canada and the United States in the war of 1812, is -lacking in imaginative color, is defective in structure, and the -incident is too slight for the significance of the theme. The comment of -the author has a way of appearing obtrusively as a digression, or at -times in the mouths of the characters. What value _A Beautiful Rebel_ -has as historic fiction lies chiefly in its representation of the part -played in the war by American sympathizers living as Canadian settlers. - - _II. The Romancers of Animal Psychology._ - -In the field of romance of wild and of domestic animal psychology, -Canadian writers have shown a distinct and unique inventive genius and a -corresponding artistry. - -Ernest Thompson Seton attracted the attention of the world by his -romances of wild life in Canada because he combined in them the skilled -observation of the scientist, the vision of the artist, the insight of -the psychologist, the sympathy of the humane man; and, perhaps, more -than all that, the spirit of youthful wonder at, and interest in, the -ways and doings of the creatures of the field and wood. - -He brought to his writings of animal life a new point of view—namely, -that human beings and wild animals are kin; that animals are motivated -with passions and desires and, to some extent, ideas, just as human -beings are. Thus he wrote with sympathy and with creative imagination -and revealed the new life and being of wild animals, and he hoped to -achieve the practical result of quickening the sympathies of man toward -animals and stopping the thoughtless extermination of many of our -harmless wild creatures. - -His books such as _Wild Animals I Have Known_ (1898), _The Trail of The -Sand-Hill Stag_, _The Biography of a Grizzly_, _Lives of the Hunted_, -are studies of animal psychology and behavior. _Lives of the Hunted_, -for example, contains life-histories of Krag, the mountain Ram; of -Johnny Bear; of Coyotito, the Escaped Coyote. Krag’s whole history from -birth to death is faithfully sketched and, incidentally, much is learned -about the habits of the mountain-sheep. From these life-histories we -gain, not merely knowledge and information but wisdom, since animal life -and human life are akin. - -Some of the earlier animal stories were written in dialogue—the animals -being made to talk. But, very wisely, the author soon adopted the -narrative style and removed his sketches from the character of fairy -stories to that of real interpretations of animal life. - -In _Two Little Savages_ he gives the adventures of two boys who lived in -the woods as Indians and learned much about Indian life and all kinds of -wood-lore. Other stories of a similar type are employed for the teaching -of different phases of woodcraft. _Wood Myth and Fable_ advances a step -further and from incidents in animal life, and other occurrences in -nature, the writer points a definite moral lesson. This escapes -preachiness by the adroit epigrammatic wit of the ‘moral.’ - -A somewhat different literary ideal inspired Charles G. D. Roberts to -undertake the pure romance of animal psychology and behavior. ‘It may be -that this arose as a natural development from Roberts’ early attempts to -depict a narrative from actual occurrences and experiences in the woods. -At any rate _Earth’s Enigmas_ (1896), followed by numerous other volumes -such as _The Kindred of the Wild_, _The Watchers of the Trails_, _The -Haunters of the Silences_, _Red Fox_, _The Feet of the Furtive_, _More -Animal Stories_ have established the place of Roberts as the supreme -artist in the field of animal romance. - -Roberts’ treatment of animal psychology differs from that of Thompson -Seton or Marshall Saunders. He makes his wild animals either wholly -human or too human. They move in their world with a sort of super-animal -(or super-human) knowledge, and Roberts’ discloses a subconscious -motivation of conduct in the wild animals that outdoes the present clay -psycho-analyists in their revealments of human motivation. For this -reason they appeal not to the heart but to the analytic imagination and -the aesthetic sense. They awaken the interest of the intellect rather -than the sympathetic emotions. They lack humor and pathos, but in -imaginative sweep and artistic structure they are supreme creations. As -examples of a literary prose style they stand almost alone in their -particular field of fiction. - -Not all Roberts’ animal stories are of this ‘intellectual’ type. Human -interest and humor is added by showing animals in relationships, more or -less accidental, to mankind, in such volumes as _The Backwoodsman_, -_Hoof and Claw_. - -The peculiar _forte_ of Marshall Saunders is the romance of the -domesticated animal or animal pet. _Beautiful Joe: The Autobiography of -a Dog_, first published in 1894, is one of the literary phenomena of the -world. It has been translated into fourteen or more languages and has -sold over a million copies. With acute perceptive sympathy and engaging -artistry, Miss Saunders has commingled strangely but veraciously the -mind and life of the domestic animals. She envisages truthfully their -‘near humanity’ and reveals them as akin to man in feelings, passions, -desires, and the motivation of conduct, but keeps them on a level below -man. Her animals are not human, but they appeal more to the heart of the -humanity in us than those of Roberts, Thompson Seton, or W. A. Fraser; -particularly do they appeal more to the spirit and heart of youth. Her -_Golden Dicky_, the story of a canary and his friends; _Bonnie Prince -Fetlar_, the autobiography of a pony, and _Jimmy Goldcoast_, the story -of a monkey, have all the engaging qualities of her earlier work. - -W. A. Eraser, in _Mooswa and Others of the Boundaries_ (1900), and in -_The Outcasts_ (1901) achieved a distinct success by working with much -the same material as Roberts and Thompson Seton and to some extent -combining the style and treatment of both. He is not so scientific as -Thompson Seton; nor is he so literary or so psychoanalytic as Roberts. -_The Sa’-Zada Tales_ (1905) in which the animals at the zoo are -represented as conversing with their keeper, Sahib Zada, and with one -another, exhibit the intimate knowledge of wild animal life gained, no -doubt, during the author’s residence in Asiatic countries, but they are -not as distinctively original in manner, nor as high in literary quality -as his other animal tales. Fraser, however, has a peculiar field in -which he excels—in his novel _Thoroughbreds_ (1902), and in his volume -of short stories _Brave Hearts_ (1904), he shows a sympathetic -understanding of the life of the race horse and he presents vividly and -with sometimes a rollicking humor, at others a tender pathos, many -incidents and expressions of the racing field. He is an apostle of clean -sport and a true lover of the racing horse and his enthusiasm gives to -these stories a directness and coherence not always found in some of his -later stories and novels with different subjects and settings. - - _III. The Evangelical Romance._ - -The pioneer writer of the ‘evangelical romance’ in Canada was ‘Ralph -Connor’ (Reverend Charles W. Gordon). Back of all his books stands the -missionary spirit. Indeed it was that missionary spirit which led to the -finding of his literary gift. The story of that finding dates back to -1896. He had been attending a meeting of the Home Mission Committee of -the Presbyterian Church at Toronto, and afterwards tried to impress upon -the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, then editor of _The Westminster_, the duty of -the magazine to educate the committee and the people to a greater -liberality. The editor’s reply was: ‘Articles are no good if they have -only facts and statistics and exhortations. Give me a sketch, a story, a -thing of life rather than a report. . .’ - -The result of this advice was a series of sketches of missionary life in -the foothills of the Rockies, which were featured as _Tales of the -Selkirks_ in _The Westminster_ (1897) and appeared in book form the -following year as _Black Rock_. - -When the first sketches were ready it was deemed advisable to conceal -the identity of the author. The editor telegraphed the query, ‘What -name?’ The reply came, ‘Sign sketch Cannor.’ ‘Can—Nor, that would -betray the face of a mask,’ says the editor. ‘Perhaps the operator made -a mistake. Likely it should be Connor.’ And running over the alphabet of -masculine names, he decided that ‘Ralph’ would just about fit with -‘Connor.’ Thus the christening of the missionary novelist. - -Ralph Connor’s novels fall into several groups. _Black Rock_ and _The -Sky Pilot_ are tales of the Rocky Mountain foothills, both telling of -the wild life of the West and of the work of the missionary. _The Man -From Glengarry_ and _Glengarry School Days_ deal with the life of the -author’s boyhood in Eastern Ontario. _The Prospector_ and _The Doctor_ -combine East and West, by following their leading characters through the -University of Toronto and transferring them to Western Canada. _The -Foreigner_ has a Manitoba setting and concerns itself with the problem -of the assimilation of the foreigner. _Corporal Cameron_ and _The Patrol -of the Sun Dance Trail_, carry a young Scot to Canada and through the -ranks of the Mounted Police. The Great War gave material for _The -Major_; labor troubles for _To Him That Hath_; while in _The Gaspards of -Pine Croft_, the author reverted to a setting not so far from that of -his first novel for a story more emotional and psychological in nature -than his others. - -The circulation of Ralph Connor’s novels has been phenomenal and has -reached somewhere between two and a half and three millions, yet it -cannot be said that he has established a reputation as a literary -artist. His stories carry the reader because of action, incident, and -tense emotional situations. They always have an underlying ethical and -spiritual significance and they promulgate a belief in the presence of -some redeeming virtue in every human being, so that, despite adverse -critical opinion, they continue to touch the responsive chord in the -heart of a common humanity. - -None of his later works has quite come up to the standard of _Black -Rock_ or _The Sky Pilot_ in consistency of characterization and in unity -of total effect. Indeed _The Sky Pilot_ is the most artistically -finished of all his works, because of the natural coherence of its parts -in their development of the central theme. Dramatic power he has to a -marked degree, so far as the presentation of individual scenes is -concerned, such as the fight in the lumber camp, the horse race, the -barn-raising, and many other thrilling episodes; but his grasp of -dramatic values is not broad enough to escape melodrama. The -constructive dramatic instinct which weaves each separate incident into -a chain of cause and effect dependent upon the character and motives of -the leading personages of the story is very little in evidence. Whole -chapters might be lifted bodily from some of these novels without -interfering with the main thread of the story. - -His imagination is reproductive rather than creatively constructive. The -stories of the foothills are built upon his own missionary experiences -at Banff and elsewhere; the Glengarry tales deal with his schoolboy -experiences and his knowledge of the rough life of the lumber woods and -the drive; the stories of east and west are also drawn from his own -experiences in college and in the missionary field. As a result of this -his characters tend to become types and although fairly individual and -distinctive they are inclined to act mechanically and to operate without -sufficient inherent motivation. - -The first novel of Robert E. Knowles, _St. Cuthbert’s_ although a -romance of a Presbyterian congregation, is not strictly an ‘evangelical -novel.’ It has more to do with showing the Presbyterian Church as an -institution which dominated the life of the Presbyterian community. The -doings of the Kirk session; the relations of the minister with the -various elements of his flock, the pious and the profligate, are -described with rare fidelity. The tender undercurrent covered by -Scottish reserve; the sympathetic understanding of human nature as the -greatest and most essential quality of ministry; the dry, pawky Scottish -humor; the distinctive and consistent characterization—these elements -make _St. Cuthbert’s_ a piece of genuine literature. _The Dawn at Shanty -Bay_ is in reality a short story. There is one underlying motive, and -only one, dominating the whole—it is the fight between parental love -and parental dignity. It should rank as one of the sweetest ‘Christmas -Carols’ in English literature. His remaining novels—_The Undertow_, -_The Web of Time_, _The Attic Guest_, and _The Singer of the Kootenay_ -are of the evangelical type and are fashioned much to the same pattern, -showing inconsistencies in development and a lack of structural unity. - - - - - CHAPTER XVII - - - Short Story Writers - - THE SHORT STORY FICTIONISTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC SCHOOL—E. W. - THOMSON—DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT—CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS—GILBERT - PARKER—ERNEST THOMPSON SETON—W. A. FRASER. - -There is, on this continent, a literary tradition that Edgar Allan Poe -is the creator of the short story. The truth is that Poe applied a new -method to the short narrative or prose tale in that he gave the short -story a higher unity of effect towards an impressionistic climax. He did -not originate or create it; he simply improved its technique. But with -the school of Poe this method crystallized into a formula, and the -so-called American short story became an invention rather than an -imaginative creation. Thus it depends upon a cumulation of effects -rising to a climactic peak of emotional intensity, or upon a plot that -induces suspense by a clever interplay of incident. Its processes are -for the most part mechanical. The telling or the reading of a short -story of this type is far more a coldly-calculated intellectual exercise -than it is an appeal to warm-hearted human emotions. With aesthetic, -moral, or spiritual values it has little to do. Hence it has not that -permanency that makes for true literature. Based on incident and -accidental circumstance rather than character it engages the reader -temporarily by its cleverness, but it does not acquaint him with living -characters to whom he loves to return for an enlargement of that -acquaintanceship. - -The Canadian species of short story is distinguished by a high artistic -unity of structure and effect and in that respect reflects the influence -of Poe upon all modern short story writing, but there is this -difference, that it achieves its unity of effect and its dramatic -interest not by mechanically constructed climaxes but by developments -arising out of the inherent traits and dispositions of the personages of -the story. Its basis is the solid rock of character. The Canadian short -story as a distinctive type does not present the excessively climactic -plot; nevertheless, it is more truly a real story than either the plot -story of the American and French writers or the fine psychological -situations of successful English story writers. - -As we see it, this peculiar quality of the Canadian short story is -rooted in some quality of Canadian nationality. No Canadian writer can -be said to have originated the method. Each appears to evolve some -modification of it particularly adapted to his own field. - -_Old Man Savarin and Other Tales_, by Edward William Thomson (1895) -contains a number of stories of Canadian life differing widely in -emotional interest. There is the near burlesque of _Old Man Savarin_, -with the incident of the fist fight which lasted for four hours, -although the two combatants never reached within striking distance of -each other all that time; _McGrath’s Bad Night_ portrays a pathetic -picture of a family on the verge of starvation, to which is added the -greater pathos of the breakdown of a man’s principles of honesty; _The -Privilege of the Limits_, wherein the author captures and presents -effectively the dry, pawky humor of the Scot; the sorrowful -dillusionment of youthful imagination in _The Shining Cross of Rigaud_; -superstitious terror overcome by plain common sense in _Red Headed -Windego_. - -The stories with Eastern Ontario and Quebec for their setting show a -loving intimacy and understanding of the plain people—the habitant, the -river driver, the lumberman, the farmer; and the author is at his best -in his delineation of the Glengarry Scot or the Quebec habitant. Thomson -is scarcely a stylist. There is a freedom, even looseness, in his story -structure, and he employs sometimes the device of introducing a narrator -for his tale. But in his stories of the Canadian type and setting his -warm friendliness for his characters radiates a glow of enthusiasm that -captures and holds the reader. Not all Thomson’s stories, however, are -of this type—in _Petherick’s Peril_, there is an approach to the horror -tale of Poe; and in _The Swartz Diamond_ there is the trap-springing -device of the surprise ending, while _Boss of the World_ is an example -of the ‘tall story’ which produces its humor by the exaggeration of its -ideas—these stories we surmise to be the result of influences which -surrounded E. W. Thomson in his editorial offices in a Boston magazine -publishing firm. - -_In the Village of Viger_ (1896), by Duncan Campbell Scott is a little -volume of prose tales of French Canada, published in Boston by Copeland -and Day. These stories affect the heart and imagination with a reality -and sense of actuality as if one had dwelt in Viger and had daily come -face to face with Mademoiselle Viau, the little milliner; Madame -Laroque, gossip and reformer; Monsieur Cuerrier, kind-hearted -postmaster; brandy-tippling Paul Arbique and his wife; Hans Blumenthal, -the expatriate German watchmaker; Pierre, and the lovely but intriguing -Eloise of No. 68 rue Alfred de Musset; Jean Francois, the mysterious -blind peddler; Paul Farlotte who was always saving up to revisit France, -and gave up the project on the day he dreamed that his mother had -died—and all the rest in this gallery of lovable characters. - -The reality and veracity of Dr. Scott’s character delineation produces -exquisite and infallible character-vignettes, or Rembrandtesque -word-etchings, lovely in ‘values’ and in spiritual _chiaroscuro_—depths -within depths of a single character as in Charles Desjardins in the -tragic story of _The Desjardins_. Yet in his handling of the tragic he -awakens, not a pity that produces fear or horror or disgust, but a -gentle pity that engenders sympathy. We appreciate the ‘little -milliner’s’ loyalty—begotten of pure love—to her rascal lover, a -common thief. The skilful sympathetic handling of the subject gives to -love a new dignity and to loyalty a new grandeur. The pathos moves to a -rise and fall, but never so overwhelms the emotions as to cause tears; -rather does it subdue the soul and leave in the heart of the reader a -gentle welling up of sympathy, a benignant sense of fellowship with -finite and erring humanity, and a tender peace. When a reader finishes -one of Dr. Scott’s stories of the pathetic episode—The _Little -Milliner_, _The Desjardins_, _Sedan_, _Paul Farlotte_—he experiences no -violent wrench of the heart-strings—sheds no tears—but is gently and -sweetly touched; feels with the unfortunate and afflicted; sees the veil -that obscures the hard workaday world lifted; and beholds life and the -world suffused with a ‘grey-eyed loveliness.’ This is all superb -artistry in emotional and spiritual love, by one who has had intimate -glimpses into the human heart and into the stern face of sublimity in -human character and in life. - -So, too, his treatment of the comedy in human character and existence. -Human destiny and fate are too dear and pathetic to him to allow him to -engage his art in any raucous laughter. The smiles he evokes are based -on sympathetic fellow-feeling, on tenderness. We are amused, yet not -unsympathetic, at the rage of Madame Laroque, defeated in a -long-cherished love, and hope of ultimate marriage, by the elopement of -her ward, Cesarine, with the postmaster (_The Wooing of Monsieur -Cuerrier_); the futilities of old Paul Farlotte, who would see ‘la belle -France’ before he dies, envisage a comic character, but subdue our -laughter with the pathos of frustrated desire. - -These themes, we see, are chosen from character and life in a typical -French-Canadian village, yet the sentiments, the ideals of human love -and character and conduct, and the natural and spiritual color, are -Canadian and even universal. They depend not upon mere accidents of -circumstance, but upon lasting and universal human emotions and human -relationships—permanent literary values. In these stories, Dr. Scott -achieves structural unity and harmony of emotional tone with an entire -absence of any striving for effect—with that finished art that conceals -the artifice of the craftsman. - -Always a careful workman rather than a prolific writer, it was not until -1923 that Duncan Campbell Scott published another volume of short -stories, _The Witching of Elspie_. Some of these are French-Canadian in -their setting, but those most exquisitely wrought deal with the lonely -and heart-searching life of the Hudson Bay posts. Although Scott’s -method was fully formed in his first volume, there is here a very -evident advance in artistry, a greater economy in expression, but a -deeper intensity of effect. Here he shows a remarkable skill in the -almost imperceptible transition from explanation or description to the -inside of the mind of the varying personages of the story and back again -to description or explanation—one of the most artistic touches of the -work of a finished craftsman. - -Charles G. D. Roberts developed, in the story of animal psychology, a -species of Canadian short story that depends not so much upon emotional -and artistic effects and a unity of impressionistic tone as upon -intellectual and stylistic effects and novelty of theme. Scott worked -with an artistry so exquisite that his stories possess the simplicity -and directness which conceal art. Roberts wrought his animal and -romantic short stories with an artistry so much in the manner of the -prose-poet that they reveal the stylist consciously aiming to impress -the intellect with niceties of structure, and the sensibility with -word-painting, always _couleur de rose_. - -When Roberts is the psychologist he is also most the true structural -stylist. But for an example of more impressionistic color, of sheer -word-painting, of prose-poetry _couleur de rose_, the following -paragraphs from _The Watchers in the Swamp_ are convincing:— - - Under the first pale lilac wash of evening, just where the slow - stream of the Lost-Water slipped placidly from the open meadows - into the osier-and-bulrush tangles of the swamp, a hermit - thrush, perched in the topmost spray of a young elm tree, was - fluting out his lonely and tranquil ecstasy to the last of the - sunset. - - • • • • - - It was high morning in the heart of the swamp. From a sky of - purest cobalt flecked sparsely with silver-white wisps of cloud, - the sun glowed down with tempered, fruitful warmth upon the - tender green of the half-grown rushes and already rank - water-grasses—the young leafage of the alder and willow - thickets—the wide pools and narrow, linking lanes of unruffled - water already mantling in spots with lily-pad and arrow-weed. A - few big red-and-black butterflies wavered aimlessly above the - reed-tops. Here and there, with a faint elfin clashing of - transparent wings, a dragon-fly, a gleam of emerald and amethyst - fire, flashed low over the water. From every thicket came a soft - chatter of the nesting red-shouldered blackbirds. - -These stories are lyrical poems in prose; as an impressionistic stylist -in the medium of the animal short story Roberts is inimitable. We find -the same mellifluous prose (as Mr. T. G. Marquis discriminatingly terms -it) in his romantic short stories, _By the Marshes of Minas_, in which -themes, settings, and color are authentically Canadian (Acadian). - -Gilbert Parker’s short stories exhibit many of the qualities of his -longer fiction. They are not always as artistically constructed as those -of Duncan Campbell Scott, nor are they as finely written as those of -Roberts, but in the main they are based on sufficient character -motivation and have a sustained dramatic power. Ernest Thompson Seton -and W. A. Fraser are engaging tellers of short tales abounding in -incident and humor, with a sound basis of characterization, yet of the -short story writers of the Systematic School, Duncan Campbell Scott has -produced the most uniformly excellent work. - - - - - CHAPTER XVIII - - - William Henry Drummond - - THE NEW CANADIAN GENRE OF IDYLLIC POETRY—WILLIAM HENRY DRUMMOND, - INTERPRETER OF THE HABITANT—POET OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN CANADA. - -The Canadian _voyageur_ and _habitant_, the lumberman, and peasant of -French Canada are ‘children of nature’—human, simple, shy, -warm-hearted, honest, and manly. They were not always thus -sympathetically conceived or regarded by most of their English-speaking -compatriots. They, therefore, needed a sympathetic interpreter who would -reveal their inward spirit and true character, mental and moral. -Strangely, but according to the inscrutable methods of Providence, the -man who was to be the friend and sympathetic interpreter of the -French-Canadian peasant, was born in Ireland in 1854. He was William -Henry Drummond. - -Drummond emigrated to Canada when but a mere lad, before Old Country -education and culture had any chance to mould his mind and imagination -and moral attitudes. While, then, Drummond himself was an _émigré_, his -verse, like that of Isabella Valancy Crawford and for the same reasons -of formative influences in Canada, is Canadian. It is indeed regional, -but it is also indigenous poetry—in substance, in diction, in imagery, -and in craftsmanship. - -William Henry Drummond, like the _dramatis personae_ of his poems, the -_voyageur_ and _habitant_, was a ‘child of nature.’ No other kind of -man, save this large-bodied, warm-hearted, open-minded lover of human -kin and of the creatures that live in the wild, who saw and felt the -common things of life, as the _habitant_ saw and felt them, could have -been a truthful interpreter of the _habitant_. The merely scholarly -poet, the poet of a hothouse refinement, the poet who went to work at -the craftsmanship of poetry as if he were carving arabesques in verse, -could not have the imaginative insight into the mind and heart of the -French-Canadian peasant and the sympathy with him that would make it -possible for such a poet, with kindly, playful humor, to express the -elemental feelings and thoughts—the real humanity—of the _habitant_. - -Drummond was above all things a human poet. His sympathies were -inclusive. By intuition he could feel just as the _habitant_ felt about -good and evil in the universe. Drummond’s heart was warm and large and -religious, which meant that he could call nothing that was made in the -image of God common or outcast. Though he was well read in the modern -poets and was a student of literature, he was not a bookish man. He -distinguished between the literature which possessed only aesthetic and -artistic beauties and that which was the embodiment of the finer goods -of the spirit, the inalienable satisfactions of existence. He loved only -the literature that was human and beautiful—simple, pure, and true. - -As, then, a ‘child of nature,’ with a large, sympathetic heart and a -Keltic vision of the ‘divinity’ which is in all men and also in the wild -creatures that are near to Nature, and with a gift of ready expression -in rhythmical verse, Drummond was uniquely fitted to be the interpreter -of his simple, kindly, reticent, but genuinely human and sincere, -fellow-being, the Canadian _habitant_. Thus singularly fitted to be, as -he has been called, ‘the Poet of the Habitant,’ Drummond, in his verse, -actually performed a social and a literary service for his country. On -the social side, to the English-speaking Canadian, who up to the last -decade of the 19th century considered the _habitant_ as little better -than a chattel, Drummond revealed the human, lovable, and admirable -virtues of the humble French-speaking compatriot, and also engendered in -the English-speaking Canadian a sincere respect and affection for his -French-speaking fellow countryman. On the literary side, Drummond -created a gallery of _genre_ pictures and spiritual portraits which -constitute a unique contribution, not only to Canadian poetic -Literature, but also to English Literature. - -Under what inspiration or vision, hitherto not vouchsafed to any other -Canadian poet, did Drummond write, and what really novel and important -contributions did he make to Canadian poetry and to world literature? - -He discovered and presented to the world, for the first time, the New -Romance in Canada, as Kirby and Sir Gilbert Parker had discovered and -presented the Old Romance. He created a new form of the Canadian Idyll. -He placed on the stage of the world a group of new Characters and, -through them, originated a new species or type of World Humor. -Pre-eminently Drummond is the Poet and Humorist of the New Social -Democracy in Canada. - -Until the publication of Drummond’s first creative work, _The Habitant -and Other French-Canadian Poems_ (1897), the French-Canadian, in -general, was appreciated only according to the types seen in the towns -and cities. In particular, the French-Canadian _voyageur_ and _habitant_ -were appreciated only as the merry hearts who had sung the old -_chansons_ on the rivers of Quebec Province—and, as their -English-speaking compatriots fancied, in the academic and eviscerated -English translations in which they heard these _chansons_. No one, up to -the time of Drummond’s first volume, had revealed the mind and heart of -the real, the living _habitant_, _voyageur_, lumberman, and peasant in -Old Quebec. No one before Drummond had sung their heart songs in the -patois that is theirs when attempting to express their thoughts and -emotions to their supercilious and not too respectful English-speaking -compatriots. But Drummond produced truthful, naturalistic pictures of -the real, the _living_ French-Canadian _habitant_, lumberman, and -peasant as they expressed their thoughts and emotions about life and -their fellows. - -He did not do this by a sort of reporting. He did it by letting them -talk for themselves in their own patois. Thus he gave to his pictures of -the French-Canadian _habitant_, lumberman, and peasant, a racy and -dramatic realism which distinguishes them as ‘characters’ apart in -Canadian, in English, and in world literature. This is the first reason -why William Henry Drummond must be regarded as an absolute creator of -literary species. He created a new form of romantic genre poetry, gave -it reality, veracity, and ideality. This is what Louis Fréchette meant -when in his Introduction to Drummond’s first volume, he hailed Drummond -as ‘the pathfinder of a new land of song.’ - -In what way did Drummond give true _ideality_ to the life and character -which he presented also with a convincing realism and veracity? There is -a species of romance which is the sheer invention of the fancy or -imagination. It presents a life and character that have never existed -and could not be possible anywhere on earth. That kind of romance is so -‘fantastic’ as to be absolutely unreal. There is another kind of romance -which is based on real imagination of supposed real life and real -personages. This sort of romance is typified by fairy tales, not the -fairy tales of all lands, but of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. -The people actually believe in the real existence of fairies, and -imagine these invisible creatures in the forms of human beings. Romances -about them and their doings are, therefore, not fantastic, but are based -on a kind of reality. Again: there is a species of romance based upon -the imagining of real personages in impossible situations and doing -impossible things. It exists in Canadian Literature in those romances in -which the Indian conducts himself in ways that could only be possible -with men of civilized natures and civilized ideas. This kind of romance -is not unreal; it is _too ideal_. - -In poetically conceiving and presenting the French-Canadian _habitant_, -lumberman, or peasant, Drummond might have drawn them as fantastic, or -fanciful, or absolutely ideal characters. Or, he might have drawn them, -as Service, for instance, has limned his characters of the trails and -mining camps, with an accentuated or rude realism. Drummond employed -none of these methods. He presented the French-Canadian _habitant_, -lumberman, and peasant as they really _appear_ on the outside, and as -they ideally _are_ on the inside, to the vision which sympathetically -divines their feelings, emotions, aspirations, sorrows, joys, and -consolations. Drummond’s poetic eye perceived the ideal spirit of the -French-Canadian _habitant_ as it shines through the outer, rude, homely, -simple, hesitant creature whom the English-speaking compatriot only too -often, till Drummond’s time, took to be of a lower and less spiritual -order than himself. By this combined realistic and idealistic treatment -of the character and life of the French-Canadian _habitant_, lumberman, -and peasant, Drummond created a new species of Canadian _genre_ poetry, -a new form of the Canadian Idyll. - -As a creator, Drummond is entitled to another distinction. He originated -a new and distinct type of Humor. There were humorists before and since -Drummond. There was the prose humor of Haliburton’s _Sam Slick_. There -was the verse humor of Howe and of Lanigan. There was the prose humor of -De Mille and of Mrs. Cotes. There have been the prose humor of Leacock -and the verse humor of Service. But the only humor of all these that is -likely to perdure as world literature is that of Haliburton. Drummond -has created a humor which also is likely to live in permanent -literature. It is distinguished from all the other humor written in -Canada by the fact that it is never satiric or malicious or ungenial, or -mere humor for the sake of raising a laugh or to ridicule another. It is -humor with _pathos_. Just as Haliburton is unique as a satiric humorist, -so Drummond is unique as a sympathetic and interpretative humorist. He -is a Master of Humor and of Pathos. - -His work is so well known throughout the world that it is hardly -necessary to quote examples of his humor. Mere excerpts will not -suffice. We may, however, recall, as outstanding examples, _The Wreck of -the Julie Plante_, _How Bateese Came Home_, _The Curé of Calumette_, -_Dominique_, _The Corduroy Road_, _Little Bateese_, _Johnnie Courteau_, -and _When Albani Sang_. - -A few words on Drummond’s use of a patois or dialect and on his verse -technique will be sufficient. It is by his patois that he gives not only -naturalness but also veracity to the speech of his characters. His -dialect is pure and clean and is felt by the reader as natural and -genuine. As to technique, Drummond is a master of simple but flowing -rhythm and obtains his rhymes with an ease and naturalness that disclose -him as an original inventor of rhyme. He elected to be ‘The Poet of the -Habitant,’ and as such he is unique. Yet his poetry in this form, as -well as in other forms, clearly shows that if he had essayed the writing -of verse on traditional themes and in a traditional manner, he could -have been a poet of considerable distinction. It is best, however, to -leave him with his natural distinction and glory about him—the Poet of -the Habitant. As the discoverer of the New Romance in Canada, as the -Creator of the New Canadian Idyll, and as the Master of a unique species -of Canadian Humor and Pathos, William Henry Drummond made a signally -original contribution to the quantity and quality of the creative -literature of Canada. - - - - - CHAPTER XIX - - - _The_ Vaudeville School - - THE DECADENT INTERIM IN CANADIAN LITERATURE—THE VAUDEVILLE SCHOOL - OF POETS—ROBERT W. SERVICE, ROBERT J. C. STEAD, AND OTHERS. - -Not ineptly, though somewhat jocosely, we may group Canadian Poets in -the Post-Confederation period, from 1887 to 1907, into three Schools, -and label them with characteristic sobriquets. Already Archibald -Lampman, Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, with Pauline Johnson -and Frederick George Scott, have been called ‘The Great Lakes School.’ -This is a dignified sobriquet, and derives its descriptive aptness from -the native environment, or from the themes, of these poets, or from -both. Again: Charles G. D. Roberts and Bliss Carman have been named ‘The -Birchbark School.’ This is a jocose, playful sobriquet, and was applied -to these poets because ‘they use the mottled scrolls of the Red Man’s -papyrus to build a canoe, or as a vehicle for verse, with equal -dexterity.’ - -By similar tokens, the throng of verse-makers whose vogue formed a -decadent interim in Canadian poetry, beginning with the publication of -Robert Service’s _Songs of a Sourdough_ (1907) and ending with the -publication of his _Rhymes of a Rolling Stone_ (1913), may be signalized -as ‘The Vaudeville School.’ On account of the themes of their verse, its -special and distinguishing technique, and its particular appeal to -popular or vulgar taste, this sobriquet, as applied to Robert Service, -Robert Stead, Paul Agar, George B. Field, Milton W. Yorke (_pseud._ -Derby Bill), Robert T. Anderson, John Mortimer, James P. Haverson, -Charles W. MacCrossan, Hamilton Wigle, and others, is just, apt, and -veracious. It must be understood, however, to convey nothing of scorn or -contempt or derision, but to be only a pedagogical formula for -summarizing the qualities of the verse, the ideals, the methods, and the -craftsmanship of the great majority of the poets here named ‘The -Vaudeville School.’ They might have been dubbed ‘The Sourdough School,’ -were it not that of them all only Service deals with those picturesque -and picaresque humans known in the slang of the Canadian gold-mining -camps as ‘Sourdoughs,’ and were it not that this name, used as -sobriquet, would be derisive rather than sincerely descriptive. - -As used here, the term Vaudeville harks back to its original French -connotation. As applied to the verse of Service, Stead, Haverson, Field, -Yorke, and the others, it means, first, entertainment which appeals to -popular or vulgar or low taste in verse. It means, secondly, arresting -or violent methods in the technique of vividness. In fact, it is on the -side of the technique of vividness in verse-color and verse-rhythms -rather than on the side of the picturesque and often picaresque -matter—characters and situations—of the verse of this School that the -term Vaudeville is most apt and veracious, and that it is applied here -as a descriptive epithet in the ‘working’ vocabulary of literary -criticism. - -_The sublimation of the technique of emotional vividness, to the -exclusion of all regard for the intrinsic and the aesthetic beauty and -moral dignity of poetry_—this is the essential formula of the verse of -the Vaudeville School of Canadian poets. Their aims or motives were -sincere and human. One motive was genuinely aesthetic: they wished to -write verse that would escape the emotional _deadness_ of the -traditional themes and manner of Canadian poetry. The other motive was -pragmatic: they wished to write rhythmic and rimed social documents in -verse which would have such novelty of theme and such dramatic or -theatrical or ‘sensational’ content as immediately to create a demand -for the ‘new poetry’ and make it readily marketable. Thus should ‘the -art of poetry’ become at once both pleasurable and profitable. - -How were these ends to be achieved? ‘I am one who left off singing -Alleluias,’ said Dante, poet of the immortal ‘Vision’ of Hell, -Purgatory, and Paradise. Thus Dante, desiring to get away from the -conventional deadness of saying that he, as a poet, was a messenger from -Heaven to reveal spiritual beauty to his fellows, makes use of one of -the principles of the technique of vividness. He employs the unusual -phrase, the lively, arresting phrase that would be sure to strike and -vividly impress the average mind or imagination. In short, Dante invents -and uses picturesque slang: for ‘singing Alleluias’ is slang, but how -poetically suggestive it is, how vivid! - -The Canadian Vaudeville verse-makers realized the poetic suggestiveness -and the vividness of the picaresque speech of the Far West and the High -North. They also knew how these sections of the country were rich in -picturesque and picaresque characters and in the ‘wild and woolly’ life -which produces strange and violent drama and melodrama, which is all the -more appealing to the imagination of men and women because it is real -and ‘stranger than fiction.’ It was a life full of moral (or immoral) -color of speech, and action—of compelling interest. Thus ready to hand -in Canada lay for immediate use the materials and the basal technical -principle—the recipe—for the ‘making,’ not the ‘creation,’ of -Vaudeville poetry. What was that recipe? Simply this. _Lilt in plangent -anapaestic metres or rhythms the picaresque melodrama of the mining -camps in the High North and the melodrama of the ‘chevalerie’ of the Far -West._ - -A single stanza from _The Shooting of Dan McGrew_ by Robert Service -(_Songs of a Sourdough_, 1907) affords ample proof and illustration of -the vaudeville qualities of this decadent verse:— - - And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar - way; - In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him - sway; - Then his lips went in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was - calm; - And, ‘Boys,’ says he, ‘you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn; - But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke - they’re true, - That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew.’ - -That is an impressive characteristic example of the technique of -vividness, by the Canadian master of them all. But let no one call it -poetry. Service’s astounding vogue for six years—it is now -vanished—was not due to the _poetry_ in his verse, but to the arresting -or violent _drama_ and _melodrama_ in it, made more arresting or -compelling by the infectious swing or lilt of the anapaestic rhythm. -This rhythm is his only _forte_ in verbal music, though he also employs -alliteration successfully. This _forte_ is seen to be a limitation and a -weakness, as it also was and is in his alleged artistic foster-father, -Rudyard Kipling. For as soon as Service attempts to employ another -rhythm better suited to higher thought than the picaresque matter of -strictly ‘Sourdough’ Songs, the results are disastrous. He fails to hold -the attention; and, inasmuch as there are no compensating rhythmic -values, all that is left is the strained and bizarre effect of cheap -melodrama. A singular example of this kind of weakness and failure in -Service is his _My Madonna_, in which he aims consciously and seriously -to achieve a _tour de force_ in religious sentiment, but falls into flat -_bathos_ of melodrama (_Songs of a Sourdough_). - -If proof is wanted that the recipe for writing Vaudeville verse is -simply to lilt in anapaestic metre and rhythm the melodrama of the Far -West _chevalerie_, proof and illustration are furnished by a stanza from -_Sergeant Blue_ by Robert Stead (_Kitchener and Other Poems_, 1917):— - - Sergeant Blue of the Mounted Police was a so-so kind of a guy; - He swore a bit, and he lied a bit, and he boozed a bit on the sly; - But he held the post at Snake Creek Bend for country and home and God, - And he cured the first and forgot the rest—which wasn’t the least bit - odd. - -The amazing and pathetic fact about Robert Service is that he really -possessed authentic poetic genius, and sometimes did write pure poetry. -At his best Stead has written some satisfying _genre_ poetry and -story-telling ballads. But Stead could not rise beyond the -homely-pathetic and the melodramatic in Western _chevalerie_ into the -realm of pure poetry. He kept always to the level of his lowly subject. -Service, however, fell or rose to the level of his subject. In short, -while most of Service’s verse is popular Vaudeville, considerable of it -violent melodrama, and much of it drama simply, some of his verse is -genuinely poetical, charged with pure beauty and poetic significance. -How nobly Service has conceived, how passionately expressed in lovely -color-images and pervasive vowel and alliterative music, and how -philosophically interpreted Nature in his poem _The Mountain and the -Lake_:— - - I know a mountain thrilling to the stars, - Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow; - Glimpsing the golden dawn o’er coral bars, - Flaunting the vanished sunset’s garnet glow; - Proudly patrician, passionless, serene; - Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break; - Virgin and vestal—oh, a very Queen! - And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake. . . . - -In that poem Service has given us an arresting and memorable picture of -pure beauty in Nature. It is beautiful and unforgettable because it has -poetic _Style_. Stead and the other members of the Vaudeville School, -with the exception at times of Service when at his best, lacked genius -for style in verse, without which verse, whether its subject or theme be -low or high, realistic or idealistic, cannot rise to the dignity of -poetry. Service, Stead, and the rest are never authentic Realists. They -could not avoid the melodramatic in the matter of their verse and the -plangent and vivid in its technique. Always they deliberately set out to -assault the senses and the sensibilities. Kipling could be realistic and -by virtue of his style rise to the dignity of poetry. But for the lack -of style, the hectic realism of Service and Stead never rises above the -crudely melodramatic or Vaudevillian. As picaresque realists they are, -to quote Mr. E. B. Osborn, ‘far behind the Australian and compare very -unfavorably with the minor masters of Quebec.’ - -Many of the most effective pieces in Service’s first volume (_Songs of a -Sourdough_) were deliberate imitations of Kipling. But later he gave -some promise of developing an independent manner of his own, the manner -which is disclosed in _The Mountain and the Lake_, and which indubitably -revealed in him innate original powers for painting the beauty and -sublimity of Nature in the Arctic. - -Service did not hold to his own manner; and Stead and the other -Vaudevillians were innately incapable of any manner of their own. At -length the vogue of the Vaudeville poets passed, having in no way -affected the stream of aesthetic and artistic poetry which began with -the Systematic School and which flowed on, pure and undefiled, if placid -and noiseless, through the poetry of the later generation and into the -Restoration Period or Second Renaissance in Canadian Literature. - -Fundamental to the point of view of the criticism which follows is this -proposition:—The poetry of the Vaudeville School for the most part must -be regarded, not strictly as an aesthetic phenomenon, but rather as an -envisagement of certain phases of the civilization of Canada in that -period—that is, as a series of _social documents_. There is nothing -wrong in treating contemporary phases of civilization in poetry with -such vividness and veracity that they really become social documents of -the period which they envisage; but they are of no aesthetic worth if -they are not consecrated to and by art. How a social document, when -sublimated by fine art, can become authentic poetry may be discovered by -turning to Pauline Johnson’s musical and swift-moving lyric _Prairie -Greyhounds_, descriptive of the transcontinental trains and their -service to Canadian civilization, or to Mr. C. G. D. Roberts’ noble -sonnet _The Train Among the Hills_, or to his equally fine sonnet of the -soil _The Sower_. - -It must be realized that the sources of poetic inspiration in Canada -have considerably shifted from the Atlantic, the Land of Evangeline, the -Great Lakes, and the Laurentians to the Prairies, the Rockies, and the -ice-clad wildernesses of the High North. Now, it was inevitable that -under the inchoate and unsettled conditions of civilization in these Far -West and High North sections of the Dominion, the mere inspiration to -write verse should have been uppermost and that considerations of form -should have appeared secondary or insignificant. - -The themes treated in the Vaudeville verse were necessarily new; and -when the Western or Yukon poets published their verses the newness of -their themes and their naïve disregard of technical niceties were -mistaken in the East for originality, vigor, freshness, and breeziness -in art, and were welcomed and read by all classes of Canadians with -avidity as ‘real,’ not ‘hothouse,’ poetry. There we have the explanation -of the astonishing vogue of the verses of Service and Stead, and of -their imitators. But their verses, far from being examples of genuine -originality in invention of poetic themes and of really new art, -exemplify the total absence of art; and far from being ‘real’ poetry, -are totally devoid of the chaste speech, lovely imagery, dulcet music, -and exquisite emotion which constitute true poetry. - -It was a distinct moral fault on the part of Service that he should have -chosen to give us in verse what he had better written in prose. The -right form for social documents of picaresque communities is prose. -Further: it is a law of aesthetics, a law exemplified most finely in -Homer, that, whenever possible, all the elements in a work of art should -each be intrinsically beautiful. Service deliberately chose themes which -disregarded that law. We could forgive him for that if he had redeemed -the vulgarity of the themes by beautiful craftsmanship in versification. -His poetry is bad not because it is wicked or picaresque or risqué, but -because it is aesthetically bad through and through. - -During the Vaudeville Period Roberts, Campbell, Carman, Duncan Campbell -Scott, Canon Scott, Pauline Johnson, Arthur Stringer, Albert E. S. -Smythe, Ethelwyn Wetherald, Jean Blewett, Helena Coleman, Virna Sheard, -the late Marjorie Pickthall, Katherine Hale, Jean Graham, Peter -McArthur, Richard Scrace, Lucy M. Montgomery and a host of others -published aesthetically satisfying poetry. For their spirit was of the -spirit which inaugurated the First Renaissance in Canadian poetry. But -the spirit of Service and the lesser poets of the Vaudeville School was -identical with that which animated the early Canadian verse-makers -before the times of Breakenridge, Sangster, Mair, and John Reade. In -spirit and in craftsmanship the poetry of the Vaudeville School was -essentially a recrudescence of the poetry that made glad the hearts of -the ‘Bush’ and ‘Clearing’ settlers of Canada in the first and second -quarters of the last century. - -That a New Poetry will arise in Canada and that it will originate and -flourish in the Canadian Far West, is highly probable, because the -prairie-lands of the West, their endless fields of grain sheening in the -sun and billowing in rhythmic swaying to the winds and the mighty -vastnesses of land and sky awaken moods and appreciations of Nature -similar to those stirred in men by the sea. It was, in Bliss Carman’s -fine phrase, ‘the glad indomitable sea’ and the inland seas that -inspired the Maritime and Lake poets who began the First Renaissance of -Canadian Poetry. - -But if any of the future Canadian poet, Western or Eastern, should -prefer or incline to turn back to the ways of Service and Stead, let him -reflect that since beauty is our clearest manifestation of the union of -the real and the ideal, that is, of perfection, not to love and promote -beauty in poetry is so far forth to refuse to love and promote the -Godlike in the hearts of mankind, for perfection is the essence of the -Godhead. To become a poet may not be a moral duty. But if one elects the -office of poet, then to perfect oneself, as far as possible, in poetic -artistry for the sake of beautifully or compellingly embodying in verse -whatsoever is lovely in Nature or noble in ideas, is to attain to high -moral dignity in one’s own soul as a poet and to impress on the world -the high spiritual function of poetry. - - * * * * * - -Sources of quotations in this chapter: - -Poems of Robert W. Service—_The Songs of a Sourdough_ (Ryerson Press: -Toronto); _The Rhymes of a Rolling Stone_, (Ryerson Press: Toronto). - -Poems of Robert Stead—_Kitchener and Other Poems_—or in _The Empire -Builders_ (Musson Book Co.: Toronto). - - - - - CHAPTER XX - - - _The_ Restoration Period - - THE RESTORATION OR SECOND RENAISSANCE PERIOD IN CANADIAN - LITERATURE—NEW FORMS, THEMES, AND SOCIAL IDEALS—THE POETS— - MARJORIE PICKTHALL—ROBERT NORWOOD—KATHERINE HALE—AND OTHERS. - -We call the period beginning with the publication of Marjorie -Pickthall’s first volume of verse, _Drift of Pinions_ (1913), and on to -the present, the Restoration or Second Renaissance Period in Canadian -Literature. It is a ‘restoration’ period because it marks a return, -after the Decadent Interim of the Vaudeville School (1907-1912), to the -aesthetic and artistic ideals of the first systematic group of -native-born Canadian writers. It is a ‘renaissance’ because the writers -of the period undertook the systematic production of original authentic -literature, and because they wrote under the inspiration of new themes, -ideals, and forms. - -By 1913 when the Canadian public had tired of the picaresque themes and -the plashing anapaests of Robert Service, and the vogue of the -Vaudeville School had passed, there was a demand for clean and sweet -sustenance of the soul and refreshing new verbal music for the spirit. -It was a demand for pure Beauty— - - of fragrance made, - Woven and rhymed of light. - -Marjorie Pickthall was the first to give the Canadian public sweet -draughts of a new poetic wine of life. She engaged the attention of the -Canadian public with the same immediacy and delight as the early lyrics -of Tennyson and Swinburne captivated the English lovers of poetry. Set -for the most part to a new or, so far as Canada was concerned, a strange -music of trochaic, anapaestic, and syncopated metres and rhythms, rich -in vowel-harmonies and the tone-color of consonance, assonance, and -exquisite alliteration, her songs changed the world about her into an -earthly paradise. At first Marjorie Pickthall arrested attention as a -young unknown poet singing shyly from a corner in a daily newspaper or -magazine, but singing with a rare beauty of imagery and of color from -Nature, and with a fresh and dulcet verbal melody, heard as overtones -above the more plashing, plangent rhythms of Service and his colleagues. -It seemed as if Pan had come again to earth, so idyllic was the -Nature-beauty and so simple and dulcet was the melody of her poetry, as -in, for instance, _The Little Fauns to Proserpine_, daintily suggestive -of their shadowy figures:— - - Browner than the hazel-husk, swifter than the wind, - Though you turn from heath and hill, we are hard behind, - Singing, ‘Ere the sorrows rise, ere the gates unclose, - Bind above your wistful eyes the memory of the rose.’ - - • • • • - - Now the vintage feast is done, now the melons glow - Gold along the raftered thatch beneath a thread of snow. - Dian’s bugle bids the dawn sweep the upland clear, - Where we snared the silken fawn, where we ran the deer. - - Through the dark reeds wet with rain, past the singing foam - Went the light-foot Mysian maids, calling Hylas home. - Syrinx felt the silver sprite fold her at her need. - Hear, ere yet you say farewell, the wind along the reed. - -There was no appeal on the part of Service and the other Vaudevillians -to the spirit, to the religious imagination. It was inevitable, then, -that the Canadian public—and the world—should be arrested by the -spiritual beauty, tenderness, wistfulness, and the engaging music of -such a poem as Marjorie Pickthall’s _Mary Shepherdess_, the following -three stanzas of which illustrate how the thought is ‘woven and rhymed -of light’:— - - When the heron’s in the high wood and the last long furrow’s sown, - With the herded cloud before her and her sea-sweet raiment blown, - Comes Mary, Mary Shepherdess, a-seeking for her own. - - Saint James he calls the righteous fold, Saint John he calls the kind, - Saint Peter seeks the valiant men all to loose or bind, - But Mary seeks the little souls that are so hard to find, - - All the little sighing souls born of dust’s despair, - They who fed on bitter bread when the world was bare, - Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair. - -One will seek far in English poetry for a picture of the human figure -limned as graphically as it is in Marjorie Pickthall’s line:— - - With the herded cloud before her and her sea-sweet raiment blown; - -and one will seek far in English poetry to find a line musically so in -harmony with the spiritual picture of ‘all the little sighing souls’ -eyeing, wistful and afraid, the wonder of the shining spectacle of -Heaven, as her line:— - - Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair. - -Not once, or even for a moment, could the earthward vision of the -Vaudevillian poets conceive, and much less could they write, such a poem -of the pure in heart who shall see God as Marjorie Pickthall’s _The Lamp -of Poor Souls_, and its subdued, sacramental music, ending thus:— - - Shine, little lamp, fed with sweet oil of prayers. - Shine, little lamp, as God’s own eyes may shine, - When He treads softly down His starry stairs - And whispers, ‘Thou art Mine!’ - - Shine, little lamp, for love hath fed thy gleam. - Sleep, little soul, by God’s own hands set free. - Cling to His arms and sleep, and sleeping, dream, - And dreaming, look for me. - -Francis Thompson or Alice Meynell could have written the whole poem -possibly with a more immaculate artistry, but not with any finer appeal -to the religious or mystical imagination, and not with a melody a whit -more winning as an end in itself. - -Having thus tasted the chief engagements of Marjorie Pickthall’s poetry, -we must in a more detailed way disclose her genius and art as they -appear in her lyrical poems in _The Drift of Pinions_ (1913), _The Lamp -of Poor Souls_ (1916), and the posthumous volume _The Wood Carver’s -Wife_ (1922)—the last of which contains a lyric drama (the title-poem -of the volume) and several lyrics. It is as an adroit and exquisite -craftswoman (or ‘artist’), rather than for originality of imaginative -conception, that, from her first printed essays in verse to the last, -Marjorie Pickthall appeals as a specially gifted poet in Canada, and -must be accorded an honorable, possibly high, place in Canadian poetic -literature. - -Technically, her poetry is distinguished by an extraordinarily -successful use of color epithets and verbal melody, especially -alliteration. The defects of her poetry are not, on the whole, -technical, but are defects, or rather limitations, of genius. Broadly -viewed, her poetry lacks breadth of range and eloquence of style. By -‘style’ is not meant Matthew Arnold’s conception or formula of what he -called ‘the grand style.’ Marjorie Pickthall’s verse is free, flowing, -airy, graceful, tripping, musical; in a word, feminine. But by thus much -does it lack originality and seriousness in the substance of its style, -the qualities which give us the sense of having met with beauty which is -not a mere finely distilled essence of loveliness, but which has -strength, and dignity, and power over the heart and the imagination. - -The key to the defects or limitations in Marjorie Pickthall’s poetry was -not her imagination but her ‘heart.’ She loved and had sympathy only or -specially with all little creatures and things, with tender, frail, and -helpless creatures and things; and she felt profoundly a sort of -injustice in their fate, which begot in her a wistful wondering about -the justice of the ways of God. She therefore inevitably impressed on -her poetry her own feminine feeling for the little and helpless -creatures of earth, her own sympathy with the evanescence of all the -animate ‘little things’—children, flowers, moths, birds, and ‘the -little stars of Duna’—that _for her_ made existence tolerable or happy. -Everywhere in her verse appears her preoccupancy with the very word or -with suggestions of the word ‘little.’ It is this ‘heart’ limitation -that causes her to show what would seem at first sight to be a -mannerism, namely, her predilection for certain substantives and -epithets, as, for instance, ‘moth,’ ‘dove,’ ‘stars,’ ‘silver,’ ‘golden.’ -It is not really a mannerism; but a necessity of her heart and mind. For -the creatures and things her heart most loved, inevitably filled her -consciousness and excluded other creatures and things. - -But while Marjorie Pickthall, by limitation of genius, failed to attain -to the sheer reaches in style and poetic substance which mark the work -of Lampman, Carman, and D. C. Scott, and while she did not possess the -ecstatic lilt of Carman, still she must be ranked as a supreme lyrist of -the lovely, evanescent little things in the world. She must be ranked -high also as a technical artist. If her poetry does not disclose her as -able to achieve the finer strength and beauties of technique in poetic -style, that distinguish the poetry of Lampman, Carman, and D. C. Scott, -she is less often at fault technically than the older poets. Her -technical artistry was not an acquired accomplishment; it was a gift of -Nature. For while the older poets won their way, by hard striving, to -their perfection in technique, Marjorie Pickthall, as early as her -sixteenth year of age, displayed a precocious virtuosity, which was -almost an instinct, in adroit and ingenious verbal coloring and melody. - -In the invention of winsome and vivid color epithets and images and in -her power for alliterative music in verse, Marjorie Pickthall was, -perhaps, surpassed by Pauline Johnson. But Miss Pickthall was the more -ingenious of the two poets. The following examples are -impressive:—‘Dark with the green silence under the gold weather,’ ‘And -close the cowslips’ cups of honeyed gold,’ ‘Yellow for the ripened rye, -white for ladies’ wearing,’ ‘Where cling the moths that are the longings -of men,’ ‘Thy lips are bright as the edge of the sword,’ ‘On the great -green lawns o’ heaven,’ ‘He saw the moonlit rafters of the world,’ -‘Clear-footed from the frontiers of the world,’ ‘And hear new stars come -singing from God’s hand,’ ‘To the wind that cried last night like a soul -in sin.’ - -Nature was Marjorie Pickthall’s chief mistress. In the pictorial -treatment of Nature the poet displayed special gifts. It is not true to -say that she had the Greek ‘feeling’ for Nature, or that the Nature in -her verse was that of the ancient Greeks. It was impossible for Marjorie -Pickthall, an Anglo-Canadian, to have a Greek imagination; and they who -claim that she had the ancient Greek feeling for Nature, might as -rightfully claim that she had the ancient Gaelic or Keltic feeling for -Nature, or the ancient Semitic feeling for the presence of God, or the -medieval Breton feeling for Nature and the mystery of religious faith, -which some have remarked as ‘mysticism’ in Marjorie Pickthall’s poetry. - -The truth is that, first, Marjorie Pickthall had a mind and imagination -which were naturally pagan, and that, secondly, Nature was to her but -the material for her fanciful and pretty treatment in verse. But to the -Greeks, Nature, as perceived and embodied in their mythology and poetry, -was their vision of the real face and heart of Nature. They actually -_believed_ in gods, goddesses, heroes, muses, naiads, mermaids, satyrs, -fauns, as being Nature herself. This is what we mean by saying that the -Greeks were pagans. But Marjorie Pickthall had, by native gift, only the -sensibility and imagination that were naturally pagan in a love of and -preference for thus _visualizing_ Nature. She had saturated her mind, by -reading, with the mythology of the Greeks; and her naturally pagan -sensibility and imagination re-colored and re-expressed this material in -a delightful pagan—not Greek—way in verse. Marjorie Pickthall had no -such lively sense of the _reality_ of divinity in Nature as had the -Greeks. But she did have a lively pagan, if Anglo-Canadian, imagination. -And so, with imaginative ‘_make-believe_’ she peopled Nature with -spirits, mermaids, pixies, fauns, elfs, playing with the Old Nurse -Nature, or with themselves, and rejoicing in the sights, sounds, and the -shy forest creatures, which they see and hear amongst the woodlands, -streams, hills. She thus paganly _poetizes_ Nature, beautifully, -winningly; but it is all a _tour de force_ of the senses and -imagination, achieved in her ‘closet,’ where she was temporarily shut -off from the roar and turmoil of great cities. - -Had she steeped herself as thoroughly in ancient Gaelic lore, myths and -legends, she would have written as engagingly of the Nature of the -Kelts. In her single poetic essay in Gaelic ‘feeling’ for Nature—the -Gael’s innate love of Nature and the Homeland, his nostalgia—she failed -in a double way; first, by infelicitously giving her poem a German -title, _Wanderlied_, and, secondly, by a dull and commonplace imitation, -if not a parody, of Ethna Carbery, Nora Hopper, Moira O’Neil, Katharine -Tynan. When she was sincerely and naturally pagan, as in most of her -verse, she succeeded admirably. But when she attempted to write a -‘literary’ poem in the pagan spirit, as in _Wanderlied_, she failed. - -More of her imagery is derived from _actual Nature in Canada_ than from -mythological Nature in ancient Greece. The coloring from Canadian woods -in Spring, Autumn, and Winter is in her verse, also visualizations of -Canadian fields and flowers, and the subtle handwork of ‘the Frost -King,’ and even Canadian domestic felicities made possible by Nature, -such as the winter arabesque on the windowpanes in contrast with the -inviting glow of burning logs on the hearth:— - - Here where the bee slept and the orchis lifted - Her honeying pipes of pearl, her velvet lip, - Only the swart leaves of the oak lie drifted - In sombre fellowship. - Here where the flame-weed set the lands alight, - Lies the bleak upland, webbed and crowned with white. - - Build high the logs, O love, and in thine eyes - Let me believe the summer lingers late. - We shall not miss her passive pageantries, - We are not desolate, - When on the sill, across the window bars, - Kind winter flings her flowers and her stars. - -And what but Canadian is this compelling line from _The Young -Baptist_?— - - Clear-footed from the frontiers of the world! - -In short, if we were making a formula for Marjorie Pickthall’s Nature -poetry, we would employ this sub-title—‘Lyrics in the Greek and the -Canadian Modes of Pictorializing Nature.’ Thus we should, by a single -phrase, escape absurdly alleging that an Anglo-Canadian mind possessed -Greek imagination and feeling for a mythological Nature; and thus also -make clear the fact that Marjorie Pickthall, an Anglo-Canadian poet, was -gifted not only with a lively pagan sense of the beauty of a vanished -world, but also with a responsive sensibility to the beauty of a real -and present world of Nature in Canada. - -In two respects, then, Marjorie Pickthall may be regarded as having made -original contributions to Canadian literature. First, she winsomely -_pictorialized_, not, as with Lampman, spiritually interpreted, the face -and pageantry of Nature. Secondly, she subtilized verse technique in -verbal coloring and melody. She had a light and tender fancy, and, -certainly for Canada, a rare artistry. She brought Titania and Ariel to -earth again; and suffused existence with magical illusion, rhymed of -light. The monument she herself raised to her genius and memory is not -large and imposing; but it is, like her own spirit, chaste, exquisite, -beautiful—and enduring. - -Another significant creative poet of the Second Renaissance Period is -Robert Norwood. Miss Pickthall was an objective poet. Whenever her -imagination concerned itself with the spiritual realm it was to -interpret only her own _private_ experience, strictly from a personal -point of view. Norwood is an interpreter of the Spirit to the -Spirit—universalizing his imaginative experiences. He is, to be sure, a -colorist and a musician in verse; but he is these secondarily in aim, -whereas primarily he is the singer and interpreter of the meaning of -Spiritual Love. In this field he has made a really original contribution -to native Canadian poetry. In another field, however, he has made a -still greater contribution to Canadian poetry. - -The faculty of love, which is the deepest function of man’s spiritual -nature, is the imagination, the idealizing faculty. The greatest and -most spiritualizing power in the world is love because its ultimate -object is the heart of the universe; that is, Immortal Love, which is -God, for God is Love. The greatest and most spiritualizing earthly -object of love is Woman, because it is the idealization, the love, of -Woman that most inspires men to achievement in this life and to the -deserving of union and companionship on earth and in the life to come. -That is to say, the spiritual love of Woman is the chief inspiration of -human creative ideals and activities—of material achievement, of -creation in the fine arts, and of religion. Thus did Goethe apostrophize -this divine function of woman:— - - Das Ewig Weibliche - Zieht uns hinan - -—the eternal woman-soul draws us forever upwards and on; and thus has -Robert Norwood also declared Woman’s spiritualizing function:— - - Much have I learned of woman and the part - She plays in shaking from the laden bough - Life’s blossoms; all that has been, and is now, - And ever shall be: Science, music and art, - Religion, these, as from a fountain start - The river, have been hers—man to endow. - -It is Norwood’s mastery of verbal color and music and his power of -spiritual vision and exaltation—his interpretation and treatment of -Ideal Love—that constitute his novel quality of fresh excellence in the -poetry of the Second Renaissance. Certainly in his sonnet-sequence _His -Lady of the Sonnets_ (1915), he has enhanced the quality of Canadian -poetry. Uppermost in his heart and imagination is the refining -redemptive, transmuting power of Love, an absolute joy in the thought of -the spiritual union and companionship of the Lover and the Beloved. To -him Love is a holy ideal; and Loving is the fusion of soul and soul, of -spirit and spirit, until the Lover and the Beloved become one soul, one -spirit, enamored of holiness in thought, speech, and deed. - -As an example of Norwood’s sensuously colorful and musical envisagement -of the Ideal Love we quote the following sonnet:— - - I meet you in the mystery of the night, - A dear Dream Goddess on a crescent moon; - An opalescent splendour like a noon - Of lilies; and I wonder that the height - Should darken for the depth to give me light— - Light of your face, so lovely that I swoon - With gazing, and then wake to find how soon - Joy of the world fades when you fade from sight. - Beholding you I am Endymion, - Lost and immortal in Latmian dreams; - With Dian bending down to look upon - Her shepherd, whose aeonian slumber seems - A moment, twinkling like a starry gem - Among the jewels of her diadem. - -As an example of his power for spiritualizing Love, the following sonnet -from the same sequence will suffice:— - - Last night I crossed the spaces to your side, - As you lay sleeping in the sacred room - Of our great moment. Like a lily’s bloom, - Fragile and white were you, my spirit-bride, - For pain and loneliness with you abide, - And Death had thought to touch you with his doom, - Until Love stood angelic at the tomb, - Drew sword, smote him and Life’s door opened wide. - I looked on you and breathed upon your hair— - Your hair of such soft, brown, translucent gold! - Nor did you know that I knelt down in prayer, - Clasped hands, and worshipped you for the untold - Magnificence of womanhood divine— - God’s miracle of Water turned to Wine! - -In his exquisitely wrought, sensuously colored, yet spiritually -elevating verse surely we discover something that has never before been -in Canadian poetry. It is a fresh achievement in Canadian poetry, even -though it is not always impeccable in rhythm and rhyme. It is, too, -authentic poetry, as if Dante or Keats or Tennyson or Swinburne had -returned to earth and their genius were reincarnated, in a notable -degree, in the genius of Robert Norwood. - -Katherine Hale (Mrs. John Garvin) is a poet by herself. For she was a -poet of considerable distinction for a decade before she published the -volume which revealed her as having found her métier in creative poetry, -as in her _Morning in the West_ (1923). The eye and the ear are supreme -in her processes of perception. Music and pictorial art were her first -aesthetic loves, and had most to do with determining her attitudes and -appreciations of the spiritual world. So that, at length, the inner eye -and the inner ear became the faculties by which she perceived beauty in -the external world as well as in the heart of mankind. All her reactions -to what she saw and heard in the external world were in terms of color -beauty and tonal beauty, perhaps more in terms of color than of tone. -She became a musical critic of distinction, and one of our foremost -‘color-writers.’ - -When, therefore, Katherine Hale felt the ‘urge’ to create poetry, her -reactions to the spiritual world also were in terms of color and music. -It is found that her development in poetic writing follows the same -order as her development in prose writing. She began as a critic of -music and reviewer of literature, but capped all her prose with a -finished and arresting work in ‘color-writing,’ _Canadian Cities of -Romance_ (1922). She began her poetic creation with the musical or -lyrical qualities of her verse much more accentuated than the color -qualities, and her themes and forms much more earth-born and -conventional than romantic and spiritualized in meaning. But always in -her first three books of verse there was the feeling for pictorial or -color values and for subtle emotional and spiritual nuances. - -At length, as in _Morning in the West_, her latest volume, she found her -true mode, and poetry became for her the beautiful sketching and etching -and painting of the romance of the Canadian spirit. This poetry of the -spirit she suffused with all the subtle variations of imaginative -‘color,’ half-lights, shadows, and chiaroscuro of Nature and social life -in Canada from the days of the Scots factor and Western _chevalerie_ to -the era of the transcontinental railways. - -Her first two books of verse, _Grey Knitting_ (1914) and _The White -Comrade_ (1916), by their very titles suggest the color ‘note.’ But the -gift or power of embodying spiritual beauty in lyrical music is always -uppermost, as for instance in _The Ultimate Hour_ or _In Noonday_ -containing the unforgettable alliterative and musical line:— - - With dear indefinite delight; - -or in this stanza from _The Answer_:— - - Unaltered aisles that wait and wait forever, - O woods that gleam and stir in liquid gold, - What of your little lover who departed - Before the year grew old? - -In addition to the winsome color and musical qualities of her earlier -lyrical verse, we discover a refined spiritual quality in such a sonnet -as _The First Christmas_, and a noble spiritualization of romantic love -in her sonnet _At Noon_, beginning:— - - Thou art my Tower in the sun at noon. - -Katherine Hale’s long poem _The White Comrade_ (1916) discloses notable -gifts in blank verse and the power to make a dramatic picture that -enthralls the mystical or religious imagination. Her rare gifts of -delicate fancy, elfin enchantment from Nature and simple Orphean music, -reminding us of Bliss Carman’s light lyrism, is finely exemplified in -her spiritualized lyric _I Used to Wear a Gown of Green_, in which -beauty and pathos are tenderly commingled:— - - I used to wear a gown of green - And sing a song to May, - When apple blossoms starred the stream - And Spring came up the way. - - I used to run along with Love - By lanes the world forgets, - To find in an enchanted wood - The first frail violets. - - And ever ’mid the fairy blooms - And murmur of the stream, - We used to hear the pipes of Pan - Call softly through our dream. - - But now, in outcry vast, that tune - Fades like some little star - Lost in an anguished judgment day - And scarlet flames of war. - - What can it mean that Spring returns - And purple violets bloom, - Save that some gypsy flower may stray - Beside his nameless tomb! - - To pagan Earth her gown of green, - Her elfin song to May— - With all my soul I must go on - Into the scarlet day. - -All these—the poetry of her first three books, _Grey Knitting_, _The -White Comrade_, and _The New Joan_—were but her short flights -preparatory to making her eagle flight, by which she should discover the -meaning of Canadian history and civilization in which is envisaged the -Canadian national spirit. In _Morning in the West_ Katharine Hale is no -longer the individual lyrist fluting in the band of other Canadian -lyrists. In that volume she sounds the diapason of Canadian nationality. -She invents new forms of lyrism, and her themes are colored with new -tones and lights of an impressionism which is the acme of realism and -yet is finely spiritualized, as in the series of verbal color-sketches -_Going North_ and _A Study of Shadows_. But always we are being taken by -the poet through Canada, and made to see what has been for us the most -invisible, or, if visible, the most elusive of all things, namely, the -forms and variation of the Canadian spirit and habitat. - -The new forms of her lyrism may be exemplified in this example, -_Enchantment_:— - - I never see a blue jay - But I think of her; - Never hear that hoarse ‘dear—dear’ - From a tree-top stir, - And the answering call - Far, far away, - And the flash of azure— - Oh, she would stay - Listening in the forest, - Loitering through the silence, - Hearing calls and singing - All the livelong day! - -Her new themes and new vision and spiritual import in them—the -envisagement of the qualities of the Canadian spirit—are notably -presented in _Cun-ne-wa-bum_, _Buffalo Meat_, and most poignantly in _An -Old Lady_, which is an incisively graphic and dramatic _picture_ of the -whole history of Canadian civilization from the early days of the -Hudson’s Bay Company to the 20th century social life in Ottawa in these -days of automobiles and bridge parties. Yet it is no mere picture, but -possesses a simple pathos, tenderness, and wistfulness which -spiritualize the realism in the poem, and raise it to the plane of -literature. This, then, is Katherine Hale’s novel contribution to the -poetic literature of Canada:—Canadian nature and civilization envisaged -with a spiritual realism which has national perspective and native color -and atmosphere. It is a new and distinct achievement in creative poetry -in Canada. - -Another significant poet of the Second Renaissance period, whose verse -deserves special mention, is Lloyd Roberts. Early in 1914 he published a -volume of verse entitled, _England Over Seas_. Lloyd Roberts is the son -of Charles G. D. Roberts. No doubt, he inherited his poetic gifts from -his father, and, no doubt, learned the principles of technical artistry -from him. But, as a matter of fact, in his own published verse, Lloyd -Roberts shows qualities—love of Nature and the gift of a singularly -lyrical lilt—that are nearer the verse of his father’s cousin, the -inimitable lyrist of the seasons, the vagrom heart, and the open road, -Bliss Carman. - -In _England Over Seas_, the younger Roberts is an enchanting lover of -Nature, a vivid colorist, and a melodious verbal musician. Nature is, in -his own phrase, ‘the star’—always the theme and in the foreground. Of -his qualities as a nature-painter and a verbal melodist, the following -is an excellent example:— - - Crimson and gold in the paling sky; - The rampikes black where they tower on high— - And we follow the trails in the early dawn - Through the glades where the white frosts lie. - - Down where the flaming maples meet; - Where the leaves are blood before our feet - We follow the lure of the twisting paths - While the air tastes thin and sweet. - - Leggings and jackets are drenched with dew; - The long thin barrels are cold and blue; - But the glow of the Autumn burns in our veins, - And the eyes and hands are true. - - Where the sun drifts down from overhead - (Tangled gleams in the scarlet bed), - Rush of wings through the forest aisle— - And the leaves are a brighter red. - - Loud drum the cocks in the thickets nigh; - Gray is the smoke where the ruffed grouse die. - There’s blackened shell in the trampled fern - When the white moon swims the sky. - -The number of the poets of the Second Renaissance is legion. Amongst -them are Arthur S. Bourinot, Gertrude Bartlett, Bernard F. Trotter -(deceased), Arthur L. Phelps, Lucy M. Montgomery-MacDonald, Grace -Blackburn, Beatrice Redpath, Laura E. McCully, Louise Morey Bowman, -Florence Randal Livesay, Norah Holland, Amy Pennington, Carroll C. -Aikins, Wm. A. Creelman, Andrew D. Merkel, Alexander Louis Fraser, Peter -MacLaren MacDonald, Clare Giffen, Erica Selfridge, Charles T. Bruce, -Marian Osborne, H. J. Maclean. It were worth while to review in detail -the work of Arthur S. Bourinot as represented in his _Laurentian Lyrics_ -(1915), and _Lyrics From the Hills_ (1923), and Arthur L. Phelps as -represented in his _Poems_ (1921) and _A Bobcaygeon Chapbook_ (1923). -Bourinot attracted attention by his noble and moving sonnet _To The -Memory of Rupert Brooke_ and his tender and musical war lyric -beginning:— - - They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor. - -But he is also an artist in colorful lyrism of Nature in Canada, -especially of the Laurentian district. Phelps is a refined, perhaps it -were better to say, dainty lyrist; but he has also attempted new forms, -and has been successful with realistic ‘free verse.’ The others, with a -few exceptions, are systematic poets, but are not notable for spiritual -vision or for originality in forms or substance. - -It is, however, from the point of view of a fresh vision of earth and -life and of originality in forms and substance that the work of Florence -Randal Livesay, Grace Blackburn, Beatrice Redpath, Louise Morey Bowman, -and Wilson MacDonald must be specially remarked. For their work displays -a distinct advance in modernism over the work of Marjorie Pickthall, -Robert Norwood, and Katherine Hale (earlier manner). In fact, there is -in their work fresh origination in themes, structures, music, and social -ideals. Florence Randal Livesay won distinction by her _Songs of -Ukraina_ (1916). Though formally called translations, they have such -original elements of form and matter that they are no more translations -in the ordinary meaning than is Fitzgerald’s _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_. -Mrs. Livesay’s work in the _Songs of Ukraina_, like that of Fitzgerald, -has a turning of phrase and of imagery and a grace and music which are -all her own and entitle the _Songs_ to the distinction of creative -verse. In 1923 she published _Shepherd’s Purse_. Here her genius -flowered independently in what is essentially spiritual realism. But it -is not a heavy spiritual realism. It exhibits a rare and light fancy for -elusive emotional nuances; and all the poems have a piquancy, -daintiness, and exquisite humanity which win one to the love of the -evanescent beauty that is in all things human. The poems too have an air -of the qualities which are in the _vers de société_ and the ‘Blue China’ -poetry of Andrew Lang and Austin Dobson. Mrs. Livesay has made a -genuinely novel contribution to Canadian poetry. - -Outstanding in other ways is the verse of Grace Blackburn, Beatrice -Redpath, Louise Morey Bowman, and Wilson MacDonald. There is more -strength and spiritual perceptiveness in the poetry of Grace Blackburn -and Beatrice Redpath than in that of Louise Morey Bowman. All show equal -originality and finish in the technical treatment of their themes, but -Louise Morey Bowman shows at times an airy fancy which is almost so -ethereal as to be altogether abstract and unearthly. On the whole, -exquisite technique is their chief distinction; they are artists. - -Wilson MacDonald in his _Songs of the Prairie Land_ (1918) and _The -Miracle Songs of Jesus_ (1921) discloses an absorption in mystical -psychology and psychoanalysis which, by its daring and his method of -suffusing the matter with ingenious and subtilized novelty or beauty of -diction and imagery, adumbrates Goethe of the _Faust_ tradition. It is -at once realistic and ultra-spiritualistic. His technique is just as -original and individualized as the matter of his poems. If any Canadian -has the right to the distinction of possessing _sheer_ creative genius, -that right belongs to Wilson MacDonald as a Seer and as an Artist -working in a field of spiritual vision which he has pre-empted. - - * * * * * - -Sources of quotations in this chapter: - -Marjorie Pickthall—_The Wood Carver’s Wife and Other Poems_ (McClelland -& Stewart: Toronto). - -Robert Norwood—_His Lady of the Sonnets_ (McClelland & Stewart: -Toronto). - -Katherine Hale—_The White Comrade_ (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto); -_Morning in the West_ (Ryerson Press: Toronto). - -Lloyd Roberts—_England Overseas_ (Elkin Mathews: London). - - - - - CHAPTER XXI - - - Fiction Writers - - THE COMMUNITY NOVEL—MONTGOMERY—KEITH—MCCLUNG—LE ROSSIGNOL. - INSTITUTIONAL FICTION—PACKARD—SULLIVAN—DUNCAN—WALLACE AND - OTHERS. REALISTIC ROMANCE—SERVICE—CODY—STEAD, ETC. HISTORICAL - FICTION—SNIDER—ANISON NORTH—TESKEY—MCKISHNIE—COONEY. - IMAGINATIVE FICTION—PICKTHALL—MACKAY. MISCELLANEOUS TYPES— - MCKISHNIE—SULLIVAN—HÉMON—SIME. THE NEW REALISM—SALVERSON—DE - LA ROCHE—CORNELL, ETC. - 1. _The Community Novel._ - -Until the ‘nineties’ the production of Canadian fiction had been -spasmodic and scattered, but the success of Gilbert Parker, Marshall -Saunders, and other Canadian writers who gained a hearing first in lands -alien to their own, and whose work came back to Canada ‘with an -alienated majesty,’ proved that Canada was rich in literary material. -The first decade of the twentieth century saw a marked increase in -fiction writing in Canada. The new writers were influenced not only by -the example of their compatriots but by that of the fiction writers of -Great Britain and the United States. They began to realize that life -around them was as interesting as Barrie’s Thrums or Bret Harte’s -California. There was, too, a growing reading public ready to appreciate -stories that presented the adventure, the humor, and the pathos of the -daily life of themselves, their neighbors, or their fellow-Canadians in -other parts of the country and sometimes of other racial origins. - -Hence arose the Community Novel or type of story. One of the earlier -examples is Adeline M. Teskey’s _Where the Sugar Maple Grows_ (1901). In -telling of the origin of this book, Miss Teskey wrote that when reading -Ian MacLaren’s _Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush_ she said within herself, -‘I know just as interesting people in Canada.’ Her sketches of village -characters, depicted with a homely but effective simplicity of style, -showed that she was right. A delightfully humorous novel of Cranfordian -flavor, _The Specimen Spinster_, by Kate Westlake Yeigh, (1906), essayed -a larger canvas instead of the smaller etchings and gave an insight into -the social relationships of the rural village. - -The year 1908 may be said to mark the real beginning of the Second -Renaissance in Canadian fiction, for in that year there were published -three novels of the Community type—_Anne of Green Gables_, by L. M. -Montgomery; _Duncan Polite_, by Marian Keith; _Sowing Seeds in Danny_, -by Nellie L. McClung. There appeared also a charming collection of short -tales, _Little Stories of Quebec_, by James Le Rossignol. This date is -still further significant as the year in which Marjorie Pickthall -published her first important short story, _La Tristesse_, in _The -Atlantic Monthly_, although her work differs greatly in setting and -artistic method from the fiction of the Community type. - -L. M. Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, and spent -her childhood in Cavendish, a seashore farming settlement which figures -as ‘Avonlea’ in her stories. That her life has been spent chiefly within -the limits of the little island province and the bounds of an Ontario -country parish does not narrow her outlook although she confines herself -to themes bounded by rural experiences, for her forte is the portrayal -of what she has seen and knows. She has imaginative and creative gifts, -but she uses these in enabling us to see the beauty, the humour, and the -pathos that lies about our daily paths. - -_Anne of Green Gables_, her first novel, has an interesting history. -Upon being asked for a short serial story for a Sunday School weekly, -she cast about for a plot idea. A faded note book entry suggested: -‘Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy; a girl is sent to -them.’ The writing of a serial was started, but time did not allow the -author to complete it for the purpose intended. As she brooded over the -theme it began to expand and the result was a book which may be -confidently labelled a ‘Canadian classic.’ - -In Anne we have an entirely new character in fiction, a high-spirited, -sensitive girl, with a wonderfully vivid imagination; wise beyond her -years, outspoken and daring: not always good but always lovable. Her -longing for a real home, and an interest in her very quaintness, ends in -her being established as a member of the Green Gables family. It is Anne -who dominates the whole story. There are other characters, quaint too, -and well-drawn, but the introduction of Anne into the community—Anne, -so unconventional so imaginative, and so altogether different from the -staid, prosaic, general attitude of the neighbourhood—proves to be the -invasion of a peculiar ferment, and the incidents which discover the -process of fermentation are most delightfully odd and mirth-provoking. - -_Anne of Avonlea_ follows the career of the orphan heroine and deals -with two eventful years of school teaching. Miss Montgomery understands -children thoroughly and makes her child characters of all types -perfectly natural and lifelike. The same creative faculty which gave us -in Anne an entirely new shadow-child shows itself in the portrayal of -the mischievous but lovable Davy Keith, his demure twin sister Dora, the -imaginative Paul Irving, and the many individualities of the pupils of -Avonlea School. - -Plot interest is not a strong feature of this or of any of L. M. -Montgomery’s novels. There are, nevertheless, several threads of action -which bind together the series of incidents and secure continuity and -unity. The nature descriptions reveal at once the author’s intimacy with -nature and her poetic attitude of mind. - -Here is a typical passage:— - - A September day on Prince Edward Island hills; a crisp wind - blowing up over the sand dunes from the sea; a long, red road, - winding through fields and woods, now looping itself about a - corner of thick set spruce, now threading a plantation of young - maples with great feathery sheets of ferns beneath them, now - dipping down into a hollow where a brook flashed out of the - woods and into them again, now basking in the open sunshine - between ribbons of goldenrod and of myriads of crickets. - -_Chronicles of Avonlea_, a volume of short stories, contains some of her -most finished work, showing that perfect art that conceals all art, and -abounding in a strong vein of simple humour that is found in all her -work. - -_The Story Girl_ and _The Golden Road_ are written with even less -attention to a central plot than the earlier ‘Anne’ books. They are -somewhat loosely connected series of incidents in which the same -characters take part. But the community type of fiction does not demand -thrilling plots. Other writers can write plot stories, but most other -writers do not hold before us the mirror of Canadian country life. - -_Kilmeny of the Orchard_ is in a sense but an expanded short story. It -is a prose love idyll and does not, perhaps, bulk very large when -compared with the other books. It is really one of the extended -‘chronicles’ of Avonlea. - -The story of Anne Shirley continues through several volumes—_Anne of -the Island_ pictures her college days; _Anne’s House of Dreams_ sees her -established as mistress of her own home; while _Rilla of Ingleside_ -carries over the history into the second generation, Rilla being the -daughter of Anne. There is no new development of method or treatment in -these. In _Emily of New Moon_ (1923) Miss Montgomery created a new child -character, with a new environment, new conditions, and a new group of -minor personages, yet in effect it is of the same type and in the same -literary field as her previous novels. The chief difference to be -observed is that she employs a more analytic psychological method in -depicting her heroine—a method that tends to produce an adult’s story -of youth. In a way it marks an advance in literary technique but is not -as yet entirely divorced from that minute objective observation which -makes equal appeal to the young in years and the young in heart. - -The particular type of rural community which is the background of Marian -Keith’s stories may be duplicated in many parts of Canada and is quite -common in older Ontario—a community originally settled by Scottish -Presbyterians and afterwards leavened with just enough English and Irish -to throw into relief the chief characteristics of each nationality. - -One cannot escape the fact of a marked similarity to the work of J. M. -Barrie in his tales of Thrums. There is, however, this difference: -Barrie is more restrained in his emotions, more abbreviated and less -poetic in his descriptions, more pawky and less boisterous in his humor; -in fine, Barrie is Scotch, Marian Keith is Scottish-Canadian. - -As in most novels of the community type, the interest lies in incident -and characterization. The noblest character of all her stories, the best -drawn, is the grand old mystic Highlander, ‘Duncan Polite,’ the -spiritual watchman of Glenoro. The incidents of this story are woven -mainly around the path of the young minister, while the other Glenoro -novels centre about the personages of chief interest in a rural -community—_Silver Maple_, the school teacher; _Treasure Valley_, the -young doctor. _The End of the Rainbow_ and _The Bells of St. Stephens_ -are studies of town life. _Lizbeth of the Dale_ and _In Orchard Glen_ -are character studies of a boy and a girl respectively. The same -qualities prevail in all these. _Little Miss Melody_ builds an engaging -picture of the community of Cherry Hill around a fresh and original -young girl character. The keynote of Marian Keith’s stories is -‘service.’ Her work as a whole gives a faithful picture of the social -and religious life of a certain type of rural Canadian settlement, and -Canadian town. - -Mrs. McClung’s ‘community’ depicted in _Sowing Seeds in Danny_ was a -little western town, with certain elements of the usual population -crossing its pages. The poor immigrant girl, the young English gentleman -learning to farm, the doctor, the preacher, the would-be politician are -faithfully portrayed. Most interesting of all is Mrs. Watson, the -hard-working washerwoman and her family of nine children. The fortunes -of Pearlie Watson are the theme of a sequel, _The Second Chance_, in -which the setting in a rural settlement, while _The Black Creek Stopping -House_ is a collection of short stories. Later the career of Pearl -Watson is continued in _Purple Springs_, but this novel shades into a -sort of politico-propagandist treatise. Human interest and news quality -with a ready-made style to correspond has caught the public interest in -Mrs. McClung’s work rather than any conspicuous artistry of method. - - 2. _The Institutional Novel._ - -From looking at the life of fixed communities or localities, the next -step is to consider them in their relation to what we might call certain -‘institutions’ of our national life, growth, or conditions. We saw that -R. E. Knowles in _St. Cuthbert’s_ made the Scottish Presbyterian Church -the dominating influence of that story. In this sense, the life of the -railroad or construction camp is an ‘institutional’ rather than a local -or community life. This has been excellently portrayed by Frank L. -Packard in his collection of short stories, _On the Iron at Big Cloud_: -Alan Sullivan’s _The Passing of Oul-I-But_ contains some splendid -stories of this type. Here also we would place the sea stories of Norman -Duncan and Frederick William Wallace. - -Norman Duncan’s peculiar field is the ragged coasts and savage seas of -Newfoundland and the hard, cruel, tempest-battered life of the -Newfoundland fisherman. When _The Way of the Sea_ was published (1904), -Frank T. Bullen, himself a master-maker of sea stories, wrote in a -foreword: ‘I am absolutely certain that with the exception of Joseph -Conrad and Rudyard Kipling no writing about the sea has ever probed so -deeply and so faithfully into its mysteries as his.’ Duncan’s fidelity -to his subject appears not only in his truthful description of the life -and way of the sea, but even more in his realization and presentation of -the religious side of the Newfoundland fishermen—whose stern creed was -born out of a never-ceasing struggle for existence. - -Norman Duncan, although he produced several novels, of which _Dr. Luke -of the Labrador_ is the most artistically constructed, is essentially a -writer of short stories. Indeed, some of his novels were made simply by -piecing together, with connecting material, stories that had first -appeared in magazine form. As a short story writer he exhibits the -finest and most desirable qualities—substantial character foundation, -economy of language, sufficiency of emotional causation, and a breadth -of human sympathy. His _Battles Royal Down North_ and _Harbor Tales Down -North_ are two collections of a high order of excellence. His power to -portray action makes his juvenile books—such as _Billy Topsail and -Company_—very acceptable to the youthful mind. - -Frederick William Wallace writes chiefly of Nova Scotia sailors and deep -sea fishermen. He is more objective in his treatment of themes than is -Duncan. While Wallace’s gift may be said to lie in his skill in -producing vivid visualizations of seamanship, Duncan’s lies in realizing -seamen. Wallace observes and describes the life of the sailor and the -fisherman; Duncan realizes and interprets the soul. Consequently in -_Blue Water_ (1920), _The Shacklocker_ (a collection of short stories), -and _The Viking Blood_, have much more plot and action to them than have -Norman Duncan’s novels and short stories; but they are not so intimate -and convincing in character analysis, neither are they so careful nor so -finished in their technique—the two styles are quite in harmony with -the differing methods of treatment. - -Commercial life in its sociological relationships falls under our -definition of an ‘institutional’ aspect of national life. Here must be -placed Alan Sullivan’s _The Inner Door_ which reveals inside conditions -and labor problems in connection with the operation of a large rubber -factory; also his story of the somewhat spectacular development of a -chain of allied industries at a strategic point for power and for raw -material—told in _The Rapids_. - -There are, in this period, some notable examples of Incidental -Literature. Louis Hémon, a native of France, lived but a short time in -Canada, yet wrote, in _Maria Chapdelaine_, (English translations by W. -H. Blake and by Sir Andrew Macphail), a chastely poetic novel of French -Canadian life. Miss J. G. Sime in _Our Little Life_ presents, if we view -it from one angle, a meticulous study of the life of a Montreal -seamstress, with her pathetically frustrate love story; but more than -all that, _Our Little Life_ is an observation of the life of the -Canadian people by an English mind. The literary artistry of both these -works is indisputable. Some criticism has been aimed at both on the -score of inaccuracy of minor facts. Whether or not there are such minor -inaccuracies, there still remains the grand result that the color, the -atmosphere, the outward semblance, are portrayed as they have scarce -ever been before; that the inmost soul of the characters is -understandingly and consistently revealed. - -Education in its institutional aspect appears in many novels only -incidentally. As a dominant motive or a circumscribing setting its -development is comparatively recent. _Miriam of Queen’s_, by Lilian Vaux -Mackinnon (1921), shows the molding influence of university life; _The -Hickory Stick_, by Nina Moore Jamieson (1921), emphasises the place and -importance of the rural school in rural life and problems; the great -school novels of English literature find a modified echo in the boarding -school stories of Ethel Hume Bennett and Gordon Hill Grahame—_Judy of -York Hill_ (1922), by the former, in which dialogue, action and -atmosphere contribute effectively in conveying a picture of a girls’ -school; _Larry, or the Avenging Terrors_ (1923), by the latter, a boys’ -boarding school story of lively incident. - - 3. _The Realistic Romance._ - -The rapid expansion of the far West and such spectacular events as the -‘Klondike rush,’ gave a sort of feverish color to a life that previously -had appeared one of toil, hardship, and stony endurance. Viewed -imaginatively, that life now presented its hectic side, and the far West -and the high North were exploited as literary fields of thrill, -adventure, and excitement. Thus the second decade of this century saw -the rise in Canada of the Realistic Romance. At its best this class of -novel resembles the Community type but is speeded up with a more -exciting and more complicated plot; at its worst it is lurid melodrama -with realism interpreted as the portrayal of the sordid and seamy side -of life. Very few of the realistic romances exhibit any distinction of -manner and style. They are not concerned with the niceties of the art of -telling a story but with the ability to keep the reader constantly keyed -up to a high emotional tensity. - -_The Trail of ’98_, by Robert W. Service (1910), is a story of the -Yukon, with the spectacular elements of gold-rush days fully emphasised. -The qualities of Service’s poetry are accentuated in his fiction. In the -same year H. A. Cody began his career as a novelist with another Yukon -tale, _The Frontiersman_. It is a story of love, adventure, and -missionary experience. _Rod of the Lone Patrol_ followed in 1912, adding -a new fictional element which has been much exploited—the doings of the -North West Mounted Police. Cody produced a long series of adventure -novels with a variety of settings. - -Other writers of the Realistic Romance speedily developed different -aspects of Western life or staged their romances in different regions of -the Great West or the Far North. We have room only for brief mention of -some of the best known writers in this class. - -Robert Stead’s novels are chiefly of the prairie farm and ranch—_The -Bail Jumper_ (1914), _The Homesteader_, _The Cowpuncher_, _Dennison -Grant_, _Neighbors_. He is effective in reproducing the atmosphere of -the prairie, the details of farm and ranch life, and characteristic bits -of scenery; his stories are stronger in incident and action than they -are in characterization. - -Robert Watson began fairly well with _My Brave and Gallant Gentleman_ -(1918), a romance of England and British Columbia, that had touches of -Borrow and Stevenson, but his later efforts have tended to cast -themselves into more stereotyped forms. Robert A. Hood produced two -adventure-romances of British Columbia, _The Chivalry of Keith -Leicester_ and _The Quest of Alistair_. Douglas Durkin exploited -Manitoba in _The Lobstick Trail_. ‘Luke Allan’ (Lacey Amy) wrote several -stories of cowboy life of which _Blue Pete: Half Breed_ was significant -because of the originality and individuality of its leading character. - -John Murray Gibbon’s earlier fiction—in _Drums Afar_ and _Hearts and -Faces_—was English in its setting and concerned with psychological -problems and studies of Oxford life. In transferring to an American -literary habitat, he entered the ranks of the Realistic Romancers. His -novel, _The Conquering Hero_, was a lively, melodramatic story of the -Rocky Mountains and British Columbia ranches; while in _Pagan Love_ -(1923), he combined a startling mystery with an element of satire on the -modern philosophy of business success. - -Theodore Goodridge Roberts, younger brother of Charles G. D. Roberts, is -essentially a story teller and much of his fiction shows the influence -of Weyman and the historical romanticists of the latter years of the -nineteenth century. His _Brothers in Peril_ (1905), _A Captain of -Raleigh’s_ (1911), and _The Harbor Master_ (1914) are stories of -romantic adventure of very early days in Newfoundland, while _Jess of -the River_, _Rayton_ and _Forest Fugitives_ have a setting in rural New -Brunswick. - - 4. _Historical Fiction._ - -The influences that produced the Community Novel gave to the Historical -Fiction of this period a closer up view. Instead of the far-off days of -the French regime, the historical field of vision became that of but a -century or so past and writers essayed to revivify the times and -personages of the War of 1812 or the Rebellion of 1837. A noteworthy -example is C. H. J. Snider’s stories of the naval engagements on the -Great Lakes, _In the Wake of the Eighteen-Twelvers_. With fine -recreative imagination he enables us to live through incidents of -daring, gallantry, and romance of these stirring battles. ‘Anison North’ -in _The Forging of the Pikes_ gives a realistic picture of Toronto of -’37, of the battle of Montgomery’s Tavern, and a pen-portrait of the -rebel leader, Mackenzie. She lets us see ‘both sides of the story’ of -the conditions that were responsible for the Rebellion. - -A minor species of the Historical Novel is found in the novel of pioneer -life which seeks to put into a permanent record pioneer experiences and -conditions of sometimes considerably less than a century ago. Adeline M. -Teskey did this for the Niagara Peninsula and the building of the first -Welland Canal with _In Candlelight Days_ (1914). Archie McKishnie told -of the conflict of the ‘bushwhacker,’ who delighted in the freedom of -the woods and streams, with the incoming tide of settlement in _Love of -the Wild_, drawing upon the historic figure of Colonel Talbot for some -of his characterization. Anison North blends a colorful picture of the -enjoyment of outdoor life with a pioneer line fence feud in her -_Carmichael_. In _Kinsmen_ Percival J. Cooney relates a strange story of -Scottish feudalism—an example of the clan system with its autocratic -laird—which actually existed in Canada. - -Few Canadian writers have found leisure to follow the example of Gilbert -Parker in writing Historical Fiction in Old World settings, but this has -quite recently been done in a highly distinctive style in novels -appearing over the signature—‘E. Barrington.’ _The Ladies_, -semi-historical stories of the eighteenth century; _The Chaste Diana_, a -story of Polly Peacham of ‘Beggar’s Opera’ fame; _The Divine Lady_ -(1924) tells the love-story of Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. - - 5. _Imaginative Fiction._ - -In one sense all fiction is imaginative. There is, however, a species in -which pure imagination plays a much greater part than in the Community -Novel, in Historical Fiction, or in the other types discussed in this -chapter. Marjorie Pickthall’s work is the highest example of this. She -wrote, not with the reproductive imagination nor with fancy, but with -the faculty defined by Matthew Arnold as imaginative reason. Into the -texture of her fiction she wove poetic imagination and poetic -significance derived from her clear, absolute, and sympathetic -understanding of the human heart and of the hidden springs and the -meaning of existence, from her superior and inclusive sympathetic -intelligence. Thus she was enabled to write stories of the most varied -settings and of the most wildly differing characters with equal -convincingness. - -_Little Hearts_ (1915), is an engaging tale of the days of ‘Bonnie -Prince Charlie’ with its conflict chiefly between loyalty to the Crown, -and fidelity to the spirit of humanity. It pictures ‘little hearts,’ men -of small fortunes, and small (as the world sees it) ambitions, in their -pathetic existence, more pathetic because of finely brave in the midst -of many both petty and heroic vicissitudes of fortune, of mean victory -and noble defeat. The novel preaches no didactic moral but it silently -teaches Christ’s philosophy of struggle and defeat—‘He that loseth his -life shall find it.’ It impresses unforgettably how little after all are -the greatest hearts, and how little we lose or gain in any defeat or -triumph which is merely earthly defeat or triumph. - -_The Bridge_ (1922), has the same theme, with the pain and cruelty of -love, of unfulfilled seeking, and the final triumph of a soul that saved -itself by losing itself in inward self-knowledge and self-sacrifice. It -is set against a background of the tremendous beauty of the Great Lakes, -scenes of storm on land and water. Technically, it is farther from -perfection than _Little Hearts_; it has less structural unity, less -smoothness of style. At times the emotional situations seem overdrawn; -nor are atmosphere and setting definitively localized. - -The collection of short stories—_Angel’s Shoes_ (1922)—embodies -examples of Miss Pickthall’s perfect artistry as a short story writer. -These stories are clear, vivid, colorful, and of almost the highest type -of creative imagination. They may lack, occasionally, a warmth of -humanity that is present in the work of other writers of poorer -craftsmanship. - -Less distinctive but belonging to the few Canadian novels of this class -is _The Window Gazer_, by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, a romance of a man -who ‘fell in love with his wife.’ Blended with the characteristics of -the novel of pure imagination there are here slight touches of the -Realistic Romance and the Community Novel. A somewhat curious literary -phenomena is found in _Mists of the Morning_ by this same writer, which -began in the style of the Imaginative Novel and ended as a Realistic -Romance. - - 6. _Some Miscellaneous Types._ - -To the ranks of the Animal Romancers this period has added at least one -writer who approaches the subject in a new way. The attitude was -apparent in the nature passages of _Gaff Linkum_ (1907) and became more -a quality of Archie McKishnie’s work as he continued to write short -stories and novels of animal life. We find it crystallized in _Openway_ -(1923). Roberts is the intellectual animal psychologist; Thompson Seton, -the literary scientist; W. A. Fraser, the objective story teller; but -Archie McKishnie impresses us with the sense of his comradeship with the -creatures of the marsh, the wood, and the stream. He is their -interpreter but not as an outside observer. He lives with them, loves -them, protects them. Thus when he writes animal stories he rises to his -best literary style and achieves a beauty and smoothness that is not -always found in his other writing. - -The detective story is represented by a series of ‘underground’ stories -by Arthur Stringer; a typical example is _The Wire Tappers_. The setting -is a large American city, and rapidity of action is the desired and -supplied element. More Canadian in setting and atmosphere are Victor -Lauriston’s _The Twenty-First Burr_ and Hopkins Moorhouse’s _The -Gauntlet of Alceste_, both well-constructed according to the -requirements of this type of fiction, concealing the mystery motive -skilfully up to a surprising climactic finish. - -The religions and philosophies of the Orient find a slight reflection in -some Canadian poetry. In fiction, the stories and novels of L. Adams -Beck—_The Ninth Vibration_, _The Key of Dreams_, _The Perfume of the -Rainbow_, _The Treasure of Ho_—are chiefly Oriental in themes and -settings, and mark the author as an interpreter of the mysteries of the -East, with an unusual beauty and originality of style. - -Arthur Stringer’s trilogy of the prairie—_The Prairie Wife_, _The -Prairie Mother_, _The Prairie Child_—is remarkable as a study in -feminine psychology and the reactions of problems of prairie life upon a -feminine mind in its domestic and personal associations. The first -volume in the trilogy is the most impressive because of its spontaneity, -its subtle touches of color and atmosphere. The modern double-triangle -element dominates and rather detracts from the originality and -individuality of the latter volumes, but the series is significant as an -advance from the realistic romance toward a newer realism. - - 7. _The New Realism._ - -It was but natural that a reaction should set in against the realistic -romance with its insufficiency of motivation and its lack of fidelity to -real life. Rather remarkably this arrives in another ten-year cycle and -a group of novels published in 1923 show a marked similarity of method -and treatment, with widely varied themes and settings. We distinguish -this fresh and original attitude as the ‘New Realism’ in Canadian -fiction. The strongest of these novels undoubtedly is _The Viking Heart_ -by Laura Goodman Salverson. It might be called the epic of the Icelander -in Canada, describing as it does the arrival of a party of immigrants in -1870 and following their struggles, hardships, and gradual rise of -fortunes to the present day. There is no plot but such as grows out of -the record of the lives of the characters. There is no melodrama, but -there is the tense drama of the realities of life. The style is chaste, -simple, but forceful. Back of it all lies a big theme—‘the price of -country’—the realization of citizenship through toil, tears, blood, and -sacrifice. - -The other novels in this group are: _Possession_, by Mazo de la Roche, -with its setting a Niagara fruit farm; _Lantern Marsh_, by Beaumont -Cornell, following a farm boy through his struggles for an education; -_Cattle_, by Onoto Watanna, an almost brutally realistic presentation of -a man whose sole aim in life was the acquirement of cattle—as a form of -wealth—whose whole outlook on life was measured in terms of cattle; -_The Child’s House_, by Marjory MacMurchy, which enters into the heart -and mind of a growing little girl. - -The importance of this movement is that it has cast aside -superficialities, that these writers have somehow been able to ‘see -things as they are,’ to glimpse the realities of life from their real -beginnings—four of the five novels named are actually rooted in ‘the -soil’ as their setting and their underlying spiritual foundation. With -this foundation of actuality and truth, the writers have gained a -clearer and more finished expression. Some of these novels have -melodramatic spots; some have other weaknesses, but, on the whole, the -effect of this new movement has been to produce novels that have a -definite structural unity, that are largely free from irrelevant and -insignificant detail, that are written with an economy and aptness of -language, and that have more definiteness and depth to their basic -themes. - - - - - CHAPTER XXII - - - The Poetic Dramatists - - THE POETIC DRAMATISTS OF THE SECOND RENAISSANCE—ARTHUR STRINGER— - ROBERT NORWOOD—MARJORIE PICKTHALL, AND OTHERS. - -Arthur stringer, novelist and lyric poet, showed versatility and -considerable power in imaginative construction when, in 1903, he -published a volume of two dramatic poems or soliloquies and one poetic -drama, all on classical themes in blank verse; namely, _Hephaestus_, -_Persephone at Enna_, and _Sappho in Leucadia_. In these works, however, -Stringer was indulging an ‘avocation;’ for his genius is at its best in -lyrical verse and prose fiction. _Hephaestus_ and _Persephone_, even -though they are written in blank verse, have all the color, music, and -emotion which we associate with lyrical poetry. _Sappho in Leucadia_, -though dramatic in form, is undramatic in movement, and is lyrical in -spirit. For at the beginning Sappho, the ‘bird-throated child of -Lesbos,’ has resolved to destroy herself by leaping into the sea, and -Phaon’s only role is the attempt of a lover to dissuade her, but to no -avail. The so-called ‘drama’ is but a series of colloquies between -Sappho and Phaon. The only ‘movement’ is a psychological development in -three stages—first, the original intention on Sappho’s part to destroy -herself; then the arrested intention; and, finally, the intention -fulfilled, in spite of Phaon’s pleading, by Sappho leaping to her death. - -What Stringer has really done in _Sappho in Leucadia_ is to take a Greek -legend and to tell the simple episode of Sappho’s death, in colorful, -musical, and artistic blank verse. There is no emotional poignancy in -it; nothing for the heart and the moral imagination. It is all for the -aesthetic sensibility, for the lover of sensuous imagery and melody. -Oddly its single lyrical interlude or ‘song’ is not in ‘Sapphics,’ but -is an octave in trimeters. The sensuous beauty of color and music in -this quasi-poetic drama is exemplified in the following speech by -Sappho:— - - For like a god you seemed in those glad days - Of droning wings and languorous afternoons, - When close beside the murmuring sea we walked. - Then did the odorous summer ocean seem - A meadow green where foam one moment flowered - And then was gone, and ever came again, - A thousand bloom-burdened Springs in one! - —How like a god you seemed to me; and I - Was then most happy, and at little things - We lightly laughed, and oftentimes we plunged - Waist-deep and careless in the cool green waves, - As Tethys once and Oceanus played - Upon the golden ramparts of the world. - Then would we rest, and muse upon the sands, . . . - And on the dunes the thin green ripples lisped - Themselves to sleep and sails swung dreamily - Where azure islands floated on the air. - Then did your body seem a temple white. . . . - The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek, - The streams of life sang thro’ your violet veins, - The midnight velvet of your tangled hair - Lured, as a twilight rill . . . . . . . . . . . - -Stringer’s _Sappho in Leucadia_ is an engaging and even impressive -dramatic colloquy, but it is not an authentic poetic or closet drama. It -has sensuous beauty but no spiritual power. But it does increase -Stringer’s reputation as a verbal colorist and melodist. - -In 1915 appeared an original poet of distinct spiritual power in lyrical -and dramatic forms. He was Robert Norwood. His first book was a -sonnet-sequence. But in 1916 he published a poetic drama, _The Witch of -Endor: A Tragedy_; and in 1919, another poetic drama, _The Man of -Kerioth_. In 1921 he published _Bill Boram_, which is a ‘dramatic tale.’ - -Robert Norwood has two natural gifts. More than any other Canadian poet -he has an innate genius for the philosophical or mystical interpretation -of good and evil in the universe. Also, he is gifted with acute insight -into the inner heart of man and woman, ancient and modern. These two -gifts fit him for the office of the kind of poet who by imaginative -sympathy perceives the ultimate harmony of the universe, the spiritual -meaning of the tragedy and comedy of existence. As a poetic dramatist, -then, Norwood is a Seer; and his voice is the voice of a Prophet. Power -over the heart and imagination of the people, not Beauty and Art for -art’s sake, is his aim. If he is the Poet of Beauty, as he is in all his -verse, lyrical and dramatic, he is more, or supremely, the Poet of -Spiritual Vision and Power in his poetic dramas. - -In _The Witch of Endor_ Norwood returns to the Biblical theme which had -engaged Heavysege—the love romance and tragedy of King Saul. The -characters are never shadowy but always alive. The dramatic movement is -never held up by long or digressive moralizing speeches, as in -Heayysege’s _Saul_, but each character makes his speeches according to -the dramatic necessity, enough and no more, thus permitting at ‘the -psychological moment’ the natural entrance of another character and his -speech. The structure is logically developed to the tragic or spiritual -climax. But in the development there is no uniform level of emotion, -rather the emotion varies from gentle or pathetic to intense or tragic. -It is indeed in its profounder imaginative vision, its more varying and -rising degrees of emotional intensity, and its more logical structural -development to a climax that _The Witch of Endor_ has more incisive and -compelling power as poetic drama than Campbell’s Arthurian drama -_Mordred_. In short, _The Witch of Endor_ is a beautiful and spiritual -poetic drama—purging the emotions of pity and fear and transporting the -spirit to the Mount of Vision where it sees intuitively how the ways of -God to man are justified and how Love is greater than Faith and Hope. - -In his next poetic drama _The Man of Kerioth_ (that is, Judas Iscariot) -Norwood made an advance in imaginative vision, construction, and power. -He achieves this by reducing the magniloquence of the speeches and by -modernly humanizing the characters of Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalen, -Blind Bartimaeus, Philip, and Jesus the Carpenter. He even introduces -little children into the drama. The high and the vulgar and lowly, -saints and sinners, the motley of society in Jerusalem, commingle -intimately and humanly. There is a distinct advance in realistic truth -of characterization, and the whole drama is pervaded with a winning -naturalness and humanity which are not in any preceding poetic drama by -a Canadian, nor even in his own succeeding ultra-realistic ‘dramatic -tale of the sea,’ _Bill Boram_. So that in respect of creation -thoroughly humanized, noble, and clearly limned -character-portraiture—as, for instance, Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalen, -and Jesus—Norwood must be ranked as the supreme creator amongst -Canadian poetic dramatists. This is a matter of sheer artistry. But -Norwood also shows an advance in spiritual power. With profounder -mystical vision and greater truth he justifies the ways of God to man, -and exalts the spirit to the Temple pinnacle where we behold Immortal -Love in all its sweet beauty of humanity and in all its white radiance -of redeeming light. In _The Man of Kerioth_ he attains his acme in -spiritual beauty and power as a poetic dramatist. - -So far Norwood had not created any poetic drama with a definitively -Canadian theme, setting, and characters. In his _Bill Boram_, which is a -‘dramatic tale’ told in the third person, the characters and the action -being ‘reported,’ Norwood made a fresh, novel, and impressive -contribution to original Canadian Literature. In doing so Norwood -dropped somewhat in imaginative truth and dramatic invention; but he -rose to greater heights of mystical perception and spiritual power. The -theme of _Bill Boram_ is the redemption of the human spirit by the love -of beauty in Nature. Ingenious as his conception is, Norwood committed -the error of conceiving the accident of a love of flowers, that is to -say, of sensuous beauty, as a possible redemptive force in human life. -He would have us believe that the love of sensuous beauty can transmute -itself or become transmuted into an altogether different kind of love, -namely, the love of spiritual beauty and thus regenerate a coarse and -brutal nature and remake it into a noble and refined spirit. Such -spiritual metabolism is impossible, and _Bill Boram_ so far forth lacks -imaginative truth and dramatic power. - -Aside from that, _Bill Boram_, on the whole, is a novel achievement in -dramatic narrative. The characters are vividly and veraciously drawn; -they have realistic truth. There is also an air of romance in the whole -tale, such an air of vital romance as obtains in the tales and novels of -the sea by Norman Duncan and Frederick William Wallace. - -Summarily; Norwood’s _Bill Boram_ is an amazing dramatic picture of rude -characters in a setting of romance colored by a strange and startling -commingling of coarse speech and brutalized deed and of beautiful -diction and exquisite imagery. It is at once a _tour de force_ in -dramatic conception and construction and in impressionistic -word-painting. Yet it is a powerful presentation of the idea of the -mystical union of the human spirit with the divine through the love of -pure beauty in Nature. - -The Second Renaissance is noted also for the work of several other -poetic dramatists. Amongst them are Dr. James B. Dollard, author of -_Clontarf: An Irish National Drama_; Rev. Dean Llwyd, author of _The -Vestal Virgin_; John L. Carleton, author of _The Medieval Hun; A -Historical Drama_, and _The Crimson Wing_, which has the distinction of -having been the winner of the first prize for original dramatic -composition in the Canadian Prize Play Competition, 1918; Norah Holland, -author of _When Half Gods Go and Other Poems_ (1924), the title-poem of -which has been repeated as a Christmas play for several successive -seasons. These are all respectable poetic dramas and give distinction -both to the quantity and the quality of poetic drama in the Second -Renaissance. - -But this work in poetic drama is, after all, not inspired impressing one -as a stint in creation, and is not at all comparable to the work of -Norwood in imaginative vision, artistic construction, and dramatic -power. Comparable, however, with Norwood’s and superior to it in -spiritual poignancy is the single poetic drama left by Marjorie -Pickthall. Though Norwood’s poetic dramas contain lyrical interludes, -and though his dramatic tale _Bill Boram_ is for the most part rhymed, -on the whole they are in blank verse. But Miss Pickthall’s single poetic -drama _The Wood Carver’s Wife_ is lyrical through and through, and is -properly to be denoted as ‘lyric drama.’ In form this lyric drama stands -midway between Stringer’s dramatic poems and Norwood’s poetic dramas. In -that respect Marjorie Pickthall made a novel contribution to Canadian -poetic literature. - -_The Wood Carver’s Wife_ was first published in _The University -Magazine_ in 1920. It was reprinted, along with other fugitive poems, in -1922, the drama supplying the title poem of the volume. _The Wood -Carver’s Wife_ has four characters, one of whom is Shagonas, an Indian -lad who represents Nemesis. It is set in the time of the Intendant. The -theme is ‘the eternal triangle’—a girl-wife, with a husband still alive -and a secret lover. The mood of the drama is the tragedy which follows -the sin of disloyalty to the sacrament of marriage, even if the -disloyalty is only in the heart and never openly expressed in -clandestine meeting between the wife and the lover. The mood of the -dramatist, however, is not one of simply illustrating the law that the -‘soul that sinneth it shall die,’ but of wistfulness about the ways of -God to men and women when spiritual unmating is permitted by Heaven. The -dramatist _seems_ to put her own feeling about the matter into her -drama. She seems to feel that if the moral law is inexorable, it ought -not to be so in the case of a young girl who innocently, or without -knowing her own heart and what she was doing, married a man, who, after -all, did not want her as an end in herself, or her spirit for its own -sake, but to have her as a model for the statue of the Blessed Virgin he -was creating in wood, as a chattel in his studio. Humanly, Marjorie -Pickthall felt that the girl-wife was more sinned against than sinning -when she allowed herself to be conscious—merely conscious—of the -lover. But Marjorie Pickthall, with loyalty to the dramatic necessities, -though with a spiritual wistfulness all the while, constructed the -action and movement of _The Wood Carver’s Wife_ so that the tragic -ending was inevitable. For the husband knows that there is a secret -lover, and Shagonas knows, and at the tragic climax it is the arrow of -the Indian, representing the moral law, that sends the lover to his -death. The girl-wife knows what has happened, because she has heard the -twang of Shagonas’ bow-string. The tragedy is complete when she receives -from Shagonas, who is again Nemesis, the sword of her lover, and dies -with a mad speech on her lips, while at the same time the husband, also -mad, as he was from the beginning, has Shagonas pose the beautiful dead -body of the girl-wife that he may put the acme touches to his statue. - -How easily the dramatist might have made certain shifts which would have -resulted in reconciliation and a happy ending! But with all her -spiritual wistfulness, Marjorie Pickthall loyally held to the dramatic -and the artistic ideals. The climax and tragic ending are tremendous and -wholly spiritualizing, purging the soul with pity for humanity through -the terror which the action and the denouement awake in the spirit. -There is in it all a spiritual poignancy which does not obtain in -Norwood’s love-tragedy of Saul in _The Witch of Endor_. It is suffused -with a lovely and winning beauty of diction, imagery, and verbal music; -and it contains one lyric ‘cry of a soul’ which for pathos is -unsurpassed in Canadian literature, namely, the Litany of Dorette, the -hapless girl-wife, to the Blessed Virgin Mother beginning, - - If you have lain in the night - And felt the old tears run - In their channels worn in the heart, - Pity me, Mary. - -Considered critically, then, the poetic dramas of Robert Norwood and the -lyric drama of Marjorie Pickthall are, from the universal point of view, -authentic works of art, originally conceived and beautifully -constructed, and, from the Canadian point of view, are the supreme -achievements in the poetic drama of Canada. - - - - - CHAPTER XXIII - - - Humorists - - THE HUMORISTS OF CANADA: PRE-CONFEDERATION—HALIBURTON—HOWE— DE - MILLE—DUVAR—POST-CONFEDERATION—LANIGAN—COTES—DRUMMOND—HAM: - NEW SCHOOL—LEACOCK—DONOVAN—DAVIS—MACTAVISH—McARTHUR—HODGINS. - -The name and work of Thomas Chandler Haliburton as a satirist or -humorist so over-shadowed the names and works of other Canadian -humorists that it is a belief, both in foreign countries and in Canada -itself, that the Canadian people have no genius for humor and that, -outside of Haliburton’s satiric writings, there is no significant -Canadian humorous literature. All this is superstition and has been -perpetuated in two ways. No Canadian literary historian has remarked the -existence of other Canadian humorists, save Haliburton, though Mark -Twain in his Library of American Humor has included the work of -Haliburton, De Mille, Lanigan; and, secondly, no Canadian anthologist, -save Lawrence J. Burpee, has collected in a single volume examples of -the work of Canadian humorists. - -Pre-Confederation Canadian humor is represented by the work of -Haliburton, Howe, and De Mille. Of these the work of Haliburton is the -significant humor of the period. In general it is satiric, a criticism -of society, aiming to bring about certain reforms. No other Canadian -humorist since Haliburton, not even Leacock, had or has any gifts in -comic characterization. Howe had no satiric purpose. His humor, which -was chiefly in verse, was written ‘for the fun of the thing.’ - -A native-born Canadian man of letters who has not received his due is -James De Mille, poet, novelist, short story fictionist and humorist. De -Mille, at least in time, anticipated the new type of American humor -which is associated with the name of Mark Twain. For some months before -Mark Twain’s _The Innocents Abroad_ was published (1869), De Mille’s -_The Dodge Club_, or _Italy in 1859_ had appeared. This volume is not to -be confused with De Mille’s _Dodge Club Series_ published in 1871, 1872, -1877 which were humorous and healthful stories for the young. If, -therefore, the humor of Stephen Leacock is essentially a recrudescence -of the American humor which we see in Franklin and in Mark Twain, and if -Leacock read De Mille and Twain, as presumably he did, then the first of -the Leacockians in Canada, to use an anachronism, was De Mille, and he -is ‘the father’ of the later or the 20th century Canadian humorists -beginning with Leacock. For the genius of that _genre_ of humor, as in -De Mille and Twain, is essentially exaggerated nonsense or nonsense said -with a face of seriousness. De Mille’s work does not lend itself to -quotation, but stylistically De Mille’s humorous prose, aside from the -humor itself, is distinctly engaging or readable by virtue of its simple -or popular diction. - -Away from the traditional humor of the American or Haliburton style, is -the more delicate imaginative humor of John Hunter-Duvar and the -whimsical humor of Grant Allen. Hunter-Duvar wrote considerable humor in -light ephemeral form and his stories and verse are colored with many -passages of _genre_ humor and satire. The chief basis of his reputation -as a humorist of a distinct and anomalous type is found in his -extraordinarily conceived narrative poem, _The Emigration of the -Fairies_. It deserves wide reading as an example of the pure humor of -fancy. Grant Allen was a novelist and scientist. He published a volume -of light verse, _The Lower Slopes_, in which he indulged his humorous -gifts in a series of satiric and entertaining verses on scientific -themes. It is all essentially the humor of persiflage. - -After Haliburton the extraordinary name in Post-Confederation Canadian -humor is George Thomas Lanigan. He was born in the Province of Quebec -and has the distinction of having founded what is now the _Daily Star_, -of Montreal. He was a brilliant journalist and possessed unusual -versatility of invention and style in prose and verse. He had all the -mental gifts, and some of the faults, native to the Keltic temperament. -His ebullient spirits expressed themselves in restless activity and with -as ready brilliancy in verse as in prose. - -His prose humor, which was published serially in _The World_, New York, -in the first decade after Confederation, was fresh and novel and -arresting. The series was published in book form under the title _Fables -Out of the World_ (1878) and were to their time what the _Fables in -Slang_ by George Ade are to our time. So compellingly did Lanigan’s -_Fables_ strike the imagination of Mark Twain that he republished seven -of them in his Library of Humor. For the most part, Lanigan’s _Fables_ -are satires on the half-truths which constitute popular moral maxims. -They are all mere absurdities, and mere nonsense; but they contain a -larger truth than the maxims they satirize. They are sure to awake a -chuckle. We quote two examples:— - - The Merchant of Venice. - - A Venetian Merchant who was looking in the lap of luxury was - accosted upon the Rialto by a friend who had not seen him for - many months. ‘How is this?’ cried the latter. ‘When I last saw - you your gaberdine was out at elbows, and now you sail in your - own gondola.’ ‘True,’ replied the Merchant, ‘but since then I - have met with serious losses, and been obliged to compound with - my creditors for ten cents on the dollar.’ - - Moral.—Composition is the life of trade. - - The Honest Newsboy. - - A Newsboy was passing along the street, when he chanced to - discover a purse of greenbacks. He was at first inclined to - conceal it, but repelling the unworthy suggestion, he asked a - Venerable Man if it was his’n. The Venerable Man looked at it - hurriedly, said it was, patted him on the head, gave him a - quarter, and said he would yet be president. The Venerable Man - then hastened away, but was arrested for having counterfeit - bills in his possession, while the honest Newsboy played - penny-ante with his humble quarter and ran it up to $2.62. - - Moral.—Honesty is sometimes the best policy. - -Though Lanigan’s _Fables_ in prose were at that time a new and brilliant -type of humor, it is in his humorous ballads that he surpasses himself, -and because of them he remains unique among Canadian humorists. Some of -his humorous ballads have also been included in anthologies of -_American_ (!) humor, as, for instance, in Roscoe Johnson’s volume, -_Playday Poetry_. The most famous of Lanigan’s humorous ballads is his -egregious piece of persiflage, _The Ahkoond of Swat_. Really, however, -much more humorous are Lanigan’s _The Amateur Orlando_ and _The -Plumber’s Revenge_. Their length prevents quotation here. On account of -its notoriety and the absolute egregiousness of its comic -irresponsibility we select for quotation Lanigan’s _The Ahkoond of -Swat_. To give it color and setting we note briefly the origin of the -verses. According to Mr. Burpee the facts are that ‘one evening, after -learning the fact from the English mail just received, Lanigan announced -that the Akhoond of Swat was dead and that he was writing a poem about -him.’ The verses appeared in the next morning paper. Following is the -text of the _Ahkoond of Swat_:— - - What, what, what, - What’s the news from Swat? - Sad news, - Bad news, - Comes by the cable led - Through the Indian Ocean’s bed, - Through the Persian Gulf, the Red - Sea and the Med— - Iterranean—he’s dead; - The Akhoond is dead! - For the Akhoond I mourn, - Who wouldn’t? - He strove to disregard the message stern, - But he Ahkoodn’t. - - Dead, dead, dead; - Sorrow Swats! - Swats wha’ hae wi’ Ahkoond bled, - Swats whom he had often led - Onward to a gory bed, - Or to victory, - As the case might be. - Sorrow Swats! - Tears shed, - Shed tears like water, - Your great Ahkoond is dead! - That Swat’s the matter! - - Mourn, city of Swat! - Your great Ahkoond is not, - But lain ’mid worms to rot: - His mortal part alone, his soul was caught - (Because he was a good Ahkoond) - Up to the bosom of Mahound. - Though earthly walls his frame surround - (For ever hallowed be the ground!) - And sceptics mock the lowly mound - And say, ‘He’s now of no Ahkound!’ - (His soul is in the skies!) - The azure skies that bend above his loved - Metropolis of Swat - He sees with larger, other eyes, - Athwart all earthly mysteries— - He knows what’s Swat. - - Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond - With a noise of mourning and of lamentation! - Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond - With the noise of the mourning of the Swattish nation! - Fallen is at length - Its tower of strength, - Its sun had dimmed ere it had nooned: - Dead lies the great Ahkoond. - The great Ahkoond of Swat - Is not. - -In passing we may note another Canadian humorous poem of the same type -which has become famous, namely, _Hoch de Kaiser_, which was composed at -a sitting by an _émigré_ Canadian journalist who went sometimes by the -name of Rose and sometimes by the name of Gordon. - -We have elsewhere noted the fresh quality of the humor of Mrs. Everard -Cotes (Sarah Jeanette Duncan) and a whole chapter has been devoted to -the poetry of William Henry Drummond as the creator of a new species of -Canadian humor. The great warm Irish heart of Drummond was not fitted to -create satire or mere fun. His humor is based upon a tender sentiment or -what is known as ‘the homely pathetic’ and on a special sense of the -humor in _genre_ characters, particularly the old and the adolescent -_habitant_ of Quebec. - -A man quite by himself as a humorist is George Henry Ham, who has not -unfittingly been called ‘the laughing philosopher’ of Canada. Ham’s -humor is essentially the humor of the ‘after-dinner’ or ‘the occasional’ -speaker, and is for the most part anecdotal. During a long life he had -acquired an inexhaustible fund of the most humorous anecdotes about -Canadian characters or celebrated men. These were collected and -published in his _Reminiscences of a Raconteur_. - -Essentially Ham’s humor is not creative; it is the reproductive humor of -the raconteur; but Ham has added to it by a color and settings of his -own. It is the humor itself and not the style that counts. But while it -is humor and for the most part sheer fun or entertainment, it comes from -a man who has seen many vicissitudes in Canadian life and history and -institutions and who, in his great age, as human life goes, invites us -in his _Reminiscences of a Raconteur_ to look upon life and its -vicissitudes of good and ill fortune with courage, serenity, faith and -hope—and not to fear death. Ham’s humor is distinguished as pleasant -medicine for the soul in the hurly-burly of life and in the -contemplation of having some time to depart from a world that is full of -dear companions and pleasant places. - -The next Canadian systematic humorist, though not Canadian-born, is -Stephen Leacock. Haliburton was a creator; he really invented, his -method of satiric humor, or if he did not invent the method, he at least -originally created his comic characters. Leacock, who is ‘a graft on the -Canadian literary tree,’ models his humor considerably after the -American manner. It is satiric burlesque deliberately constructing -around serious character or events extravagant nonsense which is a sort -of criticism of manners and morals of society, but which tends to engage -us more as burlesque than as criticism. Mr. Leacock’s first book was -entitled _Literary Lapses_, published at Montreal in 1910. It was, as -the author’s Preface states, for the most part a collection of sketches -which had before that date appeared in print in various magazines. Two -of the sketches gained the distinction of being reprinted in _Punch_ and -_The Lancet_, London. These were respectively Leacock’s _Boarding House -Geometry_ and _The New Pathology_, the latter of which had the further -distinction of being reprinted in translations in various German -periodicals. His _Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town_ approaches more -closely to the unity of a regular novel than any of his other books and -is the highest example of his art. His style here is personal and -familiar almost to undue flippancy; it is witty and sparkling even to -brilliancy; it is less literary than the material of the _Mariposa -Newspacket_; it is surrounded with an exuberant atmosphere of burlesque. -Yet in _Sunshine Sketches_ he has achieved an unmistakably true -characterization of the average ‘little town’ of Canada—its life and -its people—a life which shows the universal touch that makes the whole -world akin, and at the same time has those narrow, provincial -idiosyncrasies that make it distinctively local and impossible of -portrayal except by one who has lived it. There is here revealed much of -the usually uncovered side of human nature, lit up with a glow of -amusement at the foibles of our fellow-man, but tempered, more than is -usual with Leacock, with a good-natured sympathy. - -From 1910 onwards to 1922, when Leacock’s _My Discovery of England_ was -published, the humorist produced a dozen volumes of his special species -of humor and attained a vogue which places him first amongst Canadian -humorists of the 20th century. He works at it brilliantly, sometimes in -the extreme burlesque manner of Mark Twain and sometimes in the quiet, -humble and drier manner of the characteristic English humor which -appears in _Punch_ in its department of ‘Charivaria.’ Unlike Haliburton, -Leacock rather makes the reader behold the humorist himself figuring -away bravely and sometimes futilely, to divert and amuse or entertain. -That is to say, unlike Haliburton’s humor, which had an easy method of -attack and drew attention to itself, Leacock’s humor gives the reader an -impression of its being _strained_, an effort on the humorist’s part -deliberately to make people smile or laugh, whether they will or not. It -is ‘smart,’ as the word is used in Yankee slang, rather than human and -profound. It ‘tickles’ the fancy and sensibility rather than illuminates -the imagination and informs the moral reason. It is clever; but like all -things that are merely clever it is ephemerally engaging or pleasing, -and it is all a case of the half being greater than the whole. In short, -Leacock’s humor is for a day, whereas Haliburton’s humor is for all -time. - -Peter Donovan is a promising later humorist. His first book was -_Imperfectly Proper_. After a short residence in England since the war, -he published _Over ‘Ere and Back Home_ (1922). Mr. Donovan is a critic -of society. He is not, however, a critic of constructive social thought -but of conventional thinking and conventional manners. The arrows of his -humor, which are neither sharp-pointed nor poisonous, are directed -against what Matthew Arnold used to call ‘Philistines’—the ‘nice’ -people who outwardly conform to all the conventionalities of the law of -the land and of the church but who inwardly—when no one is -looking—break these laws. Donovan directs his humor against shams in -society—not the great shams but those shams which have become acquired -habits, or against all that is the ‘fashion’ or the ‘rage’ of the year -or day. What he really achieves, from the point of view of vision, is to -make us see ourselves as others see us, and to cause us to ‘chuckle’ -over his polite—for he is never rude or coarse—revealments. Norris -Hodgins works much within the same range as Donovan—_Why Don’t You Get -Married?_ (1923)—and is not often quite so hilariously funny, but he -comes closer to the daily experiences of every man and every woman, and -there is just a bit more solidity to his underlying structure of -everyday philosophy. - -In another vein is the humor of Peter McArthur, who has been sometimes -called ‘The Sage of Ekfrid.’ McArthur writes as one who, living a -pastoral and serious life, actually looks around upon his neighbors in -other spheres of life and on their striving after wealth and material -goods, and who freshly reflects the thought, as old as the ancient -hills, that a serious and contented mind, satisfied with the gifts of -nature and of God, with pure friendships and sufficient sustenance for -body, possesses the only permanent satisfactions of life. He presents -this view, not with any originality in thought, but with a manner or -style that is pleasant reading and causes us to fall in love with life -and laughter and simple joys and to look with charity upon our fellows, -and to promote peace. - -A new type of Canadian humor, with a new quality of style, is the humor -of Newton MacTavish, Editor of _The Canadian Magazine_, in which -periodical Mr. MacTavish first gave to the public his fresh and piquant -humor, under the title _Thrown In_. The sketches were collected in a -volume and published with the same title in 1923. The aim of MacTavish’s -humor is definitively social—to disclose the hidden humanity of -commonplace souls and their essential unity with their more magnificent -fellows. When his humor is amusing or entertaining, it achieves this -quality not so much by depicting grotesque or ludicrous situations as by -revealing the natural attitudes of pioneer people towards the common -things of life, and the elementally human idiosyncrasies of the -so-called common people. When it is wit rather than mere humor, -MacTavish turns the light of truth upon human psychology and character, -by way of situation and character-drawing, in terms of commonplace -humanity expressed and colored by homely speech and anecdote. So that -the effect of his humor is two-fold. For while the reader is being -entertained his mind is also receiving new insight into our common -heritage, our genuine humanity, whatever be our culture or social -status. In short, MacTavish’s humor is philosophical. - -In Roy Davis’ long satiric poem, _Flying Rumors_, published in booklet -form at Boston, 1922, we discover a recrudescence of the satiric spirit -of Haliburton. Davis was born in Nova Scotia, and was educated at -Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and Harvard University. He is -Professor of English in the School of Business Administration, Boston -University, of which he is also Assistant Dean. - -With the same intent as Haliburton, namely, to correct certain -centrifugal tendencies in society, Davis employs satire, not, as did -Haliburton, in prose, but in verse, which was the traditional medium of -the satire of Haliburton’s and Davis’ Loyalist ancestors in -Pre-Revolutionary days in the Old Colonies. The form of Davis’ ‘essay on -man and society’ in verse adds, on the side of novelty, a fresh -contribution to the satiric literature of Canada. The poet has avoided -going back to the traditional rhymed couplet of the Loyalist satirists -in Nova Scotia, but has used an octavo stanzaic form in which the first -six lines are rhymed alternately, and the last two are rhymed as a -couplet. This effects a pleasant sense of finality and rest. Besides, -Davis has invented a considerable number of lines which are musical, and -arresting or startling in novelty of imagery, as, for instance, this -ingenious and daring couplet:— - - A goose-step strutting Kaiser, kissing Mars, - Has missed the humor of the midnight stars! - -When, therefore, we survey the history of Canadian humor from Haliburton -to Leacock, and from Leacock to MacTavish and Davis, the humorists who -have remained salient and popular, and whose work seems to have the -inherent qualities which make for permanent appeal, are Haliburton and -Lanigan. And when we survey and note the variety and distinction of -Canadian humor—that it is, in many ways, a humor quite by itself, and -that it is of considerable quantity—we may reply to certain literary -historians and critics that Canadians are not, as they are -superstitiously believed to be, a humorless people and quite without a -literature of humor. For Canada has produced several notable humorists, -an admirable literature of humor; and the work of one of Canada’s -humorists, Haliburton, has long possessed international renown—a place -in permanent world literature. - - - - - CHAPTER XXIV - - - National Stage Drama - - THE RISE OF NATIVE AND NATIONAL REALISTIC STAGE DRAMA IN CANADA: - THE LITTLE THEATRE AND THE WORK OF CARROLL AIKINS AND MERRILL - DENISON. - -Although Canada is relatively rich in Poetic Drama, there is no evidence -of a developed Stage Drama. Part of the literary future of the country -lies in the development of native and national stage drama. A -significant beginning in native production of the acted drama was -inaugurated by Mr. Carroll Aikins who established in the Okanagan -Valley, at a centre named Naramata, a ‘Little Theatre,’ which he named -The Home Theatre. It was formally opened in November 1920 by the Rt. -Hon. Mr. Meighen, then Prime Minister. Mr. Aikins’ aims were to produce -a national drama, staged according to artistic conceptions of simplicity -and beauty, and to teach the people to appreciate good plays produced -with simple and beautiful properties, stage sets, and lighting. - -In order to realize these ideals it was necessary to choose good plays -that had already been standardized and to train his actors directly in -the Home Theatre. Mr. Aikins’ belief was that by developing in the -people a love of good plays produced in a Canadian theatre under -Canadian direction, the people sooner or later would demand the -production of Canadian plays and that this demand would lead to the -creation of plays on Canadian subjects by Canadian playwrights. That is -to say, Mr. Aikins believed that the movement he started in the Home -Theatre would at length result in the creating of Canadian Native and -National Stage Drama. - -In 1921 Mr. Aikins produced on the stage of the Home Theatre an acted -version of _The Trojan Women_ by the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides. -In 1922 he produced his own Passion Play, _Victory in Defeat_, a -beautifully staged pantomime of moving pictures against a sky of -changing light, interpreted with the aid of a reader and expressive -music—the first experiment of its kind attempted in Canada. - -The ‘Little Theatre’ movement has also achieved something for the -appreciation of good Canadian plays in the cities of Winnipeg, Montreal, -Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. At Hart House in Toronto, there has been -considerable activity concerned with the production of Canadian plays. -In April, 1921, Merrill Denison’s _Brothers in Arms_ was produced at -that theatre; and in April 1922 another of his plays, _From Their Own -Place_, was produced. These, with two others, were published in book -form in 1923 under the title _The Unheroic North_. - -Denison’s plays are Canadian by virtue of the author’s parentage and -family traditions (his mother being the late Flora McD. Denison), and by -the plays themselves being on Canadian themes, with Canadian characters -moving in Canadian surroundings. They are realistic satiric dramas of -life and thought in Canadian ‘backwoods’ and rural settlements. The -dramatist presents the life and speech and conduct of these characters -with such broad realism that the plays themselves are a mordant satire -on existence and society in isolated Canadian communities. But Denison’s -plays are also a satire _within_ a satire. It is not life in certain -Canadian communities that he is really satirizing, but an attitude of -the Canadian people themselves. - -The people of Canada dearly love ‘high’ romance and spurious -sentimentality. They find this spurious sentimentality in some Canadian -fiction, and the romance in the poetic dramas of Mair, Mrs. Curzon, -Wilfred Campbell, Dr. Dollard, Robert Norwood, and others. Boldly, -therefore, and with evident sincerity, Merrill Denison conceived the -idea of satirizing the lovers of spurious sentimentality by presenting -them with plays which would be the antithesis of ‘high’ romance and -affected sentimentality—with life so broadly or coarsely realistic that -the people of Canada would _not_ like the life or the plays. - -Two of the plays—_Brothers in Arms_ and the _Weather Breeder_—portray -life in the Canadian backwoods districts as Mr. Denison has observed -that life. Two of the plays—_From Their Own Place_ and _Marsh -Hay_—portray, according to Mr. Denison, life in the poorer or more -sordid farming districts of Canada. The dramatist has explained his -motive and aim. He says: ‘These plays have their origin in the needs of -a theatre—not _the_ theatre. _Brothers in Arms_ was written because a -Canadian comedy was needed to fill a bill and none could be found. In -writing it as an innovation, I wrote of a part of Canada I knew, and -introduced as characters actual Canadians. The result was new, but, as -might have been expected, Canadian. It must be remembered that these -plays were written for a Canadian theatre, not Broadway, and that any -literature of the theatre in Canada must follow the same course—be -written for Canadian production.’ - -It may be regretted that Denison went to sordid and vulgar society in -Canada for his dramatic subjects or material. But he had just cause to -satire Canadian life by means of realistic Canadian plays. For the -intellectual dishonesty, and the ‘immoral moral psychology,’ which -creates the spurious or hectic sentimentality in certain Canadian -fiction would compel a sane-minded man to show the other side of the -picture, and to show it with pervasive and vivid realism. Denison -perceived and felt the profound untruth or falsity of certain forms of -20th century Canadian fiction. In his view, it was all too ‘nice’ and -saccharine as art; it had neither truth nor strength. Denison felt that -no such men and women as appear in many of the novels of the Realistic -Romances exist in Canada. In his opinion, the substance of these novels -is puerile and vain invention. He, therefore, decided to present to the -Canadian public real men and women as they really live, move and have -their being in Canada—even if they are, as indeed they are, sordid and -vulgarized men and women. Denison’s plays, then, are a Protest; they are -also a Satire. What the dramatist is protesting against is not the life -that he presents in his plays. What he is satirizing is not Canadian -life as such. He is protesting against intellectual dishonesty and -spurious sentimentality in Canadian fiction. He is satirizing the life -and characters which these Canadian fictionists have presented in their -romances. - -Denison presents his material in three one-act plays with four to six -characters, and in one four-act play with fourteen characters. It is the -business of the dramatic critic to estimate Denison’s success in -dramaturgy, to determine whether they are well-constructed and actable -plays. On the strictly literary side, his plays in _The Unheroic North_, -despite their sordid or vulgarized characters, and despite the sections -of society and life presented in them, intrigue the attention and make -interesting and diverting reading. As satires on the methods and ideals -of certain Canadian romantic fictionists, on the social life at least of -certain Canadian communities Denison’s realistic dramas are a -significant beginning of creative Stage Drama in Canada. - - - - - Part III. - - - - Special and Miscellaneous - Literature - (1760-1924) - - - - - CHAPTER XXV - - - _The_ War Poetry _of_ Canada - - MRS. MOODIE—ANNIE ROTHWELL CHRISTIE—ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD— - JOHN MCCRAE—CANADIAN POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR. - I. THE POETRY OF THE CIVIL REBELLION - AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR - -It is a literary phenomenon by itself that the best or most popular of -the inspirational and the commemorative war verse by permanently -resident _émigrés_ or native-born Canadians was the work of the -country’s women poets. No samples of martial verse inspired by the War -of 1812-14 seem to be extant. The records of martial verse produced in -Canada begin with the Civil War of 1837-38 and the inspirational war -lyrics of Mrs. Susanna Moodie. - -Fifteen years after the war opened, Mrs. Moodie’s martial lyrics were -published in her _Roughing It In The Bush_ (1852, two vols.). In ‘The -Advertisement’ (which is a sort of publisher’s Preface) to this work, -the publisher recounts the origin and effect of Mrs. Moodie’s -inspirational war verse. ‘During the rebellion,’ he says, ‘her loyal -lyrics, prompted by strong affection for her native country [England], -were circulated and sung throughout the colony [Ontario], and produced a -great effect in rousing an enthusiastic feeling in favor of public -order.’ But Mrs. Moodie herself modestly remarks (_op. cit. sup._, Vol. -2):— - - I must own that my British spirit was fairly aroused, and as I - could not aid in subduing the enemies of my beloved country with - my arm, I did what little I could to serve the good cause with - my pen. It may probably amuse my readers, to give them a few - specimens of these loyal staves, which were widely circulated - through the colony at the time. - -It will suffice to quote the first and last stanzas of her _Address to -the Freemen of Canada_ (_op. cit. sup._, p. 191) in order to show that -Mrs. Moodie wrote no mediocre martial verse of the inspirational type:— - - Canadians, will you see the flag - Beneath whose folds your fathers bled, - Supplanted by the vilest rag - That ever host to rapine led? - Thou emblem of a tyrant’s sway, - Thy triple hues are dyed in gore; - Like his, thy power has passed away, - Like his, thy short-lived triumph’s o’er. - -In a footnote Mrs. Moodie explains that ‘the vilest rag’ is the -tri-colored flag assumed by the rebels. The use of the phrase has, of -course, both psychological and aesthetic warrant. The thought of the -tri-colored flag, of its earlier bloody history in the French -Revolution, revolted her sense of nobility and righteousness, and, like -Homer’s, her diction and imagery sank in correspondence with the fall in -the spiritual dignity of her subject. Aesthetically viewed, she was -quite justified in sinking and rising with the emotional dignity of her -subject. She sinks in the third stanza, but rises magniloquently in the -fifth (final) stanza. Thus:— - - By all the blood for Britain shed - On many a glorious battlefield, - To the free winds her standard spread, - Nor to these base insurgents yield. - With loyal bosoms beating high, - In your good cause securely trust; - ‘God and Victoria’ be your cry, - And crush the traitors to the dust. - -Compared with standard martial songs, such as Burns’ _Scots Wha’ Hae wi’ -Wallace Bled_, or _The March of the Men of Harlech_, the first three -lines of the foregoing stanza are really excellent. The vocables are -mouth filling, the rhythm moves rapidly and carries one with it, and -though the third line might be improved by the use of the word ‘fling’ -for the word ‘spread’ in the text, still ‘To the free winds her standard -spread’ increases respiration, and stimulates ideated sensations of free -movement and expanding personality. Altogether, it is a vigorous—a -‘breezy’ line. No Canadian need feel ashamed of it. And what magnificent -energy is in the last two lines of the stanza! The reader no sooner -reaches ‘God and Victoria’ than he shifts back the accent to the word -‘God,’ emphasizes it with a full burst of breath and with a change in -pitch, and then impulsively spurts out the utterance of the remaining -syllables in the same changed pitch until he attacks the word ‘cry,’ -which is both oxytoned and emphasized. Thus the line becomes a veritable -battle-shout and inspiriting slogan. After this ringing, rousing, -energizing oxytone line comes the barytone cadence, ‘And crush the -traitors to the dust.’ The reader braces himself for action—takes in a -full breath, fronts his eyes, sets his jaws, and all his muscles, and -lunges forward to the fray. Both are brave lines; both are energizing, -impelling; and the whole stanza is a magnificent sample of inspiriting -martial verse. No Canadian need feel ashamed to recite it before the -admirers of Robert Burns or William Duthie. - -Mrs. Moodie’s modest estimate of her martial lyrics is not just to the -poet. They are better than mere ‘loyal staves,’ fitted solely to ‘amuse’ -casual readers. That they were widely circulated and sung throughout -Canada at the time when they were needed, is proof that they possessed -lyrical eloquence and the inspirational power to stir the heart and -impel the will to honorable action. They are good singing verse, but -they are not genuine poetry. All that is required in an inspirational -war lyric is that it come warm from the heart and hand; that it be -human, manly, direct in thought; that it be ringing in lilt and swinging -in rhythm; and that it be respectable technically as verse. To write -martial verse that fulfils all these requirements and to write it -immediately on demand is no easy task. Judged by these standards Mrs. -Moodie excelled in inspirational war lyricism. It is true that Harriet -A. Wilkins, Mrs. Curzon, Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie, Valancy Crawford, -and Agnes Machar surpassed her in poetic war lyricism. But this was due -to the fact that their best martial verse was commemorative, and was -written _after_ the deeds or events celebrated by them, and at a time -when they could compose in peace and at leisure. - -Of these later Canadian women poets of martial verse the supreme artist -was Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie. The verse of the others, even Isabella -Valancy Crawford’s novel _The Rose of a Nation’s Thanks_, and Agnes -Maule Machar’s swinging _Our Lads to the Front_, though choicer in -diction and imagery than Mrs. Moodie’s, hardly rise above the quality of -good verse. Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie’s commemorative martial verse -on the other hand, attains to the dignity and beauty of pure poetry. We -do not need the statement of the English poet Sir Edwin Arnold, that -‘the best war songs of the Half-breed Rebellion were written by Annie -Rothwell-Christie.’ Dignity, beauty, melody and compelling pathos are in -every line she wrote. These qualities can be observed in the lines we -quote from her _After the Battle_ and _Welcome Home_, selecting, first, -two stanzas from _After the Battle_:— - - Ay, lay them to rest on the prairie, on the spot where for honor they - fell, - The shout of the savage their requiem, the hiss of the rifle their - knell. - • • • • - As the blood of the martyr enfruitens his creed, so the hero sows - peace - And the reaping of war’s deadly harvest is the earnest his havoc shall - cease. - -The extraordinary imagery of the last line of the first stanza -(couplet)—‘the shout of the savage their requiem, the hiss of the rifle -their knell’ and the novel beauty of the similitude in the first line of -the second stanza are enough to raise these verses to the dignity of -pure poetry. Besides, there is a spiritual militancy in the rhythm that -soothes or solaces, while its cadences solemnize the soul, begetting -resignation to the Will of the Universe. Or listen to the triumphant, -sonorous verbal music of these lines from _Welcome Home_:— - - War-worn, sun-scorched, strained with the dust of toil, - And battle-scarred they come—victorious. - Exultantly we greet them—cleave the sky - With cheers, and fling our banners to the winds; - We raise triumphant songs, and strew their path - To do them homage—bid them ‘Welcome Home!’ - -We hear drum beats, bugle calls, and the tramp of armed men on the march -in those first two spondaic phrases—‘war-worn, sun-scorched.’ A new -emotional experience comes to us with the quicker moving syllables in -the next two lines; the rhythm is fitted to exultation. Also we are -treated to a new but brilliant alliterative metaphor—‘cleave the sky -with cheers.’ We are in the realm of poetry. But fine as are the -preceding examples of Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie’s commemorative -martial verse, the pathos of the following, from _The Woman’s Part_, is -overwhelmingly human and moving and ennobling. The inspiration is -derived from reflecting whether to those who, fired by love of adventure -or country, have gone to war, and fallen, the mothers, sisters, and -sweethearts shall give regrets, prayers, or tears. The poet disparages -all these, and turns to solace the mother or wife, whose son or husband -had died on the battlefield:— - - O, woman-heart be strong, - Too full for words—too humble for a prayer— - Too faithful to be fearful—offer here - Your sacrifice of patience. Not for long - The darkness. When the dawn of peace breaks bright, - Blessed she who welcomes whom her God shall save, - But honored in her God’s and country’s sight - She who lifts empty arms to cry, ‘_I Gave_!’ - -After reading that noble poem of love and pathos, and being moved to -emotion too deep for tears, one knows that all distinctions for sex are -man-made and ephemeral and abortive—that only ‘soul,’ whatever be its -form of earthly tenement, is real. For Annie Rothwell-Christie who wrote -that poem was altogether soul—superman, superwoman—gifted with the -speech of angels. Her martial verse is absolutely unique, and a distinct -contribution to perduring war poetry. - - II. THE POETRY OF THE WORLD WAR - -The Canadian Poetry of the World War is, as was previous martial verse -by Canadian poets, both inspirational and commemorative. What is -significant for literary history, is, first, that there is a distinct -advance in the excellence both of the ideas and of the artistic form of -the Canadian poetry of the world war; and, secondly, that both the -activity in poetic composition occasioned by the late war and the -quality of the poetry became an inspiration to other poets whose genius -was dormant and unawakened, and caused a genuine Renascence of the -Poetic Spirit and of Poetry in Canada. - -In what respect may the Canadian Poetry of the world war be said to be -excellent, or even unexcelled by the martial poetry of the United -States, if excelled by that of England and France? It is relatively -great in noble ideas. In it we see clearly and vividly what Canadian men -and women, at home and in the field of war, really thought and felt -about war and death, love and home and country, self-sacrifice, and the -good green earth, and peace. - -_Truth, beauty and splendor of ideas_—these are the three supreme -excellences of the Canadian poetry written by the soldier-poets in -active service on the fighting field, and by the professional or amateur -non-combatant poets at home, during the war. - -As to the artistic form of this poetry, considering all the conditions -of distraction and perturbance under which it was written, the wonder is -that it has any formal finish at all. As a matter of fact, however, the -Canadian poetry inspired by the world war cannot be depreciated as -‘twinkling trivialities’ either in substance or in form. All the best of -it is good poetry—originally conceived, winningly suffused with beauty -of sentiment, rich in noble ideas and spiritual imagery, engaging in -verbal music, and technically well-wrought. If the formal finish of -Canadian Poetry of the world war is not always quite the equal of the -British and American poetry similarly occasioned, still the altogether -most famous and most popular poem of the war and most likely to perdure -in the popular memory, is neither the sonnet of the English -soldier-poet, Rupert Brooke, _The Soldier_, nor the poem of the American -soldier-poet, Alan Seeger, _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_, but the -lyric of the Canadian soldier-poet, John McCrae, _In Flanders Fields_. -Further, special circumstances, special sentiments, and special color -and form went to making the poem by McCrae the supreme lyric of the -world war, and the popularity of _In Flanders Fields_ affected the -appreciation of other Canadian poetry of the late war to such a degree -as to cause the popular imagination, as well as the critical sense of -the cultured, to estimate all other Canadian poetry of the world war as -so far below McCrae’s exquisite lyric as to be second-rate in substance -and form. This is not so. Save that they do not embody a special form -and are not as musically insinuating as McCrae’s, the best of other -Canadian poems of the world war are as nobly conceived, as spiritually -subduing or exalting, and as technically finished as _In Flanders -Fields_. - -During the world war, as in previous wars, the women poets of Canada -were to the fore in writing inspirational and commemorative martial -verse. In Garvin’s _Canadian Poems of the Great War_ about one third -(26) of the total number (73) of poets represented are women, and their -war verse, especially the verse of Katherine Hale (whose poetry has been -already dealt with), Helena Coleman, Frances Harrison, Isabel Graham, -Agnes Maule Machar, Gertrude Bartlett, Grace Blackburn, Jean Blewett, -Minnie Hallowell Bowen, Louise Morey Bowman, Isabelle Ecclestone Mackay, -Lilian Leveridge, Lucy Montgomery, Beatrice Redpath, Sheila Rand, -Florence Randal Livesay, Richard Scrace (Mrs. J. B. Williamson), Virna -Sheard, Eloise Street, Ruth Strong, is not a whit below the level of the -war verse by Canadian men and in some instances surpasses the latter’s. - -Dr. O’Hagan’s _Songs of Heroic Days_ (1916) is a popular volume, in -which, for the most part, the poet recrudesces, in good newspaper verse, -the traditional war spirit of bloodshed, retaliation and revenge. The -poems, however, are made engaging by a ready humor and an Irish _jeu -d’esprit_ in the thought of ‘squaring things’ with an enemy guilty of -‘dhirty thricks’ in war. Several other volumes of war verse appeared -during and shortly after the close of the war—_The Fighting Men of -Canada_ by Douglas Durkin; _Over the Hills of Home and Other Poems_ by -Lilian Leveridge; _Sea Dogs and Men at Arms_ by Jesse Edgar Middleton; -_A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems_ (posthumous) by Lieutenant Bernard -Freeman Trotter; _Laurentian Lyrics and Other Poems_ (1915) by -Lieutenant Arthur S. Bourinot; _Insulters of Death_ and _The New -Apocalyse_ by Sergeant J. D. Logan, and several other volumes by -returned men. The only comprehensive anthology of verse of the Great -War, written by Canadians, is J. W. Garvin’s _Canadian Poems of the -Great War_ (1918). This volume furnishes adequate proof that, as foreign -critics have said, ‘the war poetry written by Canadian civilians and -Canadian poets on active service is as excellent as that written by the -poets of the older Allied Nations.’ - -For the purpose of just appreciation we remark the fine, spirited, and -imaginatively impressive qualities, as well as the artistic finish, of -selected Canadian war poems that are really worthy to stand beside the -best verse of English and American poets who were inspired by the late -war. Aside from McCrae’s _In Flanders Fields_ the most celebrated -commemorative war poem by a Canadian is Dr. J. B. Dollard’s sonnet to -the memory of Rupert Brooke—a sonnet in which, as English and American -critics observed, Dr. Dollard made beautiful use of the supposed cause -of Brooke’s death (sunstroke, ‘arrows of Apollo’) and the place of -burial in the Aegean. Brooke’s grave is on the island of Scyros, not -Lemnos. But the error in fact only enhances the beauty of the poem:— - - Slain by the arrows of Apollo, lo! - The well-belovèd of the Muses lies - On Lemnos’ Isle ’neath blue and classic skies, - And hears th’ Aegean waters ebb and flow! - How strange his beauteous soul should choose to go - Out from his body in this hallowed place, - Where Poetry and Art’s undying grace - Still breathe, and Pipes of Pan melodious blow! - Here shall he rest untroubled, knowing well - That faithful hearts shall hold his memory dear, - Moved to affection weak words cannot tell - By his short, splendid life that knew no fear; - Beloved of the gods, the gods have ta’en - Their Ganymede, by bright Apollo slain! - -Almost as celebrated as Dr. Dollard’s sonnet to Brooke is Lieutenant -Arthur Bourinot’s sonnet to the dead poet-soldier. For the sake of -variety in forms we quote _Immortality_—a most winsome, tender lyric; -simple, sincere, and convincing—from Lieutenant Bourinot’s _Laurentian -Lyrics_ (1915):— - - They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor, - Fallen for Freedom’s sake; - They merely sleep with faces that are paler - Until they wake. - - They will not weep, the mothers, in the years - The future will decree; - For they have died that the battles and the tears - Should cease to be. - - They will not die, the victorious and the slain, - Sleeping in foreign soil, - They gave their lives, but to the world is the gain - Of their sad toil. - - They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor, - Fallen for Freedom’s sake; - They merely sleep with faces that are paler - Until they wake. - -The most lilting example of Canadian inspirational war verse is Douglas -Durkin’s _The Fighting Men of Canada_. It is spirited and inspiriting. -The colloquial diction of the refrains charges it with veracity, -vividness, and with ‘the punch’ which the London critic, Mr. E. B. -Osborn, desiderates in the content of what are, in his view, the only -‘true war poems,’ namely, ‘song-pictures of the campaigns and of -soldiers’ life’:— - - Call it lust, or call it honor. Call it glory in a name! - We’re a handful, more or less, of what we were, - But we praise the grim Almighty that we stuck and played the game, - Till we chased them at the double to their lair. - For the word came, ‘Up and over!’ - And our answer was a yell - As we scrambled out of cover— - And we dealt the dastards hell! - -Mr. Durkin’s ballad is a human, veracious war-poem in the traditional -spirit of Campbell’s _Battle of the Baltic_, Tennyson’s _Ballad of the -Revenge_, Newbolt’s _Drake’s Drum_. It is designedly inspirational after -the manner, and with the substance, of the old heroic ‘fighting spirit.’ -It is, therefore, a recrudescence of a war spirit and an ideal of poetic -inspiration, aim, and content which were not the real and authentic -spirit, motive, and ideal of the best Canadian, British, French, or -American poetry of the world war. In short, Mr. Durkin’s poem, _The -Fighting Men of Canada_, lilting, spirited, and inspiriting as it is, -must critically be estimated as an obsolete form of ‘recruiting’ ballad -rather than as a true inspirational poem conceived and written according -to the characteristic genius of the poetry of the world war. As a -reversion to the old type of martial poem, it deserves mention. Possibly -it may be instanced as the nearest approach to a Canadian war-song, -though the extraordinary fact is that not a single war-song, of the -popular or of the marching species, was written by a Canadian civilian -or soldier-poet. - -In the war verse of another poet we find the kind of poetry that fired -the imagination and moved the will of the men of Canada who went to the -world war. To Lloyd Roberts, son of Charles G. D. Roberts, the war -poetry of the British Empire, as well as Canada, is indebted for two of -the most striking and impressive short poems in the new spirit of -inspirational verse inspired by the world war. His _Come Quietly, -England_, simple and direct in thought, free in form, colloquial in -diction, but positive, candid, sincere, is one of the most arresting and -convincing poems that have for a theme ‘the call to arms’—not for King, -or Country, nor for fear or anything else undivine:— - - But for the sake of simple goodness - And His laws, - We shall sacrifice our all - For The Cause! - -_The Literary Digest_ remarked Lloyd Roberts’ _Come Quietly, England_ as -‘one of the most striking statements of what may be called the -philosophy of the war from the English [British] point of view because -it puts so candidly into words the thoughts that are in the minds of the -author’s fellow-countrymen.’ The other poem by Roberts, also in his new -simple, colloquial, direct style, is entitled _If I Must_. It is the -most remarkably original ‘anti-pacifist’ poem written by an -English-speaking poet. It takes the form of a quasi-dramatic monologue, -and concludes with a stanza which has, in journalistic slang, ‘punch’ in -it. We quote the whole poem:— - - God knows there’s plenty of earth for all of us; - Then why must we sweat for it, deny for it, - Pray for it, cry for it, - Kill, maim and lie for it, - Struggle and suffer and die for it— - We who are gentle and sane? - - Let us respect one another, wherever we are, - Fly your flag, O my brother; - I like its bright color, whether red, green, or yellow; - Your language is queer, but I’ll learn it in time; - And you’re a dear fellow, - If your laws are not quite so clean as our own; - But then ours need pruning, and thistles have grown. - - So I won’t spill your blood, for that’s not the way - To assist in law-making, whatever some say, - I’ll try by example to lead you aright - Out of the shadows and into the light— - If you’ll do as much for me. - - What! You don’t understand? - You refuse my right hand? - You say might is right, - And to live we must fight? - Are we still in such plight? - Poor, blind, stupid fool, so deep in the dust— - Well, hand me the gun— - If I must—if I must! - -It is, perhaps, in the best Canadian commemorative, elegiac, or -reflective poems of the Great War that the three supreme excellences, -Truth, Beauty, and Splendor of Ideas, in the war poetry of Canada are -most conspicuously present. The distinctive presence of these qualities -not only marks a clear advance beyond the older Canadian martial verse -but also establishes a high place for Canadian commemorative, elegiac -and reflective war verse in the body of war poetry written by poets of -the Allied Nations. Truth, Beauty, or Splendor of Ideas are in Gertrude -Bartlett’s _The Blessed Dead_, Grace Blackburn’s _Christ in Flanders_, -Lillie Brooks’ _Bereaved_, Helena Coleman’s _Oh, Not When April Wakes -the Daffodils_, Jean Blewett’s _The Lover Lads of Devon_, Lilian -Leveridge’s _Over the Hills of Home_, Florence Randal Livesay’s _A -Daffodil from Vimy Ridge_, Agnes Maule Machar’s _De Profundis_, Louise -Morey Bowman’s _The White Garden_, Virna Sheard’s _The Young Knight_, -Frederick George Scott’s _The Silent Toast_, Arthur Stringer’s -_Christmas Bells in War Time_, Archibald Sullivan’s _The Plaint of the -Children_, Beatrice Redpath’s _The Men of Canada_, Isabel Ecclestone -Mackay’s _The Mother Gives_, John Stuart Thomson’s _His Darkest Hour_, -A. E. S. Smythe’s noble sonnet _The Champions_, S. Morgan-Powell’s -magniloquent _Kitchener’s Work_, and W. D. Lighthall’s magnificent and -exalting poem _The Galahads_. - -One of the finest commemorative poems of the world war written by a -Canadian is Duncan Campbell Scott’s sonnet _To a Canadian Lad Killed in -the War_. It is fine in conception, novel in terminal endings and -elevating in emotional appeal. But fine as it is, it pales in aesthetic -and artistic dignity with the only Canadian war poem that has achieved -sublimity—the same poet’s unforgettably noble elegiacs _To a Canadian -Aviator (Who Died for His Country in France)_:— - - Tossed like a falcon from the hunter’s wrist - A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise, - And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist, - The elastic stairway to the rising sun. - Peril below thee and above, peril - Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt - Thy peerless heart; gathering wing and poise, - Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant - Subdued to a whisper—then a silence,— - And thou art but a disembodied venture - In the void. - - But Death, who has learned to fly, - Still matchless when his work is to be done, - Met thee between the armies and the sun; - Thy speck of shadow faltered in the sky; - Then thy dead engine and thy broken wings - Drooped through the arc and passed in fire, - A wreath of smoke—a breathless exhalation. - But ere that came, a vision sealed thine eyes, - Lulling thy senses with oblivion; - And from its sliding station in the skies - Thy dauntless soul upward in circles soared - To the sublime and purest radiance whence it sprang. - - In all their eyries eagles shall mourn thy fate, - And leaving on the lonely crags and scaurs - Their unprotected young, shall congregate - High in the tenuous heaven and anger the sun - With screams, and with a wild audacity - Dare all the battle danger of thy flight; - Till weary with combat one shall desert the light, - Fall like a bolt of thunder and check his fall - On the high ledge, smoky with mist and cloud, - Where his neglected eaglets shriek aloud, - And drawing the film across his sovereign sight - Shall dream of thy swift soul immortal - Mounting in circles, faithful beyond death. - -In that poem we perceive, unmistakably, how even war verse may rise to -the spiritual dignity of absolute poetry, and by its ideal substance and -spiritual grandeur achieve the highest moral and religious function—the -function, namely, of dignifying or glorifying the human spirit with -Christlikeness in self-slaying love for the perfection and happiness of -humanity. Only a too fastidious and perverted criticism will deny to the -best of the Canadian poetry of the World War a distinction in truth, -beauty, and splendor of ideas and in technical artistry that gives it -the right to an equal place beside the significant war verse of the -British and United States poets. Certainly in technique it is quite as -finished as the American war poetry, and in ideas of ‘uncompelled and -undiluted chivalry,’ it is as noble and eloquent as the war poetry of -the British singers. - - - - - CHAPTER XXVI - - - Hymn Writers - - THE HYMN WRITERS OF CANADA—ALLINE—CLEVELAND—SCRIVEN— MURRAY— - SCOTT—RAND—DEWART—WALKER—AND OTHERS. - -A hymn is a form of sacred lyrical literature. It must be popular -literature, but not necessarily pure poetry or permanent literature. A -hymn is properly defined not by what it _is_ in literary qualities but -by what it _does_ for the human spirit—for the heart and the religious -imagination. It aims lyrically to express dependence on divine -providence, to praise the divine perfections, to give thanks for divine -mercies and benefits, and to supplicate divine aid in doubt and weakness -and divine consolation in tribulation and defeat. A hymn, in short, is -the spontaneous lyrical expression of a paternal and filial relationship -between Man and God. - -The structural qualities which constitute a true hymn are few and -readily understood. Since a hymn must above all things be potent over -the hearts and imagination of _all_ the people, its diction must be -vernacular—simple words of one and two syllables. Since a hymn must be -singable by _all_ the people in concert, its metrical flow must be short -and rhythmical. In aesthetic qualities a hymn should be simple but -beautiful in thought, sentiment and imagery. In moral qualities a hymn -should be suggestive of human but holy relations between Man and Divine -Providence. These are the prime qualities that constitute the popularity -of a hymn and give it a place either in permanent poetry or in permanent -hymnody. - -Several Canadians, _émigrés_ or native-born, have written hymns which -have a rightful and permanent place in church hymnody. The history of -Canadian hymnography dates back to the year 1786. In that year Henry -Alline, leader of the ‘New Lights’ schism in Nova Scotia, published his -_Hymns and Spiritual Songs_. He was as prolific a hymn writer as Charles -Wesley, having five books of hymns to his credit. His diction is not -always true to the demands of a hymn; sometimes it is stilted and too -literary. But his imagery is simple and the movement of his thought is -direct. The chief merit of his hymns is their genuine lyrical quality; -they have rhythmical flow. One or two of them have held a permanent -place in church hymnody, as, for instance, the hymn beginning with this -homely image expressed in vernacular English:— - - Amazing sight! the Saviour stands - And knocks at every door— - -Of the Cleveland family in the Old Colonies two members emigrated to -Nova Scotia—Aaron Cleveland, who became minister of Mather’s (now St. -Matthew’s) church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Benjamin Cleveland who -joined in with the ‘New Lights,’ and emulated Alline as a hymn writer. -One of his hymns still finds a place in church hymnody in Canada, the -familiar hymn beginning - - Oh, could I find from day to day - A nearness to my God. - -None of the hymns of Alline or Cleveland, however, attained a world-wide -popularity. The first Canadian to write a hymn that has become not only -world-famous but also has been translated into several ‘heathen tongues’ -as well as civilized languages was Joseph Scriven, author of the simple -spiritual song, _What a Friend We Have in Jesus_. The man and the hymn -have a remarkable history, which is recounted by Rev. James Clelland in -his biographical sketch in a tiny thirty-page booklet entitled: _What a -Friend We Have in Jesus, and Other Hymns by Joseph Scriven_. It was -published at Port Hope, Ontario, in 1895. - -For many years the hymn had been attributed, without authentication, to -Dr. Horatius Bonar. But in 1893 a letter appeared in the _New York -Observer_, in which it was stated that the hymn had been found amongst -some papers belonging to Joseph Scriven, who had ended his life by -suicide. Scriven was a local preacher but he was a graduate of Trinity -College, Dublin, and was, therefore, a man of respectable culture. Like -Cowper, Scriven suffered from melancholia; and it is natural to suppose -that he had written the hymn after recovery from one of his fits of -melancholia. He was a shy man, and after writing the hymn gave a copy of -it to his mother, from whom he extracted a promise that she would not -reveal its existence or show it to anyone else. But whether the mother’s -pride in her son’s accomplishment overcame her, or whether due to some -sort of accident, the hymn reached a certain Mr. Converse, a musician, -and he at once set it to music of the more popular kind. Soon the hymn -attained a popular vogue in the United States and from there gained -equally popular vogue in Canada. Some are inclined to believe that it -was not the hymn itself but the musical setting that created its -popularity. No doubt the musical setting to Lyte’s _Abide With Me_, or -to Newman’s _Lead Kindly Light_, has considerable to do with the appeal -of those hymns. Newman expressly attributes the popularity of his hymn -to the musical setting and not to the spiritual beauty of the text. But -the musical setting to Scriven’s _What a Friend We Have In Jesus_ is so -poor in melodic invention and so lacking in cantante quality and -rhythmic flow that as a tune or melody it is not singable or infectious -and could not be a compelling ‘sacred folksong.’ We must, therefore, -charge its popularity to the appeal of the text of the hymn to some -elemental want or need of humble human hearts. - -But whatever the cause of the popularity of this hymn, whether the words -or the musical setting or both, the fact remains that it is the most -widely known hymn in Christian hymnology. It has been translated into -many of the civilized and the barbaric languages of the world, and more -than a hundred million impressions of the hymn have been printed. -Searching for a psychological explanation of its appeal to the universal -human heart, we know that as a matter of fact it has solaced, as one -writer puts it, ‘millions and millions of souls, from the criminal on -his way to the scaffold to the ocean traveller in his last moment aboard -a sinking ship; from the negro in his wretched plantation cabin to the -highest dignitary of the evangelical churches; from the unclad heathen -denizen of the cannibalistic South Sea Islands or in wildest Africa to -the most learned savant of the most civilized land.’ The obvious -explanation of its appeal is that Scriven’s hymn expresses, both for the -humble and for the highest, the elemental and inevitable sense of -_dependence_ for life and happiness on some spiritual power that is -mighty to comfort, solace, sustain, and save. When that sense of -dependence comes over any human being, and when such a human being feels -that there is an ever-ready invisible hand to sustain or succor, in that -moment the sense of dependence and of ever-ready aid, and of joy or -comfort or hope thus awakened, are expressed in emotionalized rhythm, -which is religious song. - -Scriven lacked lyrical or rhythmical sensibility, and his famous hymn -possesses no aesthetic or artistic appeal. But in times of need, -aesthetics are the poorest support and solace. In spite, then, of the -lyrical and aesthetic defects of Scriven’s simple hymn, it has remained, -by virtue of its elemental appeal to people of all estates and by its -solacing and sustaining power, one of the world’s perduring sacred -songs. - -From a strictly Canadian point of view and with reference to aesthetic -qualities which give a hymn a dignity of poetry, the most notable and -significant hymn composed by a native-born Canadian is Robert Murray’s -_From Ocean Unto Ocean_. The author was born and educated in Nova -Scotia. From early childhood he disclosed a Keltic gift of imagination -and fondness for expressing his emotions in verse. Dr. Murray was a -religious journalist, and, as editor of _The Presbyterian Witness_, did -much to raise ordinary journalism to the dignity of literature. - -It was his custom to write hymns and to publish them anonymously in the -religious press. Those who had an eye for the revision of church hymnals -were struck by the aesthetic beauty and dignity as well as religious -fervor of Dr. Murray’s hymns. They are indeed extraordinary, and the -substance of them is so universalized that they fit the hymnals or Books -of Praise of any Christian communion, Protestant or Catholic. His hymns -are included in the _Book of Praise_ of the Presbyterian Church of -Canada; in the _Book of Common Praise_ of the Church of England in -Canada; and in _The Hymnary_ of the Scottish Churches. Rev. A. W. Mahon -observes in his readable brochure, _Canadian Hymns and Hymn Writers_ -(1908): ‘Thirteen Canadians contribute to the New Church of England Book -of Common Praise, including Canon Welsh of Toronto and the late Dean -Partridge of Fredericton, but Dr. Murray’s contributions exceed all -other in number and in intrinsic merit.’ - -To appreciate Murray’s _From Ocean Unto Ocean_—its intrinsic merits, as -well as its special qualities and fervor which embody and express the -Canadian national spirit—the whole poem must be read and felt both as a -hymn for devotional and for national occasions. Following is the full -text of Dr. Murray’s hymn:— - - From ocean unto ocean - Our land shall own Thee Lord, - And, filled with true devotion - Obey Thy sovereign word. - Our prairies and our mountains, - Forest and fertile field, - Our rivers, lakes, and fountains, - To Thee shall tribute yield. - - O Christ, for Thine own glory, - And for our country’s weal, - We humbly plead before Thee, - Thyself in us reveal; - And may we know, Lord Jesus, - The touch of Thy dear hand; - And, healed of our diseases, - The tempter’s power withstand. - - Where error smites with blindness, - Enslaves and leads astray, - Do Thou in lovingkindness - Proclaim Thy gospel day; - Till all the tribes and races - That dwell in this fair land, - Adorned with Christian graces, - Within Thy courts shall stand. - - Our Saviour King, defend us, - And guide where we should go; - Forth with Thy message send us; - Thy love and light to show; - Till, fired with true devotion - Enkindled by Thy word, - From ocean unto ocean - Our land shall own Thee Lord. - -The diction of this hymn is simple, vernacular; of 160 words in the text -only ten are of Latin origin, and even these are as short and familiar -as our Anglo-Saxon diction. The rhythmic flow is thoroughly lyrical. But -though simple in diction and lyrical structure, there is a universality -of reach or sweep in its imagery that, at least relatively to most other -hymns, raises Murray’s hymn to the dignity of poetry. There is no -provincialism in it. There is no denominationalism in it. There is no -narrow or bigoted ethics in it. It is thoroughly human and humane. It -possesses universality and spiritual dignity. It is all that a true hymn -should be. - -Murray’s hymn, moreover, in humanity and spiritual dignity, contrasts -winningly with the original form of the British, which is also the -Canadian, National Anthem. This so-called anthem has been revised so as -to remove from it certain inane thoughts and sentiments and imagery that -were not consistent with Christian charity and the ideal of human -brotherhood. Canada has, too, its own indigenous National Song or Hymn -which is the text to a sonorous organ-toned musical setting by Calixa -Lavallée. The original text of the Canadian National Hymn is by -Routhier. It is patriotic in the old exclusive sense, containing that -kind of patriotism which is solicitous about the mere material success -and aggrandizement of Canada. But Murray’s _From Ocean Unto Ocean_ is so -human and so humane, so unracial, so unprovincial, so unsectarian, and -by its imagery so informed with the free and all-embracing spirit of the -Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, bounding the vast Canadian prairies and -mountains and forests, that its spiritual sweep takes in the whole of -Canada without respect to race or region or religion, or high degree or -low degree of person, and is fitted to be, if not the National Anthem, -at any rate the National Hymn, of Canada. It is at once both Christian -and Universal—a distinctive and authentic hymn, and an original -contribution to permanent Canadian hymnody. - -Murray was not a creative poet in the sense of being a systematic poet. -But Canon Frederick George Scott, who is a member of the Systematic -School of Canadian poets, has written hymns. They are strictly -evangelical, rather than universal in thought and scope, and are in the -traditional hymn form. They have a sweet simplicity and a spiritual -dignity but, beyond their lyrical or rhythmic expressiveness, have no -especial aesthetic and artistic qualities that call for particular -critical consideration. The same appreciation suits a critical estimate -of the hymns by Silas T. Rand, Edward Hartley Dewart, Charles Innis -Cameron, Louisa Walker and other accepted Hymn Writers of Canada. - -Rand’s Latin Hymns are interesting as translations and are literary -phenomena by themselves. Cameron was a poet and his hymns have an -excellence of structure, imagery, and color that give them quite the -quality of poetry, though again, it must be observed, they are -evangelical, rather than universal, in scope and sweep. Anna Louisa -Walker is famous as the author of the hymn _Work, For The Night Is -Coming_. This is really a ‘sacred folk-song.’ It has indeed a wide -popularity, but by no means as wide as Scriven’s world-famous hymn. -Albert Durrant Watson and Alexander Louis Fraser are hymn writers of -distinction. Summarily: Canadian Hymn Writers have contributed -substantially to the hymnody of the Evangelical Church in Canada, and, -at least in two instances, to permanent hymnody. But no Canadian hymn -has the structural beauty and spiritual sublimation which belong to such -hymns as Newman’s _Lead, Kindly Light_, or Baring-Gould’s _Onward, -Christian Soldiers_, or Lyte’s _Abide With Me_, and which lift these -hymns into the realm of authentic poetry. - - - - - CHAPTER XXVII - - - Literary Criticism - - LITERARY CRITICISM IN CANADA—SCHOOLS, AIMS, METHODS, AND DEFECTS - —NEW SYNOPTIC METHOD APPLIED TO POETRY OF OVERSEAS DOMINIONS. - _I. Schools of Literary Criticism._ - -In an old country, like England, which long has had established -standards of taste and refined artistry, literary criticism is a fine -art. The essays in criticism by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Arnold, Pater, -Arthur Symons, Gilbert Chesterton, Mackail, Ker, and others are polite, -disinterested, humane, and delightful in themselves. They have an -intrinsic charm of thought and style. They are literature. In a young -country, like Canada, when, in pioneer days, the people were necessarily -preoccupied wholly with practical living and material civilization, and -few were cultured and none had leisure for cultivating taste, literary -criticism, if it existed, was exotic and traditional. Later, when the -people are still primarily occupied with material civilization but -decent culture is distributed and there is leisure for cultivating -taste, literary criticism becomes imitative but academic, and, -sometimes, is in the manner of the dilettante. Finally, when the people -of a young country become conscious that they have a native literature -and indigenous standards of taste but are in doubt about the status of -their literature and the aesthetic dignity of their literary taste, -literary criticism becomes pragmatic or pedagogical or philosophical. - -In its first stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to -_appraise_, by exotic, traditional standards, foreign literature. Such -criticism has no communal value. It is not disinterested but personal. -It only exhibits, as it was intended to do, the fine taste and style of -the critics. In its pragmatic stage literary criticism in a young -country attempts to _praise_ native literature, so as to win for this -literature the appreciation of the people in the land in which it was -produced and, secondarily, the decent regard of foreign men of letters. -The matter of such pragmatic criticism always counts most, or for more -than the manner or style. It aims to be constructive. But because it is -self-conscious, self-reliant, and ardent, its praise tends to be too -high and its condemnation too severe. In the final stage literary -criticism becomes less self-conscious, less ardent, and more detached -and philosophical towards native literature. It takes a synoptic view of -the whole civilization and culture which the native literature of a -young country embodies and interprets. It looks first to this literature -as an entity by itself and next regards it from the point of view of -absolute or long established standards. It judges the native poetry and -prose of a young country by their relative importance to the people of -that country itself, and by its dignity as a contribution to -world-literature. - -These are the stages in evolution of Literary Criticism in Canada. -Progressively there arose four Schools of Criticism—the Traditional, -the Academic or Dilettante, the Pragmatic or Pedagogical, and the -Synoptic or Philosophical. But the fourth is not so much a new School as -it is the Pragmatic School with a broader and more philosophical -application of its aims and methods. All these distinctions, however, -are themselves pedagogical. The members of the various Schools commingle -aesthetic, academic, and pragmatic methods in the same essay, for the -reason that in Canada criticism has been compelled, as it still is -compelled, to be primarily a cultural agency, and could never aim to be -literature, wholly delectable in itself. - -The Traditional School has passed but it was represented by such -deceased critics as George Stewart, John Reade, George Murray, and -Martin Griffin. The Academic or Dilettante School is represented by -Professors James Cappon, W. J. Alexander, Pelham Edgar, and Archibald -MacMechan, and by Sir Andrew Macphail, and Arnold Haultain; and the -Pragmatic School, by T. G. Marquis, Miss Jean Graham, Miss Marjory -MacMurchy, Katherine Hale (Mrs. John Garvin), Donald G. French, Melvin -O. Hammond, R. H. Hathaway, J. D. Logan, and Bernard Muddiman. The -Synoptic School, which, too, is pragmatic but also philosophical, is -represented by Ray Palmer Baker, author of _A History of -English-Canadian Literature to Confederation_ and by the author of the -present work. - -As to the aims and methods of the members of the Traditional and the -Academic Schools:—In general, Reade and Griffin wrote critically, to -illuminate universal literature (poetry, fiction, drama, social life, -and history). The members of the Academic or Dilettante School have, on -the whole, the same aim, but sometimes they write critical essays as a -fine art in the department of _belles-lettres_. Reade and Griffin wrote -on literature and life in brief but scholarly journalistic essays. -Professors Cappon, Alexander, Edgar, and MacMechan wrote or write -monographs (as, for instance, Cappon’s fine study of the poetry of C. G. -D. Roberts) or critical introductions and prefatory essays to selected -English men of letters (as, for instance, Alexander’s admirable -_Introduction to Browning_ or MacMechan’s scholarly Introductions to his -_Selections from Tennyson_ and Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_). Dr. -Macphail and Mr. Haultain delight in the critical essay for its own -sake, and are more solicitous about beauty or dignity of style than -about substance or thought. Their essays belong to the department of -_belles-lettres_—not always and not essentially, but in tendency, form, -and aesthetic dignity or style. - -In particular, whenever the members of the first two schools have -written about any phase of the literary history and the literature of -Canada, or about any author who has figured notably in that history and -literature, they have been rigorously aesthetic and critical. But the -writers of the Traditional School differ from those of the Academic or -Dilettante School in critical attitude to Canadian literature and -literary history. Reade and Griffin wrote sympathetically, and with -sincere admiration, about phases of Canadian Literature; but they showed -little or no understanding of the historic process in the evolution of -Canadian culture, of the continuity of Canadian literary history. How, -then, could they have been more than merely aesthetic—how could they -have been genuinely critical—if they had not the philosophic eye, did -not look before and after, and thus did not treat the phases of Canadian -Literature from the point of view of its implied relations to the whole -of Canadian life and of English literature, of which Canadian verse and -prose form a part? Sympathetically, politely, and charmingly as Reade -wrote about the phases of Canadian Literature, his criticism, to employ -a phrase of M. Jules Lemaitre, was ‘not criticism, but entertaining -conversation.’ Virtually it denied that Canada possessed a literature, a -body of poetry and prose which should be regarded as a real integer, -having unity of inspiration and a continuous growth from crude thought -and form to respectable aesthetic and artistic dignity. It implied only -that in the literature of Canada there are no ‘highways,’ but only -pleasant ‘by-ways’ which invite the essayist to write of them with -aesthetic appreciation. This is not philosophical, not genuine, -criticism; it is polite, entertaining conversation. For the problem of -Canadian literary criticism is not the question whether Canada has -produced, intermittently and here and there, some original authors who -have composed poetry and prose as aesthetically winning and as -artistically beautiful or dignified as that of British and American -writers, but whether the Dominion has produced a continuous body of -poetry and prose, which, at its best, may justly be considered genuine -literature, worthy to be regarded, as American literature is regarded, -as a living branch of English Literature. - -While the members of the Academic School take the strictly aesthetic -attitude to Canadian Literature, and show little or no appreciation of -the historic process in the evolution of Canadian culture, they differ -even in aesthetic attitude from their predecessors. They are rather -dogmatic and patronizing towards Canadian prose and poetry. - -As to the aims and methods of the Pragmatic School:—The members of this -school have for their central principle or chief article of faith the -proposition that Canada has a worthy body of authentic literature, which -is being perennially enhanced in quantity and in quality. For their -second principle they hold to the proposition that Canadian literary -critics must more or less intimately know the history—the social and -spiritual origins, ideals, and evolution—of Canadian Literature. For -their third principle they have the proposition that the independent, -sincere, honest, and really serviceable literary critic to-day must be -constructive and pedagogic in method. They do not write literary -criticism which is meant to be literature itself, intrinsically -aesthetic, or pleasantly engaging reading on its own account. They call -their essays, whether a journalistic review or editorial, or a magazine -article, constructive criticism. Their critical writings are, in the -Greek sense, pragmatic. For the chief aims of the Canadian constructive -critics are these two: first, to make plain and indubitable to their -compatriots and the world that Canada has a really respectable body of -literature; secondly, to appraise new works of verse and prose by -Canadians and to determine the status of their worth in the permanent -literature of Canada. Canadian constructive critics have also a third -aim. It is pedagogical: to teach the people a decent knowledge of the -literary history of Canada and an aesthetic appreciation of Canadian -poetry and prose. The members of the Pragmatic School all write with -knowledge of their subject, with literary dignity, thoughtfully, and, on -the whole, convincingly and effectively. Their systematic and ardent -championing of the cause of Canadian Literature has had a three-fold -result. It has led to establishment of regular courses in the study of -Canadian Literature in the universities and colleges of the Dominion and -in some universities of the United States, to a wider study and -appreciation of Canadian Literature on the part of the people, and to -finer critical and creative writing by Canadian men and women of -letters. - - _II. The Synoptic Method._ - -Literary criticism in Canada has had two faults. It was _vicarious_—an -echo of foreign criticism which was patronizing and insincere, and, -therefore, untrue and harmful. It was too _inclusive_ in conspectus and -standards, for Canadian poetry and prose were critically compared with -classical English Literature. This was to write criticism without -perspective and without respect to a hierarchy of values. It was -supererogatory and therefore futile. Even the Pragmatic School of -Canadian literary critics did not wholly escape this second fault. It -will result better for the advancement of Canadian Criticism if the -literatures of the British Overseas Dominions—Canada, Australia, New -Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa—are compared amongst themselves; and if -thus the status of each relatively in the literature of the Empire is -critically determined. - -By this method of comparing child with child, and not the child with the -parent, the literary historian shows how worthily Canadian poetry and -prose compare with other Overseas poetry and prose, and what right -Canadian and other Overseas literature have to be considered respectable -branches of the literature of the Empire. A comparative appreciation of -the Poetry of Canada and the other Overseas Dominions will suffice. - -If Canadians have not written ‘great’ poetry, they have written poetry -in which, as Mr. E. B. Osborn, of the London _Morning Post_, says, ‘the -most exacting critic can find something to admire.’ The problem of -literary criticism in Canada to-day is not whether Canada has produced -or is producing ‘great poetry,’ but whether it has produced or is -producing good poetry, consistently with its grade of culture, -civilization and national inspirations and aspirations—poetry that can -genuinely be admired and that deserves to be preserved. To observe that -Canada has produced good poetry, near-great poetry, is not, as many -Canadians seem to feel it is, to damn it with faint praise, but sensibly -to evaluate it. Those native critics who ignore Canadian poetry because, -as they think, it is not ‘great’ poetry and is, therefore, not ‘real’ -poetry or not poetry worthy of the name of literature, are maladroit -logicians. Those other native critics who discover Coleridge -reincarnated in Bliss Carman, Tennyson in Roberts, Keats in Lampman, -Matthew Arnold in Duncan Campbell Scott, Kipling in Service are damning -Canadian poetry with superobese praise. The truth is that Canada has -produced systematic poets who have written much poetry that is good, -some that is super-excellent, and some rare examples that are near the -perfection which entitles them, in their kind, to be ranked as really -great. - -Canadian poetry, in variety of theme or species, and in technical -finish, naturally might be presumed to be superior to that of Australia, -New Zealand, or South Africa. In a literary way, Canada is not much, if -at all, older than Australia. Both countries depend on England for their -literary standards and poetic forms. But in changes of seasons and their -effects on the beauty and call of objective Nature, Canada has greater -variety, and Nature makes a deeper impress on the soul, than is possible -by climatic changes and Nature’s varying face and garb in Australia. -Moreover, Canada has a unique background of romantic history which -affords Canadian poets special opportunities to incorporate romantic and -heroic material in their poetry, or to suffuse it with the glamor of -romance. Australia has not this romantic history, and Australian poets, -therefore, have less opportunity to make their descriptive and narrative -poetry interesting or entrancing by way of romantic glamor. Again: -Canada has had several internal or national crises which have had a -distinct effect on the conscience of the Canadian people—creating in -them a sense of solidarity, evoking a national consciousness, and -filling them with national aspirations and an intense desire to work out -their own destiny. Australia has not had any such internal crises; and, -it is, therefore, not to be expected that Australian poetry will be -noted for peculiar, intense, or profound expressions of the sense of -nationality and of destiny. - -But while in Canada the literature most in popular demand is imaginative -prose, and while the majority of readers are virtually perusers of prose -fiction, in Australia the readers and writers of poetry are legion or, -as one critic has put it, ‘poetry out there is a national habit.’ Mr. -Arthur Adams, an Australian editor, has stated that while he was always -certain of getting good verse from contributors, he was never certain of -getting a good story. It has been quite the other way in Canada—an -editor is practically certain of getting a good piece of prose or a good -story, and never sure of getting a technically worthy poem, or even -verse which might by courtesy be called poetry. In Canada, with the -exception of the enormous sales of Service’s volumes and W. H. -Drummond’s _habitant_ verse, Canadian poets have had to be content with -very small editions, and even some of these had many left-over copies, -absolutely unsaleable. In Australia the sale of poetry—of large -successive editions of the poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Lawson, -Will H. Ogilvie, A. B. Patterson, C. J. Dennis, the latter’s running -beyond 100,000 copies in 1917—is a literary phenomenon by itself; and -goes to prove that in Australia the reading and the writing of poetry -are virtually national habits. - -On the sides, then, of romantic historical backgrounds, practical or -social crises, and variety, beauty, and sublimity of Nature, Canada was -naturally fitted to produce a larger and more impressive body of poetry -than was Australia. But as a matter of fact, in at least two respects, -Australian poetry rather surpasses Canadian. Canadian poets never had a -waiting and avid body of readers. Australian poets had precisely such a -_clientèle_. This means that in Canada poetry would not be written with -the consciousness of a critical public in mind—a public that would as -readily reject or condemn poetry which was not satisfactory as it would -accept and praise poetry which satisfied, whereas in Australia poetry -would be written consciously aiming at pleasing and satisfying a -critical public of readers. In other words, while Canadian poets had -only foreign or English standards, and practically no domestic standards -or _clientèle_, Australian poets had both foreign and domestic standards -and a very large and responsive domestic public of readers. - -The result was that while in Canada the general run of poetry was -technically indifferent, at least until the rise of the Systematic -School, in Australia the run of poetry, irrespective of the themes, was -technically better finished than the Canadian. The Canadians did not -seem to write with a consciousness of English standards and criticism. -Their poetry was only for home consumption—and the substance counted -more than the form or style. The Australians, as poets, on the whole -were more cultured than the Canadians and wrote their verse as if -distinctly conscious that it would be seen and read in England, and -judged according to rigorous English standards, because regarded as -written by _absentee_ Englishmen. Australian verse was written more for -English readers than for home readers. But the home readers also read -with English standards in view—even though the themes were Australian, -horse-racing and other picaresque life or the more dignified themes of -Nature’s loveliness, Nature’s immensities, or tragic death in the -wilderness. Hence, on the whole, Australian poetry actually shows a -better _technical_ finish than does Canadian poetry. - -Canadian and Australian poets naturally produced verse which is marked -by fervid nature-painting and by realistic pictures of pioneer and wild -romantic social life. But in fine nature-painting the Canadians surpass -the Australians. Both in color from Nature (Canadian poets have the -larger, more varied palette) and in technical artistry Australia has not -produced a poet of the quality of Lampman, Wilfred Campbell, or Duncan -Campbell Scott. Nor when it comes to envisaging the _moods_ of Nature -and the open-road, has Australia produced a poet of the lyrical quality -of Bliss Carman. Canada’s Nature-painters are superb _artists_. - -But the Australian poets have their _forte_. In realistic pictures of -rough or pioneer social life, they surpass the Canadian poets. The -Canadian poet Drummond, of course, stands in a class by himself, -inasmuch as his poetry of the _habitant_ and _voyageur_ was a field -pre-empted by him and inasmuch as his poetry in this field is devoted to -picturesque revealment of the _humanity_—the pathos and humor—of the -thought, speech and simple life—of a peculiar but morally worthy -people. There is nothing melodramatic in Drummond’s poetry. It is -genuinely humanized verse about a genuinely human people. Service’s -Western and Northern Canadian verse, on the contrary, is the poetry of -picaresque melodrama. The best ballads of the Australian poets of rough -or pioneer life, A. L. Gordon, A. B. Patterson, Henry Lawson, C. J. -Dennis, are authentic poetry. In remarking the distinction between the -Australian and the Canadian poets of rude or picaresque life, Mr. E. B. -Osborn truthfully says: ‘Some of the poems in his [Service’s] last -volume are a _near approach_ to the Australian realism, which avoids the -melodramatic and the splashing of anapests as far as possible and makes -use of the quiet-curtain. So far the manly adventurous poets of Canada -[Service, Stead, McInnes, Fraser, _et al._] have not progressed far -beyond the Adam Lindsay Gordon convention. As yet none of the Western -Canadian poets see that _style_ is the only antiseptic and, as artists, -they are far behind the Australians and compare unfavorably with the -minor masters of Quebec.’ - -What has been said regarding the technical finish of Australian verse -applies also to the verse of New Zealand and of South Africa, and to the -latter with even more truth. For all the South African poets happened to -be men and women of culture. Thomas Pringle was a man of rare and -refined culture. So are Arthur Cripps, R. C. Russell, John Runcie, Mrs. -Beatrice Bromley, W. C. Scully, and a score of others. - -What, then, is the status of Canadian poetry in the poetry of the -Empire? Canadian nature-poetry, in variety of theme, substance, color, -imagery and artistry, at its best, surpasses that of the other -Dominions. Much of Overseas poetry is concerned with social life. In the -past Canadians displayed an insistent sense of a call to work out their -own destiny, and a profound pride in the resources and institutions of -their country. In the verse of Canadian poets the ‘note’ in this regard -is somewhat too insistent, almost strident. But the stridency of the -national ‘note’ is nothing compared with another defect. The moral -earnestness of Canadian poets is so obtrusive that it either causes a -neglect of form in order to get the important thing said, or it -effervesces in insincere and melodramatic utterances. Australian, New -Zealand, and South African poets do not exhibit the same intense -consciousness nationality and destiny. They still hold to the idea of -the Motherland, still feel their connection with the Old Country. For -this reason they write of social life in their respective countries with -more objectivity than do the Canadians, revealing the joys and humor and -pathos of life with a realism that is veracious and sincere. - -So far no Overseas poetry, Canadian or other, has contributed anything -novel or original to the forms and aesthetic values of English poetry. -In this respect no Overseas poetry is ‘great’ poetry, although much of -it is genuinely ‘real’ and excellent poetry. But in aesthetic content, -as in its Nature-painting or Nature-psychology, and in moral substance, -all Overseas poetry—all the best of it—is admirable. Canadian poetry, -however, ranks highest, particularly in self-reliance, in faith in the -land and the people, in serenity and a profound trust in the -providential government of nations that love righteousness and pursue -it. - -Summarily: Canadian poetry, excepting the realism of Service, is the -sincerest poetry written in the Overseas Dominions of the British -Empire. It is not always the most joyous, the most winning, the most -moving, or the most transporting. But it is the most sincere and serene, -and, therefore, the most satisfying, verse in the poetry of the British -Overseas Dominions. - - - - - CHAPTER XXVIII - - - Essayists _and_ Color Writers - - THE ESSAYISTS AND COLOR WRITERS OF CANADA—CARMAN—MACMECHAN— - BLAKE—KATHERINE HALE—KING—DEACON—LEACOCK. - -Canadian essays, familiar studies of life and manners, or essays in -_belles lettres_, are too meagre in quantity and too ephemeral or slight -in aesthetic substance as yet to be significant. Pure criticism of fine -arts, including literature, is also slight in quantity and insignificant -in form and substance. Both literary criticism and essays in -_belles-lettres_ are possible only under certain social and mental -conditions. There must be a considerable degree of economic independence -and leisure so as to permit writers to view Nature and existence with -detachment. The writers themselves must be specially gifted with a light -literary touch, a delicate sensibility to impressions from Nature and -character, and a refined sense of the relative values of good and evil, -tragedy and comedy, in the world, a whimsical or gracious humor and a -faculty for gentle revery. In short, detachment, an eye for beauty in -Nature and the human spirit and a genuine humor are necessary in writers -who would achieve distinction in the field of the Familiar Essay and in -Belletristic Literature. In Canada, however, where life is strenuous and -where men and women must take pragmatic or moralistic attitudes to -existence, detachment, humor, and a light touch are rarely possible. The -result is that the belletristic literature of Canada is slight and as -yet insignificant. - -The most notable work of the kind appears to be the essays of Bliss -Carman. He has published four volumes, considerable in quantity, on the -philosophy of Nature and the Spirit, distinguished by a clear, -well-knit, and readable prose style, and rich in poetic suggestiveness -and spiritual power. These volumes are _The Kinship of Nature_, _The -Friendship of Art_, _The Poetry of Life_, and _The Making of -Personality_. Plato, the Greek Gnostics and Mystics, and the -Transcendentalism of Emerson informed Carman’s heart and sublimated his -imagination pantheistically and mystically. Carman applied his poetic -imagination to a special philosophical interpretation and appreciation -of Man’s kinship with Nature, and of the metaphysical meaning of the -human personality or spirit in its relation to Nature and the universe. -In truth, Carman’s prose and poetry are related as the converse and -obverse sides of his inner being. Indeed the secret of the inner springs -of his lyricism is to be discovered beautifully, lyrically, expressed in -his prose essays. - -But Carman’s essays are not prose poetry. He did not attempt, as Roberts -attempted in his prose, to write impressionistic prose. Carman does not -aim at mere color-writing for its own sake. What he attempts and -achieves is a subtle analysis of the history of the spirit in its -relations to man and to God and the whole universe. Because this was his -aim, Carman was solicitous about his style—especially about clarity of -diction and pure beauty of imagery, and about the simplicity and -readableness of the structure of his sentences. In short, Carman’s prose -style has the same simplicity and directness and chaste beauty of -imagery and spiritual exaltation which we find in his lyrics. For this -reason we may signalize Carman’s prose as ‘lyrical’ prose. But we are by -no means to allow this epithet to connote anything like sensuous -impressionism or vague imagination. It is all solid, if sublimated, -thought about profound matters, addressed to the imaginative reason or -the religious imagination, and addressed in a style so clear and direct -and so emotionally pure that it affects the heart and the imagination -lyrically. - -An essayist in another style is Archibald MacMechan. Dr. MacMechan has -published two volumes, _The Porter of Bagdad_ (1901) and _The Life of a -Little College_ (1914); and he has published several booklets of essays -in a series of ‘chap books.’ Dr. MacMechan is unsurpassed in Canada as a -writer of the Light Essay. He differs of course from Carman in bent of -genius as an essayist. Carman employs the religious or metaphysical -imagination and appeals to our sensibilities. Dr. MacMechan employs the -fancy. His essays are essentially, as he indicates in the title of _The -Porter of Bagdad_, ‘fantasies’ or reveries. His style has a lightness of -touch which is inviting and ingratiating, and he has a delicate and -pleasant gift of humor. He is hardly Addisonian, but the substance of -his essays, their diction, and the movement of his sentences engage the -attention and delight the sense of form with the readiness and pleasant -intrigue of the essays of Addison. - -Not in so light a style and not with such playful fancy as Dr. -MacMechan’s are the essays of W. H. Blake, widely known as the -translator of Louis Hémon’s romantic idyll of French Canada, _Maria -Chapdelaine_. Mr. Blake’s _Brown Waters and Other Sketches_, _In a -Fishing Country_, and _A Fisherman’s Luck_ indicate the scope and method -of his essays. They are ‘sketches’ of objective experiences. They are -not fantasies or reveries. The intellect, rather than the fancy, is the -creative faculty most employed in them. Mr. Blake’s essays, therefore, -have not the lightness and the limpidity of MacMechan’s but they contain -happy revealments of Nature in Canada and of the human spirit against a -background of Nature. At times, they contain patches of engaging -‘color-writing.’ - -In the field of systematic ‘color-writing’ Katherine Hale is an artist -by herself. In aesthetic criticism Katherine Hale’s _forte_ had always -been a gift of causing the imagination and sensibilities to appreciate -one art, say, music, in terms of another art, say, painting. Her musical -criticism is not musical, but _literary impressionism_. Its effect all -depends upon suggestion, particularly suggestion of color. When, -therefore, Katherine Hale turned to employ her pictorial imagination in -a field where the sense of color in Nature and of the ‘color of life’ -would be absolutely free and directly at home, she produced work which -is unique in its kind, as in her _Canadian Cities of Romance_ (1922). -The romance in this case is not the romance of sentiment and of wonder -and of curiosity. It is the romance that exists for the eyes which -perceive beauty in ancient by-ways, strange and eerie places, and in the -dress, manners and habits of peculiar peoples in towns and cities which -still retain a residue of an old and lost civilization and culture. Her -_Canadian Cities of Romance_ is a book by which to transport the -pictorial imagination and to win the imaginative eye with aesthetic -delights of ‘color’ in character, incident, and the dramatic movement of -life. Her literary style is piquant, swift-moving, realistically -faithful and yet suffused with tints from Nature’s palette and with -imaginative light. Its analogue is found in the travel essays of E. V. -Lucas. - -In another form of the Essay, namely, the Practical, Reflective Essay, -very little has been achieved, because rarely attempted, in Canada. -Canadians do not seem to have the same desire as their cousins in the -United States for homilies or practical preachments on the secret of -‘getting along’ in the world. An excellent, if singular, example of the -Practical, Reflective Essay is _The Secret of Heroism_ by the Rt. Hon. -MacKenzie King, Premier of Canada. _The Secret of Heroism_ is a -biography of a human spirit, which, having served nobly on earth, -passed, and in passing left the effluence of his life, which is still -potent, to win men to the love of ‘otherworldliness.’ Aside from the -matter, it is notable as an example of what is rare in Canadian prose, -namely, ‘infused’ style, which requires that the matter and the form, -the thought and the expression, be indivisible. - -A pragmatic people, as are the Canadians, have little or no taste for -the Whimsical Essay. The matter of the whimsical essay counts for -nothing. Its appeal is altogether by way of piquancy in what is said. -Piquancy—not mordancy! For mordancy would only make what is said -satiric, and cause pain. The whimsical essay must cause mere smiles and -chuckles. It must be _clever_—and nothing more. Canadians are beginning -to turn more and more to this form of Essay. Its character and manner -are well exemplified in William A. Deacon’s _Pens and Pirates_ (1923). -The essays in this volume have novelty of theme, over which plays -precisely the light of a ‘whimsical’ fancy and humor. They are informed, -however, with the strictly literary color of allusion and quotation from -the poets and prosemen of all ages to the present, but in such an -incidental and light way that there is no show of pedantry. The allusion -and quotation are natural to Mr. Deacon’s professional office as a -reviewer of contemporary literature. His style is journalistic in the -French sense—‘style _coupe_’—as regards sentence length. But he adds a -piquancy to it which makes it somewhat ‘winged’ and which thus -pleasantly engages the sensibility. - -No Canadian as yet has appeared as a systematic writer of the Critical -Essay. Such essays of this genre as were published have been ‘fugitive,’ -and their aim and method have been pragmatic and pedagogical rather than -literary. There is, however, much room and great need in Canada for -systematic Essays in Criticism which shall have dignity of thought, -imaginative light, and grace or power of style, and which in themselves -shall be literature. Thomas O’Hagan’s Essays in _Canadian Literature_ -are too fragmentary and didactic to be literature, though they are -literary. L. J. Burpee’s _A Little Book of Canadian Essays_ contains -brief but illuminating critical studies of seven Canadian writers. -Stephen Leacock’s _Essays and Literary Studies_ are too heterogeneous in -theme and too variable (perhaps variegated) in style to be credited with -the dignity of systematic Essays in Criticism. They are interesting but -not weighty literary ‘Studies.’ The master critic has yet to appear in -Canada. - - - - - CHAPTER XXIX - - - Anthologies - - CANADIAN BIRTHDAY BOOK (SERANUS)—DEWART’s SELECTIONS FROM - CANADIAN POETS—LIGHTHALL’S ‘SONGS OF THE GREAT DOMINION’—OXFORD - BOOK OF CANADIAN VERSE—GARVIN’S CANADIAN POETS, ETC. - -Every anthology of national literature must be critically appreciated -from the point of view of the aim of the author. Properly, according to -the roots of the word anthology, care, and even fastidiousness, are -implied on the part of the compiler. The world-famous collection of -Greek verse known as _The Greek Anthology_ is properly, that is both -etymologically and aesthetically, an ‘anthology.’ For the poems in it -were most carefully chosen before being collected together; and they -were selected strictly according to ideals of beauty in thought and -expression. So that the term anthology hardly if ever applies strictly -to the so called anthologies of Canadian verse. As a matter of fact such -collections of Canadian verse as have been compiled, actually do not -bear the title anthology; they bear some such title as ‘A Treasury,’ or -‘A Wreath,’ or ‘Flowers,’ of Canadian Verse. Sometimes the collections -have the plainest of practical titles, such as _Canadian Poets_ or -_Canadian Singers and Their Songs_, or _The Oxford Book of Canadian -Verse_. - -It is quite irrelevant and an elaboration of the obvious to dispraise, -as some Canadian critics have done, the contents of certain anthologies -of Canadian poetry, as of ‘unequal merit.’ They might as well say that -the culture and the cultural institutions of Canada are of ‘unequal -merit.’ Relatively to the poetry of old civilizations the poetry of -Canada is poor or mediocre or indifferent or fine in aesthetic substance -and artistic structure and form according to the culture and genius of -the country’s poets. Secondly, all Canadian anthologies, whether the aim -was to select the very best of the very best poetry or to select -representative poems from each period or all periods, contain poetry -which is not all on the same level of excellence. - -The first anthology to engage public attention and to win critical -appreciation was a book which now belongs to the _rarissimae_ of -collectors of ‘Canadiana,’ namely, _The Canadian Birthday Book_, by -‘Seranus’ (pseudonym of Mrs. S. Frances Harrison), published at Toronto -in 1887. It was compiled, with exquisite taste, in both English and -French; and it is notable for the fact that its selections date as far -back as the year 1732, with a poem by Jean Taché who, as the compiler -has said in her notes, is ‘probably the first French-Canadian poet to -publish.’ It is notable also for the fact that it contains some verses -by the Indian Chief Tecumseh, and is, likewise, one of the earliest -volumes to contain the work of such poets as Bliss Carman, Wilfred -Campbell, Pauline Johnson, and Archibald Lampman. In a real sense, that -is, in the Greek sense of the term, the _Canadian Birthday Book_ is the -first Canadian anthology. The poems in it, are dainty in themselves and -the artistry of the poems also is dainty—‘little flowers’ of pretty or -beautiful Canadian verse, pioneer, _émigré_, nativistic, and native and -national. - -Twenty years before the appearance of Seranus’ miniature anthology Rev. -Edward Hartley Dewart published, under the plain title of _Selections -From Canadian Poetry_, what may be called the first treasury of Canadian -verse (1864). Dewart’s _Selections_ was simply a ‘collection’ of poems -for ‘good reading,’ or for pedagogical purposes in the Provinces of -Canada. It was not intended to be received as literary anthology, but -only as a volume of representative poems from the earlier periods of -Canadian history up to the year of publication. Its audience was limited -to Canada and it had only local or provincial appreciation. - -The next anthology was W. D. Lighthall’s _Songs of the Great Dominion_ -(1889). It was informed with the Canadian outlook on life and national -achievement within the twenty years after the formation of the -Confederacy, and with the Canadian prevision of a national destiny which -seemed implied in the genius of the Canadian people for autonomous -government, in the vast resources of the Dominion, and in the relations -which would inevitably develop between Canada and the United States and -the other nations of the world. The aim of Dr. Lighthall was both -literary and pragmatic. He desired to present to the English-speaking -world the ideals and genius of Canada as these ideals and genius were -embodied and expressed in the best poetry by _émigré_ and by native-born -Canadian poets. - -Dr. Lighthall’s inclusive and pragmatic aim determines both the scope -and the method of his aptly named _Songs of the Great Dominion_. In his -Introduction he carefully explains the scope and method of his -anthology. The order of this collection is in sections, treating of the -Imperial Spirit, the New Nationality, the Indian, the _Voyageur_ and -_Habitant_, Settlement Life, Sports and Free Life, Historical Incidents, -Places and Seasons. He says: They give merely, it should be understood, -a sketch of the range of the subjects. Canadian history, for example, as -any one acquainted with Parkman will know, perfectly teems with noble -deeds and great events, of which only a small share have been sung, -whereof there is only space here for a much smaller share. The Northwest -and British Columbia, that Pacific clime of charm—the gold-diggings -Province, land of salmon rivers, and of the Douglas firs which hide -daylight at noonday—have been scarcely sung at all, owing to their -newness. The poetry of the Winter Carnival, splendid scenic spectacle of -gay Northern arts and delights, is only rudimentary also. Those who have -been present at the thrilling spectacle of the nocturnal storming of the -Ice Palace in Montreal, when the whole city, dressing itself in the -picturesque snow-shoe costume and arraying its streets in lights and -colors, rises as one man in a tumultuous enthusiasm, must feel that -something of a future lies before the poetry of these strange and -wonderful elements.’ - -What Lighthall in his _Songs of the Great Dominion_ attempts to do is -not to present us with a mere quantity of Canadian poetry which we may -receive with delight or reject, but to invite us to the home of the -Canadian National Spirit and to show us what the Canadian spirit, as it -is envisaged and expressed in the poetry of the Dominion since -Confederation, has achieved and means to achieve. One who reads -Lighthall’s anthology cannot escape catching in it glimpses of the -essential Canadian spirit. In the poems in Lighthall’s volume the -Canadian spirit sings clearly its full gamut. We hear the ‘notes’ always -of courage; of self-reliance; of hope; of exultation; and of good cheer -and serenity; and these notes of courage and faith and exultation and -indomitable will and heroism and good cheer and peace in the heart of -man in Canada _are but the antiphons to the voices of the land and the -sea and the forest, the great waters and the sky and the maples, and -elms in their strength and also in their gentler and peaceful humors_. - -The Canadian spirit, as evisaged and expressed in the _Songs of the -Great Dominion_, is manly; and the supreme quality of the poetry in -Lighthall’s anthology is the quality of _manliness_. But this is a moral -quality. What of the aesthetic quality of the _Songs of the Great -Dominion_? Agreeing that poets should rise and drop with their subjects, -we note a high level of excellence in thought and in craftsmanship in -the poems in Lighthall’s volume. Considering its scope and the variety -of the subjects and styles of form in the volume, and considering also -its expression of the full gamut of the notes of the Canadian spirit, -Lighthall’s _Songs of the Great Dominion_ not only implies a kind of -creative vision and imagination on the part of the compiler, but -distinctly and unmistakably appeals to the same faculties in the reader. -In other words, Lighthall’s volume delights the heart and the -imagination by way of the intrinsic beauty and the moral substance of -the poetry in it; but it delights more the constructive imagination of -the reader by way of the illumination it sheds on the essential nature, -will, and ideals of the Canadian spirit, of the Canadian people. It -differs in this constructive way from all anthologies of Canadian verse -that have preceded it and all that have followed it. In short, -Lighthall’s _Songs of the Great Dominion_, on the side of embodying and -expressing spiritual essences, is unique amongst Canadian anthologies of -native and national poetry. - -_Later Canadian Poems_ (1893), edited by J. E. Wetherell, is a much -slighter volume than Lighthall’s but is significant as an expression of -the new spirit in Canadian Literature, containing, as it does, the first -publication of some of the work of Bliss Carman, Charles G. D. Roberts, -Duncan Campbell Scott, and Pauline Johnson. - -It might have been expected that _The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse_ -(1913), inasmuch as it was seemingly compiled by Wilfred Campbell, one -of the more important poets of Canada, would be on the level of the -ideal required by the Oxford Press and superior to other anthologies of -Canadian verse. As a matter of fact _The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse_, -as originally compiled by Wilfred Campbell, was not according to the -standard of the Oxford Press. The necessary re-compilation was made by -two hands, Mr. S. B. Gundy, Canadian Representative of the Oxford Press -at Toronto, and J. D. Logan who selected and added fifty poems (Nos. 211 -to the end, inclusive) from the work of the younger Canadian poets. -Campbell’s Oxford Press anthology has been frequently appreciated as the -best of the treasuries of Canadian poetry. But how a volume of such -fortuitous origin and construction can be the best of the Canadian -anthologies, passes understanding. As an anthology _The Oxford Book_ is -more than any of the other anthologies of Canadian verse a volume of -poetry ‘of unequal merit.’ But the defect most conspicuous in the book -is psychological rather than artistic, spiritual rather than aesthetic. -It contains 251 poems by 100 poets. It is the slightest of the three -great anthologies, and the most classical. Its contents have dignity, -taste, correctness. - -Of the other two chief anthologies—Theodore Harding Rand’s _A Treasury -of Canadian Verse_ (1900) and John W. Garvin’s _Canadian Poets_ -(1916)—the Rand anthology was compiled from the point of view of the -history, rather than the aesthetics, of Canadian poetry, whereas the -Garvin anthology was compiled from the point of view of modernity in the -aesthetic substance and artistic construction of Canadian poetry. -Garvin’s volume contains the work of only fifty-two poets, whereas -Rand’s and Lighthall’s contain the work of more than twice that number -of poets. Garvin’s volume is better suited to its century than is any of -the others. It is not only a repository of modern Canadian poetry but -also a critical _vade mecum_ to 20th Century Canadian poetry. For in -addition to the poems in the volume, each poet’s work is prefaced by a -biographical sketch and by critical appreciation or comment by others -than the compiler. The latter fact relieves the critical apparatus -itself of the charge of personal bias on the part of the compiler. The -Garvin anthology, again, is distinguished by a peculiarity of singular -spiritual import. It contains nothing that is not _typical_ of the -Canadian national spirit and Canadian civilization and culture. -Lighthall’s volume, despite its good sense and genuinely aesthetic -quality, had such variety and diversity of ‘notes’ of the spirit in it -that it is hard to distinguish which is the essential note, the typical -voice, and which the ‘overtones’ of the Canadian spirit. _The Oxford -Book_, again, is untypical of the Canadian spirit by way of too many -poems that are ‘poet’s poems’—too much of art for art’s sake. But -Garvin’s _Canadian Poets_ contains the work of such poets, both of the -older and the younger generation, as expresses the typical work of each -of the singers and the typical spirit of the Canadian people. It is a -companionable volume; and it has the distinct advantage of biographical -and critical comment, which fit it, according to its scope, for private -reading and enjoyment and for critical study of the history of Canadian -poetry. In those regards Garvin’s _Canadian Poets_ is an anthology which -is at once aesthetically satisfying and pragmatically the most -serviceable in the field that it covers. Mr. Garvin is also the compiler -of the only anthology of the Canadian poetry of the Great War. - -Several other anthologies of Canadian poetry require no more notice here -than to mention their names and scope. L. J. Burpee’s _Flowers From a -Canadian Garden_ is a genuine anthology in the Greek meaning of the -term. It is a bijou anthology containing seventy-five fastidiously -selected short lyrics, lovely ‘little flowers’ of Canadian poetry. The -selections in Mr. Burpee’s _A Century of Canadian Sonnets_ are also most -carefully chosen. E. S. Caswell’s _Canadian Singers and Their Songs_ is -a unique volume of selected poems in fac-similes of the authors’ -holograph manuscripts; and is illustrated with portraits of the authors -of the poems. It is essentially a literary curiosity, and meets the -express design of the compiler, namely, to produce a book of -‘personalia’ which would be appreciated as a gift book. Mrs. C. M. Whyte -Edgar’s _A Wreath of Canadian Song_ (1910) is too fragmentary in the -poetry which chiefly forms its substance to be considered a genuine -anthology. Moreover, it is limited to the verse of Canadian poets who -have died. Aesthetically viewed it is a work of no significance; but it -contains historical and bibliographical data that is curious and useful -for critical purposes. _Our Canadian Literature_ (1923) is a collection -of Canadian poetry and prose by Dr. Lorne Pierce and Dr. A. D. Watson. -It is much more valuable as a reading course or class room textbook than -as a treasury of aesthetic poetry and prose. _A Book of Canadian Verse -and Prose_ (1923) is the compilation of Professor E. K. Broadus and Mrs. -Broadus. It is a collection of Canadian poetry and prose in English and -French. - -A number of compilations of Canadian poetry and prose have been made -from time to time for school use. Among these are _Patriotic Recitations -and Arbor Day Exercises_, by G. W. Ross; _Selections from Canadian -Poets_ and _Selections from Canadian Prose_, both by E. A. Hardy; _The -Standard Canadian Reciter_, by Donald G. French; _The Canadian Poetry -Book_, by D. J. Dickie. - - - - - CHAPTER XXX - - - Canadian Journalism - - CANADIAN JOURNALISM IN RELATION TO PERMANENT CANADIAN LITERATURE; - A SUMMARY CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE CHIEF CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS AND - MAGAZINES. - -The question: Are Newspapers and Magazines literature? has various -answers, negative and affirmative. There cannot be any doubt that -Newspapers and Magazines can be literature, because they have been -literature; or that Newspapers and Magazines promote literature, because -they have done this. The fact is that the first journalism in English -was at the very outset literature. _The Tatter_ and _The Spectator_ were -founded in the years 1709 and 1711, respectively. _The Rambler_ was -founded later. These periodicals, whose pages were the popular reading -of the times, and whose pages were made ‘living epistles’ by the pens of -Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, and Oliver -Goldsmith—four of the greatest prose writers of the 18th century—were -the predecessors of the modern Newspaper. Their pages, especially those -of _The Spectator_, combined the functions of a newspaper, a literary -miscellany and a review of society, life, and world happenings. In -particular, Joseph Addison was ‘the father’ of the modern newspaper -‘leader’ and ‘editorial’ and of the special article in theatrical and -art criticism. Samuel Johnson was the inventor of the modern ‘society -page’ and ‘woman’s page’ as we know them in our day. In short, Steele, -Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, Defoe and others of considerable literary -reputation in the 18th century were the creators of England’s first -‘people’s literature’—a journalistic literature. - -Journalism and Magazine writing in Canada began with the same ideals of -scope and literary dignity as obtained in the days of Addison and -Johnson in England. The first newspaper to be established in any of the -Provinces which later became confederated in the Canadian Union was _The -Halifax Gazette_ which was established at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1752; -that is, 43 years after the founding of _The Tatler_. The first magazine -to be established in Canada was published at Halifax in 1789 and was -named _The Nova Scotia Magazine_. As a newspaper, however, _The Halifax -Gazette_ was devoted chiefly to the publication of military and -governmental intelligence. It was not till Joseph Howe purchased _The -Novascotian_, at Halifax, in 1828, that journalism in Canada harked back -to the ideals of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_. Joseph Howe must be -regarded as the first and foremost literary, as well as practical, -journalist in the history of Canada. - -It is sufficient here to remark Howe’s strict literary ideals, even as a -journalist, and to observe not only that in his own journalistic writing -he strove after literary form and color, but also that in the writings -of his contributors he saw to it that there was a very considerable -literary flavor. His ideals were emulated by other Canadian journalists, -as for instance Etienne Parent, in Quebec, and George Brown of the -Toronto _Globe_ and Charles Lindsey, in Ontario, and by later -journalists in Canada. Yet we must here emphasize, for our own times, -the inclusiveness of the ideals which inspired Howe and which resulted -in his producing newspapers whose influence abides to this day. - -By some sort of intuition, Howe knew, as Addison and Steele before him -knew, that the secrets of successful journalism are two: _Variety_ of -interests in reading matter, and _Readableness_ or the power to hold the -attention by the manner or style of what is written. Howe also had -aesthetic and moral ideals. He aimed to produce journalism that would -entertain and at the same time improve literary taste and educate the -sensibilities and moral imagination. Howe saw that the unpardonable sins -of all newspapers are the lack of humanized matter, and dullness in -style; and that, therefore, no matter how high and worthy the moral aims -of journalism may be, unless a newspaper possesses variety and -readableness, it is doomed to fail both as a newspaper that otherwise -might have endured and as a newspaper that might have been perennially -the voice and the educator of the spirit. In other words, Joseph Howe -saw that the supreme virtues of first rate journalism, the virtues which -raise journalism to the dignity of literature, are two: _Humanity_ and -_Urbanity_. - -Five years after the fall of Quebec, that is, in 1764, when Quebec city -had acquired a considerable English-speaking population, the second of -the pioneer Canadian newspapers was established. This was the _Quebec -Gazette_. For seventy-eight years this newspaper was printed in two -languages—English and French. From 1848 till 1880 it was printed wholly -in English. With the coming of the Loyalists, while New Brunswick was -still part of Nova Scotia, there appeared at St. John, in 1783, the -_Royal St. John Gazette and Nova Scotia Intelligencer_. In the following -year, when New Brunswick had become a separate Province, this newspaper -changed its name to the _Royal Gazette & New Brunswick Advertiser_. In -1785 the _Gazette_ was established at Montreal. In 1791 and in 1793 -newspapers were established at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and -Niagara, Ontario. In 1806 and in 1810 newspapers were established at -Fredericton, N.B. and Kingston, Ont. Up to 1810 the newspapers of -Canada, with the notable exception of the _Quebec Gazette_, were not at -all in the spirit of constructive journalism, but with the founding of -_The Herald_ at Montreal in 1811, _The Acadian Recorder_ at Halifax in -1813, the _Colonial Advocate_ at Queenston in 1824, and _The -Novascotian_ at Halifax in 1824 (purchased by Joseph Howe in 1828), -journalism in Canada took on the scope and complexion of literary and -constructive journalism. - -The Pioneer Newspapers, as contrasted with the Pioneer and later -Canadian Magazines, served very considerably as ‘the people’s’ reading -and as the popular educator. They were instrumental in creating a desire -for intelligence about Canada, the United States, and the United -Kingdom. The demand was chiefly for commercial and social, and political -news. And so with the desire for news came into existence an ardent -desire for an education in the so-called ‘three R’s.’ As to the style of -the reading matter in the Pioneer Newspapers, it conformed, with notable -exceptions, to the conditions, social and political, of the times. As a -matter of fact, politics were paramount in pioneer days and up to the -triumph of Responsible Government, or to the middle of the 19th Century. -Naturally, therefore, the newspapers contained considerable satiric -writing and letters on practical matters, including reforms in -Government. Accordingly the general style of the newspapers was -straightforward, often overpointed in vigorous vernacular, with no care -for purity of diction and coherency of sentential structure. The thing -to be said, the matter, must be said at all hazards—plainly, bluntly, -vigorously, and unmistakably. In all these regards, which were not -according to the English style of journalism under Addison and Steele, -the better newspapers, such as _The Montreal Gazette_, and _The -Novascotian_, were notable exceptions to the general run of the Pioneer -Newspapers. Howe, for example, did see to it, with considerable -solicitude, that his newspapers, especially _The Novascotian_, should -contain genuine literary matter and that the style of the general -reading matter which appeared in his newspapers should be in decent -readable English. - -On the whole, therefore, the Pioneer Newspapers of Canada and those -which appeared up to Responsible Government and Confederation, and -later, conformed to the two ideals of purveyors of intelligence and -disseminators of popular culture. Except in rare instances, however, -they did not foster the creative literary spirit. That function was left -to the Canadian Magazines. - -As, in the case of daily journalism, Nova Scotia had priority in -establishing newspapers, so, in the case of Canadian magazines, Nova -Scotia also was first in enterprise. The first magazine to be published -in any of the Provinces of Canada was the _Nova Scotia Magazine_, which -appeared at Halifax in 1789, and ceased publication in 1792. The second -Canadian magazine to be published was the _Quebec Magazine_, which -appeared at Quebec in 1791 (2). It also went out of existence in two or -three years. The difficulty then was the same as in the present day. The -Canadian editor and publisher of native magazines could not compete with -the British and the United States magazines, because the foreign -periodicals were more readable and cheaper. The matter, however, of the -earlier Canadian magazines was, for the most part, genuinely literary -and fostered culture. - -The first magazine in Canada to spread culture and at the same time to -foster amongst native-born or resident _émigré_ writers the creative -literary spirit, and to publish contributions in the form of essays, -Nature sketches, and poems by native-born and permanently resident -writers, was the _Literary Garland_. It flourished from 1838 to 1851, -and numbered amongst its contributors such men and women of parts as -William Dunlop, who may be regarded as the first _émigré_ Canadian -humorist in distinction from Haliburton, the first native-born humorist, -Charles Sangster, who was the first native-born Canadian poet of -significant power in original creation, Susanna Moodie who was a -versatile writer of colorful prose, and the first singer of Canadian -Martial Verse, and her sister Catharine Parr Traill, whose Nature -studies and sketches are still eminently worth reading. - -In the year which saw the consummation of the Confederacy George -Stewart, a man of fine critical taste, established _Stewart’s Quarterly_ -at St. John, N.B. His ideal was that of the English Quarterlies; and the -articles which appeared in his magazine were notably solid in substance -and distinguished in literary style. _Stewart’s Quarterly_ did much to -promote culture and to encourage creative writing on the part of -native-born Canadian writers. Several other magazines which conformed -more to the matter and style of the _Literary Garland_ were established -in the first 25 years following Confederation. They all eventually went -out of existence. The first magazine to endure as a cultural agency and -genuine fosterer of the literary spirit was the _Canadian Magazine_, -founded in 1893 by J. Gordon Mowat. Under his editorship it grew and -further progressed under the editorship of John A. Cooper. In 1907 the -_Canadian Magazine_ came under the editorship of Mr. Newton MacTavish. - -From 1907, when Mr. MacTavish became editor, there was a distinct and -continually progressive change in the editorial policy of the _Canadian -Magazine_. Patriotically he set out to foster the appreciation and -production of fine arts and literature by native-born Canadians. To do -this he reproduced in the magazine paintings and drawings by Canadian -artists, along with special articles, critically appraising Canadian -artists and their art. He also published essays, criticism, fiction, and -poetry, by native-born Canadian writers. In fact, it was considerably -due to the sympathetic and respectful encouragement which Mr. MacTavish -gave to native-writers, that Canadian poets and prose writers achieved -as splendidly as they have done in the first quarter of the 20th -century, and that constructive literary criticism and literary history -significantly developed in Canada. - -With the _Canadian Magazine_ should be mentioned two others, the -_Queen’s Quarterly_ and the _University Magazine_. The latter was edited -by Sir Andrew Macphail, and did much to foster letters and criticism in -Canada. Amongst other distinctions, the _University Magazine_ published -not only the best verse but also the first book of poems by Marjorie -Pickthall, _Drift of Pinions_ (1913). It ceased publication in 1921. The -_Queen’s Quarterly_, always well edited, is still potent in fostering -letters and criticism in Canada. _The Dalhousie Review_, founded in -1921, essayed some of the ideals of the _University Magazine_. But it is -given too much to critical writing by foreign _literati_ to be potent in -fostering letters and criticism in Canada. - - - - - CHAPTER XXXI - - - Narrative Literature - - NARRATIVE LITERATURE—HISTORY—BIOGRAPHY—EXPLORATION—TRAVELS— - SPORT OR OPEN-AIR LIFE. - _I. History._ - -Two general conditions have made the writing of ‘true history’ in Canada -an impossibility. On the personal side, there were the lack of adequate -culture, of a sense of the historic process and of history as the -narrative of spiritual development, and of any genius, save curiosity, -on the part of those who essayed the writing of history. Men with the -historic imagination did not exist in Canada, and only ‘minor’ -historians were active, up to the beginning of the 20th century. On the -material or instrumental side, there were the heterogeneity of Canadian -civilization, the want of political unity, the lack of access to -documents and of facilities for historical research, and other untoward -circumstances. Unimaginative minds and the heterogeneity of life and -thought in Canada, before and after Confederation, limited history for -the most part to annals, chronicles, period and sectional narratives. - -The number of these uninspired, unimaginative ‘minor’ Canadian -historians is legion. The more important were George Heriot, William -Smith, Robert Christie, Alexander Begg, Beamish Murdock, Duncan -Campbell, William Kingsford, James Hannay, and Egerton Ryerson. Oddly, -the two first native-born historians to write with a show of imagination -and a sense of true history were Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the -humorist, and Major John Richardson, the romancer. - -Haliburton’s _Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia_ was -published by Joseph Howe in 1829. Though the two volumes are, in a -degree, a compendium of facts, Haliburton was not interested in the -facts so much as in the romantic or dramatic story of civilization and -life in Nova Scotia. The way Haliburton imaginatively handled his -material, the way he romantically told the story and made the whole a -colorful and generally absorbing narrative, constitutes his work as -‘true history.’ It is Haliburton’s conception of history and his method -of writing it that make him important—though he was not potent—in this -department of Canadian Literature. His work is an outstanding native -example of the romantic method of writing history as literature; and -Haliburton himself appears as the first Canadian Historian to write -history as if he were writing imaginative literature. But if he was not -potent in his own country, that is, in British North America, he had, -there is good ground to believe, considerable influence on Francis -Parkman. For Parkman read Haliburton’s _Historical and Statistical -Account of Nova Scotia_, and not only had his imagination fired by such -a romantic story as Haliburton tells of the Expulsion of the Acadians, -but also adopted the romantic method of Haliburton in writing his own -historical works. - -The best account of the War of 1812 came from the pen of Major John -Richardson, who had served in the conflict. It is the account of an -eye-witness. It was written hurriedly for publication serially in his -newspaper the _New Era_, and was reprinted in book form in 1842. As -might be expected, Richardson presents vividly the drama or dramatic -movement of his story, and makes it a colorful, gripping narrative. But -though, like Haliburton, Richardson wrote graphically, romantically, he -is superior to Haliburton in an important respect. The Nova Scotia -historian and humorist did not have any gift for sharp -character-drawing; his characters, like Dickens’ or Twain’s, stand out -and hold us by what they say. But Richardson’s characters in his account -of the War of 1812, especially Brock and Tecumseh, are vividly drawn by -their _action_, and stand out sharply individualized. In Haliburton’s -_Historical Account of Nova Scotia_ we get only colorful romance. In -Richardson’s _War of 1812_ we get colorful romance, dramatic movement, -and memorable character portraiture. It, too, is ‘true history,’ and his -work, like Haliburton’s, is an outstanding native example of the -romantic method of writing history as literature. - -After Haliburton and Richardson, all history of Canada, or the -Provinces, by native-born or _émigré_ writers was fragmentary in -conception and dry-as-dust in matter and method. They all show -inquisitiveness, diligence, though not careful research, and no -imagination, and certainly no sense of history as the outward expression -and movement of a people’s social and spiritual evolution. Yet the work -of one man must be specially remarked. He was Alpheus Todd, who, in the -department of Constitutional History, wrote a work which was long -regarded as the greatest study of the English constitution written by -any British subject. This really ‘monumental’ historical work was -entitled _Parliamentary Government in England; its Origin, Development, -and Practical Operation_. The first volume was published in 1867, the -year of Canadian Confederation. But while Todd’s work is a ‘monument’ to -his scholarship and industry, and while it has historic perspective, it -is, like the work of preceding historians, without imagination and was -written by one who had no conception of constitutional history as the -expression of the social conscience gradually realizing, under changing -conditions, the ideal of the rights of the spirit. - -From the beginning of the 20th century, Canadian historians based their -work on documentary research and wrote history with a lively sense of -imaginative or romantic values which corresponded to the method and -manner of Haliburton and Richardson. This change in the method of -writing ‘true history’ is notably exemplified in _Quebec Under Two -Flags_ and in _The Cradle of New France_ by A. G. Doughty; in _The Fight -for Canada_, by William Wood; and, later, in _The Conquest of the Great -North-West_, _Pathfinders of the West_, and _Vikings of the Pacific_, by -Agnes Laut. Doughty was a poet before he became an historian, and in -writing history let his imagination play over the facts, thus -transmuting the documentary material into literature. William Wood also -applied the romanticist’s imagination to the facts, and, besides, wrote -history with a fine feeling for style and characterization somewhat in -the manner of Parkman. Miss Laut, basing her matter on thorough -research, humanized it with a sympathetic appreciation of the struggles -of the pioneers of the Canadian West and with a picturesque literary -style. - -Sectional and local histories of Canada abound. There are also race -histories and several so-called School Histories. But these are all of -popular quality and have no distinction in literary style, although the -narratives of W. J. Rattray, George Stewart, H. Scadding, J. Ross -Robertson, John Murray Gibbon, Sir John Bourinot and Charles G. D. -Roberts show a considerable solicitude for style and actually achieve -good literary style. - - _II. Biography._ - -As with general history, so with personal or spiritual history. -Biographical writing in Canada is sparse in quantity and, on the whole, -insignificant in literary quality. Often the subject of a biographical -narrative was great enough to compel imaginative and artistic creation -on the part of the writer. Seldom, however, does any biographer of a -Canadian man of distinction rise to his subject either in conception or -in style. But of those who did rise to their subject, one was Charles -Lindsey, who wrote _The Life and Times of William Lyon MacKenzie_. -Lindsey handled his material so as to present the proper values in the -political and social problems in the time of the famous leader of the -Rebellion of 1837. Another of those who rose to his subject and who -wrote with a sense of the really significant events in the life of his -subject, presenting the salients with decent respect for truth, with -adequate detail, and yet with readable style, was Sir Joseph Pope, who -gave the literary world a compelling and vigorously moving biographical -volume, _Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald_. -It is a vigorous narrative, but rather inflexible in style. Sir John -Stephen Willison’s _Sir Wilfrid Laurier and The Liberal Party_ is an -outstanding biography. Like Lindsey, Sir John Willison was a thoroughly -trained journalist before he attempted biographical writing. Along with -the journalist’s vigor and vivacity of style, Sir John Willison wrote -with feeling for dignified and elegant diction. His _Wilfrid Laurier_ is -notable chiefly for its refinement in prose style. - -George Monro Grant’s _Joseph Howe_ is a _tour de force_ in brilliant -word painting and hero worship. It misses the significance of Howe as an -original and constructive mind. Longley’s _Joseph Howe_ is a popular -narrative, careless of logic and literary style. - -Several other individual biographies of Canadians by Canadians have been -published. The best of them are Duncan Campbell Scott’s _John Graves -Simcoe_, Adam Shortt’s _Lord Sydenham_, George M. Wrong’s _Life of Lord -Elgin_, Arnold Haultain’s _Goldwin Smith: His Life and Opinions_, Grant -and Hamilton’s _George Monro Grant_, and Edith J. Archibald’s _Life and -Letters of Sir Edward Mortimer Archibald_. But a genuinely great -biography of a great man remains to be written in Canada. - -Deserving of mention are three short popular biographies—Owen -McGillicuddy’s sketch of the life and achievements of Rt. Hon. MacKenzie -King, Premier of Canada, which appears under the title _The Making of a -Premier_ (1922); John W. Dafoe’s _Laurier_ (1922) and Peter McArthur’s -_Laurier_ (1922). These biographies are by practical journalists, and -are journalistic in style. Dafoe’s Laurier is the most acute and -weighty. - -A genuine literary achievement in biographical writing is M. O. -Hammond’s _Confederation and Its Leaders_ (1917). It is based on -thorough research, and, as a series of intimate political biographies in -the form of narrative sketches, is packed with human interest, and is -marked by a straightforward, commonsense style. It has a high -seriousness, and in this respect contrasts with the lighter, more -piquant but less persuasive style of Augustus Bridle’s _Sons of -Canada_—a work which is essentially a series of familiar portraits, -done as _jeux d’esprit_. - - _III. Travels, Exploration, Sport._ - -Canada has a considerable quantity of the literature of travels, -explorations and sport but the literary interest of the most of it is -far from obvious. A really remarkable book in this genre is the elder -Alexander Henry’s _Travels and Adventures in Canada and The Indian -Territories_, published in New York in 1809. Henry was a man of acute -observation, and also possessed a graphic pen for character limning. His -_Travels and Adventures_ engages both the intellect and the imagination, -the scientist and the literary artist. For it contains the most -interesting observations on the flora and fauna of the countries he -visited, and really graphic and colorful pictures of the peoples and the -characters he met and observed. Henry had also a gift like that of -Thucydides—the gift and skill of dramatically reporting a speech as, -for instance, the speech of the Ojibwa Chief Minavavana. The book really -forms an entrancing and instructive volume of Travel and Adventure. - -The same may be said of Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s _Voyages From Montreal -Through the Continent of North America, 1789-1793_. This work was -published at London in 1801. Mackenzie came from a people—the Gaels of -the Island of Lewis—who have a racial gift of colorful imagination and -of felicity of language in nature description. Mackenzie, moreover, was, -like Henry, a keen observer. His _Voyages_, therefore, as might be -expected, are marked by colorful style and the imaginative presentation -of the scenes he visited and of the inspiring or sublime phenomena he -observed. John Howison’s _Sketches of Upper Canada_ conforms only to the -ideal of fact. It is, as the title suggests, merely a series of -‘sketches,’ written in a vigorous style with only a touch here and there -of finer literary style. - -With the work of Anna Brownell Jameson we meet with the first -‘color-writing’ in and about Canada. Her _Winter Studies and Summer -Rambles in Canada_, published in London in 1838, has not yet been -excelled by a native Canadian ‘color writer.’ At the time, Canada was a -wilderness for the most part, with a few settlements, but Mrs. Jameson, -with the eye of an artist, saw everywhere in Nature in Canada and in -Canadian life and character much to delight the eye and the -sensibilities and much to satisfy the pictorial and dramatic -imagination. Her _Winter Studies and Summer Rambles_, in three volumes, -are a library of winsome Nature sketches and critical appreciations of -human personality—a work of art, and a permanent contribution to the -Incidental Pioneer Literature of Canada. - -The aesthetic sense and the artistic conscience were uppermost in Paul -Kane’s _Wanderings of An Artist Among The Indian Tribes of North -America_. Kane was a celebrated Canadian painter; and, having the gift -of style, he wrote, with the eye of the pictorial artist, about his -‘wanderings’ among the western tribes. It is an informing volume and -makes genuinely interesting and satisfying reading. - -George M. Grant was a man of splendid force of character and strength of -will tempered with a singular gift of humor and pathos. He travelled -across Canada in the last five years of the first decade following -Confederation, he met all peoples, dwelt in camps, visited trading -posts, and stopped at the hotels of the larger centres. On his journey -he was impressed by the _life_, _energy_, and the _striving_ of the -Canadian people for a self-reliant and worthy history and destiny. And -so Grant’s volume of travel, _Ocean to Ocean_, is noted for its acute -observation, for its colorful and vitalizing descriptions of Nature in -Canada, and for its seriousness, at all times relieved by an unusual -quality of humor and of pathos. In ‘color-writing’ too, the volume is, -at times, incomparable. - -J. W. Tyrrell’s _Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada_ and his _The St. -Lawrence Basin and Its Border-Lands_, Lawrence J. Burpee’s _The Search -for The Western Sea_, Vilhjalmur Stefannson’s _The Friendly Arctic_ and -his _Hunters of the Great North_, Arthur Heming’s _Drama of the -Forests_, are all noted for their literary style and for the dramatic -pictures they make of Nature scenes and of human characters. - -Two really notable books under the head of Sport, as a form of travel -and adventure, are Arthur Silver’s _Farm, Cottage, Camp and Canoe In -Maritime Canada_ (1884) and Phil. H. Moore’s _With Gun and Rod in -Canada_ (1922). Silver’s volume makes pleasant reading, but the style is -much more pedestrian than Moore’s work, which is heightened and colored -by picturesque diction and images and by considerable characteristic -humor. Midway between the greater books of Travel and Adventure and -these books of Sport come Wilfred Grenfell’s volumes descriptive of -Labrador and the late C. Gordon Hewitt’s _Conservation of the Wild Life -of Canada_. The latter, though scientific in aim and method, is full of -aesthetic and literary charm and is written in an interesting literary -style. - - - - - Index - -This index covers the names of Canadian writers, Canadian books, -journals, individual poems, or stories referred to in the text. Names of -authors are in roman type; all titles of books, journals, poems, -stories, etc., are in _italic_. - -_Above St. Irénée_, 164. -_Acadia_, 60, 96. -_Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada_, 402. -_Address to the Freemen of Canada_, 340. -_Admiral’s Daughter, The_, 193. -_Adventurer of the North, An_, 244. -_Afoot_, 17. -_After a Night of Storm_, 165. -_After the Battle_, 342. -Agar, Paul, 271. -_Ahkoond of Swat, The_, 325-326. -Aikins, Carroll, C., 295, 333-334. -Alexander, W. J., 364. -Allen, Adam, 39. -Alline, Henry, 36-37, 355. -_Amateur Orlando_, The, 325. -_Americans at Home, The_, 67, 77, 78. -_Anastasis_, 255. -_Anatomy of Melancholy, The_, 166. -Anderson, Robert, T., 271. -_Angel’s Shoes_, 309. -_Anne of Avonlea_, 300. -_Anne of Green Gables_, 299. -_Anne’s House of Dreams_, 301. -_Anne of the Island_, 301. -_Annunciation_, 211. -_Answer, The_, 292. -_Anti-Traditionist, The_, 37. -_Antoinette de Mirecourt_, 93. -_April Airs_, 142, 149. -Archibald, Edith J., 399. -_At Husking Time_, 209. -_At Noon_, 292. -_Attaché, The_, 67, 80, 82, 83. -_Attic Guest, The_, 257. -_Autumn’s Orchestra_, 201. -_Ave!_ 229, 231-235, 239. -_Aylesford_, 17. - -_Backwoodsman, The_, 253. -_Backwood’s Philosopher, The_, 49. -Bailey, Jacob, 39. -_Bail Jumper, The_, 307. -Baker, Ray Palmer, 8, 42, 364. -_Ballads and Lyrics_, 141. -_Ballads of Lost Haven_, 150-151. -Barrington, E., 309. -Bartlett, Gertrude, 295, 346, 351. -Bates, Walter, 39. -_Battle of the Strong, The_, 244, 245. -_Battles Royal Down North_, 304. -_Beautiful Joe_, 253. -_Beautiful Rebel, A_, 250. -_Beauty and Life_, 161, 165, 166. -Beck, L. Adams, 311. -Begg, Alexander, 395. -_Behind the Arras_, 142, 157. -_Behind the Veil_, 230, 239-240. -_Bells of St. Stephens, The_, 302. -Bennett, Ethel Hume, 306. -_Bereavement of the Fields_, 229. -_Between the Battles_, 223. -_Between the Lights_, 229. -_Bill Boram_, 315-319. -_Billy Topsail & Company_, 304. -_Biography of a Grizzly_, 251. -_Birch and Paddle_, 120. -_Bird’s Lullaby, The_, 208. -Blackburn, Grace, 295, 296, 297, 351. -_Black Creek Stopping House, The_, 303. -_Black Rock_, 254, 255, 256. -_Black Stole, The_, 80. -Blake, W. H., 304, 376. -_Blessed Dead, The_, 351. -Blewett, Jean, 221, 222, 278, 346, 351. -_Bliss Carman_, 141. -_Blue Nose, The_, 60. -_Blue Pete; Half Breed_, 307. -_Blue Water_, 304. -_Boarding House Geometry_, 328. -_Bobcaygeon, Chapbook, A._, 295. -_Bonnie Prince Fetlar_, 253. -_Book of Canadian Verse and Prose_, 387. -_Book of the Myths, The_, 142. -_Book of the Native, The_, 122, 123. -_Boss of the World, The_, 260. -Bourinot, Arthur S., 295, 346, 348. -Bourinot, Sir John, 398. -Bowen, Minnie Hallowell, 346. -Bowman, Louise Morey, 295, 296, 297, 346, 351. -Branscombe, Gena, (Mrs. J. F. Tenney), 213. -_Brave Hearts_, 254. -Breakenridge, John, 278. -_Bride, The_, 211. -_Bridge, The_, 310. -Bridle, Augustus, 400. -_Brier_, 207. -Broadus, E. K., 387. -Broadus, Mrs., 387. -_Brock_, 97. -_Brockenfiend, The_, 193. -Brooke, Mrs. Francis, 45, 46. -_Brookfield_, 229, 238-239. -Brooks, Lillie A., 351. -_Brothers in Arms_, 334, 335. -_Brothers in Peril_, 308. -Brown, George, 389. -Bruce, Charles T., 295. -_Buffalo Meat_, 294. -_Burial of Brock, The_, 50. -Burpee, Lawrence J., 322, 379, 386, 402. -Byles, Mather, 39. -_By the Aurelian Wall_, 157. -_By the Marshes of Minas_, 263. - -Cameron, Charles Innis, 361. -Campbell, Duncan, 395. -Campbell, Wilfred, 17, 18, 26, 49, 55, 99, 102, 105, 107, 113, 132, 133, - 184-194, 195, 229, 235-236, 250, 271, 278, 316, 334, 371, 384. -_Camper, The_, 201. -_Canada_, 191. -_Canadian Birthday Book, A_, 226. -_Canadian Birthday Book, The_, 381. -_Canadian Born_, 26, 200, 201. -_Canadian Brothers, The_, 89, 91-93. -_Canadian Folk Song, A_, 190. -_Canadian Magazine, The_, 8, 331, 393-394. -_Canadian Poems of the Great War_, 8, 346. -_Canadians on the Nile_, 50. -_Canadian Cities of Romance_, 291. -_Canadian Hymns and Hymn Writers_, 358. -_Canadian Poetry Book, The_, 387. -_Canadian Poets_, 5, 8, 380, 385-386. -_Canadian Singers and Their Songs_, 380, 386. -_Canadian Twilight_, A, 346. -Cappon, James, 364. -_Captain of Raleigh’s, A_, 308. -Carleton, John L., 319. -Carman, Bliss, 16, 17, 18, 26, 27, 43, 55, 99, 101, 102, 105, 107, 111 _et - seq._, 128, 132, 133, 139-158, 159, 160, 163-164, 167, 172-177, 180, 195, - 209, 217, 219, 223, 226, 229, 233-235, 271, 278, 279, 284, 368, 371, - 375. -_Carmichael_, 309. -Caswell, E. S., 386. -_Cattle_, 313. -_Cattle Thief, The_, 202, 203, 207. -_Champions, The_, 351. -_Chaste Diana, The_, 309. -_Child’s House, The_, 313. -Christie, Robert, 395. -_Christmas Bells in War Time_, 351. -_Chronicles of Avonlea_, 301. -_City and the Sea, The_, 203. -Clelland, Rev. James, 356. -Cleveland, Aaron, 355. -Cleveland, Benjamin, 355. -_Clockmaker, The_, 58, 65, 66, _et seq._, 80, 81, 83, 84. -_Clontarf_, 319. -Cockings, George, 44. -Cody, H. A., 306. -_Collected Poems_, (Campbell), 185. -_Collected Poems_, (Carman), 158. -_Collected Poems_, (F. G. Scott), 215. -Coleman, Helena, 226, 278, 346, 351. -_Colonial Advocate_, 391. -_Come Quietly, England_, 350. -_Coming of the Winter, The_, 110. -_Confederation and Its Leaders_, 400. -_Confession of Tama the Wise, The_, 17. -Connor, Ralph, (_pseud._), 254-256. -_Conquest of Canada, The_, 44. -_Conquest of Quebec, The_, 44. -_Conquest of the Great Northwest, The_, 398. -_Conservation of Wild Life in Canada_, 403. -Cooney, Percival J., 309. -Cooper, John A., 393. -_Corduroy Road, The_, 270. -Cornell, Beaumont, 313. -_Cornflower, The_, 221. -_Corn-Planting, The_, 227. -_Corporal Cameron_, 255. -Cotes, Mrs. (Sara Jeanette Duncan), 268, 326. -_Cowpuncher, The_, 307. -_Cradle of New France, The_, 398. -_Crawford, Isabella Valancy_, 46, 47, 50-54, 128, 207, 265, 342. -Creelman, Wm. A., 295. -_Crimson Wing, The_, 319. -_Cripple, The_, 17, 217. -_Crowning, The_, 214. -_Cry from an Indian Wife, A_, 202, 203. -_Cumner’s Son_, 244. -_Cun-ne-wa-bum_, 294. -_Curé of Calumette, The_, 270. -Curzon, Sarah A., 334, 342. - -_Daffodil from Vimy Ridge, A_, 351. -Dafoe, John W., 400. -_Daily Star_ (_Montreal_), 324. -_Daisies_, 149. -_Dalhousie Review, The_, 394. -_Daulac_, 193, 194. -Davis, Roy, 331, 332. -_Dawn_, 216. -_Dawn at Shanty Bay, The_, 257. -_Day Dawn_, 201. -Deacon, William A., 378. -de la Roche, Mazo, 313. -De Mille, James, 18, 95, 108, 229, 239-240, 268, 322, 323. -Denison, Merrill, 334-336. -_Dennison Grant_, 307. -_De Profundis_, 351. -_Deserted Nest, The_, 61. -_Deserted Pasture, The_, 155. -_Desjardins, The_, 261. -Dewart, Edward Hartley, 361, 381. -Dickie, D. J., 387. -_Divine Lady, The_, 309. -_Doctor Luke of the Labrador_, 304. -_Doctor, The_, 254. -_Dodge Club Series_, 323. -_Dodge Club, The_, 323. -Dollard, James B., 319, 334, 347. -_Dominique_, 270. -_Donovan Pasha_, 244. -Donovan, Peter, 330. -Dougall, Lily, 18. -Doughty, A. G., 398. -Duncan, Norman, 247, 303-304, 318. -_Duncan, Polite_, 299. -Duncan, Sara Jeanette, 326. -Dunlop, William, 392. -Durkin, Douglas, 307, 346. -_Drama of the Forests_, 402. -_Dreamland and Other Poems_, 25, 99, 206. -_Drift of Pinions_, 27, 280, 283, 394. -Drummond, William Henry, 46, 47, 128, 265-270, 370, 371, 372. -_Drums Afar_, 307. - -_Earth’s Enigmas_, 252. -_Eavesdropper, The_, 157. -Edgar, Pelham, 364. -Edgar, Mrs. C. M. Whyte, 386. -_Embers_, 210, 213. -_Emigrant, The_, 49. -_Emigration of the Fairies, The_, 323. -_Emily of New Moon_, 301. -_Enchantment_, 293. -_End of the Day, The_, 17. -_End of the Rainbow, The_, 302. -_England Over Seas_, 294. -_English-Canadian Literature_, 8. -_Erie Waters_, 201. - -_Fables from the World_, 324. -_Falls of Chaudière, The_, 98. -_False Chevalier, The_, 242. -_Farm, Cottage, Camp and Canoe in the Maritime Provinces_, 402. -_Fasting_, 203. -_Feet of the Furtive_, 252. -Field, George B., 271. -_Fight for Canada, The_, 398. -_Fighting Men of Canada, The_, 346, 348-349. -_Fire-Flies, The_, 100. -_Fire in the Woods, The_, 49. -_Fires of Driftwood_, 227. -_Flag of Old England_, 60. -Fleming, John, 48. -_Flint and Feather_, 197 _et seq._ -_Flood, The_, 247. -_Flowers from a Canadian Garden_, 386. -_Foreigner, The_, 255. -_Forest Fugitives_, 308. -_Forest of Bourg Marie, The_, 248. -_Forge in the Forest, A_, 248. -_Forging of the Pikes, The_, 308. -_For He was Scotch and so Was She_, 222. -_Forsaken, The_, 180. -_Fragment of a Letter, The_, 167. -Fraser, Alexander Louis, 295, 361. -Fraser, D. A., 372. -Fraser, W. A., 253-254, 263, 310. -Fréchette, Louis, 268. -French, Donald G., 7, 364, 387. -_Friendly Arctic, The_, 402. -_Frogs, The_, 135. -_From Ocean Unto Ocean_, 358-360. -_From the Book of Myths_, 157. -_From the Book of the Green Bards_, 154. -_From the Book of Valentines_, 157. -_From Their Own Place_, 334, 335. -_Frontiersman, The_, 306. -_Frost Magic_, 159. - -_Gaff Linkum_, 310. -_Galahads, The_, 351. -_Garden of the Sun, The_, 224. -Garvin, John, 5, 8, 346, 385. -Garvin, Mrs. John, 364. -_Gaspards of Pine Croft, The_, 255. -_Gauntlet of Alceste, The_, 310. -_Gazette (Halifax), The_, 40. -_Gazette (Montreal), The_, 390, 391. -_George Monro Grant_, 399. -_Geraniums_, 120. -Gibbon, John Murray, 8, 307, 398. -Giffen, Clare, 295. -_Give us Barabbas_, 203. -_Glengarry School Days_, 254. -_Globe, (Toronto), The_, 184, 202, 389. -_Going North_, 293. -_Golden Dicky_, 253. -_Golden Dog, The_, 94-95, 241, 243. -_Golden Road, The_, 301. -Goldsmith, Oliver, (2nd), 42, 48, 96, 108. -_Goldwin Smith_, 399. -Gordon, Charles W., 105, 254-256. -Gordon, 327. -_Gouging School, The_, 80. -Grahame, Gordon Hill, 306. -Graham, Isabel, 346. -Graham, Jean, 278, 364. -Grant and Hamilton, 399. -Grant, George Monro, 399, 402. -_Gravedigger, The_, 151. -_Grave Tree, The_, 17. -_Green Book of the Bards, The_ 142. -Grenfell, Wilfred, 403. -_Grey Knitting_, 291, 293. -_Grey Rocks and Greyer Sea_, 16. -Griffin, Martin, 364, 365. -Gundy, S. B., 385. -Gyles, John, 46. - -_Habitant, The_, 267. -Hale, Katherine, (_pseud._), 278, 290-294, 296, 346, 364, 377. -_Half-Breed Girl, The_, 180. -Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 17, 40, 42, 43, 55, 57, 63-88, 89, 96, 108, - 268, 270, 322, 328, 332, 393, 395, 396-398. -_Halifax Gazette, The_, 389. -Ham, George Henry, 327-328. -Hammond, M. O., 8, 202, 364, 400. -Hannay, James, 395. -_Harbor Master_, 308. -_Harbor Tales Down North_, 304. -Hardy, E. A., 387. -Harrison, S. Frances (‘Seranus’), 226, 248, 346. -Hathaway, R. H., 8, 141, 364. -Haultain, Arnold, 364, 399. -_Haunters of the Silence, The_, 252. -Haverson, James P., 272. -_Hayfield, The_, 220. -_Hearts and Faces_, 307. -_Heart Songs_, 221. -_Heat_, 137. -Heaveysege, Charles, 46, 48-49, 108, 316. -_Height of Land, The_, 183. -Heming, Arthur, 402. -Hémon, Louis, 21, 305, 376. -Henry, Alexander, 46, 400. -_Hephaestus_, 314. -_Heralds of Empire_, 249-250. -_Herald, The (Montreal)_, 391. -_Here’s to the Land_, 50. -Heriot, George, 395. -_Hesperus_, 97. -Hewitt, C. Gordon, 403. -_Hickory Stick, The_, 305. -_Higher Kinship_, 185. -_Hildebrand_, 193. -_Hills and the Sea, The_, 17. -_His Darkest Hour_, 351. -_His Lady of the Sonnets_, 211, 289. -_Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia_, 42, 77, 396. -_History of Emily Montague, The_, 45, 46. -_History of English-Canadian Literature to Confederation, A_, 8, 364. -_History of Manitoba_ (Gunn’s), 249. -_Hoch de Kaiser_, 327. -Hodgins, Norris, 330. -Holland, Norah, 295, 319. -_Homesteader, The_, 307. -_Honest Newsboy, The_, 325. -Hood, Robert, A., 307. -_Hoof and Claw_, 253. -_Homing Bee, The_, 202, 205. -_House of Trees, The_, 220. -_How Bateese Came Home_, 270. -Howe, John, 40, 57. -Howe, Joseph, 40, 42, 43, 56-62, 96, 109, 268, 322, 389, 391. -Huestis, Annie Campbell, 226. -Hunter-Duvar, John, 108, 323. -_Hunters of the Great North_, 402. -_Hurrah for the New Dominion_, 50. -_Huron Chief and Other Poems, The_, 48. -_Hymn of Empire_, 217. -_Hymns and Spiritual Songs_, 37, 355. - -_Ian of the Orcades_, 250. -_Ida Beresford_, 92. -_Idlers_, 206. -_If I Must_, 350. -_Ilicet_, 148. -_Immortality_, 347. -_Imperfectly Proper_, 330. -_In a Country Churchyard_, 164. -_In Candlelight Days_, 308. -_In Divers Tones_, 26, 47, 112, 113, 118-119, 121-122, 123, 214, 220. -_In Flanders Fields_, 345, 347. -_In Grey Days_, 201. -_In Memorabilia Mortis_, 224. -_Inner Door, The_, 305. -_In Noonday_, 291. -_In Orchard Glen_, 302. -_Insulters of Death, The_, 346. -_In the Afternoon_, 120. -_In the Battle Silences_, 215. -_In the House of Dreams_, 164. -_In the Shadows_, 17. -_In the Study_, 187. -_In the Village of Viger_, 17, 260. -_In the Wake of the Eighteen-Twelvers_, 308. -_Introduction to Browning_, 364. -_Irish Folk Song, An_, 214. -_Irish Poems_, 227. -_Italy in 1859_, 323. -_I Used to Wear a Gown of Green_, 292. - -Jameson, Anna Brownell, 45, 401. -Jamieson, Nina Moore, 305. -_Jess of the River_, 308. -_Jimmy Goldcoast_, 253. -_Joe_, 201. -_John Graves Simcoe_, 399. -_Johnnie Corteau_, 270. -Johnson, Pauline, 17, 18, 26, 55, 99, 102, 105, 107, 113, 128, 133, - 139-140, 160, 177, 195-209, 219, 271, 277, 278, 285. -_Joseph Howe_, 399. -_Judgment House, The_, 244, 245, 246. -_Judy of York Hill_, 306. - -_Kaleedon Road_, 144. -Kane, Paul, 401. -Keith, Marian, (_pseud._), 299, 302. -_Key of Dreams, The_, 311. -_Key of Life, The_, 215. -Kidd, Adam, 48. -_Kilmeny of the Orchard_, 301. -_Kindred of the Wild, The_, 252. -King, Rt. Hon. Mackenzie, 377, 400. -_King’s Consort, The_, 201. -Kingsford, William, 395. -_Kinship_, 17. -_Kinsmen_, 309. -Kirby, William, 43, 93-95, 96, 241, 267. -_Kitchener and Other Poems_, 275. -_Kitchener’s Work_, 351. -Knowles, Robert E., 256-257, 303. - -_Labor and the Angel_, 180, 181-183. -Lacey, Amy (Luke Allan, _pseud._), 307. -_Ladies, The_, 309. -_Lady Icicle_, 201. -_Lady Lorgnette_, 201, 208. -_Lake Huron_, 17, 188. -_Lamp of Poor Souls, The_, 282, 283. -Lampman, Archibald, 16, 17, 26, 55, 98, 99, 100, 105, 107, 110, 111, 113, - 120, 122, 127-138, 139, 141, 149, 152-153, 159, 160, 162, 163-164, 167, - 180, 184, 195, 209, 217, 219, 235, 236, 271, 284, 287, 368. -Lanigan, George T., 61, 268, 322, 324-327, 332. -_Lantern Marsh_, 313. -_Larry, or the Avenging Terrors_, 306. -_Last Robin, The_, 220. -_Last Songs from Vagabondia_, 157. -_Later Canadian Poems_, 384. -_Later Poems_, 141. -_La Tristesse_, 299. -_Laurentian Lyrics_, 295, 346, 348. -_Laurier_, 400. -Lauriston, Victor, 311. -Laut, Agnes C., 249-250, 398. -_Lazarus_, 189, 192. -Leacock, Stephen, 269, 322, 323, 328-330, 332, 379. -Lee, H. D. C., 141. -_Legislative Reviews_, 59. -Leprohon, Mrs., 241. -Le Rossignol, James, 299. -_Letterbag of the Great Western, The_, 67, 81. -Leveridge, Lilian, 346, 351. -_Life and Journal (Alline)_, 37. -_Life and Letters of Sir Edward Mortimer Archibald_, 399. -_Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie_, 399. -_Life of Lord Elgin_, 399. -_Lifting of the Mist, The_, 201. -Lighthall, William Douw, 242, 351, 382. -Lindsey, Charles, 399. -_Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris_, 229, 236-238. -_Lily-Song_, 53. -_Literary Garland, The_, 92-93, 392-393. -_Literary Lapses_, 328. -_Little Bateese_, 270. -_Little Book of Canadian Essays, A_, 379. -_Little Fauns to Proserpine, The_, 281. -_Little Hearts_, 309-310. -_Little Milliner, The_, 261. -_Little Stories of Quebec_, 299. -Livesay, Florence Randal, 295, 296, 346, 351. -_Lives of the Hunted_, 251. -_Lizbeth of the Dale_, 302. -Lloyd, Rev. Dean, 319. -_Lobstick Trail, The_, 307. -Logan, J. D., 346, 364, 385. -_Lone Wharf, The_, 17. -_Long Lane’s Turning, The_, 244. -Longley, 399. -_Lords of the North_, 249-250. -_Lord Sydenham_, 399. -_Love in a Wilderness_, 181. -_Love of the Wild_, 308. -_Lover Lads of Devon, The_, 351. -_Lover’s Diary, A_, 210, 211. -_Lover to His Lass, A_, 17, 175. -_Lower Slopes, The_, 324. -_Low Tide on Grand Pré_, 112, 142, 143, 149. -_Lullaby of the Iroquois_, 201, 208. -_Lundy’s Lane_, 165. -_Lyrics From the Hills_, 295. - -MacCrossan, Charles W., 272. -MacDonald, Elizabeth Robert, 226. -MacDonald, Peter McLaren, 295. -Macdonald, Rev. J. A., 254. -Macdonald, Wilson, 296, 297. -MacGregor, James, 133. -Machar, Agnes Maule, 226, 342, 346, 351. -Mackay, Isabel Ecclestone, 226, 227, 228, 310-311, 346, 351. -Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 401. -Mackinnon, Lilian Vaux, 305. -MacLean, H. J., 295. -MacLennan, William, 249. -MacMechan, Archibald, 239, 364, 376. -MacMurchy, Marjory, 364. -MacPhail, Sir Andrew, 239, 305, 364, 394. -MacTavish, Newton, 8, 331, 393-394. -_Magic House, The_, 162, 164. -Mahon, A. W., 358. -Mair, Charles, 18, 25, 43, 48, 55, 99-102, 132, 193, 206, 278, 334. -_Major, The_, 255. -_Making of a Premier, The_, 400. -_Malcolm’s Katie_, 52-53. -_Man from Glengarry_, 255. -_Manor House of de Villerai, The_, 93. -_Marguerite de Roberval_, 248, 249. -_Maria Chapdelaine_, 18, 305. -Marquis, T. G., 8, 248-249, 364. -Marshall, William E., 18, 43, 229, 238-239. -_Marsh Hay_, 335. -_Marshlands_, 201. -_Mary Callaghan and Me_, 213. -_Mary Shepherdess_, 281-282. -_Master of Life, The_, 242. -_Matins_, 223. -McArthur, Peter, 226, 227, 278, 330-331. -McCarroll, James, 48. -McClung, Nellie L., 299, 303. -McCollum, Alma Frances, 226. -McCrae, John, 345, 347. -McCully, Laura E., 295. -McGee, Thomas D’Arcy, 48. -McGillicuddy, Owen, 400. -_McGrath’s Bad Night_, 259. -McIlwraith, Jean N., 18, 249. -McKishnie, Archie, 308-309, 310. -McLachlan, Alexander, 48, 49-50. -_Mediaeval Hun, The_, 319. -_Memoirs of Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald_, 399. -_Men of Canada, The_, 351. -_Merchant of Venice, The, (Lanigan)_, 324. -Merkel, Andrew D., 295. -Merrill, Helen M., 226. -Middleton, Jesse Edgar, 346. -_Miracle Songs of Jesus, The_, 297. -_Mirage of the Plain, The_, 144. -_Miriam of Queens_, 305. -_Mission of the Trees, The_, 180. -_Mists of the Morning, The_, 310. -_Money Master, The_, 245. -Montgomery, Lucy M., (Mrs. Ewan Macdonald), 43, 278, 295, 299-302, 346. -_Montreal Star, The_, 8. -Moodie, Susanna, 47, 48, 339-341. -Moody, James, 39. -_Moonset_, 209. -Moore, Phil H., 402. -_Moorhouse, Hopkins_, 311. -_Mooswa_, 253. -_Mordred_, 193, 316. -_More Animal Stories_, 252. -Morgan-Powell, S., 8, 351. -_Morning_, 193. -_Morning in the West_, 290-294. -Mortimer, John T., 271. -_Mother Gives, The_, 351. -_Mother, The_, 17, 192. -_Mountain and the Lake, The_, 275, 276. -Mowatt, J. Gordon, 393. -Muddiman, Bernard, 364. -Mullins (Leprohon), Rosanna, 43, 92-93, 96. -Murdock, Beamish, 395. -Murphy, Henry, 44. -Murray, George, 49, 364. -Murray, Robert, 358-360. -_My Brave and Gallant Gentleman_, 307. -_My Discovery of England_, 329. -_My Madonna_, 274. -_My Spanish Sailor_, 243. - -_Nancy’s Pride_, 16. -_Nature and Human Nature_, 67, 79-80, 84, 86. -_Neighbors_, 307. -Neville, Valentine, 44. -_New Apocalypse, The_, 346. -_New Era_, 396. -_New Joan, The_, 293. -_New Pathology, The_, 328. -_New World Lyrics and Ballads_, 180. -_Ninth Vibration, The_, 311. -_Nocturne_, 209. -_Nocturne of Consecration, A_, 16. -North, Anison, (_pseud._), 308, 309. -_Northern Lights_, 244. -Norwood, Robert, 18, 43, 49, 211-212, 288-290, 296, 315-319, 321, 334. -_Nova Scotia Magazine, The_, 40, 389, 392. -_Nova Scotian Afloat, The_, 59. -_Nova Scotian in England, The_, 59. -_Novascotian, The_, 40, 57-59, 63, 66, 389, 391. - -_Ocean to Ocean_, 402. -_Odd Adventures_, 46. -_Ode for Keats Centenary_, 178. -_Ode for the Centenary of Shelley’s Birth, An_, 231. -_Ode on the Birthday of King George III., An_, 48. -_Ode to the Canadian Confederacy_, 114, 191. -O’Dell, Jonathan, 39. -_Off Pelorus_, 120. -_O Flower of all the World_, 214. -O’Hagan, Thomas, 346, 379. -_Oh, Not When April Wakes the Daffodils_, 351. -_Ojistoh_, 202, 207. -_Old Hoss, The_, 49. -_Old Judge, The_, 67, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87. -_Old Lady, An_, 294. -_Old Man Savarin_, 259. -_Old Spookses’ Pass_, 51-52. -Onoto Watanna (_pseud._), 313. -_On the Creek_, 120, 124. -_On the Death of Claude Debussy_, 168. -_On the Iron at Big Cloud_, 303. -_Openway_, 310. -_O Red Rose of Life_, 16. -_Orion and Other Poems_, 26, 107, 110, 112, 114, 116-117. -Osborne, Marion, 295. -_Our Canadian Literature_, 387. -_Our Lads to the Front_, 342. -_Our Little Life_, 305. -_Outcasts, The_, 253. -_Over ’Ere and Back Home_, 330. -_Overlooked_, 206. -_Over the Hills of Home_, 351. -_Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, The_, 380, 384-385. - -_Packard, Frank L._, 303. -_Pagan Love_, 307. -Parent, Etienne, 389. -Parker, Gilbert, 18, 26, 55, 94, 105, 210-214, 227, 243, 263, 267, 298, - 309. -Parkman, Francis, 396. -_Parliamentary Government in England_, 397. -Partridge, Dean, 358. -_Passing of Autumn, The_, 17. -_Passing of Oul-I-But, The_, 303. -_Pathfinders of the West_, 398. -_Patriotic Recitations and Arbor Day Exercises_, 387. -_Patrol of the Cypress Hills, The_, 244. -_Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail, The_, 255. -_Paul Farlotte_, 261. -Pennington, Amy, 295. -_Pens and Pirates_, 378. -_Penseroso_, 203. -_Perfume of the Rainbow, The_, 311. -_Persephone at Enna_, 314. -_Petherick’s Peril_, 260. -Phelps, Arthur, L., 295. -Pickthall, Marjorie L. C., 28, 140, 160, 177, 207, 278, 280-288, 296, 299, - 309, 319-321, 394. -Pierce, Dr. Lorne, 387. -_Pierre and His People_, 244. -_Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis_, (S. F. Harrison), 226. -_Piper of Arll, The_, 176, 179. -_Plaint of the Children, The_, 351. -_Plumber’s Revenge, The_, 325. -_Poems_ (A. L. 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J., 398. -_Rayton_, 308. -Reade, John, 25, 46, 48, 49, 105, 278, 364, 365. -_Recessional_, 17. -_Recorder, Acadian, The_, 391. -_Red Fox_, 252. -_Red Headed Windego_, 259. -Redpath, Beatrice, 295, 297, 346, 351. -_Reduction of Louisbourg, The_, 44. -_Reminiscences of a Raconteur_, 327-328. -_Reverie, A_, 17. -_Rhymes of a Rolling Stone_, 271. -_Richardson, Major John_, 43, 46, 55, 89-92, 96, 108, 241, 395-398. -_Riders of the Plains, The_, 207. -_Ridgeway_, 50. -_Right of Way, The_, 244, 245. -_Rilla of Ingleside_, 301. -_Rising Village, The_, 48, 96. -_Rivers of Canada, The_, 144. -Roberts, Charles, G. D., 16, 17, 18, 26, 27, 43, 47, 56, 99, 100, 102, - 105, 107, 110-126, 127, 128, 136, 138, 139, 141, 149, 154, 195, 214, 217, - 219, 220, 224, 226, 229, 231-235, 259, 247, 248, 252-253, 262, 263, 271, - 277, 278, 294, 308, 310, 349, 364, 368, 398. -Roberts, Lloyd, 294-295, 349, 350. -Roberts, Theodore, Goodridge, 308. -Robertson, John Ross, 398. -_Robespierre_, 193. -_Rododactulos_, 188. -_Rod of the Lone Patrol_, 306. -_Romany of the Snows, A_, 244. -Rose, 327. -_Rose à Charlitte_, 243. -_Rose of Acadie_, 243. -_Rose of a Nation’s Thanks, The_, 342. -Ross, G. W., 387. -Rothwell-Christie, Anna, 342, 343, 344. -_Roughing it in the Bush_, 339. -_Royal Gazette and New Brunswick Advertiser_, 390. -_Royal St. John Gazette and Nova Scotia Intelligencer_, 390. -Ryerson, Egerton, 395. - -_Salt_, 120. -Salverson, Laura Goodman, 312. -_Sam Slick_, 58, 268. -_Sam Slick’s Wise Saws and Modern Instances_, 67. -_Samson_, 217. -Sangster, Charles, 43, 55, 97-99, 132, 278. -_Sanio_, 193. -_Sapphics_, 129, 134. -_Sappho_, 142, 152. -_Sappho in Leucadia_, 314, 315. -_Sartor Resartus_, 364. -_Saul_, 48-49, 316. -Saunders, Marshall, 26, 43, 55, 105, 243, 252, 253, 298. -_Sa’-Zada Tales_, 253. -Scadding, H., 398. -Scott, Duncan Campbell, 8, 17, 18, 26, 27, 99, 102, 105, 107, 113, 133, - 138, 140, 159-183, 184, 185, 195, 209, 219, 229, 236-238, 271, 278, 284, - 351, 360, 368, 399. -Scott, Frederick, G., 17, 26, 55, 107, 113, 115, 184, 214-218, 219, - 260-264, 271, 278, 351, 371. -Scrace, Richard, (_pseud._), 278, 346. -Scriven, Joseph, 355-358. -_Sea Dogs and Men at Arms_, 346. -_Seamark, A_, 229, 233. -_Search for the Western Sea_, 402. -_Seasons of the Gods, The_, 224-225. -_Season, Ticket, The_, 42, 67, 79, 80. -_Seats of the Mighty, The_, 243, 244. -_Second Chance, The_, 303. -_Second Concession of Deer, The_ 50. -_Secret of Heroism, The_, 377. -_Sedan_, 261. -_Selections from Canadian Poets_, 387. -_Selections from Canadian Prose_, 387. -_Selections from Tennyson_, 364. -_Selections of Canadian Poetry_, 381. -Selfridge, Erica, 295. -_September_, 16. -_Sergeant Blue_, 275. -Service, Robert, 26, 27, 128, 220, 269, 271-279, 280, 281, 306, 368, 370, - 372, 373. -Seton, Ernest Thompson, 251-253, 263, 310. -Sewell, Jonathan, 39. -_Shacklocker, The_, 304. -_Shadow River_, 201, 205. -_Shamballah_, 144. -Shanly, Charles D., 48. -Sheard, Virna, 226, 278, 346, 351. -_Sheep-washing, The_, 50. -Shepard, Odell, 141. -_Shepherd’s Purse_, 296. -Sherman, Francis, 222-224. -_Shining Cross of Rigaud, The_, 259. -_Shining Ship, The_, 227-228. -_Ships of St. John, The_, 17. -_Shooting of Dan McGrew, The_, 273-274. -Shortt, Adam, 399. -_Siege of Quebec, The_, 44. -_Silent Toast, The_, 351. -Silver, Arthur, 402. -_Silver Maple, The_, 302. -Sime, J. G., 305. -_Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party_, 399. -_Sister to Evangeline, A_, 248. -_Sky Pilot, The_, 255, 256. -_Sleeping Giant_, 202, 205. -Smith, Goldwin, 110, 199. -Smith, William, 395. -Smith, William Wye, 48, 50. -Smythe, Albert Ernest Stafford, 224-226, 278, 351. -Snider, C. H. J., 308. -_Snow_, 186. -_Snowflakes and Sunbeams_, 186. -_Solitary Woodsman, The_, 123, 124. -_Song My Paddle Sings, The_, 201, 204. -_Songs of a Sourdough_, 26, 220, 271, 274, 276. -_Songs of Heroic Days_, 346. -_Songs of the Common Day_, 124, 135. -_Songs of the Great Dominion_, 382-384. -_Songs of the Prairie Land_, 297. -_Songs of the Sea Children_, 152. -_Songs of Ukraina_, 296. -_Songs of Vagabondia_, 142. -_Songster, The_, 208. -_Son of the Sea, A_, 150. -_Sons of Canada_, 400. -_Sower, The_, 17, 120, 123, 135, 277. -_Sowing Seeds in Danny_, 299, 303. -_Soul’s Quest, The_, 215. -_Span o’ Life, The_, 249. -_Specimen Spinster, The_, 299. -_Spring on Mattagami_, 165, 166, 181. -_Spring Song_, 17. -_Standard Canadian Reciter, The_, 387. -Stansbury, Joseph, 39. -_St. Cuthbert’s_, 256-257, 303. -Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 402. -Stead, Robert J. C., 271-279, 307, 372. -Stewart, George, 364, 393, 398. -_Stewart’s Quarterly_, 393. -_St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, The_, 97. -_St. Lawrence Basin and its Borderlands, The_, 402. -_Story Girl, The_, 301. -_Study of Shadows, A_, 293. -_Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, A_, 95. -Street, Eloise, 346. -Stringer, Arthur, 213, 226, 278, 310, 312, 314-315, 351. -Strong, Ruth, 346. -Sullivan, Alan, 303, 304, 305. -Sullivan, Archibald, 351. -_Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town_, 328-329. -_Swartz Diamond, The_, 260. - -_Tales of the Selkirks_, 254. -_Tall Master, The_, 247. -_Tangled in the Stars_, 220. -_Tantramar Revisited_, 120, 122. -_Tecumseh_, 49, 193, 206. -_Te Deum_, 158. -Teskey, Adeline M., 299, 308. -Thomson, Edward W., 139, 259-260. -Thomson, John Stuart, 351. -_Thor_, 217. -_Thoroughbreds_, 254. -_Three-Flower Petals_, 110. -_Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson, A_, (_A Seamark_), 233. -_Thrown In_, 331. -_Time_, 217. -_To a Canadian Aviator_, 351-353. -_To a Canadian Lad Killed in the War_, 351. -_To a Lady_, 62. -_To Ann_, 62. -_Toast, A_, 60. -Todd, Alpheus, 397. -_To England_, 191. -_To Him That Hath_, 255. -_To Mary_, 60. -_To the Birds_, 227. -_To the Linnet_, 61. -_To the Mayflower_, 61. -_To the Memory of Rupert Brooke_, 295. -_To the United States_, 191. -_Trail of Ninety-Eight, The_, 306. -_Trail of the Sandhill Stag, The_, 251. -_Trail to Lillooet, The_, 201, 208. -_Train Among the Hills, The_, 277. -_Traits of American Humor_, 67, 77. -_Translation of a Savage, The_, 244. -_Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories_, 45, 400. -_Treasure of Ho, The_, 311. -_Treasure Valley_, 302. -_Treasury of Canadian Verse, A_, 385. -Trotter, Bernard Freeman, 295, 346. -_Truce of the Manitou, The_, 144. -_Twenty-First Burr, The_, 311. -_Two Little Savages_, 252. -Tyrrell, J. W., 402. - -_Ultimate Hour, The_, 291. -_Unabsolved_, 17, 192. -_Under Canvas_, 209. -_Undertow, The_, 257. -_Unheroic North, The_, 334, 336. -_University Magazine, The_, 239, 319, 394. - -_Vagabond Song, A_, 155. -_Van Elsen_, 17, 217. -_Vapor and Blue_, 17. -_Vancouver_, 144. -_Variations on a Seventeenth Century Theme_, 169-174. -_Vestal Virgin, The_, 319. -_Vestigia_, 143, 157. -_Via Borealis_, 165, 180, 181. -_Victory in Defeat_, 334. -_Viking Blood, The_, 304. -_Viking Heart, The_, 312. -_Vikings of the Pacific, The_, 398. -_Voice and the Dusk, The_, 176. -_Voyage from Montreal Through the Continent of North America_, 401. - -_Wacousta_, 46, 69, 89, 91-92. -Walker, Louisa, 361. -Wallace, Frederick William, 303-305, 319. -_Wanderlied_, 287. -_Watchers in the Swamp, The_, 263. -_Watchers of the Trails, The_, 252. -_Wanderings of An Artist Among the Indian Tribes of North America_, 401. -Watson, Albert D., 361, 387. -Watson, Robert, 307. -_Wave-Won_, 206. -_Wa-Wa_, 144. -_Way of the Sea, The_, 304. -_Weather Breeder, The_, 335. -_Weaver, The_, 17. -_Weavers, The_, 244, 245, 246, 247. -_Web of Time, The_, 257. -_Week, The_, 110, 199. -_We, too, Shall Sleep_, 17. -_Welcome Home_, 342, 343. -Welsh, Canon, 358. -_Western Rambles_, 42, 59. -_Westminster, The_, 254. -Wetherald, Ethelwyn, 220, 278. -_What a Friend We Have in Jesus_, 355-357. -_What Time the Morning Stars Arise_, 221. -_When Albani Sang_, 270. -_When Half Gods Go_, 319. -_When Valmond Came to Pontiac_, 244, 245, 246. -_Where the Sugar Maple Grows_, 299. -_White Comrade_, 291, 292. -_White Garden, The_, 351. -_White Gull, The_, 148, 293. -_White Wampum, The_, 18, 200, 201. -_Why Don’t You Get Married?_ 330. -Wigle, Hamilton, 272. -_Wild Animals I Have Known_, 251. -Wilkins, Harriet A., 342. -Williamson, Mrs. J. 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margin-bottom:0; text-indent:0; } - .hang { padding-left:1.5em; text-indent:-1.5em; } - </style> - <style type="text/css"> - h1 { font-size:1em; text-align:center; } - h2 { font-size:1.3em; text-align:center; } - h3 { font-size:1.3em; text-align:center; } - h4 { font-size:1em; text-align:center; } - .poetry-container { font-size:.9em; - margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom:.5em; padding-left:4em; - margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; } - .literal-container { margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom:.5em } - .dropcap {font-size: 250%; margin:0 0.1em 0 0;} - .sc { font-variant:small-caps; font-size:120%; } - .summary {font-size:.8em; } - div.lgc { margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom:.5em } - p { margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em; } - div.blockquote { margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom:.5em; } - </style> - </head> - <body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Highways of Canadian Literature, by J. D. Logan</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:table'> - <div style='display:table-row'> - <div style='display:table-cell; padding-right:0.5em'>Title:</div> - <div style='display:table-cell; padding-right:0.5em'>Highways of Canadian Literature</div> - </div> - <div style='display:table-row;'> - <div style='display:table-cell'></div> - <div style='display:table-cell'>A Synoptic Introduction to the Literary History of Canada (English) from 1760 to 1924</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: J. D. Logan and Donald G. French</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 7, 2021 [eBook #65557]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Project Gutenberg team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIGHWAYS OF CANADIAN LITERATURE ***</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:350px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0' style='margin-top:1em;font-size:2em;'>Highways <span class='it'>of</span></p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:2em;'>Canadian Literature</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>A Synoptic Introduction to the Literary</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>History of Canada (English)</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>from 1760 to 1924</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='it'>By</span> J. D. Logan</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:x-small'>M.A. (Dalhousie), Ph.D. (Harvard), Hon. Litt. D. (Acadia).</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:x-small'>Lecturer on Canadian Literature, Acadia University, Nova Scotia</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='it'>and</span> Donald G. French</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:x-small'>Honorary President Canadian Literature Club of Toronto.</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:x-small'>Author of <span class='it'>The Appeal of Poetry</span>; Editor</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:x-small'><span class='it'>Standard Canadian Reciter</span>, Etc.</span></p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk100'/> - -<table id='tab1' summary='' class='center' style='font-size:.8em;'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 10em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 7em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><span class='gesp'>McCLELLAND</span></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'>&</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle2'><span class='gesp'>STEWART</span></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='gesp'>PUBLISHERS</span></span></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'>- -</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle2'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='gesp'>TORONTO</span></span></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style='margin-top:2em;'> <!-- rend=';fs:.8em;' --> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:.8em;'>Copyright, Canada, 1924</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:.8em;'>by McClelland and Stewart, Limited, Toronto</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0' style='margin-top:15em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:.8em;'>Printed in Canada</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='3' id='Page_3'></span></p> - -<div class='lgc' style='margin-top:4em;'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>TO</p> -<p class='line0'>COLONEL WILLIAM ERNEST THOMPSON, LL.B.</p> -<p class='line0'>District Officer Commanding Military District</p> -<p class='line0'>No. 6 During the World War,</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'><span class='sc'>A Governor of Dalhousie College</span>,</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'><span class='sc'>for</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='sc'>The Gift of His Loyal and</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='sc'>Inexhaustible Friendship</span>.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk101'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Save laughter and the love of friends.</span></p> -<p class='line0'> —<span class='it'>Hilaire Belloc.</span></p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h3><span class='pageno' title='5' id='Page_5'></span>Preface</h3> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='it'><span class='dropcap'>H</span><span class='sc'>ighways</span> of Canadian Literature</span> provides teachers -and students in educational institutions and readers -in general with a complete history of the Canadian literature -extant in the English language. In very recent years -Canadian universities and colleges have added to their -curricula systematic study of the verse and prose of the -chief writers born in or resident in the Dominion. Also, -teachers in Canadian academies and high schools, as occasion -affords opportunity, inform their pupils about the -lives and work of Canadian authors. Further: as expressive -of the new and increasing interest in Canadian -Literature, Literary Clubs, Reading Clubs, and Reading -Circles have been formed, and constantly are being formed, -to promote ‘community’ study of the writings of Canadian -men and women of letters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hitherto, however, those who wished to be informed -on the literary history of Canada and the status of Canadian -Literature, had to depend on Anthologies, summary -annalistic Sketches, and biographical Compendia. The -earlier anthologies comprise verse either chronologically or -topically arranged, but some of them contain, in an Appendix, -biographical notes on the authors represented in -the volumes. The later anthologies, as, for instance, -Garvin’s <span class='it'>Canadian Poets</span>, contain, besides the ‘selections,’ -biographical and critical introductions. These anthologies, -though comprehensive, informing and delightful ‘source-books,’ -do not, by themselves, disclose the <span class='it'>development</span> of -Canadian Literature. The annalistic sketches or compendia, -on the other hand, are too sketchy, too annalistic. -They do not tell the story of the development of Canadian -<span class='pageno' title='6' id='Page_6'></span> -Literature with any attempt at perspective or at disclosing -its social and spiritual origins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was, therefore, pressing need for a comprehensive -Synoptic History of Canadian Literature. Such a work -would furnish the teacher, the student, and the general -reader with a ‘method’ of reading Canadian Literature -with philosophical insight or with historical and critical -perspective. It would distinguish certain ‘epochs’ and -‘movements’ in the literary history of Canada, and make -clear how Canadian poets and prose writers are related -to one another and have influenced one another, and how, -gradually, they expressed in literature the slowly emerging -consciousness of a national spirit and a national destiny -in the Dominion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That is what <span class='it'>Highways of Canadian Literature</span> attempts -to do. In scope it is a complete or comprehensive -survey of literary ‘epochs’ and ‘movements’ in Canada, -beginning with the Puritan Migration from the American -Colonies in 1760 and closing at the end of the first quarter -of the 20th century. In method it is both historical and -critical. It orientates the ‘backgrounds’ of Canadian -Literature, traces the social and spiritual origins of that -literature, remarks special ‘influences,’ demarcates several -‘epochs’ and ‘movements,’ discusses the importance of outstanding -Canadian authors, and supplies critical estimates -of Canadian prose and poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is designed for the use of teachers and students in -universities, colleges, academies, seminaries, and high -schools, and of general readers. Together with suitable -anthologies or selections it will furnish teachers and -students with adequate equipment for a systematic study -of Canadian Literature, and general readers and members -of literary clubs equally adequate equipment for ‘home’ or -‘club’ study of the development of Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Chapters on Post-Confederation Fiction (Chapters -XVI and XVII—Novelists and Short Story Writers of the -<span class='pageno' title='7' id='Page_7'></span> -First Renaissance and Chapter XXI—Fiction Writers of the -Second Renaissance) were written, expressly at my solicitation, -by Mr. Donald G. French, whose wide and intimate -knowledge of the forms, technics, and history of Canadian -fiction is recognized throughout Canada. For many years -he has been assiduous, as an essayist and lecturer, in reviewing -and promoting the study of Canadian imaginative -prose fiction, and his experience of many years as reviewer, -and later as literary editor for a book publishing house, has -given him special opportunities to study the history and -observe the evolution of Canadian imaginative prose. -Moreover, since Mr. French is also well versed in the -forms, history, and technics of Canadian poetry, and since -he has a temperamental patience, which engenders in him -the ‘wise passiveness’ essential to the just critic, I engaged -for the book as a whole his taste and judgment, in regard -to treatment and style, and his knowledge of facts of Canadian -literary history. The text of the book is therefore -enhanced in treatment and style, as well as in critical justice, -by Mr. French’s contribution, and by his critical -revision of the whole work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I wish, here, specially to remark my ideal and aim in -writing <span class='it'>Highways of Canadian Literature</span>. It is, I believe, -the duty of the literary historian and critic to respect his -subject and to present it under its most significant and -engaging aspects in order that he may win others to equal -respect for his subject. Canadian Literature is important -at least to Canadians; and, whatever be its comparative -aesthetic and artistic dignity, it is an integral part or -branch of English Literature. This book will justify itself -if it compels Canadians to recognize the importance of -their own literature, and wins other peoples to a decent -respect for a literature which, while still in its adolescence, -shows evidences of attaining to independent and vigorous -adult estate—in the event of which Canadian literary creation, -taste, and judgment will be based, not on the work of -<span class='pageno' title='8' id='Page_8'></span> -British or of American masters of poetry and imaginative -prose, but on that of Canadian masters. Meanwhile, this -book aims to disclose to Canadians the social and spiritual -importance of their own literature and to determine its -place or distinction in English Literature—in short, to promote -in Canada and abroad what may aptly be called ‘the -higher study’ of Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To Mr. Newton MacTavish, M.A., Editor of <span class='it'>The -Canadian Magazine</span>, Mr. R. H. Hathaway, Mr. M. O. -Hammond, Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, Mr. John Murray -Gibbon, Mr. S. Morgan-Powell, Literary Editor of <span class='it'>The -Montreal Star</span>, Mr. John Garvin, B.A., Editor of <span class='it'>Canadian -Poets</span>, <span class='it'>Canadian Poems of the Great War</span>, etc., Dr. Ray -Palmer Baker, author of <span class='it'>A History of English-Canadian -Literature to the Confederation</span>, and Mr. T. G. Marquis, -author of <span class='it'>English-Canadian Literature</span>, I am indebted for -advice, criticism, and much practical aid in preparing the -text. To Miss Annie Donohoe, Librarian of the Nova -Scotia Legislative Library and Mrs. Mary Kinley Ingraham, -M.A., Librarian of Acadia University, I am indebted -for assistance in research; and to Miss Laura P. Carten, -Editor of The Children’s Page, Halifax Herald, for reading -the ‘galley proofs’ of the text. To Colonel William -Ernest Thompson, LL.B., Honorary Secretary of the Board -of Governors of Dalhousie University, my indebtedness is -great and is acknowledged in the Dedication to this book.</p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;margin-top:.5em;'><span class='sc'>J. D. Logan.</span></p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;'>Acadia University, Wolfville, N.S.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='9' id='Page_9'></span></p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.5em;'>Contents</p> - -<div class='blockquote100percent'> - -<table id='tab2' summary='' class='center'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 2em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 30em;'/> -<col span='1' style='width: 2.5em;'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><span style='font-size:x-small'> PAGE</span></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Dedication</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Preface</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_5'>5</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Preliminary Survey</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_15'>15</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'>I. PRE-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE (1760-1887)</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER I</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Social and Spiritual Bases</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_33'>33</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Social and Spiritual Bases of Canadian Literature—The Puritan and Loyalist Migrations—The Significance of the Scots Migration—The Primacy of Nova Scotia in the Creative Literature of Canada—Literary Species in Ontario and Quebec.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER II</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Incidental Pioneer Literature</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Incidental Pre-Confederation Literature of Canada—Alexander Henry’s Travels—Mrs. Brooke’s Novels—Mrs. Jameson’s Nature-Studies—The Émigré Pre-Confederation Literature of Canada—Mrs. Susanna Moodie—Adam Kidd—John Reade—George Murray—Archibald McLachlan—William Wye Smith and Isabella Crawford.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER III</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Joseph Howe</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Nativistic Literature of Canada—Joseph Howe as Founder of the Independent Prose, Creative Journalism, Political Literature, Literary and Forensic Oratory—as Patriotic, Descriptive, and Humorous Poet—and as the Discoverer and Sponsor of Thomas Chandler Haliburton.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER IV</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Thomas Chandler Haliburton</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Nativistic Literature of Canada—Thomas Chandler Haliburton—First Systematic Humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples—Creator of a New Type of Satiric Humor and Comic Characterization.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'>II. POST-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'>(1887-1924)</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>A. The First Renaissance</span></span></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER V</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Romance and Poetry</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_89'>89</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Nativistic Literature of Canada—The Historical Romancers—John Richardson—Rosanna Mullins—and Others. The Poets—Goldsmith—Sangster—Mair.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER VI</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>The Systematic School</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The First Renaissance in Canadian Literature—The Systematic School and Period—Roberts and his Colleagues.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER VII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Charles G. D. Roberts</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_110'>110</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Roberts Sponsor to Lampman—Literary Father of Bliss Carman—Master of Verse Technique—Forms of his Verse, and its Qualities.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER VIII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Archibald Lampman</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_127'>127</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>An Interpreter of the Essential Spirit of Canada—Study of Lampman’s ‘Sapphics’—Power of Humanizing Nature—Excellence of his Sonnets—Consummate Artist of Natural Beauty.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER IX</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Bliss Carman</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_139'>139</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>As a World-Poet—Creative Melodist—Periods of his Poetry—Singing Quality and its Method—Lyrist of the Sea and of Love—Treatment of Nature.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER X</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Duncan Campbell Scott</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_159'>159</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Influences on his Work—Old World Culture—Austere Intellectualism—Music and Painting—Association with Lampman—Scott, Campbell, and Lampman compared—Influence of English poets—Technical Excellences—Revelation of the Indian Heart—Mystical Symbolism.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XI</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Wilfrid Campbell</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_184'>184</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>As an Objective Nature Painter—Humanized Substance of his Verse—Patriotism and Brotherhood—Dramatic Monody—Poetical Tragedies and Dramas.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Pauline Johnson</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_195'>195</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Her Ancestry and its Influences—Literary and Musical Qualities of Work—Stages of Development in Spiritual Vision—Picturesque Color Verse.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XIII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Parker and Scott, F. G.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_210'>210</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Parker as a Sonneteer of Spiritual Love—Origin and Theme of a Lover’s Diary—Musical and Colorful Lyrical Verse—Scott’s Poetry a Reflection of his Personality—Distinguished as the ‘Poet of the Spirit’—Chief Qualities of his Poetry.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XIV</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Minor Poets</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Term ‘Minor’ Defined—Ethelwyn Wetherald—Jean Blewett—Francis Sherman—A. E. S. Smythe—S. Frances Harrison—Arthur Stringer—Peter McArthur—Isabel Ecclestone Mackay.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XV</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Elegiac Monodists</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_229'>229</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Elegiac Monodists of Canada—Charles G. D. Roberts—Bliss Carman—Wilfred Campbell—Duncan Campbell Scott—William Marshall—James De Mille.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XVI</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Novelists</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_241'>241</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Fictionists of the Systematic School—The Historical Romancers—Lighthall—Saunders—Parker—Marquis—Maclennan and McIlwraith—Agnes C. Laut—Wilfred Campbell—Charles G. D. Roberts—The Romancers of Animal Psychology—Thompson Seton—Roberts—Saunders—Fraser—The Evangelical Romancers—Ralph Connor—R. E. Knowles.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XVII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Short Story Writers</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_258'>258</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Short Story Fictionists of the Systematic School—E. W. Thomson—Duncan Campbell Scott—Charles G. D. Roberts—Gilbert Parker—Ernest Thompson Seton—W. A. Fraser.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>B. The New Genre</span></span></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XVIII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>William Henry Drummond</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_265'>265</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The New Canadian Genre of Idyllic Poetry—William Henry Drummond, Interpreter of the Habitant—Poet of Social Democracy in Canada.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>C. The Decadent Interim</span></span></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XIX</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>The Vaudeville School</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_271'>271</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Decadent Interim in Canadian Literature—The Vaudeville School of Poets—Robert W. Service, Robert J. C. Stead, and Others.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>D. The Second Renaissance</span></span></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XX</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>The Restoration Period</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_280'>280</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Restoration or Second Renaissance Period in Canadian Literature—New Forms, Themes, and Social Ideals—The Poets—Marjorie Pickthall—Robert Norwood—Katherine Hale—and Others.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXI</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Fiction Writers</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_298'>298</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Community Novel—Montgomery—Keith—McClung—Le Rossignol. Institutional Fiction—Packard—Sullivan—Duncan—Wallace and Others. Realistic Romance—Service—Cody—Stead, etc. Historical Fiction—Snider—Anison North—Teskey—McKishnie—Cooney. Imaginative Fiction—Pickthall—Mackay. Miscellaneous Types—McKishnie—Sullivan—Hémon—Sime. The New Realism—Salverson—de la Roche Cornell, etc.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>The Poetic Dramatists</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_314'>314</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Poetic Dramatists of the Second Renaissance—Arthur Stringer—Robert Norwood—Marjorie Pickthall, and Others.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXIII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Humorists</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_322'>322</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Humorists of Canada: Pre-Confederation—Haliburton—Howe—De Mille—Duvar—Post-Confederation—Lanigan—Cotes—Drummond—Ham: New School—Leacock—Donovan—Davis—MacTavish—McArthur—Hodgins.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXIV</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>National Stage Drama</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_333'>333</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Rise of Native and National Realistic Stage Drama in Canada: The Little Theatre and the Work of Carroll Aikins and Merrill Denison.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col3 tdStyle5' colspan='3'>III. SPECIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS (1760-1924)</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXV</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>The War Poetry of Canada</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_339'>339</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Mrs. Moodie—Annie Rothwell Christie—Isabella Valancy Crawford—John McCrae—Canadian Poems of the Great War.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXVI</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Hymn Writers</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Hymn Writers of Canada—Alline—Clelland—Scriven—Murray—Scott—Rand—Dewart—Walker—and Others.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXVII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Literary Criticism</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_362'>362</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Literary Criticism in Canada—Schools, Aims, Methods, and Defects—New Synoptic Method Applied to Poetry of Overseas Dominions.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXVIII</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Essayists and Color Writers</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_374'>374</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The Essayists and Color Writers of Canada—Carman—MacMechan—Blake—Katherine Hale—King—Deacon—Leacock.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXIX</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Anthologies</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_380'>380</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Canadian Birthday Book (Seranus)—Dewart’s Selections from Canadian Poets—Lighthall’s ‘Songs of the Great Dominion’—Oxford Book of Canadian Verse—Garvin’s Canadian Poets, etc.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXX</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Canadian Journalism</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_388'>388</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Canadian Journalism in Relation to Permanent Canadian Literature; A Summary Critical History of the Chief Canadian Newspapers and Magazines.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle5' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:smaller'>CHAPTER XXXI</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'><span class='sc'>Narrative Literature</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_395'>395</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Narrative Literature—History—Biography—Exploration—Travels—Sport or Open-Air Life.</span></td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'></td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle3'> </td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle3' colspan='2'>INDEX</td><td class='tab2c3 tdStyle4'><a href='#Page_405'>405</a></td></tr> -</table> - -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h3><span class='pageno' title='15' id='Page_15'></span>Preliminary Survey</h3> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>o</span> write properly a Synoptic History of Canadian -Literature, the historian must first evaluate extant -Canadian verse and prose from the point of view of the -Whole. Secondly, he must treat Canadian Literature as -a Whole in respect to its Genetic bases and relations. In -presenting this synoptic history, Canadian Literature is -considered not as a special, isolated, and chance product, -but as the definitive outcome of racial, naturalistic, social, -economic, and political conditions within the vast Dominion -itself, and of other conditions brought into existence by -racial affinities and social, political, economic, and spiritual -relations with the people of the United States and the -United Kingdom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The general treatment proceeds on an <span class='it'>a priori</span> presumption -and a critical principle. The <span class='it'>a priori</span> presumption is -that in Canada where verse and prose which possess all degrees -of worth have for more than a century and a half been -produced in the English language and which had English -poetry and prose for models, there must be a respectable -residue of authentic literature written by native-born and -resident <span class='it'>émigré</span> Canadian authors. In a phrase, the <span class='it'>fact</span> -of a Canadian Literature is presumed. The critical principle -employed in the treatment is this: that however -insignificant, from the point of view of world literature, -Canadian Literature may be, it is <span class='it'>important to Canadians -themselves</span>. For however unimportant Canadian historical -romances, Canadian humor, Canadian nature-poetry, Canadian -poetic drama, Canadian realistic fiction, Canadian -monodies may be when compared with the same <span class='it'>genres</span> in -English Literature, they are the representatives of Canadian -culture and of the Canadian creative spirit; if they were not -<span class='pageno' title='16' id='Page_16'></span> -extant there would be no Canadian Literature at all; and -thus the Canadian people would be spiritually poorer and -less significant not only to themselves but also to the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some fair show of the fact of an authentic Canadian -Literature may be evident from the following considerations. -Let it be granted, as axiomatic, that verse and -prose rise to the dignity of literature when they express -and promote existence ideally—by delighting the aesthetic -senses, by consoling the heart, by inspiring the moral -imagination, by exalting or transporting the spirit. Judged -by this four-fold test, the best Canadian poetry and -imaginative prose will compare favorably with the admittedly -authentic poetry and prose of many of the significant -British and United States authors in the mid-Victorian era. -In Canadian verse in English are genuine ‘gems’ of poetry, -which, for vision, imagery, passion, lyrical eloquence, verbal -music, and mastery of form and technique, are hardly, -if at all, surpassed by the poetry of Coleridge, Shelley, -Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Swinburne.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If this is doubted, in part or in whole, then apply this -concrete pragmatic test:—For exquisite tenderness and -simple pathos: with Tennyson’s <span class='it'>Break, Break, Break</span>, compare -Charles G. D. Roberts’ sweetly sad lyric, <span class='it'>Grey Rocks -and Greyer Sea</span>. For delicacy or for poignancy in expressing -the passion and meaning of love: with Swinburne’s -<span class='it'>These Many Years</span>, compare Roberts’ <span class='it'>O Red Rose of Life</span>, -or with Browning’s <span class='it'>Evelyn Hope</span>, compare Roberts’ -<span class='it'>A Nocturne of Consecration</span>. For power to visualize the -ghostly and ghastly: with Coleridge’s <span class='it'>The Ancient Mariner</span> -compare the vivid, uncanny pictures of a spectral ship and -crew in Bliss Carman’s <span class='it'>Nancy’s Pride</span>. For beauty of -descriptive imagery, verbal music, and expressive correspondence -of emotion with the mood of the season in nature-poetry: -with Keats’ <span class='it'>Ode to Autumn</span>, compare Archibald -Lampman’s lovely lyric of earth, <span class='it'>September</span>. For dignity -of thought and mastery of technic: with the finest sonnets -<span class='pageno' title='17' id='Page_17'></span> -of Wordsworth, compare Roberts’ <span class='it'>The Sower</span>, or those -noble sonnets by Lampman, beginning, ‘Not to be conquered -by these headlong days,’ ‘Come with thine unveiled -worlds, O truth of Night,’ and ‘There is a beauty at the -goal of life.’ For dramatic power in sounding the depths -of elemental passion and emotion: with Tennyson’s <span class='it'>Rizpah</span>, -compare Campbell’s profound utterance of the heart of -woman in <span class='it'>The Mother</span>, or with the more subtle of Browning’s -dramatic monologues compare Campbell’s psychological -revealments in <span class='it'>Unabsolved</span>, and in <span class='it'>The Confession -of Tama the Wise</span>. For the dainty, piquant expression of -all those experiences which delight and console us in our -humaner moments of reflection and reverie, let these pure -lyrics be a daily rosary:—F. G. Scott’s <span class='it'>The Cripple</span>, <span class='it'>Van -Risen</span>, and <span class='it'>A Reverie</span>; Campbell’s <span class='it'>The Hills and the Sea</span>, -<span class='it'>Vapor and Blue</span>, and <span class='it'>Lake Huron</span>; Lampman’s <span class='it'>We, too, -Shall Sleep</span>, <span class='it'>The Weaver</span> and <span class='it'>The Passing of Autumn</span>; -Carman’s <span class='it'>Spring Song</span>, commencing ‘Make me over, -mother April,’ <span class='it'>The Ships of St. John</span>, and <span class='it'>The Grave Tree</span>; -Roberts’ <span class='it'>The Lone Wharf</span>, <span class='it'>Lake Aylesford</span>, <span class='it'>Afoot</span>, <span class='it'>Kinship</span>, -and <span class='it'>Recessional</span>; Duncan Campbell Scott’s <span class='it'>The End -of the Day</span>, and <span class='it'>A Lover to His Lass</span>; and Pauline Johnson’s -<span class='it'>In the Shadows</span>. Consider, too, that the satiric humor -and comic characterization of Thomas Chandler Haliburton -are not only in some respects unsurpassed by the art of -Cervantes, Dickens, Daudet, and Mark Twain, and that -Haliburton’s comic epigrams and moral maxims and certain -of his comic characters have become part of the warp -and woof of English literature. It is also indubitable that -the two volumes of short stories of Duncan Campbell Scott—<span class='it'>In -the Village of Viger</span> and <span class='it'>The Witching of Elspie</span>—are -not excelled either in originality of conception or in -technical artistry, and certainly not in spiritual beauty and -pathos, by the short stories of Maupassant in France, of -Stevenson or Hewlett in England, of Cable or Mary Wilkins -Freeman in the United States. -<span class='pageno' title='18' id='Page_18'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>In two other fields, the elegiac monody and poetic -drama, Canadian poets have produced distinctive and impressive -literature. It is admitted by British and United -States critics that the threnodies of Campbell, Carman, -Roberts, Duncan Campbell Scott, Marshall, and De Mille -are distinctly noble in conception and imagery and artistically -finished, and would be worthy of the genius even -of Milton, Shelley, Keats, Arnold, and Emerson, and deserve -to be placed in the company of the other fine -threnodies written in the English language. It is also admitted -by British and United States critics that the poetic -dramas of Mair, Campbell, and Norwood, whether embodying -Biblical, Arthurian, or Canadian legends and romantic -characters, show authentic genius of dramatic conception -and a notable distinction in technical structure and artistry -while, to their credit, avoiding what Edmund Gosse has -called the ‘violences and verbosities’ of the Elizabethan -Tradition and of the Restoration and later poetic drama.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In England, at least as early as the ‘nineties’ of the last -century, the fact of a respectable Canadian literature received -a sort of spasmodic recognition. A genuine interest -in it, or at least in Canadian poetry, was evoked in the -United Kingdom by the visit of the late Pauline Johnson -to London and her recitals there in 1894. As a matter of -fact, Pauline Johnson’s first volume of verse <span class='it'>The White -Wampum</span> was published originally in London in 1895. -Again: with the permanent residence of Sir Gilbert Parker, -and other Canadian men and women of letters, as, for -instance, Miss Jean McIlwraith and Miss Lily Dougall, in -England, the interest in Canadian Literature, on the part -of the British people and critics, was very considerably -intensified.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the World War caused, first, an intenser sense -of the unity of the Motherland and Canada, and, secondly, -a plethora of verse and prose, especially verse, by Canadians -in the field in France and in Flanders, and by -<span class='pageno' title='19' id='Page_19'></span> -Canadians at home, there arose in England a definite and -systematic movement to promote in the United Kingdom -the recognition and study of the literary history and literature -of Canada, or at least Canadian literature written in -the nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth -century. Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen -College, Oxford, who for some time during the late war -was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, engaged in a serious -and sympathetic study of the literature of Canada, and -lectured on Canadian literature at the Colonial Institute, -London, and elsewhere. Moreover, Sir Herbert Warren, -then also President of the Poetry Society of London, had a -by-law passed which stipulated that living Canadian authors -should be recognized as non-resident members of the Poetry -Society of London; and Canadian authors were invited to -send copies of their published verse and prose to the -Librarian of the Poetry Society, for cataloguing and exhibition -in the reading room of the Society. Besides Sir -Herbert Warren, two other British lecturers of established -reputation—Miss Louise Bagley and Miss Julie Huntsman—devoted -themselves to systematic lecturing on Canadian -literature, verse and prose, in certain notable educational -institutions in London and in provincial centres in England. -Moreover, since the late war the works of Canadian -authors have been in increasing numbers either published -in England simultaneously with their publication in other -countries, or have been first published in England and -later republished in Canada, and in the United States.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In these facts, therefore, we have a kind of empirical -proof or pragmatic test that in the United Kingdom there -has existed for a considerable time a genuinely respectful -recognition of the fact of a Canadian literature in the -English language.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the purposes of a Synoptic History of Canadian -Literature in the English language a significant year is that -of 1760. For that year marks both the Fall of Montreal -<span class='pageno' title='20' id='Page_20'></span> -(following the Fall of Quebec in 1759) and the Puritan -Migration from New England to Maugerville, on the St. -John River, and to the valleys of western Nova Scotia, in -‘Nova Scotia,’ which at the time embraced the mainland -of what is now Nova Scotia, as well as New Brunswick, and -part of Maine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The significance of this date for a History of Canadian -Literature in English will be realized by reflecting that -from 1760 onwards until Confederation in 1867,—that is, -a period of one hundred years—the two pioneer Provinces -of the later Dominion, Quebec and the original Nova Scotia, -and, in due time, Ontario, came under the influence of a -specific British and a specific New England and Loyalist -civilization and culture which essentially determined the -political, social, and spiritual ideas and ideals of the -English-speaking people in Canada. These specifically -pioneer and pre-Confederation ideas and ideals form the -social and spiritual bases of Canadian Literature in English, -from 1760 to 1867.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>More particularly, it is important to note that the -struggle of the British North American Provinces to realize -the ideals of Responsible Government, which the Puritan -settlers brought with them and which were effected in 1848 -in three of the Provinces later confederated, caused the -first awakening of the literary spirit, and the actual creation -of the first nativistic literature, in Canada. This struggle -for Responsible Government and of other higher spiritual -interests and ideals before 1848 and afterwards, including -the later struggle for political union (Confederation) of -the Provinces, not only incited Canadian poets and prose -writers to literary expression during the period, but also -largely determined the form, substance, and mood or -temper of that literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A distinction must be drawn between (1) the literature -written in or about Canada by British authors, visiting or -sojourning in the Canadas and the Maritime Provinces, as, -<span class='pageno' title='21' id='Page_21'></span> -for instance, Tom Moore’s <span class='it'>Canadian Boat Song</span> (1804) -and much other verse and prose down to Louis Hémon’s -realistic romance of French-Canada, <span class='it'>Maria Chapdelaine</span> -(1922), all of which will be noted but will be denominated -the ‘Incidental’ Literature; and (2) the literature which was -written by permanently resident <span class='it'>émigrés</span> and by native-born -citizens in the <span class='it'>separate</span> (unconfederate) Provinces, -Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas, up to the -year of Confederation, which will be designated the -‘Nativistic’ Literature; and (3) the literature, after Confederation, -written by native-born Canadians, which will -be called the ‘Native and National’ Literature of Canada. -These literary distinctions themselves are demanded by an -important demarcation in the social groups which, from the -Fall of Montreal in 1760 and the Puritan Migration from -New England in the same year up to the last Loyalist -Migration, in 1786, from New England and the other -revolutionary States, formed the social and cultural units -of the Anglo-Saxon civilization in what, after the acknowledgment -of American Independence and up to the -Confederation of the Canadian Provinces, was known -definitively as British North America.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Following 1760 and the British Occupation of Montreal -and Quebec City, the civilization and culture of the social -groups in these centres and, later, in the Loyalist centres -in Ontario, were on another and lower level than the culture -and civilization in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. -Moreover, the literature written by the groups of English-speaking -people, sojourning or permanently resident in the -Canadas, neither sprang from the social and spiritual -necessities which created the literature of the Maritime -Provinces in their Puritan and Loyalist period, nor possessed -the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of the literature -produced in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the -Puritan and Loyalist period of their history.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Anglo-Saxon civilization and culture in Montreal -<span class='pageno' title='22' id='Page_22'></span> -and Quebec, after the British Occupation (1760), was -highly military and practical; that is to say, materialistic. -For the English-speaking people in Quebec were concerned -wholly with the civil and military administration of Quebec -City and Province, and the English-speaking people in -Montreal were concerned chiefly with the development of -trade, particularly the fur trade, under men who were adventurers -much more than they were colonizers and -civilizers. Naturally, therefore, Canadian Literature in -English in the Province of Quebec chiefly consisted of -chronicles, annals, and narratives (historical, or of adventure); -and, secondly, whenever it happened to be pure -literature, comprised verse and prose written by cultured -visitors from the Motherland; and thus in all cases this -‘Incidental’ Pioneer Canadian Literature in English in the -Province of Quebec was British in inspiration, form, and -aim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the other hand, the Puritan and Loyalist migrations -to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, particularly Nova -Scotia, from 1760 to 1783 and later, comprised groups of -English-speaking people who were intellectually cultured -and spiritually-minded. The literature, verse and prose, -which they produced was the urgent expression of political, -social, and spiritual needs; and, being for the most part -satiric, was modelled on the pre-revolutionary literature of -their relatives in New England and the other Atlantic -States, which, in its time, had been modelled on the satiric -neo-classical verse and the polemic and satiric prose of the -eighteenth century in England.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So that the genius of the literature written in the -Province of Quebec from the British Occupation of Montreal -to the triumph of Responsible Government in 1848, -and somewhat later, was pragmatic rather than literary; -whereas the genius of the literature produced in the same -period in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, particularly in -Nova Scotia, was definitively literary in spirit and form. -<span class='pageno' title='23' id='Page_23'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The civilization and culture of the Loyalist centres in -Ontario, brought in by the Loyalist Migrations, 1783-1786, -and later by the settlements of British-born <span class='it'>émigrés</span>, chiefly -discharged soldiers, officials, and mechanics, after the close -of the Napoleonic wars, 1815, were essentially practical and -materialistic. On the whole the literature produced in -Ontario, particularly up to the triumph of Responsible -Government was, as in Quebec Province, a literature of -annals and chronicles and narratives. However, during -this period and onwards to Confederation, particularly after -the war of 1812 and during the rebellion of 1837, there -appeared in the Canadas some genuinely aesthetic verse and -prose, written by British-born sojourners or permanent -<span class='it'>émigrés</span> and by native authors.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, -several other migrations of small groups of English-speaking -people to Nova Scotia and the Canadas, notably a -group of Scots. The English Migration in 1749, under -Cornwallis, to Halifax was of no significance in the literary -history of Canada; nor were the Swiss and German Migrations -to Nova Scotia of literary significance. On the other -hand, the Scots Migration to Pictou, Nova Scotia, 1773, -had a most decided <span class='it'>intellectual</span> influence not only on Nova -Scotia, but also on the whole of what is now known as -Canada. It had, however, no influence on specific <span class='it'>literary</span> -culture and literary creation, save Journalism, in Canada -as a whole.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, it must be observed that in literary culture -and the production of literature in the English language -in Canada from 1760 to Confederation, taking these merely -as convenient dates, Nova Scotia (including New Brunswick) -during the Puritan and Loyalist period and up to -the triumph of Responsible Government, and even still -later, not only produced the most significant and authentic -literature, but also Nova Scotia is to be regarded as the -first home of an originally ‘Nativistic’ Literature produced -in Canada. -<span class='pageno' title='24' id='Page_24'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Up to Confederation there could not be, as there was -not, any innate and natural sentiment of Canadian nationality -in the hearts of the people. The motive of Confederation -was not based on sentiment but on practical political -vision and expediency. The ideal of Confederation, before -it was achieved, was wholly an intellectual concept. -If, therefore, the Canadian Confederacy were to endure, -it was imperative that the intellectual ideal, for the factual -realization of it, should become powerful over the hearts -and imagination of the Canadian people after the fact of -Confederation in 1867—that there should develop, or be -developed, in the souls of the Canadian people a definitive -sentiment of nationality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This meant that following the consummation of Confederation -the people of Canada should find themselves -pledged to and engaged in a distinctly new and novel -political and social program. This program was chiefly one -of political and social consolidation and of industrial and -commercial expansion. It was most astutely and effectively, -though slowly, carried out. With the ever-increasing -political and social unification of the people and the intellectual -and commercial expansion of the country, a genuine -sentiment of Canadian nationality gradually developed, until -by the time of the Great World War, 1914-1918, and -largely in consequence of Canada’s part in that war, the -sentiment of Canadian nationality suddenly acquired a -pervasive intensity and evolved into a definite and profound -sense of distinct nationhood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now, with this development in political and social consolidation, -and territorial, industrial, and commercial expansion, -and the evolution of a sentiment of nationality -and, later, nationhood, it was inevitable that there should -be not only a change in the literary ideals, inspiration, and -aims of Canadian men and women of letters, but also that, -with this change in aesthetic and artistic conscience, the -literature produced in Canada, after Confederation, should -<span class='pageno' title='25' id='Page_25'></span> -be different in substance, form, and technical artistry or -craftsmanship from the literature produced prior to Confederation. -It was also inevitable that immediately upon -Confederation, when, naturally, political and social consolidation -and the sentiment of nationality were virtually -at zero point or at least were inchoate, the literary ideals -of Canadian men and women of letters should be, in substance -and form, for a decade or so, traditional and -derivative, not indigenous and originally Canadian. It -was indeed so: for at least a decade there was hardly any -independent or original native Canadian literature, or in -it even a simmering of the sentiment of Canadian nationality, -though there was a considerable quantity of ‘journalistic’ -and imaginative poetry and prose which possessed -distinctive and even engaging aesthetic and artistic qualities, -written both by permanently resident <span class='it'>émigrés</span> and by native-born -Canadians.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1868, for instance, Charles Mair, a native-born -Canadian, published his <span class='it'>Dreamland and Other Poems</span>; -and in 1870 John Reade, an Irishman long resident in -Canada, published a volume of verse, <span class='it'>The Prophecy of -Merlin and Other Poems</span>: but while Mair’s poems contained -Canadian sentiment and color they were the -sentiment and color of <span class='it'>objective</span> Nature in Canada; and -while John Reade’s volume was written in Canada and -though the poet really felt and was in sympathy with all -the political, social, and spiritual aspirations of Canada, -Reade’s poems themselves were based chiefly upon Arthurian -legend and were written in a derivative English -romantic manner of form, music, and color.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mair and Reade and others were having an influence, -however, in holding up the ideal of authentic literary creation -in Canada while during that decade and the following -decade a group of young native-born Canadians were -growing into manhood, and were having engendered in -their hearts and imagination a distinct innate sentiment of -<span class='pageno' title='26' id='Page_26'></span> -Canadian nationality and were to become the first native-born -group of <span class='it'>systematic</span> poets and prose writers in Canada. -Their work, in poetry and prose, may fairly be signalized -as the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This group, for the purposes of literary history, we have -denominated the Systematic School of Canadian poets and -prose writers. For with the publication of Chas. G. D. -Roberts’ <span class='it'>Orion and Other Poems</span> in 1880, a native-born -leader for native-born men and women of letters appeared -in Canada; and with the publication of Roberts’ <span class='it'>In Divers -Tones</span> in 1887 in Canada (in U. S. 1886), there appeared -at length the first ‘Voice’ of the Spirit of Canada, expressed -in poetic literature, artistic in structure and noble in inspiration. -The authentic beginning of strictly so-called Canadian -Literature in English must, therefore, be dated from -1887. Roberts and his colleagues, Lampman, Carman, -Campbell, D. C. Scott, F. G. Scott, Pauline Johnson, Gilbert -Parker and Marshall Saunders are designated the -Systematic School of Canadian poets and prose writers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The First Renaissance in Canadian Native and National -Literature may be said to close either with the publication -of Pauline Johnson’s last volume of poems, <span class='it'>Canadian Born</span>, -in 1903, or with the publication of Robert Service’s first -volume of verse, <span class='it'>Songs of a Sourdough</span> (1907). By this -is not meant that after twenty years of leadership and influence -the first Systematic Group had not continued to -hold up the ideal to the younger or later Canadian poets -and prose writers or that there were no Canadian poets -and prose writers who were continuing the older ideal and -tradition. As a matter of fact, the creative and artistic -ideals of the first group of systematic poets and prose -writers had become engendered in the aesthetic and artistic -conscience of the younger or later men and women of letters -in Canada; and the poetry and prose produced by the -younger or later Canadian men and women of letters were -notably refined in sentiment, beautiful in structure and -<span class='pageno' title='27' id='Page_27'></span> -imagery, and noble in spiritual substance and appeal. They -continued, and still continue, as do also Roberts, Carman, -Duncan Campbell Scott and the other living members of -the original Systematic Group, the tradition of aesthetic -and artistic verse and prose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But in 1907 another singing voice was heard; and there -developed a group of poetasters and picaresque fictionists -whose leader was Robert Service. Their special literary -<span class='it'>métier</span> was verse, though Service and his literary <span class='it'>confrères</span> -also essayed fiction. This group we call the Vaudeville -School of Canadian Poetry. Its vogue lasted for an insignificant -period of five years, or from 1908 up to the -beginning of the Great World War.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1913 appeared a new group of younger Canadian -poets and prose writers, who may be regarded as having -begun the Second Renaissance in Canadian literature. They -inaugurated, as it were, a Restoration Period in Canadian -literature, inasmuch as, with some changes in ideals of -form and craftsmanship, they essentially ‘restored’ the -literary principles and aims of the First Renaissance Group. -All these distinctions in nomenclature and dates are, of -course, only used for expository or pedagogical purposes. -Accordingly, it is convenient to mark the beginning of the -Second Renaissance, or the Restoration Period, in Canadian -Literature with the publication of Marjorie Pickthall’s -first volume of verse, <span class='it'>Drift of Pinions</span>, in 1913.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This period in Canadian Literature in English is still -in process. It is showing definitive originality in several -ways, including original developments in modernity of -theme and moral substance, in formal novelty, and in fresh -expression of neglected or hitherto unessayed literary -<span class='it'>genres</span>, such as, for instance, poetic and stage drama, and -essays strictly in <span class='it'>belles-lettres</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Contemporary with the poets of this period is a group -of fictionists, who have produced and are producing novels, -romances, and tales which are Canadian in theme, in social -<span class='pageno' title='28' id='Page_28'></span> -background, and in color. This group may be distinguished -as the Realistic School of Canadian Fiction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These distinctions thus determine the scope of the -present work as a Synoptic History of Canadian Literature. -The literature considered or treated comprises—(I) -Pre-Confederation Literature (1760-1887); and (II) -Post-Confederation Literature (1887——?). The Pre-Confederation -Literature, which, for purposes of exposition -or treatment, is viewed as running over into two -decades beyond 1867, will be considered under three rubrics—(1) -Incidental Pioneer Literature; (2) Emigré Literature -and (3) Nativistic Literature. Post-Confederation -Literature will be treated under a single rubric—Native -and National Literature of Canada; and this indigenous -Canadian literature will, for expository and pedagogical -purposes, be considered under five Schools (or Periods)—(1) -the Systematic School and Period (First Renaissance); -(2) the Vaudeville School and Period (Decadent Interim); -(3) the Restoration School and Period (Second Renaissance); -(4) the Realistic School and Period of Fiction; -and (5) the Rise of Realistic Native or National Drama. -But these formal divisions cannot be kept mathematically -rigid and there will necessarily be overlappings and special -consideration of both imaginative and aesthetic Canadian -literature, such as poetic drama, <span class='it'>belles-lettres</span>, hymnody and -literary criticism, journalism, and the literature of travel, -exploration, history, and biography.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The method of treatment and criticism employed in the -present work is also Synoptic or Philosophical. The synoptic -method adopts the point of view of Canadian literary -history and literature as a spiritual Whole. It has distinct -and desirable advantages over the other critical and -pedagogical methods. For the synoptic method assists the -imagination to view Canadian authors and their literature -in an inclusive historical perspective, and thus to discover -in Canadian Literature the evolution of a people’s social -<span class='pageno' title='29' id='Page_29'></span> -and spiritual ideals, their national and world conceptions, -and how and what each individual poet or prose writer, -or each group or school of poets and prose writers, has -contributed to the vision of the people’s social and spiritual -ideals and to the evolution of them in the people’s social -conscience. Further: the synoptic method disengages and -discriminates the essential excellences of the poetry and -prose of particular individuals and groups, and enables -the critic or historian rightly to estimate the social and -spiritual significance and value of Canadian authors ideas -on Nature, Society, human Existence, and Endeavor.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='31' id='Page_31'></span>Part I</h2> -<hr class='tbk102'/> - -<h3>Pre-Confederation Literature<br/> 1760-1887.</h3> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='33' id='Page_33'></span><h1>CHAPTER I</h1></div> - -<h3>Social <span class='it'>and</span> Spiritual Bases</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL BASES OF CANADIAN LITERATURE—THE -PURITAN AND LOYALIST MIGRATIONS—THE SIGNIFICANCE -OF THE SCOTS MIGRATION—THE PRIMACY OF NOVA -SCOTIA IN THE CREATIVE LITERATURE OF CANADA—LITERARY -SPECIES IN ONTARIO AND QUEBEC.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>C</span><span class='sc'>reative</span> literature in the Provinces which now -form the Dominion of Canada, really or most significantly -began in Nova Scotia. The social bases of this -Nova Scotian pioneer literature, its literary forms, and -even its inspiration were of New England origin. It is -highly important clearly to understand all this. In 1760, -or two years after the proclamation of Governor Lawrence -and the establishment of a Legislative Assembly in Nova -Scotia, seven thousand Puritans emigrated from Massachusetts, -Rhode Island, and Connecticut to Maugerville on -the St. John River, and to the valleys of western Nova -Scotia. The expulsion of the Acadians had left the fertile -farms of western Nova Scotia deserted. These lands were -naturally attractive to the people of New England, inasmuch -as the soil was not only fertile, but the country itself -was, at the time, part of British North America, as was -New England itself. As soon as the Acadians had been -expelled, the Governor of Nova Scotia set up military -control and government. Moreover, the Anglican Church -was the dominant creed. In New England civil and religious -liberty were regarded as absolutely necessary to the -<span class='pageno' title='34' id='Page_34'></span> -life of the people. When, then, in 1758, Governor Lawrence -brought about the formation of a Legislative Assembly -and proclaimed civil and religious liberty for Nova -Scotia, the New England Puritans felt free to come to Nova -Scotia, which promised them an acceptable new home, both -for the obtaining of material possessions and the free expression -of their spiritual ideals.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1763 other groups of New Englanders, with their -characteristic ideals, came to Nova Scotia. In 1783, 1785 -and 1786, following the War of American Independence, -thirty thousand United Empire Loyalists emigrated from -the Atlantic States and settled in Nova Scotia; ten thousand -settled in Lower Canada (Quebec); and twenty thousand -settled in the district which later became the Province -of Ontario. So that, in a period of twenty-five years, -about one hundred thousand <span class='it'>émigrés</span> from the United States -coast had become permanent residents of the Maritime -Provinces and the Canadas. That is to say, the bases of -Canadian civilization and culture, following the Fall of -Montreal and beginning with the first Puritan Migration, -were definitively the social, political, intellectual, and literary -ideals of New England.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1749 there was a migration of English from the -Motherland to Halifax. They founded the City of Halifax. -These English <span class='it'>émigrés</span>, however, found conditions of life -at Halifax so forbidding by way of hardships and so -socially unsettling that many of them removed to Boston -and to New York. Subsequently their descendants came -from New England and New York to Halifax. It was -they, not their fathers, who really founded the City of -Halifax and did most for the development of commerce -and culture in that community. Later, when Halifax became -a British Military and Naval Station, it took on an -English ‘air.’ But essentially its culture and commerce -were of New England Puritan origin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1773 occurred the Scots migration to Pictou, on the -<span class='pageno' title='35' id='Page_35'></span> -North shore of Nova Scotia. These colonists were but a -little band of two hundred; yet they brought with them -two ideals which eventually pervaded the civilization and -culture of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Viewed, then, synoptically, the civilization and culture -of the Dominion of Canada, as we conceive and appreciate -the significance of Canada to-day, had their origins in -Puritanism and Calvinism—in the ideals brought into Nova -Scotia and the Canadas by the New England and the Scots -Migrations in the 18th century. Specifically, the New -England colonists, especially the Loyalists, brought, with -them the literary ideals which were to become the creative -principles of the first native-born poets and prose writers -of Nova Scotia and the Canadas. Specifically, the Scots -colonists brought into Nova Scotia two ideals of spiritual -import; namely, the ideal of the supreme worth of the -individual human spirit and its salvation, and the ideal of -sound intellectual education as the basis of the life of the -spirit both for this world and the world to come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To appreciate critically the results of the Loyalist ideals -on the creative literary spirit in Nova Scotia, we must hark -back to pre-Revolutionary times in New England and the -other Atlantic Colonies and to the social conditions and -spiritual problems of the people of Nova Scotia following -the Loyalist Migrations. In pre-revolutionary days in the -New England and the other Atlantic Colonies, the weapon -used both by those who were for separation from England -and those who were loyal to the British Crown was a literary -weapon—prose and poetry. Naturally pre-revolutionary -literature in the American Colonies was modelled on -the mood and form of the satiric verse and pamphlets of -the 18th century poets and prosemen of England. The -American colonies became alive especially with poetic -satirists. When, therefore, the Loyalists settled in Nova -Scotia and the Canadas, and when, in due course, they -themselves had to face the discussion and solution of new -<span class='pageno' title='36' id='Page_36'></span> -social and political problems, inevitably they adopted the -18th century forms of literary expression.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But what of the Puritan settlers in Nova Scotia? They -were in the land for at least a decade before the coming -of the Loyalists. They had social and religious problems -for discussion and solution. Did not these problems of -the Puritan <span class='it'>émigrés</span> issue in a literature? They did. But -the Puritan literature in Nova Scotia was not in mood, -aim, form, or result at all significant, or as genuinely -creative as the Loyalist literature, and may be shortly -noticed and dismissed. The Puritans were Congregationalists, -and brought with them the old New England -ideals of the ‘Town Meeting’—Responsible Civic Government -and Religious Liberty. They were political and -religious Democrats. But Church interests were paramount. -Congregationalism, though essentially a democratic -form of Church government, developed all the -formalism, of an aristocratically conducted religion. The -inevitable happened. There were ‘fundamentalists’ and -‘modernists’ in those days as in ours. Under Whitefield -a schism occurred in Congregationalism. The leader of -the schism in Nova Scotia was Rev. Henry Alline (1748-84). -Under Whitefield in the American Colonies and -Henry Alline, ‘the Whitefield of Province’ of Nova Scotia, -the ‘New Lights’ (as they were called) triumphed over -the Orthodox or Formalistic Congregationalists in America. -But, oddly, this religious schism also resulted in a -political schism. It resulted, in short, in a separation of -the Puritans in Nova Scotia from the Puritans in the New -England Colonies. So that the Puritan colony in Nova -Scotia became a community apart, with a new and distinct -sentiment of British connection. They retained, however, -their New England ideals of responsible municipal government -and absolute religious liberty. Nova Scotia thus became -the home of a new experiment in Political and -Religious Democracy. -<span class='pageno' title='37' id='Page_37'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>But since, with the Puritans, Church or Spiritual -interests were paramount, and since the separation between -the Nova Scotia Puritans and the New England Puritans -was merely sentimental and followed the religious schism, -the Puritan literature of the period in Nova Scotia was -wholly religious and theological. On the theological side, -it took the form of controversial and polemical literature -for the promotion of the ‘New Lights’ schism. On the -religious and creative sides, it took the form of homilies, -sermons, devotional works, prayers, and hymns.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The chief creative writer of the Puritan period was -Henry Alline. During the conflict between the Orthodox -Congregationalists and the ‘New Lights’ Henry Alline published -a polemical pamphlet, <span class='it'>The Anti-Traditionist</span>, and -five books of <span class='it'>Hymns and Spiritual Songs</span>. After his death -his <span class='it'>Life and Journal</span> was published. It is interesting only -to students of religious psychology and the varieties of -religious experience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Alline’s <span class='it'>Hymns and Spiritual Songs</span> is a genuinely -creative work. It contrasts admirably with the too often -spiritually inept and doggerelized hymns and evangelical -songs that have found a place in the hymnody of the -Churches. Alline’s hymns and spiritual songs disclose on -his part an authentic lyrical faculty, a sure sense of rhythm -and of decent rhyme, and a respect for dignified diction and -imagery. Though Alline’s work in prose and verse has no -significance in the evolution of Canadian Literature, inasmuch -as he did not even ‘influence’ Canadian hymnography, -yet the literary historian must give him the distinction of -being the first of the Pioneer Hymn Writers of Canada. -The Puritan period in Nova Scotia had, however, no importance -in the development of Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The literature produced by the Loyalists in Nova -Scotia, on the other hand, was fundamental in the evolution -of Canadian Literature. For the most part, the Loyalists -were members of the cultured Tory or aristocratic families -<span class='pageno' title='38' id='Page_38'></span> -of New England and the other Atlantic Colonies, and were -highly cultured themselves. Many of them were teachers, -clergymen, lawyers, jurists and officials—all graduates of -Harvard, Yale, and other leading educational institutions -in the lost colonies. The Loyalists brought with -them their social and cultural ideals; and many of -them were practised in literary expression, after the -manner of the 18th century prose and verse. They were -thus fitted by education and powers of literary expression -to reconstruct, as they did, the civilization and culture of -Nova Scotia, and to produce, as they did, the first Nativistic -Literature of Canada. How they accomplished these -creative results is an instructive study by itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>During the American Revolution the Loyalists were -aristocratic families with an ardent British sentiment. -They wished to retain British connection and to promote -their own institutions, with New World modifications, -modelled upon British institutions. The persecutions they -endured during the whole of the Revolutionary times and -their forced exile to Nova Scotia did but intensify their -sentiment for British connection in their new home in -Nova Scotia. Yet the love for their old homeland remained, -and became with them a rather poignant nostalgia. -It was, however, the old <span class='it'>homeland</span> they loved; but for the -<span class='it'>people</span> of the United States they had no sentiment save -scorn and hate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All the while, therefore, they retained in their minds -and hearts the so-called ‘United Empire’ ideal. But at -length this became a problem which took the form of an inner -debate as to whether they should cast aside all thoughts -of bringing about a re-union of British North America -(that is, the Canadas and the Maritime Provinces) and -the United States, or whether they should promote a <span class='it'>new</span> -United Empire in the land over the border from the United -States. It must be admitted, however, that on the side of -ardency of sentiment the Loyalists in Nova Scotia really -<span class='pageno' title='39' id='Page_39'></span> -felt more a nostalgia for their old homeland than they felt -a love for Great Britain and the establishment of a great -British nation in the lands north of the United States.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is this nostalgia which first finds expression in the -Loyalist literature produced in Nova Scotia; and it finds -its fullest expression in verse. Several names—Jacob -Bailey, Jonathan Sewell, Joseph Stansbury, Jonathan -O’Dell, Adam Allen, James Moody, Mather Byles, Walter -Bates—are noted by literary historians as paramount in -the early Loyalist literature. There is, however, nothing -of genuine literary merit in their poetry, prose narratives, -and diaries. Of these early Loyalist writers Jonathan -O’Dell is somewhat significant. He introduced into Nova -Scotia the verse forms and temper of the 18th century -poetic satirists, Dryden and Pope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Time, at length, wrought changes in the hearts of -the Loyalists, and they began to look away from the United -States and to take a pride in their new home; to look with -affection upon Nova Scotia and to express a decent regard -for England, the Motherland. As it were, the grapes in -the United States had soured, and the Loyalists in Nova -Scotia began to look on the Revolutionists as their inferiors -in birth, culture and civilization. The true ideals, in their -view, were in the aristocratic culture and the political -system of the new Provinces and England. Once this spirit -of contempt for United States culture and civilization became -thoroughly engendered, the separation of the Loyalist -community in Nova Scotia from all United States connection -was complete. Whereupon the Loyalists felt that -the only right course to pursue was for them to unite with -the Puritan settlers who had preceded them to Nova Scotia, -and to develop a civilization and culture all their own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This they proceeded to do by laying the foundations of -Journalism in Nova Scotia. The first journalistic ventures -in Nova Scotia happen also to be the first in Canada. -The first newspaper had been founded at Halifax in 1752: -<span class='pageno' title='40' id='Page_40'></span> -that is, eight years before the Puritan Migration; but -it was a government organ and not a real newspaper. But -on March 17th, 1776, when the British troops evacuated -Boston, John Howe, Loyalist and printer, also left Boston -and with him went the press of the Boston <span class='it'>News-Letter</span>. -Eventually it reached Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the <span class='it'>News-Letter</span> -was amalgamated with the Halifax <span class='it'>Gazette</span>. In -1789 <span class='it'>The Nova Scotia Magazine</span> was founded, printed, and -edited by John Howe. This was the first literary magazine -published in British North America. Thus, under Loyalist -auspices and literary traditions, journalism began in Nova -Scotia, that is, in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Further: Loyalist newspapers and Loyalist magazines, -founded at Halifax, and later at St. John, that is, Loyalist -Journalism, laid the foundations of literary expression and -literary creation in Canada. It is beside the point to animadvert -upon the aesthetic values of the substance and -form of the original prose and verse which appeared in the -Loyalist newspapers and magazines. For, up till the time -of Joseph Howe’s becoming sole owner and editor of <span class='it'>The -Novascotian</span>, in 1828, all the literary work that had preceded -was but a preparatory school of journalism and -literature. When <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> was founded by -Joseph Howe, and when Thomas Chandler Haliburton, with -Howe himself and others, began to contribute to it, journalism -itself became literature, and the first Nativistic Literature -of Canada was created.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Loyalists, we must remember, though they came -from a country in which the social and political ideals were -democratic, were themselves aristocratic. When, therefore, -they bethought themselves of founding a college, their ideal -was that of a college which would preserve the curriculum -of Colleges open only to those who were well to do. The -University of King’s College was begun as an Academy at -Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1787, was granted a Collegiate -Charter in 1789, and was formally opened as a College in -<span class='pageno' title='41' id='Page_41'></span> -1790. It was indeed open to all the Province—to all those -who could <span class='it'>afford</span> to attend. But in 1802 this policy of -seeming democratic inclusiveness was abrogated by an -Imperial Government Act which limited the privilege of -matriculation to members of the Church of England. Since -seventy-five per cent. of the population of Nova Scotia -were members of other communions, the great majority of -possible students were shut out from King’s College. When, -therefore, the Scots <span class='it'>émigrés</span> who settled at Pictou in 1773, -found their children debarred from education at King’s -College, they established in 1819 a new College. Education -at Pictou Academy, as it has always been called, was open -to students of all creeds, races, and color, as it is to this -day. From that Academy went forth men and women who -held up to the people of their own country and the rest -of Canada the two ideals of the supreme worth of the -individual human spirit and of sound elementary education -as the basis of constructive good citizenship. From -Pictou Academy went forth men and women who became -leaders in thought and practical endeavor in Canada—superior -teachers and presidents of Colleges, eloquent -preachers, distinguished scientists, men of practical vision -and achievement in the professions, in government and -statesmanship, and in industry and commerce. Their influence, -however, was intellectual and practical. Save in -the field of journalism, they had no influence on literature -and literary creation in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In Lower Canada and in the district that became Upper -Canada, or Ontario, the earlier Loyalist Migrations brought -with them a lower level of culture than that which was -brought into the Maritime Provinces by the Loyalists who -had migrated to Nova Scotia, which at the time included -the territory that in 1784 became the Province of New -Brunswick. This is not a matter of opinion or prejudice; -it is a matter of fact. For the Loyalists who migrated -to Nova Scotia were from the most cultured families in -<span class='pageno' title='42' id='Page_42'></span> -the Old Colonies, and even the men of the Loyalist Regiments -were of a superior order of character and mind. So -that the Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia formed, as -Dr. Baker phrases it, ‘an educated class seldom found in a -pioneer community—a homogeneous community unique in -origin, with a local pride not found in other sections.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The so-called Overland Loyalists, on the other hand, -who moved into the Niagara Peninsula and into Quebec -were on the whole of humbler social status—agricultural -workers, artisans, and a considerable number of irresponsible -adventurers, who joined the Migrations in the hope -of obtaining cheap lands and something for nothing. They -were led, of course, by men of parts, but even these men -had neither literary culture nor literary interests. Their -interests were material, and they ‘headed’ a Loyalist motley -so as to have the means and labor necessary to occupy the -lands and clear them for their own materialistic ends. And -so it happened that while in Quebec and in the settlements -in the district which was to become Ontario there were -literary activities, and even newspapers and magazines, the -Overland Loyalists did not contribute constructively to the -literary spirit and the creative literature of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first genuine Nativistic Literature of Canada was -created in Nova Scotia—in the Satiric Comedy or Humor -of Haliburton, in the Sketches, Essays, Legislative Reviews, -Speeches and Public Letters and the Poetry of Joseph -Howe, and in the Poetry of Oliver Goldsmith, 2nd, a great-nephew -of the author of <span class='it'>The Deserted Village</span>. Still, this -pre-eminence given to Nova Scotia is, in a way, based on a -half-truth. It is true that, to put it colloquially, Nova -Scotia had her creative literary ‘innings’ early in the game. -It lasted from the publication of Joseph Howe’s <span class='it'>Western -Rambles</span>, in 1828, or from the publication of Haliburton’s -<span class='it'>Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia</span>, in 1829, -to Haliburton’s last volume, <span class='it'>The Season Ticket</span>, published -anonymously in 1859—that is, a period of thirty years. -<span class='pageno' title='43' id='Page_43'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were again to have -an ‘innings’ when Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, -and Marshall Saunders, of the Systematic School of native -poets and prose writers, began publishing in the late ‘eighties’ -of the 19th century. The Maritime Provinces, as a -whole, by the addition of Lucy M. Montgomery to the -native prose writers and William E. Marshall and Robert -Norwood to the native poets, had a still further short ‘innings.’ -But, it must be recalled, contemporaneously with -Haliburton and Howe in Nova Scotia, certain writers in -Ontario and Quebec, namely, first, John Richardson, -Rosanna Mullins, and William Kirby, produced historical -romances, or a ‘nativistic’ literature in prose, and, later, -through the poetry of Sangster and Mair, Ontario produced -Nativistic Literature in verse. Since the rise of the Systematic -School, the centre of literary creation in Canada -has shifted from Nova Scotia to Ontario and Western -Canada.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='44' id='Page_44'></span><h1>CHAPTER II</h1></div> - -<h3>Incidental Pioneer Literature</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE INCIDENTAL PRE-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE OF -CANADA—ALEXANDER HENRY’S TRAVELS—MRS. BROOKE’S -NOVELS—MRS. JAMESON’S NATURE-STUDIES—THE ÉMIGRÉ -PRE-CONFEDERATION LITERATURE OF CANADA—MRS. -SUSANNA MOODIE—ADAM KIDD—JOHN READE—GEORGE -MURRAY—ALEXANDER M<sup>c</sup>LACHLAN—WILLIAM -WYE SMITH—ISABELLA V. -CRAWFORD.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>B</span><span class='sc'>roadly</span> taken, the Incidental Pioneer Literature of -Canada was produced by the wits and <span class='it'>bon vivants</span> -amongst the officers of the British army and navy during -or after the taking of Louisburg and Quebec, and by certain -‘birds of passage,’ British-born men and women, who -were sojourning in the Canadas. It was considerable in -quantity, embracing verse, narratives, social and nature -studies and sketches, and even fiction. But it did not -affect the life and ideals of the people. It was simply -literature produced in the Canadas—incidentally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From Louisburg to Quebec and Montreal the poets in -the British navy and army exhibited a special preoccupation -with a species of war poetry. In 1759, for instance, when -the British frigate’s guns were breaching the walls of the -French stronghold, Louisburg, Valentine Neville penned -his poem <span class='it'>The Reduction of Louisburgh</span>. In 1760, George -Cockings produced another war poem for the delight of -London—<span class='it'>The Conquest of Canada</span>, or <span class='it'>The Siege of Quebec: -A Tragedy</span>. In this species of literature, the most -remarkable performance was Henry Murphy’s <span class='it'>The Conquest -<span class='pageno' title='45' id='Page_45'></span> -of Quebec: An Epic Poem in Eight Books</span>. It was -published at Dublin in 1790 and runs to the amazing length -of eight thousand lines. Quantity, not literary quality, -was the only distinguishing mark of these early Canadian -poems of heroism in war.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A really remarkable book, with genuine literary quality -was the elder Alexander Henry’s narrative of his experience -as a traveller and explorer, published in 1809 under -the title <span class='it'>Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian -Territories</span>. In point of publication it was anticipated by -narratives dating as early as 1736, when John Gyles wrote -his memoirs of <span class='it'>Odd Adventures</span>, an account of his experience -while exploring the region through which runs the -St. John River. There were many volumes of narratives, -but the most of them lacked literary style and are of interest -chiefly to the antiquarian.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two women, however, deserve special notice as contributors -to the Incidental Literature of Canada. These -were Mrs. Frances Brooke, who was the wife of a chaplain -of the forces at Quebec in the last quarter of the 18th -century; and Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson. While a -resident of the Province of Quebec, Mrs. Brooke wrote -what has been called ‘the first Canadian novel,’ <span class='it'>The History -of Emily Montague</span>. Published in 1769, it ran into several -editions. Mrs. Jameson possessed a rare pictorial sense of -beauty in nature; and while visiting the Canadas she wrote -<span class='it'>Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada</span>. Published -in three volumes at London in 1838, this work remains -to this day the finest example of ‘color writing’ in -the whole range of Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the exception of Mrs. Brooke and Mrs. Jameson, -the writers of the Incidental Pioneer Literature of Canada -merely took a passing view of what had interested them -and put it into literary form decent enough for publication. -It was the substance of what they wrote, not the style or -literary art in their books, that interested their public in -<span class='pageno' title='46' id='Page_46'></span> -the Canadas, the United States, and the United Kingdom. -The only faculty these books satisfied or delighted was the -faculty of curiosity; and the only delights they really gave -readers were vicarious thrills of adventure and wonder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Incidental Literature of Canada, therefore, must -be merely noted as fact. In nowise, whether it be literature -or not, had it any real influence in developing a Canadian -sentiment or in awakening a Canadian literary spirit. Mrs. -Brooke wrote her novel, <span class='it'>The History of Emily Montague</span>, -strictly in imitation of the first English novelist, Samuel -Richardson. But Canadian fiction, in any real sense, did -not begin with Mrs. Brooke. It began with a native-born -Canadian, John Richardson, who wrote historical romance, -notably <span class='it'>Wacousta</span>, after the manner of, though not in -imitation of, Fenimore Cooper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By the Emigré Literature of Canada we mean in general -the poetry and prose written in Canada by permanent -residents who were not born in any of the British North -American Provinces. It is a moot question whether the -literary historian should class the poetry of Isabella Valancy -Crawford and of William Henry Drummond under the -category of Emigré Canadian Literature. They were born -outside of Canada; but they came to Canada at an age -when their minds were young and unformed and readily -susceptible to Canadian influences, naturalistic, social, and -spiritual. Poets like Heavysege and John Reade came to -Canada when their minds were mature and their attitudes -to life were fixed. It is certain that Valancy Crawford and -W. H. Drummond did write from the Canadian point of -view and did influence Canadian literature, as well as contribute, -somewhat uniquely, to its quantity and quality. It -is equally certain that several of the maturely minded -<span class='it'>émigré</span> writers influenced, by their presence and example, -the development of Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the point of view of influence, both of production -and example, we include in the one category of Emigré -<span class='pageno' title='47' id='Page_47'></span> -Literature the poetry and prose of the permanent residents -who came to Canada when mature in mind and of those -who came in childhood. With the exception of the poetry -of Miss Crawford and W. H. Drummond the Emigré -Literature of Canada is derivative in form and substance. -In Miss Crawford’s case we discover a considerable element -of Canadian theme and a form of her own. In the case -of Drummond we come upon what Louis Fréchette has -called a ‘Pathfinder’—a poet with a new substance and a -new form absolutely and uniquely indigenous to Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Though Confederation in 1867 sounded the death knell -of the Emigré Literature of Canada, actual production of -it continued for a decade or two past Confederation. It -may be said to have lasted for about a hundred years; or -from the Fall of Montreal in 1760 till the publication of -Charles G. D. Roberts’ <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> (1887) twenty -years after Confederation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the first form, it was strictly pioneer literature, and -naturally had the crudity of thought and structure which -belong to literature composed under unsettled conditions. -Gradually it came to have better aesthetic substance and -artistic form. This growth in it from crudity to decent -literary form evolved according to the social and spiritual -development of Canada in the Pioneer and the later Pre-Confederation -periods. As existence in Canada became -more and more settled, and education and culture became -more and more distributed and appreciated, the literature -produced in the country was written more and more to appeal -to the aesthetic sensibilities and the artistic conscience. -The reason for this is that when an <span class='it'>émigré</span> writer, such as -Mrs. Susanna Moodie, undertook to write social and nature -sketches, the substance counted for everything, and the -form and movement were free, unhampered by traditional -laws of expression. It was speech transcribed on paper. -But the <span class='it'>émigré</span> poets were bound by English models according -to which they must write, or not write at all. In -<span class='pageno' title='48' id='Page_48'></span> -<span class='it'>émigré</span> verse, therefore, rather than in <span class='it'>émigré</span> prose, we observe -evidences of an evolution in substance and artistic -structure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>John Fleming came to Montreal early in the 19th century. -Suddenly his imagination grew poetic wings, and -forthwith he produced <span class='it'>An Ode of the Birthday of King -George III</span>. He made his poem as intellectualized and -stilted with imitative poetic phrases as he possibly could. -There was nothing Canadian about it. In 1830 Adam -Kidd, who came to Canada from Ireland, produced a volume -of poetry, <span class='it'>The Huron Chief and Other Poems</span>, which is -definitively Canadian in theme and is remarkable for really -engaging descriptions of Canadian scenery. It is in a traditional -English form, but from the point of view of its -substance it may be regarded as the first example of a -genuinely Canadian poem by an <span class='it'>émigré</span> writer, as distinguished -from a ‘nativistic’ writer, as, for instance, Oliver -Goldsmith, 2nd, who was born in Nova Scotia and published -<span class='it'>The Rising Village</span> in 1825.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The names and work of the <span class='it'>émigré</span> versifiers might be -extended so as to include several significant poets, such -as Charles D. Shanly, James McCarroll, Alexander McLachlan, -William Wye Smith, Thomas D’Arcy McGee and -others down to John Reade, who published <span class='it'>The Prophecy -of Merlin and Other Poems</span> in 1870. In their verse we -note a constantly increasing regard for aesthetic substance -and artistic craftsmanship. The name and work, however, -of one <span class='it'>émigré</span> poet deserves special notice, more particularly -because he is constantly being classified as a Canadian -poetic dramatist. This was Charles Heavysege.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Heavysege was thirty-seven years of age when he arrived -in Canada. The accident of his having remained in -Canada and of having published at Montreal his <span class='it'>Saul</span>, -which, as a matter of fact, had been conceived in England, -does not give him as much right, if any at all, to be considered -a Canadian <span class='it'>émigré</span> poet as attaches to Kidd or Mrs. -Moodie. -<span class='pageno' title='49' id='Page_49'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Saul</span> was published in 1857. As a poetic drama there -is no other poem which was written in Canada that is so -much in the grand manner. Its theme is Biblical, and it -is really treated with epic grandeur and romantic intensity. -But with all its excellences, it had no influence, by way of -example, on subsequent Canadian poetic dramatists, such -as Charles Mair, Wilfred Campbell, or Robert Norwood. -The first Canadian poetic dramatist, native-born, was -Charles Mair. Though the theme of his <span class='it'>Tecumseh</span> is not -so sublimated as Heavysege’s <span class='it'>Saul</span>, it is Canadian; and -though its style is not so altiloquent as that of <span class='it'>Saul</span>, Mair’s -<span class='it'>Tecumseh</span> is an original and notable contribution to the -‘nativistic’ literature of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was really, however, the later <span class='it'>émigré</span> men of letters, -particularly John Reade and George Murray, who by their -own work in verse and in literary criticism held up the -ideal of native production of worthy poetry in Canada. -They were active in the first and second decade after Confederation. -They did much to awaken the literary spirit -in Canada and to correct the literary or artistic conscience -of native-born writers. But when they had done this, -their work for Canadian Literature was at an end.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Archibald McLachlan came to Canada in his twenties -and he followed, in much of his writing, the themes, the -dialect, and even the stanza-forms of Robert Burns. Both -poets were intensely patriotic, both sang the gospel of the -brotherhood of man. To both life was very much a mystery, -a mystery tinged with pathos. The work of McLachlan -which may be regarded as purely Canadian in tone -and subject is found chiefly in the depiction of scenes of -pioneer life, treated objectively: <span class='it'>The Fire in the Woods</span>, -<span class='it'>The Old Hoss</span>, <span class='it'>The Backwood’s Philosopher</span>; and in <span class='it'>The -Emigrant</span> he projected a pioneer epic, which opens with an -apostrophe to Canada and traces the progress of the -emigrant from the old land to his arrival and settlement in -the new. The cutting of the first tree, the building of the -<span class='pageno' title='50' id='Page_50'></span> -log-cabin and the Indian battle are successive incidents of -the poem. The style of the poem is rather formal, and recalls -Scott’s <span class='it'>Lady of the Lake</span>, but is without so much life -or color. The poet loved the spirit of freedom and independence -which he found in the new land and voiced this -love in some stirring patriotic lyrics, such as <span class='it'>Hurrah for -the New Dominion</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Although William Wye Smith left Scotland in his infancy -and was for almost four score years a Canadian by -adoption, almost all his writings show the influence of the -language, the literature, the history, the religious and -philosophic spirit of his homeland. A deep spiritual note -is present in many of his lyrics. Yet he did on occasion -enter fully into the Canadian spirit and show an appreciative -understanding of Canadian conditions, the beauties of -Canadian landscape, historic themes and national aspirations. -Some of his best known poems are: <span class='it'>The Second -Concession of Deer</span>, <span class='it'>The Sheep-washing</span>, <span class='it'>Ridgeway</span>, <span class='it'>The -Burial of Brock</span>, <span class='it'>Here’s to the Land!</span>, <span class='it'>Canadians on the -Nile</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was one <span class='it'>émigré</span> poet who deserves detailed appreciation -as a creative interpreter of Western <span class='it'>chevalerie</span> -and as a lyrist with an exquisite fancy and delicate artistry. -This was Isabella Valancy Crawford. Born in Ireland in -1850, she came to Canada when but a child of eight years, -her family settling in Ontario, and, later, moving to the -Kawartha Lakes. Her father was a physician and it must -be presumed that the daughter came under cultural influences -in her home. More important is the fact she lived in -Canadian districts which must have peculiarly affected her -young, impressionable, and receptive mind. Undeniably -she was born a poet; that is to say, she was born with a -genius for seeing spiritual beauty and meaning in all common -things, natural and human. Thus gifted and thus -left free to be impressed by Canadian Nature and life -around her, and also by Nature and life in the Western -<span class='pageno' title='51' id='Page_51'></span> -prairie regions, of which she had read, Valancy Crawford -set about imaginatively to interpret and express in verse -her appreciation of Nature and life in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whether it was her sheer genius that created her sympathy -with pioneer and cowboy life in Western Canada, or -whether it was her imaginative sympathy with that life -that fired her poetic faculty, is a question in literary -psychology that does not here require discussion. The outstanding -fact is that Miss Crawford’s most notable faculty -was a profound sympathy with and a clear vision of the -elemental dignity of the heart of men and women whose -lot was cast in rude and unspiritualizing circumstances. It -was out of this sympathy that she was able to handle her -themes of Western <span class='it'>chevalerie</span> with a subtle, veracious, and -genuinely human but not coarse humor. Miss Crawford -saw, as no one in Canada before her or since has seen, the -poetry and the poetic or religious significance of life and -<span class='it'>chevalerie</span> in the early days in Western Canada. She took -the rude material and sublimated it, not with rhetoric, but -rather with verisimilitude of diction and phrase and imagery, -to the dignity and beauty of authentic poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>We may summarize the qualities of her poetry of -Western <span class='it'>chevalerie</span>, as in her <span class='it'>Old Spookses’ Pass</span>, under -four distinctions. It is noted for dramatic (not melodramatic) -force, rugged but characteristic humor, graphic -character-drawing, and power of conveying to us the sense -of the war of the elements which is felt by the wild -creatures, such as cattle herds, who become the ‘playthings’ -of those elements. The extraordinary fact is that, though -all these qualities were, on her part, sheer imaginative -invention, yet they are truer to the facts than if they had -been written by an actual eye-witness. In short, Miss -Crawford, as a poet of Western <span class='it'>chevalerie</span>, stands out as -gifted with sheer and intense imaginative power and as -an authentic imaginative creator.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nevertheless, her art is all authentic realism, totally free -<span class='pageno' title='52' id='Page_52'></span> -from crass and hectic melodrama. Moreover, Miss Crawford -achieved, not solely because she had imagination and -a true sense of realistic values, but also because she saw -that <span class='it'>style</span> in poetry was the only antiseptic for picaresque -realism and hectic melodrama. She had genius, not merely -a tale to tell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly Lowell, Bret Harte, John Hay, and others of -their school, writing in dialect, did no better work than did -Miss Crawford in <span class='it'>Old Spookses’ Pass</span>; and most certainly -Robert Service did nothing so elementally human and so -spiritualizing with his material from rude or picaresque life -in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>We shall not wait to detail the qualities of Miss Crawford’s -art in other species of verse. We observe, however, -that her long poem <span class='it'>Malcolm’s Katie</span> is specially remarkable -for fine imagery, colorful descriptive passages, and for a -glowing impressionism which is taken directly from Canadian -Nature. Moreover, it is notable for its lyrical interludes, -which as lyrics, are as dainty and as delicately -constructed, as full of fancy and imagination in small form, -as any one of the kind in English literature. Miss -Crawford’s lyrical interlude, beginning ‘O, Love builds on -the azure sea,’ is beyond criticism, and is ‘the gem’ of several -Canadian anthologies. We quote the whole lyric:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O, Love builds on the azure sea,</p> -<p class='line0'>    And Love builds on the golden sand;</p> -<p class='line0'>And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud,</p> -<p class='line0'>    And sometimes Love builds on the land!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O, if Love build on sparkling sea,</p> -<p class='line0'>    And if Love build on golden strand,</p> -<p class='line0'>And if Love build on rosy cloud,</p> -<p class='line0'>    To Love these are the solid land!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O, Love will build his lily walls,</p> -<p class='line0'>    And Love his pearly roof will rear</p> -<p class='line0'>On cloud, or land, or mist, or sea—</p> -<p class='line0'>    Love’s solid land is everywhere!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='53' id='Page_53'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>As an outstanding example of Miss Crawford’s genius -and art in lyrical impressionism, Canadian Literature contains -nothing more colorful and musical than her ‘Lily-Song’ -from <span class='it'>Malcolm’s Katie</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>  While, Lady of the silvered lakes—</p> -<p class='line0'>Chaste goddess of the sweet, still shrine</p> -<p class='line0'>    The jocund river fitful makes</p> -<p class='line0'>    By sudden, deep gloomed brakes—</p> -<p class='line0'>Close sheltered by close warp and woof of vine,</p> -<p class='line0'>Spilling a shadow gloomy—rich as wine</p> -<p class='line0'>Into the silver throne where thou dost sit,</p> -<p class='line0'>Thy silken leaves all dusky round thee knit!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Mild Soul of the unsalted wave,</p> -<p class='line0'>  White bosom holding golden fire,</p> -<p class='line0'>Deep as some ocean-hidden cave</p> -<p class='line0'>  Are fixed the roots of thy desire,</p> -<p class='line0'>Thro’ limpid currents stealing up.</p> -<p class='line0'>And rounding to the pearly cup.</p> -<p class='line0'>    Thou dost desire,</p> -<p class='line0'>With all thy trembling heart of sinless fire,</p> -<p class='line0'>    But to be filled</p> -<p class='line0'>    With dew distilled</p> -<p class='line0'>From clear, fond skies that in their gloom</p> -<p class='line0'>Hold, floating high, thy sister moon,</p> -<p class='line0'>Pale chalice of a sweet perfume,</p> -<p class='line0'>Whiter-breasted than a dove,</p> -<p class='line0'>To thee the dew is—love!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>When, in 1884, Isabella Valancy Crawford’s unpretentious -little volume of poems appeared, it won high -praise from the critics of the London <span class='it'>Athenaeum</span>, <span class='it'>The Spectator</span>, -<span class='it'>The Graphic</span>, and <span class='it'>The Illustrated London News</span>. -They all noted that she had an excess of riches in fancy -and in imagination, and a poetic style of her own which -was distinguished both by beauty and exquisite artistry. In -1905 her poems were collected and edited by John W. -Garvin, B.A., and published with a critical Introduction -by Miss Ethelwyn Wetherald. This remains the definitive -edition of the poetry of Isabella Valancy Crawford, whom -Miss Wetherald describes as ‘a brilliant and fadeless figure -in the annals of Canadian literary history.’ -<span class='pageno' title='54' id='Page_54'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Canadian Emigré writers in the Pre-Confederation -period, are, then, to be appreciated by the literary historian -as men and women who, first, drew attention to the fact -that Canadian life and culture needed expression and, next, -awoke in native-born sons and daughters of the Dominion -the ambition to undertake this expression in verse and prose. -We must, therefore, honor the earlier and later <span class='it'>émigré</span> -poets and prose writers of Canada, not for the intrinsic -merit of their work, but for the fact that they engendered -in the native-born the ideal of expressing the consciousness -of a Canadian homeland and spirit in literature which -should possess originality in substance, and beauty in form -and in technical artistry.</p> - -<hr class='tbk103'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations from Isabella Valancy Crawford’s work in this chapter are -from <span class='it'>The Collected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford</span>, edited by John W. -Garvin, B.A., (Ryerson Press: Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='55' id='Page_55'></span><h1>CHAPTER III</h1></div> - -<h3>Joseph Howe</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—JOSEPH HOWE -AS FOUNDER OF THE INDEPENDENT PROSE, CREATIVE JOURNALISM, -POLITICAL LITERATURE, LITERARY AND FORENSIC -ORATORY—AS PATRIOTIC, DESCRIPTIVE, AND HUMOROUS -POET—AND AS THE DISCOVERER AND SPONSOR OF THOMAS -CHANDLER HALIBURTON.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>he</span> epithet nativistic as applied to Canadian Literature -marks a two-fold contrast. On one side, it -distinguishes the literature written by natives of any of the -Maritime Provinces and the Canadas (Ontario and Quebec) -from the earlier Incidental or Émigré Literature. On -the other side, it distinguishes the literature written by -native-born men and women <span class='it'>before</span> Confederation from the -Native and National Literature written by native-born -poets and prosemen <span class='it'>after</span> Confederation. Nativistic -Literature is ‘native’ only in the sense of being the -indigenous product of the Unconfederated Provinces; but -it is neither ‘native’ nor ‘national’ in the sense of being the -product of the Confederated Provinces which form the -Dominion of Canada. But since this Nativistic Literature -was written by native-born sons and daughters of the -Provinces in a period when these Provinces were, so to put -it, ‘on the way’ to political union, and since it has permanent -significance, it is classified retroactively as part of the -genuine literature of Canada. Thus Richardson’s romances -(written and set in Ontario), Haliburton’s satiric comedy -(written and set in Nova Scotia), Sangster’s and Mair’s -poetry (written and set in Ontario) belong to the Nativistic -<span class='pageno' title='56' id='Page_56'></span> -Literature of Canada. But the poetry of Roberts, Lampman, -Carman, Campbell, D. C. Scott, Sir Gilbert Parker, -and Pauline Johnson, and the prose fiction of Miss Marshall -Saunders, Roberts, Parker, and Scott, as well as the verse -and prose of later native-born writers, belong to the Native -and National Literature of Canada. Yet both the Nativistic -and the Native and National Literature are equally <span class='it'>Canadian</span>, -inasmuch as each expresses with beauty or truth the -spirit and life of the people and the physiognomy and -moods of Nature in her seasons in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The most significant writer, at least by versatility of -genius and variety of achievement, in the history of the -Nativistic Literature of Canada, was Joseph Howe, born -at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1804. Solely as a man of -letters, Howe must be regarded as having been, from the -point of view of Nova Scotia and of Canada, a man of -superior creative genius. He, along with Haliburton, -inaugurated the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature -of Canada. He laid the foundations of Canadian Creative -Journalism and Canadian Political Literature. He was the -‘father’ of Canadian Literary and Forensic Oratory. He -gave fresh life and novel humorous quality to the Familiar -Sketch or Light Essay, after the manner but not in imitation -of Addison and Goldsmith. He was the first writer -in British North America to attempt the Short Story of -Mystery, and with engaging success. He was a Poet of -greater authentic genius than many other Canadian poets -who have a wider reputation. For he wrote poetry of -Nature and the Commonplace with the beauty and distinction -of Goldsmith and Burns. He infused into the -Patriotic Song a new music and what may be regarded as -the first expression of the National spirit in verse of that -species. He gave to the Convivial Song a fresh Western -‘tang’ of breeziness and genial humanity. He revitalized, -with novel originality and piquancy, the Poetry of Humor, -so originally indeed as to make his humorous poetry almost -<span class='pageno' title='57' id='Page_57'></span> -a species by itself. Finally, he discovered the genius -of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, trained him, sponsored -him, and introduced him to the world as the first systematic -humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1704, or just one hundred years before the birth of -Joseph Howe, the Boston <span class='it'>News-Letter</span>, the first New England -newspaper, was established. On March 17th, 1776, or -seventy-two years after the founding of the <span class='it'>News-Letter</span>, -the press of that journal departed from Boston for Halifax, -<span class='it'>via</span> Newport, R.I., in the care of John Howe, father of -Joseph Howe; and was set up in the office of the Halifax -<span class='it'>Gazette</span>, founded in 1752, the first newspaper published in -any of the Provinces which later became the Dominion of -Canada. The <span class='it'>News-Letter</span> was amalgamated with <span class='it'>The -Gazette</span>. The latter, however, was not a genuine newspaper; -it was a governmental organ which published chiefly -military and official intelligence. The <span class='it'>News-Letter</span> was, -in our sense of the word, a genuine newspaper. On the -face of the fact, the amalgamation of the New England -and the Nova Scotia newspapers appears as a simple, unmeaningful -<span class='it'>business</span> matter. Really, however, it was an -important factor in the evolution of Canadian literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>John Howe was a printer, and a cultured Loyalist. He -brought to Nova Scotia two ideals. These were, first, the -ideal of the free and democratic expression of the spirit in -word and deed; and, secondly, the ideal of the expression -of thought in strictly literary form. When, therefore, the -Boston <span class='it'>News-Letter</span> was amalgamated with the Halifax -<span class='it'>Gazette</span>, Loyalist culture and journalistic ideals and practice -infected and enhanced Nova Scotian (that is, Canadian) -journalism. The amalgamation changed the scope and -quality of Canadian journalism. For in 1828 Joseph -Howe became sole owner and editor of <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span>, -and proceeded systematically, and with better effect, to put -into practice the social, journalistic, and literary ideals of -his father. -<span class='pageno' title='58' id='Page_58'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Joseph Howe assumed absolute control of <span class='it'>The -Novascotian</span>, in the same year (1828) he also brought together -the band of Nova Scotia writers known as ‘The -Club.’ In the twenty years from 1828, when Howe became -active in creative journalism, to 1847, when the struggle -for Responsible Government in Nova Scotia ended and -Howe retired from <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span>, Howe raised journalism -to the dignity of literature. He achieved this in -two ways: first, by publishing in <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> his own -and Haliburton’s original ‘Club’ prose sketches, Haliburton’s -first series of <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, and the prose -and verse of other contemporary Nova Scotia writers; and, -secondly, by establishing, in his own narrative and descriptive -sketches, essays, legislative reviews, reported legislative -speeches, pamphlets, and public letters, a <span class='it'>new standard of -literary prose</span>. Those twenty years—1828 to 1848—may -be called the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature of -Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The epithet, ‘independent,’ as applied to the literature -of that period in Nova Scotia means that Howe, along with -Haliburton, set up standards of prose which in substance -and style broke away from English traditions and models. -Howe’s and Haliburton’s writings were not only an indigenous -product of Nova Scotia, a <span class='it'>native</span> literature, but -also a <span class='it'>new</span> literature, absolutely independent of other -literatures—in matter, form, and style. Moreover, <span class='it'>The -Novascotian</span>, in which were published the skits, sketches, -essays, and letters of ‘The Club,’ the sketches and essays -of Howe, the first of the <span class='it'>Sam Slick</span> humorous sketches, and, -later, the texts of Howe’s literary and forensic orations and -public letters, circulated not only in the Maritime Provinces -and the Canadas but also in the United States and Great -Britain. <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> thus introduced Howe and -Haliburton, as creative prose writers, to the literary world. -We may, therefore, mark the twenty years from 1828 to -1848 as the Epoch of the First Nativistic Literature of -Canada. -<span class='pageno' title='59' id='Page_59'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Howe’s own creative literary work by itself deserves -particular notice, inasmuch as it was a distinct contribution -to the genuine Nativistic Literature of Canada. In 1828 -Howe himself began a series of narrative and descriptive -writings, intimate, gossipy ‘genre’ and ‘color’ sketches, -which he published in <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> and which he named -<span class='it'>Western Rambles</span>. In 1830 he followed these with a -similar series which he named <span class='it'>Eastern Rambles</span>. In 1838 -and in 1839, while he and Haliburton were in Europe, -Howe published in <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> two series of essay-like -sketches, <span class='it'>The Nova Scotian Afloat</span> and <span class='it'>The Nova -Scotian in England</span>, in which it appeared that Howe was -developing for himself a new literary style. For though -these sketches are somewhat in the manner of Goldsmith -they have a merely outward essay-like formality, but are -distinguished by an originality of their own, an inward -spirit of fresh humor and a humanity, almost urbanity, -which are wholly Howe’s own creation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In another department Howe added creatively to the -prose literature of Canada. He laid the foundations of a -political literature, which was not journalism, but authentic -literature. He did this, first, by his inimitable so-called -<span class='it'>Legislative Reviews</span>, when, in 1830, he began what is admitted -by all critics to be in literary form and style a -brilliant series of discussions of public affairs. Again: -Howe enhanced the political literature of Canada by his -pamphlets, public letters and his speeches and addresses, -which were all published in the press.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is not, however, by his legislative reviews, pamphlets, -essays, sketches and public letters that Howe must be given -a unique status in Canadian creative prose literature. He -wins his unique status by virtue of his Speeches and Orations. -They are really ‘great’—noble in thought, beautiful -in literary style and finish, extraordinarily fine examples -of a Western reincarnation of the rhetorical and literary -gifts of such consummate parliamentarians and statesmen -<span class='pageno' title='60' id='Page_60'></span> -as Edmund Burke, John Bright, and William Ewart -Gladstone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally: Howe contributed to the Nativistic creative -literature of Canada considerable journalistic verse which, -in virtue of its humanity, and sincerity, its imaginative -beauties, pleasing conceits and sentiments, and flowing -rhythms (though it lacks somewhat in original verbal -music) is quite on the plane of the journalistic verse of -the 18th century neo-classical school, especially the verse -of Goldsmith, upon which most of the verse of Howe was -modelled. Howe wrote inspiriting Imperial verse, as, for -instance, his <span class='it'>Flag of Old England</span>, a really fine example of -patriotic poetry. He wrote colorful and musical descriptive -verse, as, for instance, his long unfinished poem <span class='it'>Acadia</span> -(in the 18th century rhymed couplet). He wrote infectious -humorous poetry, as, for instance, <span class='it'>The Blue Nose</span>, <span class='it'>To Mary</span>, -<span class='it'>A Toast</span> (to Haliburton), which is as near poetry as that -species of verse ever reaches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Johnson and Goldsmith raised journalistic verse to -the plane of poetry, so did Joseph Howe. Or, concretely, -if Goldsmith’s <span class='it'>Deserted Village</span> is authentic poetry, so is -Howe’s <span class='it'>Acadia</span>. Consider this excerpt from Howe’s -<span class='it'>Acadia</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Pearl of the West!—since first my soul awoke</p> -<p class='line0'>And on my eyes thy sylvan beauties broke,</p> -<p class='line0'>Since the warm current of my youthful blood</p> -<p class='line0'>Flowed on, thy charms, of mountain, mead, and flood</p> -<p class='line0'>Have been to me most dear. Each winning grace</p> -<p class='line0'>E’en in my childish hours I loved to trace,</p> -<p class='line0'>And, as in boyhood, o’er thy hills I strode,</p> -<p class='line0'>Or on thy foaming billows proudly rode,</p> -<p class='line0'>At ev’ry varied scene my heart would thrill,</p> -<p class='line0'>For, storm or sunshine, ’twas my Country still,</p> -<p class='line0'>And now, in riper years, as I behold</p> -<p class='line0'>Each passing hour some fairer charm unfold,</p> -<p class='line0'>In ev’ry thought, in ev’ry wish I own,</p> -<p class='line0'>In ev’ry prayer I breathe to Heaven’s high throne,</p> -<p class='line0'>My Country’s welfare blends—and could my hand</p> -<p class='line0'>Bestow one floweret on my native land,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='61' id='Page_61'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>Could I but light one Beacon fire, to guide</p> -<p class='line0'>The steps of those who yet may be her pride,</p> -<p class='line0'>Could I but wake one never dying strain</p> -<p class='line0'>Which Patriot hearts might echo back again,</p> -<p class='line0'>I’d ask no meed—no wreath of glory crave—</p> -<p class='line0'>If her approving smile my own Acadia gave!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Are those lines any less true, human, sincere, winning -poetry than the opening apostrophe of Goldsmith’s <span class='it'>Deserted -Village</span>?—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;</p> -<p class='line0'>Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain,</p> -<p class='line0'>Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,</p> -<p class='line0'>And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delayed:</p> -<p class='line0'>Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,</p> -<p class='line0'>Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,</p> -<p class='line0'>How often have I loitered o’er thy green,</p> -<p class='line0'>Where humble happiness endeared each scene!</p> -<p class='line0'>How often have I paused on every charm. . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and so on. ‘Pearl of the West!’—in just as short, apt, and -felicitous poetic phrase as Goldsmith’s apostrophe ‘Sweet -Auburn!’ Howe signalizes Nova Scotia, her natural beauty -and magic, her ‘homeland’ thrall over the heart and imagination -of her native sons, a thrall of mountain, mead, and -wood, and flood, of kinship with nature and of pride in her -resources on land and sea. His <span class='it'>Acadia</span> is all authentic -poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a lyrist of the beauty and pathos of the Commonplace, -after the manner of Burns, Howe ranks well, as in -his lyrics of this species, <span class='it'>To The Linnet</span>, <span class='it'>The Deserted -Nest</span>, and <span class='it'>To the Mayflower</span> (trailing arbutus). It is, -however, as a Poet of Humor that Howe must be regarded -as somewhat unique in the literary history of Canada. For -in his humorous verse Howe does not indulge in the ludicrous -or in sheer absurdity, as did George T. Lanigan. -Rather Howe employs an unconventional method of dignifying -the human spirit, as in his playful manner of -signalizing the heart qualities of the Nova Scotian in his -poem <span class='it'>The Blue Nose</span> and in <span class='it'>A Toast</span> (to Haliburton). -<span class='pageno' title='62' id='Page_62'></span> -Seldom did Howe use satire in humorous verse. But -whenever he did so, he employed the manner of Burns, -and in the form of epigram, as in <span class='it'>To Ann</span> and in this smart -epigram, <span class='it'>To a Lady (whose Eyes were Remarkably -Small)</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Your little eyes, with which, fair maid,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Strict watch on me you’re keeping,</p> -<p class='line0'>Were never made to <span class='it'>look</span>; I’m ’fraid</p> -<p class='line0'>  They’re only fit for <span class='it'>peeping</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Joseph Howe was a ‘poet frustrate.’ Had he been able -to devote himself wholly to verse, there is no doubt that -he would have left a considerable body of authentic poetry. -The bad in his verse is like the bad in the verse of his -superiors, but the best of Howe’s verse is genuine poetry. -Yet however high or low individual critics may estimate -the aesthetic and artistic qualities of his verse, Joseph -Howe has a right to a place in the history of Canadian -poetry, and to a distinctive place in the history of Canadian -humorous poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As the inaugurator of the Epoch of the Independent -Nativistic Prose Literature of Canada, as an authentic -creator of Literary Journalism and Literary and Forensic -Oratory, and as a significant, though frustrate Poet, Joseph -Howe was, as Samuel Johnson said of Goldsmith,—‘a very -great man.’</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='63' id='Page_63'></span><h1>CHAPTER IV</h1></div> - -<h3>Thomas Chandler Haliburton</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—THOMAS CHANDLER -HALIBURTON—FIRST SYSTEMATIC HUMORIST OF THE -ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLES—CREATOR OF A NEW TYPE OF -SATIRIC HUMOR AND COMIC CHARACTERIZATION.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>t</span> is the chief glory of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, -born at Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1796, that he was -<span class='it'>the first systematic humorist and satirist of the Anglo-Saxon -peoples</span>. This distinction will appear as almost obvious -once its meaning and scope are properly understood. -From the founding of the American Colonies till the American -Declaration of Independence there were no Anglo-Saxon -<span class='it'>peoples</span>. Up to pre-revolutionary times the colonists -in the Maritime Provinces, in Canada, and in the Atlantic -Colonies thought of themselves as British people merely -separated from the people in the Old Country by the main -of the Atlantic. It was a separation only in geographical -distribution. The British ‘family spirit’ was still intact, -and the Old Country was still ‘over home.’ It might be -thought that there were two British peoples on the American -continent after the Fall of Montreal (1760). As a -matter of fact, the British people in the Maritime Provinces -and Canada had been, as it were, always ‘under the wing’ -of the New England Colonies, at least in the sense of a -military and naval protectorate. So that after the Fall -of Montreal to the Declaration of Independence the whole -of the vast areas occupied by the British in the New World -was definitively British America.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the American Declaration of Independence and -<span class='pageno' title='64' id='Page_64'></span> -the revolution, there resulted in sentiment and aim a political -separation between the British people of one section -in America and the people of the Old Country. For the -first time the British ‘family spirit’ was disintegrated. In -1786, with the granting of the independence of the Atlantic -Old Colonies, a real political separation of the British in -North America was permanently established. There was -effected a separate United States and a separate British -North America (Maritime Provinces and Canada). Thus -there were, politically viewed, two Anglo-Saxon peoples in -America, and one in the United Kingdom. For the first -time in history the phrase ‘the Anglo-Saxon <span class='it'>peoples</span>’ denoted -a real distinction in political and social entities. The process -of time, of course, only increased the sense of separation -of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Unless we think of this 18th century division of the -Anglo-Saxons into three separate peoples, politically as well -as sentimentally, we shall regard Jonathan Swift as the -first systematic satiric humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. -This is impossible, however, for the reason that -Swift’s satires—<span class='it'>The Tale of a Tub</span> and <span class='it'>The Battle of -The Books</span> (1704) and <span class='it'>Gulliver’s Travels</span> (1726)—were -not only written prior to the revolution in America but -also were addressed solely or specifically to the English -people of the United Kingdom. Further, Swift was not -a consciously systematic satirist. He simply wrote, as -occasion demanded, satiric <span class='it'>pièces-a-thèse</span>. For the same -reasons Laurence Sterne cannot be regarded as the first -systematic humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Sterne’s -<span class='it'>Tristram Shandy</span> (1759-67) and <span class='it'>A Sentimental Journey</span> -(1768) were published before there was a United States -Republic and a British North America as separate political -entities. When Charles Dickens published his <span class='it'>Pickwick -Papers</span> (1836-37), the Anglo-Saxon <span class='it'>peoples</span> as such—in -the United States, in British North America, and in the -United Kingdom—had been a political fact for more than -<span class='pageno' title='65' id='Page_65'></span> -fifty years. Yet Dickens cannot be regarded as the first -systematic satiric humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. -He definitively addressed the English people in England. -He was a benevolent humorist, aiming by comic characterization -to create sympathy with our common humanity. -He also aimed to bring about certain social reforms, but -his method was that of the kindly humorist. The satirist -aims to cause pain as a remedial measure. But, above all, -Haliburton had anticipated Dickens both in time and in -method. For <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, with Sam Slick as the -central comic character, was published serially in <span class='it'>The -Novascotian</span> in 1835, or a year before the publication of -the first of <span class='it'>The Pickwick Papers</span>, and was in method a combination -of humor and satire, with a distinct political and -social thesis, namely, to promote a <span class='it'>zollverein</span> of the Anglo-Saxon -peoples. Dickens aimed mostly to entertain his -own people. Haliburton aimed to change the vision of -the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the United States, British -North America, and the United Kingdom, and thus, if -possible, to effect a world-wide Anglo-Saxon union or -unity. In short, Haliburton’s works in satiric humor were -not conceived and written primarily as literature, but as -social and political propaganda. The humor in them—the -‘soft sawder’—was introduced to relieve the pain of the -satiric truth just as the comic episodes in Shakespeare’s -tragedies relieve the emotional poignancy of the tragic -strain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To take this point of view about the aim and significance -of Haliburton as a satiric humorist is the first step towards -a proper approach to his humorous writings, and the only -way rightly to estimate his importance in Canadian, American, -English, and world literature. It is a simple matter -to trace the origin of his genius and to show his place and -influences on Canadian, American, and English Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Briefly, Haliburton’s satiric mood or temper was a -recrudescence of the revolutionary Loyalist mood or temper. -<span class='pageno' title='66' id='Page_66'></span> -He also inherited the Loyalist love of British connection -and an antipathy to republican institutions and -civilization, as in the United States. Further, in his time -the realistic revolt against the historical romance in fiction -was under way. Born with an inherited satiric temper, -and finding to hand a great problem, namely, the effecting -of the Anglo-Saxon dream of Imperialistic unity amongst -the peoples of British origin, Haliburton decided to be a -satiric realist, and to have his satiric writings reach and -move the hearts of his compatriots in the Maritime Provinces -and Canada and of the people of the United States -and in the United Kingdom. But as a satirist he saw all -the facts with a humorous appreciation, and in presenting -the facts of life, the psychology of society, the idiosyncrasies -of peoples, political institutions and culture and -civilization, as he saw them, Haliburton decided to write -with realism and truth but without rancor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was the <span class='it'>protégé</span> of Joseph Howe; and when Howe -founded ‘The Club,’ a coterie of Nova Scotia wits, Haliburton -contributed his share of the skits in political and -personal satire for which ‘The Club’ was famous. These -skits were derivative in manner. But in 1835 Haliburton -invented a method of his own and definitively set out on his -career as a systematic humorist, presenting his thoughts, -‘as the sunny side of common sense,’ in a series of sketches -entitled <span class='it'>The Clockmaker; or The Sayings and Doings of -Sam Slick of Slickville</span>. These sketches were published in -Joseph Howe’s newspaper <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> (1835-36). -There were twenty-three of them. These were augmented -to thirty-three, and were published in book form by Joseph -Howe, at Halifax, in 1837, and by Richard Bentley, at -London, in the same year. Bentley published a second -Series in 1838, and a third Series in 1840. Reprints appeared -in the United States, and translations in France and -Germany.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His reputation as a satiric humorist having been made -<span class='pageno' title='67' id='Page_67'></span> -by <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, Haliburton became a thorough systematic -creative humorist, publishing <span class='it'>The Letter-Bag of the -Great Western</span> (1840), <span class='it'>The Attaché</span>; or <span class='it'>Sam Slick in -England</span> (1843-44), <span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>; or <span class='it'>Life in a Colony</span> -(1849), <span class='it'>Sam Slick’s Wise Saws and Modern Instances</span> -(1853), <span class='it'>Nature and Human Nature</span> (1855), and <span class='it'>The -Season Ticket</span> (1860). Besides these works in creative -satire and humor, Haliburton applied himself to editing -humorous works, and published <span class='it'>Traits of American Humor -by Native Authors</span> (1852), and a sequel, <span class='it'>The Americans -at Home</span> (1854). All his creative works and his compilations -of humor were published on both sides of the -Atlantic and ran into innumerable editions and pirated reprints, -and <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> and some others were translated -into French and German. So that, on the face of -original production, Haliburton appears as the first and -foremost systematic satiric humorist of the Anglo-Saxon -peoples.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The core of all his works in creative humor is some -problem of the larger politics—British Connection, Imperial -Federation, Free Trade, the Independence of the British -North American Colonies, their Annexation with the -United States, Anglo-Saxon Alliance or Union, Responsible -Government in the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas, -Confederation of the Provinces, Voting by Ballot, Universal -Suffrage. For instance, in <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> (second -series) he presented the desirability of British connection, -but in <span class='it'>Nature and Human Nature</span> declared for the independence -of the British North American Colonies as against -their annexation with the United States, because he fancied -independence would be better for them and the motherland. -In <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> (second series) he advocated Imperial -Federation in the form of a union or alliance of the Anglo-Saxon -peoples for reciprocal security and economic development. -But in the same work and in <span class='it'>The Attaché</span> he -opposed Responsible Government for the Colonies out of -<span class='pageno' title='68' id='Page_68'></span> -a fear of mobocracy, a fear that had been engendered in -his heart by the Rebellion of 1837. An inherited prejudice -against republican institutions and a dread of mobocracy -caused him to oppose Confederation of the Provinces and -Universal Suffrage. In every one of his works of humor -or satire we find some special thesis, but chiefly satiric arguments -for the union or unity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples -to which he bends all his power of humor, satire, ridicule, -and epigram.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hitherto Haliburton’s originality and greatness have -been based on two claims. He created one of the perduring -or unique comic characters of humorous literature; and he -is regarded as the ‘father’ of American humor. Neither -of these distinctions constitutes his real originality and -greatness as a satiric humorist and man of letters. He is -really great on account of his distinct and definable influences -on three literatures.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beginning with Canadian Literature, we remark that -Haliburton’s influence in Canada is popularly conceived, -not as literary, but as political. It is true that Haliburton’s -themes or theses were highly social and political. It is -also true that, so far as his humor is concerned, he was -unappreciated and even unread in Canada. It is true, still -further, that he has had no successors as a humorist in -Canada (for Stephen Leacock is not a successor, neither -being a native son nor following the method of Haliburton). -Nevertheless, Haliburton achieved two important results -for Canadian Literature. Along with Joseph Howe, Haliburton -ushered in the Epoch of the New or Independent -Prose Literature of Canada. Again: he not only produced -an original prose literature but also wrote it with such -originality and novelty of matter and style that Haliburton’s -prose, that is, Canadian prose, has a significant and permanent -place in English and World Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It may sound strange or startling to learn that Haliburton’s -work in satiric humor and comic characterization -<span class='pageno' title='69' id='Page_69'></span> -actually <span class='it'>displaced</span> in England the vogue of such popular -American prose writers as Irving and Cooper. The fact -is important, but the reason is more important. Between -1820 and 1840 Irving, with <span class='it'>The Sketch Book</span> and <span class='it'>Bracebridge -Hall</span>, and Cooper, with <span class='it'>The Spy</span>, <span class='it'>The Pioneers</span>, and -his <span class='it'>Leatherstocking Tales</span>, won popular appreciation in -England. By 1840 two Canadian authors, John Richardson, -with his historical romance <span class='it'>Wacousta</span>, and Thomas -Chandler Haliburton, with <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> series, also won -popular appreciation. But Haliburton’s work was appreciated -for an altogether different reason from that which -caused the vogue of Irving, Cooper, and Richardson. The -English were caught by the <span class='it'>new matter</span> in the work of -Irving, Cooper and Richardson, but they felt that it was -all in an <span class='it'>old manner</span>, the manner respectively of Goldsmith -and Sir Walter Scott. They were reading, they felt, -<span class='it'>English</span> Literature, done by two Americans and one Canadian. -Save in mere matter and ‘properties’ there was -nothing in the work of Irving, Cooper, and Richardson that -might not have been done by a visiting Englishman who -had gone to the United States or to the Canadas for new -material and local color. It was English, not strictly -<span class='it'>original American</span>, literature. And so it had a mere vogue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When, however, the English people read Haliburton’s -satiric comedy and comic characterization, they came, <span class='it'>for -the first time</span>, upon an absolute or sheer literary novelty—literature -that was <span class='it'>not</span> English, <span class='it'>not</span> English-American, <span class='it'>not</span> -English-Canadian, but an original <span class='it'>American</span> species, absolutely -new and unique. Here in Haliburton’s work was -literature in the English language, but not English in -matter, manner, or tone. Here were such novel satiric -humor, such arresting and vitalized comic characterization, -and such a strange medley of practical wisdom in moral -maxims and epigrams, and all expressed in a unique lingo, -that the like of it never was before in any literature which -had come even from America. -<span class='pageno' title='70' id='Page_70'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>At once a change took place in the minds of the English -people in England. Hitherto America had looked across -to England for fresh literature, and had based its own -literature on English models. But when Haliburton produced -a wholly original American literature, England -looked, for the first time in history, across to America both -for fresh and original literature, and for models which the -English writers might follow. At least in one instance -English humoristic literature actually modelled itself on -Haliburton. There is no argument possible in the matter. -For the fact is that Dickens did read <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, -which appeared serially a year earlier than Dickens’ <span class='it'>Pickwick -Papers</span>, and that Sam Weller is an English version of -Haliburton’s Sam Slick (not conversely).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is a literary phenomenon by itself that Haliburton’s -work enjoyed an ‘unprecedented popularity’ in England but -also displaced in popularity the work of Irving, Cooper and -Richardson. The popularity of Haliburton’s work was not -a mere vogue. It remains to this day. His Sam Slick -has been admitted to the gallery of the chief comic characters, -not only in English, but also in world, literature—to a -place beside Sterne’s Uncle Toby, Dickens’ Pickwick and -Micawber, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Daudet’s Tartarin, -Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It is also a fact that Haliburton’s -epigrams and moral maxims have become part of -the English colloquial speech and at least English popular -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Most remarkable were the influences of Haliburton and -his works on American Literature. Rightly to appreciate -these influences, it is necessary to understand what Haliburton -was not. He was not, as has been alleged, ‘the -father (or founder) of American humor.’ He was not -‘the creator of the American type in literature.’ He was not -‘the first American in literature.’ His Sam Slick is not -‘the typical American.’ These alleged distinctions are half-truths -and are based on ambiguities. -<span class='pageno' title='71' id='Page_71'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>There is considerable truth and point in calling Haliburton -‘the Apostle of American Humor.’ As to progenitorship, -the fact is that Benjamin Franklin is the ‘father’ -of indigenous American humor. In 1765 Franklin sent -to a London newspaper what is the first example of that -species of satiric burlesque, that preposterous or extravagant -nonsense, said with a grave air of veracity, which is accepted -as the characteristic matter and manner of American -humor. Franklin was versatile in genius and so variously -occupied in his long career that hardly can he be regarded -as systematic in any calling. Yet he was as systematic -as a humorist and satirist as he was in anything else. He -began his literary career as a humorist when, in 1722, he -contributed pseudonymously to <span class='it'>The New England Courant</span> -the series of imitative Addisonian skits known as the -‘Silence Dogood Papers.’ Seven years later, he continued -his humor in <span class='it'>The Pennsylvania Gazette</span> with the -sprightly letters of ‘Busybody,’ ‘Anthony Afterwit,’ ‘Alice -Addertongue,’ and ‘Bob Brief,’ and with satiric burlesques -in <span class='it'>A Meditation on a Quart Mug</span>, <span class='it'>A Witch Trial at Mount -Holly</span>, and other squibs. Quite systematic was the humor -of Franklin’s Prefaces to <span class='it'>Poor Richard’s Almanack</span> (1732-1758) -and of some of the aphoristic wit and wisdom in -the Almanacks when the epigrams or maxims were Franklin’s -own invention, as, for instance, ‘Never take a wife -till you have a house (and a fire) to put her in.’ Though -most of the proverbial wisdom in <span class='it'>Poor Richard</span> was borrowed, -the form and wit—the ‘Yankee smartness’—of it -were Franklin’s creation, and he became the ‘father’ of all -those New World humorists who wrote aphoristic wit and -wisdom, down to Haliburton and from Haliburton down -to Westcott (‘David Harum’). Masterpieces in mordant -satire worthy of Dean Swift are Franklin’s <span class='it'>Of the Meanes -of disposing the Enemies of Peace</span> (1760), <span class='it'>An Edict by the -King of Prussia</span> (1773), <span class='it'>Rules by which a Great Empire -may be Reduced to a Small One</span> (1773), <span class='it'>Speech of Sidi -<span class='pageno' title='72' id='Page_72'></span> -Mehemet Ibrahim</span> (an ironical justification for the enslaving -of the Christians by Mohammedan Africans, 1790). -Also to be mentioned are Franklin’s <span class='it'>bagatelles</span> (1778-80), -written during his stay at Passy, France, of which the most -famous are <span class='it'>The Ephemera</span>, <span class='it'>The Story of the Whistle</span>, <span class='it'>The -Morals of Chess</span>, and <span class='it'>The Dialogue between Franklin and -the Gout</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The foregoing enumeration of Franklin’s humorous -and satiric writings show that if collected in one or more -volumes they would bulk large and prove that he was very -considerable a systematic humorist. But only the Letter -of 1765 to the London Press and the four masterpieces of -irony or satiric burlesque written in 1760, 1773 and 1790 -are in the manner which is recognized as the characteristic -American humor—a commingling of extravagant nonsense -and fact, uttered with such an air of veracity as to make -the passage from fact to nonsense and conversely imperceptible -and the detecting of it, on first reading, impossible. -On the side of aphoristic wit and wisdom, the work of -Franklin is indigenous, and, though in substance frequently -derived, is original in form and style. So that while we -must regard Franklin as the real ‘father’ of American -humor, we must also see wherein Haliburton is even more -original than Franklin and had an even more important -a constructive influence on American humor than had -Franklin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What was meant by Artemus Ward and others who -distinguished Haliburton as ‘the ‘father’ (or ‘founder’) -of American humor,’ as the ‘creator of the American type -in literature,’ as ‘the first American in literature,’ and Haliburton’s -Sam Slick as ‘the typical American,’ was a three-fold -distinction which these formulae do not truly express. -First, Haliburton ‘naturalized’ in America a method of -humor in dialect, so that it became the method of certain -of his successors (Ward, Billings, Westcott, Dunne) and -a method of exaggeration or humorous mendacity and -<span class='pageno' title='73' id='Page_73'></span> -comic characterization, so that it became the method of certain -other successors (notably Mark Twain). Secondly, -Haliburton ‘popularized’ his method of humor in dialect and -his comic characterization, especially Sam Slick, so that -they became accepted in England and Europe as peculiarly -American—the one as the indigenously original American -method of humor, and the other as the typical New -Englander, whom the English cartoonists transmuted in -caricature into ‘Uncle Sam,’ that is, into the embodiment -of <span class='it'>some</span> typical American characteristics. Thirdly, though -American (United States and British North America or -Canadian) authors, Irving, Cooper, Richardson, who were -contemporaries of Haliburton, had a vogue in England, -Haliburton had produced satiric humor and comic characterization -which were not only <span class='it'>un</span>-English in method and -conception, but also so original as to be absolutely unlike -any other humor and humorous characterization in the -world. If any literature was, in substance and manner, -strictly American, it was Haliburton’s humorous writings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In short, the ‘naturalization’ of a method of humor in -dialect—in America, and the ‘popularization’ of the chief -phases of what became accepted throughout the world as -American, though really New England, humor of thought, -speech, and character—that is what is really meant by -saying that Haliburton is the ‘father’ of American humor, -and is also his great achievement so far as he constructively -influenced American (United States) Literature. But it -is not his greatest distinction from the point of view of -creative originality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His prime originality lay neither in his dialect nor in -the creation of his chief character, Sam Slick, but in something -which is ultimate and unique in satiric genius, and -which entitles him to a place beside Swift as a subtle creator -of mordant satire. As regards the dialect and the conversational -method of narrative of his chief character Sam -Slick, the variations in morphology and phonetics, and the -<span class='pageno' title='74' id='Page_74'></span> -piquancy and liveliness of it all convince one that Haliburton -independently developed the dialect or lingo of his -humorous characters. But there are facts which prove that -he developed it on a groundwork of a real New England -diction. When we compare, on the one side, the ‘Down -East’ dialect of Seba Smith’s <span class='it'>Letters of Major Downing</span> -in the Portland <span class='it'>Courier</span> (1833-34), which were imitated by -Charles Augustus Davis in the New York <span class='it'>Daily Advertiser</span> -(1835), and on the other side, the New England diction in -Lowell’s <span class='it'>Biglow Papers</span> (Boston <span class='it'>Courier</span> 1846-48; <span class='it'>Atlantic -Monthly</span> 1862-67), with the diction which Haliburton puts -into the mouth of Sam Slick, we find that Sam Slick’s -dialect is more ‘outlandish’ in morphological and phonetic -corruption than the ‘Down East’ diction in Smith’s and -Davis’ <span class='it'>Letters</span>, but nearer to the New England dialect in -Lowell’s <span class='it'>Biglow Papers</span>. Lowell, who was a scholar and -linguist, and whose own appreciation of the New England -diction is embodied in the learned disquisitions of Rev. J. -Wilbur on dialectical morphology, certainly would not burlesque -and degrade the speech of his fellow countrymen. -The dialect of Lowell’s <span class='it'>Biglow Papers</span> must be accepted -as a real, indigenous New England dialect. Haliburton -had read Smith’s <span class='it'>Letters</span>, which had circulated throughout -the Maritime Provinces, and a New England of ‘Down -East’ dialect was familiar in Nova Scotia. Haliburton’s -diction, then, in faithfulness to the real New England -diction, falls midway between the diction in Lowell’s <span class='it'>Biglow -Papers</span> and the first journalistic forms of that diction -as represented in the <span class='it'>Letters</span> of Smith and Davis. Haliburton’s -is his conception of that diction and his independent -development of it into a novel humorous dialect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As to the originality of Haliburton’s chief character, -Sam Slick, the truth is that the humorist created, on a -realistic basis, a transcript of the ‘composite’ order, the -main outline being derived from a real peddler-clockmaker, -named Seth, familiar in Nova Scotia, and from Haliburton’s -<span class='pageno' title='75' id='Page_75'></span> -own coachman, Lennie Geldert, and a friend Judge -Peleg Wiswell, who were ‘smart’ in wit and who were -first-rate <span class='it'>raconteurs</span>. Haliburton also had as material the -stage peddler who had made his appearance in dramatic -literature as early as 1811, and who by 1830 was a stock -character of the acted drama, having the same comic -function as the stage Irishman of the late Victorian age. -Neither Sam Slick himself nor his conversational dialect -were absolute inventions of Haliburton, but were based on -a real and living dialect and character. He employed his -creative faculties in giving the one a humorous piquancy -and liveliness and the other the individuality and reality of -a real person; so that Sam Slick remains as one of the immortal -characters of fiction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the slightest reflection reveals the fact that Sam -Slick is not a <span class='it'>single</span> person of many characteristics, not a -<span class='it'>type</span> of character, but a <span class='it'>composite</span> creation, the <span class='it'>epitome</span> of -so many distinct and contradictory traits that they could not -reside in a single person but only in persons. Sam Slick, -in short, was conceived and drawn to personify <span class='it'>a people</span>, -and his characteristics are an immanent criticism or -satirizing of the virtues and vices of republican democracy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What is Sam Slick? He is a disreputable plebeian -creature—slangy, coarse, conceited, boastful, mendacious, -irreverent, yet shrewd, wise, practical, acute in perception -of social and political ideals, courageous, self-reliant, -quick-witted, critical of standards and values, frank in -speech, and direct in action. What does he represent? -Haliburton’s conception of <span class='it'>typical Americanism</span>. What -was he designed to achieve? Haliburton aimed to present -in the character, sayings, and doings of Sam Slick, the -<span class='it'>reductio ad absurdum</span> of republican culture, institutions and -civilization in America.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>President Felton, of Harvard University, in 1842, -writing in <span class='it'>The North American Review</span>, and George William -Curtis, writing later in <span class='it'>Harper’s Magazine</span>, were only -<span class='pageno' title='76' id='Page_76'></span> -partially right in attacking Haliburton for having burlesqued -and caricatured in <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, and, particularly -in the character of Sam Slick, American culture and -civilization. It was mis-representation by sectional and -class typification; the illogic of a part for the whole. But -they were wrong in their fundamental presumption, namely, -that the English people would accept Sam Slick and his -sayings and doings as typical Americanism. Cultivated -English people no more accepted Sam Slick as the typical -American than cultivated American people accepted the -London Cockney, Sam Weller, as the typical Englishman. -What really happened was a two-fold result in literary appreciation. -That such an uncultured and socially inferior -creature as Sam Slick should appear as the social and -political critic of Anglo-Saxon institutions and civilization -struck the imagination of the English people as a most -novel and daring creation in satiric comedy, and Sam Slick -himself as the most egregiously comic figure in modern -literature. The second result was that since the English -people accepted Sam Slick and his sayings and doings as a -novelty in creative comedy and the American people took -it all as a caricature of their culture and civilization, Haliburton’s -satiric humor enjoyed, as it does to this day, an -‘unprecedented popularity’ in England but had less popularity -in the United States. Haliburton’s unprecedented -popularity in England had also the effect of causing the -English people for the first time to look across the Atlantic -to America for novel literary creation and entertainment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Did Haliburton really mis-represent? Did he really -present only sectional and class culture and civilization in -America? Was he justified in choosing an obscure, socially -disreputable creature from a section of American society -to be the critic of American institutions and civilization? -Why did he not choose someone socially higher—an American -gentleman—to represent typical Americanism? The -truth is Haliburton actually did represent all phases of -<span class='pageno' title='77' id='Page_77'></span> -American culture and civilization. There is the interlocutor -in <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>—the Squire, Rev. Mr. Hopewell, -and Mr. Everett, who was a real person, a president -of Harvard and a diplomat, and there are pictures of -the finer social and intellectual life of Nova Scotia and -the United States. Felton and Curtis missed all this. How -did they happen to miss it? Because Haliburton’s lesser -characters were just bits of <span class='it'>genre humor</span>, whereas Sam Slick -was such an outstandingly clear and vivid—unique—creation -in comic characterization that Felton and Curtis -saw only Sam Slick and immediately conceived him as a -mis-representation of the whole of American culture and -civilization. That they did so is a tribute to the genius -of Haliburton. For it contains the answer as to what is -Haliburton’s real originality as a creative humorist. The -answer is this: The fact that Haliburton created a composite -character, uncultured and socially inferior, to be the -supreme critic of his social and intellectual betters and -of American or republican culture, institutions, and civilization, -is an <span class='it'>absolutely original achievement in creative satire -and comic characterisation</span>. With a single stroke of genius -Haliburton places himself beside Dean Swift as a satirist, -and raises himself to the status of one of the world’s -perduring satirists and humorists.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally: Haliburton influenced not only American -humorous literature but also American <span class='it'>fine</span> literature. We -note, first, the constructive influence of his editorial labors -in compiling and distributing in the United States and -other countries the best American humorous fiction, as in -his <span class='it'>Traits of American Humor</span>, and <span class='it'>The Americans at -Home</span>. Too much has been said of his influence on Artemus -Ward, Josh Billings, and other American humorists -writing in dialect in prose. But his influence on American -humor in dialect in <span class='it'>verse</span> has hardly, if at all, been rightly -or fully appreciated. Lowell came under the influence of -Haliburton in writing his humorous verse. In his <span class='it'>Biglow -<span class='pageno' title='78' id='Page_78'></span> -Papers</span> Lowell not only imitated, but also actually borrowed, -ludicrous conceits and situations from <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> -series. This fact is important, because in the last -analysis Haliburton produced his humorous effects more -by grotesque conceits and ludicrous situations than by -dialect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Haliburton had a potent influence also on American -journalism of his time. The newspapers reprinted ‘Yankee -Stories’ and ‘Yankee Yarns’ and ‘Letters,’ which were the -titles of pirated editions of Haliburton’s <span class='it'>The Americans at -Home</span>, and American newspaper staff humorists wrote -imitations and burlesques in the manner of Sam Slick. This -in turn influenced other American humorists, and they produced -imitations of Sam Slick, commercializing them as -‘By the Author of Sam Slick,’ knowing that thus they -guaranteed sure and large sales.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It may be granted that Haliburton’s influence on American -romantic poetry was only accidental and pragmatic. -But the fact is that Longfellow was actually inspired to -versify the ‘story’ of the Acadian maiden Evangeline, not -when he heard a mere incident of it from Hawthorne, or -when he heard it more in detail from his own pastor, who -got it from an aunt of Haliburton, but when he read in -Haliburton’s <span class='it'>Historical and Statistical Account of Nova -Scotia</span> (1829) the full pathetic tale of the Expulsion of the -Acadians. More important is the fact that Francis Parkman -derived from his reading of Haliburton’s <span class='it'>Historical -and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia</span> his own romantic -method of writing history. So that, as far as America is -concerned, Haliburton may be called the ‘father’ of the -romantic method of writing history.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Versatility</span> of powers or genius and <span class='it'>variety</span> of literary -creation distinguish Haliburton as a man of letters. He -was a first-rate satirist or epigrammatist, narrative and -descriptive writer, anecdotist or raconteur, character-delineator, -nature-painter, and, in one respect, he was a -<span class='pageno' title='79' id='Page_79'></span> -prose stylist of first rank. Such versatility is unusual and -even exceptional, and seemingly marks Haliburton as a -specially gifted writer. But Haliburton’s versatility also -exhibits certain peculiarities. Oddly, though he is saliently -the humorist or satirist or aphorist or story-teller or -descriptive writer or nature-painter or character-limner in -one or another of his works, he is, almost without exception, -all these in any work. More oddly, while a certain -gift or power predominates in a given work, all his works, -taken successively, disclose no development of powers -either in invention or in literary mechanics. There are -differences in each successive work, but only of sheer <span class='it'>variety</span> -in literary substance, not of greater and still greater advance -in novel conception and artistic handling of his matter. -Summarily: Haliburton’s gifts in humorous story-telling -and aphoristic wit and wisdom are salient in the first and -second series of <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, <span class='it'>Wise Saws</span>, <span class='it'>Nature and -Human Nature</span>, and <span class='it'>The Season Ticket</span>. His gifts in narration -and description are salient in <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, <span class='it'>The Attaché</span>, -and <span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>. His gifts in character-portraiture -and naturalistic description are salient in <span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>. -But if any work contains all Haliburton’s best qualities—ingenious -and unfailing invention, novel and colorful -imagination, rare perception of the humorous and ludicrous, -acute insight into human nature, and extraordinary powers -of vivid narration and realistic description—that work is -<span class='it'>The Old Judge; or, Life in a Colony</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a satirist Haliburton employed two forms—realistic -satire and humorous exaggeration or mendacity (‘tall -stories’ Haliburton called the latter). A prime example -of his realistic satire is his description of a fashionable -wedding in London; another of a ‘rube’ or bucolic wedding -in Slickville, both in <span class='it'>The Attaché</span>. In this sort of ‘take-off’ -Haliburton has never been surpassed by modern journalistic -humorists. A first-rate example of Haliburton’s gifts in -humorous mendacity or burlesque is his ‘tall story’ of the -<span class='pageno' title='80' id='Page_80'></span> -sale of his horse Mandarin as related in <span class='it'>Nature and Human -Nature</span>. This is the prototype of Westcott’s horse deal -burlesques in his <span class='it'>David Harum</span>. More in the manner -made familiar by Mark Twain is the humorous mendacity -of Haliburton’s tales of ‘The Gouging School’ and ‘The -Black Stole,’ both in <span class='it'>The Attaché</span>. There are anticipations -a-plenty of the Mark Twain manner of ironic exaggeration -and mordant satire in the second series of <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, -<span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>, and <span class='it'>The Season Ticket</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a Humorist Haliburton obtained his effects—and -won his popularity with all classes—by character typification, -story-telling, aphorisms, epigrams, and homely moral -maxims, jests, waggish conceits, jocular phrases, and puns, -including <span class='it'>double entendres</span>. He employed two methods of -character typification; one being humorous definition; the -other, humorous classification. Almost all Haliburton’s -characters have names that are essentially what we mean -by nick-names, to indicate distinctive mental or moral -qualities of the individuals. It is by this method, rather -than by character-drawing, that Haliburton succeeded in -individualizing each character. It is the method of individualization -by suggestion. The name Sam <span class='it'>Slick</span>, for -instance, at once conveys the type of individual or character, -namely, the kind of person who ‘lives by his wits,’ who -gains profit by subtle or sharp practice. Such a person is -‘slick,’ an epithet derived by a vulgar pronounciation of -the adjective ‘sleek.’ Other instances are The Honourable -Lucifer <span class='it'>Wolfe</span>, The Honourable Alden <span class='it'>Gobble</span>, General -Conrad <span class='it'>Corncob</span>, Captain Ebeneezer <span class='it'>Fathom</span>, Mr. <span class='it'>Pettifog</span> -the Justice, <span class='it'>Nabb</span> the police constable, Deacon <span class='it'>Flint</span>, Rev. -Joshua <span class='it'>Hopewell</span>, Dr. <span class='it'>Query</span>, and Old <span class='it'>Blowhard</span>. The -moral connotations of these nick-names are obvious, but -Haliburton himself in the proper place always names the -character and adds a summary of moral qualities to show -the aptness of the name and its connotation. The Honourable -Alden Gobble is satirically or humorously thus named -<span class='pageno' title='81' id='Page_81'></span> -because he was ‘dyspeptic and suffered great oneasiness -arter [and from] eatin’.’ A signal example of Haliburton’s -method of typification by humorous classification is found -in <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, (third series, chapter 13). There he -classifies patriots into ‘rebel patriots, mahogany patriots, -spooney patriots, place patriots, and raal genu<span class='it'>ine</span> patriots.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>General popular character types which are familiar in -American humor indubitably had their prototypes in Haliburton’s -characters. Sam Slick, as a horse trader, is the -prototype of David Harum; and, as an aphorist and practical -philosopher, is the prototype of Mr. Dooley. Mrs. -Figg in Haliburton’s <span class='it'>Letter-Bag</span> is the prototype of Shillaber’s -Mrs. Partington. In the same work Haliburton -has an ‘enfant terrible’ who is the prototype of Peck’s ‘Bad -Boy’ and of later examples of ‘awful children,’ down to -Tarkington’s Penrod.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Haliburton was an egregious punster, and he even indulged -in <span class='it'>double entendres</span> which were coarse and sometimes -obscene, but which may be excused on account of -their humorous point or satiric wit. As an anecdotist, -‘spinner of yarns,’ ‘tall stories,’ ‘stretchers,’ with a decided -tendency to employ the coarse and irreverent, Haliburton -anticipated similar traits in Mark Twain, as in Twain’s -<span class='it'>Roughing It</span> and <span class='it'>Innocents Abroad</span>. Haliburton’s occasional -coarseness and irreverence are to be explained by -his hatred of sham and insincerity, of conventionalized -prudery, of concealed indecency of thought, of the real -evil caused by men and women who are outwardly ‘whited -sepulchres.’ It must, however, be admitted that, traceable -to his Border Scots ancestry, there was in him a love of -plebeian or coarse fun for its own sake. But it must also -be said that his coarseness of wit was never based on impurity -of heart, and that he had the highest respect for the -moral beauty and dignity of womanhood. He did remark -playfully the engaging vanities and foibles of women, but -for pure love and motherhood and all the sweet charities of -<span class='pageno' title='82' id='Page_82'></span> -woman he had the finest and tenderest respect. Unsurpassed -in world literature is Haliburton’s tender and holy sublimation -of woman’s spiritual winsomeness and dignity, as -in this immortal metaphor:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote-right90percent'> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>A woman has two smiles which an angel might envy; the -smile that accepts a lover before the words are uttered, and -the smile that lights on the first-born baby and assures him of -a mother’s love.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>As to the original humor of Haliburton’s ingenious -metaphors, similes, outlandish coinage of expressive word -morphology (such as ‘absquotulate,’ ‘spiflicate,’ ‘conflustigation,’ -‘conniption fit,’ reechoed in Artemus Ward and Josh -Billings), and of his wealth of aphoristic wit and wisdom, -so much are they in the permanent warp and woof of the -popular literature of humor and of common speech that -they need not here be specially remarked and illustrated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But there is one matter in which Haliburton has not -been properly appreciated, and which demands fresh treatment. -He has been charged with a lack of prose style. -The truth is that Haliburton not only wrote with a positive -Theory of Style in mind, but also anticipated Matthew -Arnold and Herbert Spencer by actually publishing his -theory or philosophy of prose style. Those who criticized -Haliburton as a stylist did so without knowing that he had -actually applied a definite theory of style to his structure -and color. From that point of view, the critics of Haliburton -as a stylist were irrelevant. But they also missed -or ignored the fact that he was, if infrequently, a master -of descriptive prose style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Haliburton formulates his theory of prose style in two -works—in <span class='it'>The Attaché</span>, and in <span class='it'>Wise Saws</span> (chapter -19). The first work contains his ‘Apologia’ for his -<span class='it'>utilitarian</span> style; the second briefly explains the <span class='it'>psychology</span> -of his style. The ‘Apologia’ justifies, as Matthew -Arnold would have justified, a certain promiscuity and rise -and fall in his style; the second work anticipates Spencer’s -<span class='pageno' title='83' id='Page_83'></span> -philosophy of the conservation of mental energies as applied -to particular styles. Haliburton himself distinguishes -between his conversational, colloquial, humoristic—his -consciously <span class='it'>utilitarian</span>—style, and his artificial or literary—his -<span class='it'>aesthetic</span>—style as in his descriptive prose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In <span class='it'>The Attaché</span> he points out, in what we have called his -‘Apologia,’ that his aims, which were utilitarian, did not -call for either architectonic skill or verbal artistry, but that -his colloquial, loose, prolix, promiscuous, repetitious, diffuse, -and digressive style in <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> and <span class='it'>The Attaché</span> -was inevitable and was consciously adopted as best fitted -to the heterogeneous themes or matter of these works. -‘Prolixity,’ he adds, ‘was unavoidable from another cause. -In order to attain my [practical] objects, I found it expedient -so to intermingle humor with the several topics as -to render subjects attractive that in themselves are generally -considered too deep and dry for general reading.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In particular, Haliburton justifies his sentential structure -on psychological grounds. In <span class='it'>Wise Saws</span> he says that -he purposely designed the structure and rhythms of his -sentences so that their length and abrupt translations would -spur the mind to attention, and that he employed a conversational -style and dialogue to create interest and keep -the attention alive. He wished his works, since they had -a utilitarian end, to be read by all classes. He resolved to -adapt the style of his works to assuring their popularity—‘in -the parlor and the kitchen.’ His themes were discursive -and therefore he resolved that the stylistic treatment should -be discursive. So Haliburton consciously employed a style -which, by novelty of dress, by being written in natural -language and illustrated with droll humor, and which by -colloquial sentential structure would, like ‘oral chat,’ sustain -interest or excite attention, and inevitably be read in -the parlor and the kitchen. ‘Why is it,’ asks Sam Slick in -the <span class='it'>Wise Saws</span>, ‘if you <span class='it'>read</span> a book to a man you set him -asleep? Just because it is a book and the language ain’t -<span class='pageno' title='84' id='Page_84'></span> -common. Why is it if you <span class='it'>talk</span> to him he will sit up all -night with you? Just because it’s talk, the language of -natur’.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Haliburton’s humoristic or utilitarian prose style is -justified, as he himself justified it, by its successful adaption -of means to end. In his ‘Apologia’ he noted the ‘unprecedented -circulation’ of his works on ‘both sides of the -Atlantic.’ He wrote <span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span> in a people’s style -for people’s ends, and the style, in his own view, admirably -succeeded. We must therefore hold that academic criticism -which scores Haliburton’s humoristic style on the -ground that it is loose, prolix, repetitious, digressive, vulgar, -colloquial, that it is not ‘<span class='it'>fine</span> style,’ commits the fallacy -of irrelevant conclusion. In the writing of humoristic, -utilitarian, conversational style, precisely adapted to its end, -Haliburton was a master. But he was also, at least on -occasion or whenever he essayed fine style, as in his descriptive -prose, especially of Nature, an artist of first rank, -worthy of a place beside Ruskin, Stevenson, and Hardy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As regards Haliburton’s aesthetic style we may instance -as example of graphic realism in ‘local color’ his description -of the dress and characteristics of an Acadian people -(<span class='it'>Nature and Human Nature</span>) and of a Low German people -(<span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>). An example of his fine artistry in -painting social life is his idyllic picture of the home of -Captain Collingwood’s sister, Aunt Thankful (<span class='it'>Wise Saws</span>). -As a picture of the sweet and gracious social life in old -colonial days, it is a masterpiece. But for sheer pathos of -‘thoughts that lie too deep for tears,’ Haliburton’s description -of the Duke of Kent’s Lodge, against a background of -Nature (<span class='it'>The Clockmaker</span>, third series), is worthy of Ruskin -or Hardy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Haliburton’s <span class='it'>forte</span> in descriptive prose was naturalistic -impressionism. In the technique of nature-painting -Haliburton employed the whole palette of pigmentation, -but especially the color-tones of carmines, yellows, greens, -<span class='pageno' title='85' id='Page_85'></span> -citrons, indigos, with white and black. His description of -a Silver Thaw in February in Nova Scotia (<span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>) -is unsurpassed in literature, and, if the authorship were -unknown, might be mistaken for a bit of aesthetic prose by -Ruskin:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote100percent'> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>This morning I accompanied the Judge and Miss Sandford in their -sleigh on an excursion into the country. The scene, though rather -painful to the eyes, was indescribably brilliant and beautiful. There -had been, during last night and part of yesterday, a slight thaw, accompanied -by a cold fine rain that froze, the moment it fell, into ice -of the purest crystal. Every deciduous tree was covered with this -glittering coating and looked in the distance like an enormous though -graceful bunch of feathers; while, on nearer approach, it resembled, -with its limbs now bending under the heavy weight of the transparent -incrustation, a dazzling chandelier. The open fields, covered with a -rough but hardened surface of snow, glistened in the sun as if -thickly strewed with the largest diamonds; and every rail of the -wooden fences in this general profusion of ornaments was decorated -with a delicate fringe of pendent ice that radiated like burnished -silver. The heavy and sombre spruce, loaded with snow, rejoiced in -a green old age. Having its massy shape relieved by strong and -numerous lights, it gained in grace, what it lost in strength, and stood -erect among its drooping neighbors, venerable but vigorous, the hoary -forefather of the wood. The tall and slender poplar and white -birch . . . bent their heads gracefully to the ground under the unusual -burden, and formed fanciful arches which the frost encircled with -numerous wreaths of pearls. . . . The boles of the different trees and -their limbs appeared through the transparent ice; and the rays of the -sun, as they fell on them, invested them with all the hues of the -prism. . . .</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>In that passage, besides realistic impressionism or color-writing, -we find first rate <span class='it'>style</span> in composition—artistic -sentential structure and rhythmical periods, along with -pure and dignified diction. In all Haliburton’s works -we can find passages which show his firm grip on the technique -of prose style, and a special power of vivifying his -description and color-impressionism with psychological -suggestion that enhances the effect on the sensibilities and -imagination. In all literature the allurement of sylvan -summer in Nova Scotia or Canada is not more winningly -<span class='pageno' title='86' id='Page_86'></span> -or colorfully presented than in Haliburton’s impressionistic -idyll ‘A Day on the Lake’ (<span class='it'>Nature and Human Nature</span>). -In psychological suggestion the acme has been attained by -Haliburton in his descriptive sketches, ‘A Hot Day’ (<span class='it'>Wise -Saws</span>) and ‘Inky Dell’ (<span class='it'>The Old Judge</span>).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whoever charges that Haliburton lacks style errs either -by irrelevancy or by making the wrong accusation. It is -not style that Haliburton lacks; for he has two styles, each -of which is right in the right place—a conversational style -for conveying unpopular practical ideas in a popular way, -and an aesthetic style for conveying ideas which are delightful -in themselves as beautiful pictures of Social Life -and of Nature. What Haliburton really lacked was -architectonic skill—the power of designing artistic structural -unity and plot. This is best illustrated by his -character-delineation. His major characters have not -character-unity but characteristics or character-promiscuity. -Sam Slick, for instance, is never <span class='it'>one</span> character as Micawber -or Swiveller in Dickens’ gallery is one character, unmistakably -and always. Sam Slick is a ‘mass of contradictions.’ -Neither is the Rev. Joshua Hopewell a unity—speaking -and acting, that is, consistently with one character. -Yet they have a unity. How do they get it? It -is not a moral but the <span class='it'>functional</span> unity of <span class='it'>Spokesmen</span> of -Haliburton’s ideas. The reason that Slick and Hopewell -have so much promiscuity of character is that Haliburton, -as he pleased and without any regard to consistency, made -Slick and Hopewell and any other of his major <span class='it'>dramatis -personae</span> the Spokesmen of his various thoughts or ideas. -He ‘picked on’ Slick for the mouthpiece of this idea, and -Hopewell for the mouthpiece of another idea, without ever -asking if the speech he put into the mouth of Slick was -consistent with Slick’s mental and moral character, or if -the speech he put into the mouth of Hopewell was consistent -with Hopewell’s intellectual and moral character. -The result is that Slick, as we read Haliburton, has ideas, -<span class='pageno' title='87' id='Page_87'></span> -makes speeches, and relates experiences that are impossible -in one of his culture and knowledge; and so with Hopewell -and others. In short, Haliburton’s major characters are -<span class='it'>puppets</span>, <span class='it'>marionettes</span>. Back of them is the Showman, -Haliburton; and the speeches we hear are not theirs but -‘their master’s voice.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Oddly, Haliburton himself maintained in <span class='it'>The Old -Judge</span> that this was not a defect in character-delineation or -in artistry but was made necessary by his practical aim and -the content of his thought. The promiscuous structure of -his themes and composition or style and the promiscuousness, -or lack of unity, in his characters correspond to the -content and movement of his thought—which was swarming -with ideas, full of details of all sorts, loose, and diffuse, -bent on expressing at all hazards his ideas and opinions on -matters of practical import, and not on creating fine literature. -The purpose of his writings, he declared, was to inform -and to amuse while informing. His humor was -designed and manufactured as the sugar-coating of his -social and political ideas. Consequently, the only unity his -characters have is the thread that runs through <span class='it'>his</span> -thought; their speeches, jests, anecdotes, aphorisms, and -moral maxims are but <span class='it'>his</span> facts, ideas, opinions, strung -on the various <span class='it'>dramatis personae</span>. Thus inevitably, so -Haliburton submitted, his works and their style appear -prolix, repetitious, diffuse, digressive, and lack artistic -unity. Still they each have their own unity of essential -thought; his characters have unity of function; his style, -unity of propriety—and the whole, unity of purpose, meaning, -and achievement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Haliburton consciously conceived a noble ideal. As a -man of letters he aimed to bring about an alliance or -<span class='it'>zollverein</span> of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. To do this he employed -an original method of satiric humor and comic -characterization. He was unmistakably a great satirist, -and the first and foremost systematic satiric humorist of the -<span class='pageno' title='88' id='Page_88'></span> -Anglo-Saxon peoples. This is his chief glory. But while -he thus was the first native-born writer to bring Canadian -literature into a high and permanent place in English and -world literature, he also was coadjutor with Howe in inaugurating -the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature -of Canada. Considered from the sides of versatility of -invention, variety of production in literary species, and of -mastery of style, Thomas Chandler Haliburton remains to -this day the Greatest Prose Writer of Canada. Yet, at -the same time, his achievements in creative satiric comedy -and comic characterization stamp his genius and work as -not for a single country or a specific age, but for all time -and the world.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='89' id='Page_89'></span><h1>CHAPTER V</h1></div> - -<h3>Romance <span class='it'>and</span> Poetry</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—THE HISTORICAL -ROMANCERS—JOHN RICHARDSON—ROSANNA MULLINS—AND -OTHERS. THE POETS—GOLDSMITH—SANGSTER—MAIR.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>N</span><span class='sc'>ativistic</span> romantic fiction in Canada begins with -the historical novels of Major John Richardson. In -1832 he published his <span class='it'>Wacousta; or, The Prophecy</span>; and in -1840 its sequel, <span class='it'>The Canadian Brothers; or, The Prophecy -Fulfilled</span>. These are authentic novels of the romantic -type, having, as they do, respectably constructed plots, and -being filled with the romance of the passion of love, -heightened with thrilling adventure and incident, and colored -with pictures of aboriginal character and life against -a background of Nature in the wild.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richardson was born near Niagara Falls, in 1796 (in -the same year as Thomas Chandler Haliburton, and seven -years after James Fenimore Cooper). He spent his childhood -and early adolescent days, till he was sixteen years of -age, that is, up to the outbreak of the War of 1812, in the -vicinity of the Falls and in Detroit. Then, although but a -mere lad, he enlisted in Brock’s army. Up to that time -young Richardson, during his most impressionable and -receptive years, was entertained by his grandparents and -parents with tales of Pontiac’s siege of Detroit, and with -stories of the thrilling, romantic, and tragic events in the -history of the Niagara and Detroit districts—events which -were surely amongst the most enthralling and stirring in -the vividly romantic history of Canada and the United -States. Those early days of Richardson’s were thus replete -<span class='pageno' title='90' id='Page_90'></span> -with rare and unique formative influences. They created -in him the love of romance, of the heroic past of his own -country, and, later, when he came to write, furnished him -with the inspiration and the material for authentic Canadian -historical novels or romances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two other formative influences, besides those exercised -over his heart and imagination by his grandparents and -parents, determined Richardson’s genius, inspiration, and -creative method. In the war of 1812 he had fought side -by side with the noble Indian warrior Tecumseh. Further: -Richardson, on his own confession, had, as he put it, ‘absolutely -devoured three times’ Cooper’s Indian romance, -<span class='it'>The Last of the Mohicans</span>. Some critics, therefore, hold -that Richardson was a mere imitator of Cooper; that, first, -Richardson studied the mind, and character, and ways of -Indians at second-hand in the pages of Cooper’s romance; -and that, secondly, Richardson acquired from Cooper’s -novel the art or craft, the mechanics, of writing fiction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the view that Richardson got his knowledge of -Indian mind and character from Cooper, there is no ground -in historical fact. The War of 1812, during which Richardson -fought side by side with Tecumseh and his Indians, -began fourteen years before the publication of <span class='it'>The Last of -the Mohicans</span> (1826), or long before Richardson could have -read a page of Cooper. Richardson’s imagination was -romantically formed in his early days when, during his -association with Tecumseh, he came to know Indian -psychology and character at first-hand. That is indisputable -fact. For the view that Richardson acquired the technique -of novel-writing from reading Cooper, there is some -justification. It is highly probable that by his reading of -<span class='it'>The Last of the Mohicans</span>, Richardson really got some -‘coaching’ in the mechanics of writing romance. But this -concession fails to prove that Richardson was a mere -imitator of Cooper and not a genuinely independent creator. -Internal evidences point to independence. For when we -<span class='pageno' title='91' id='Page_91'></span> -compare the diction, the sentential structure, the descriptive -epithets and imagery, and the general style of the two -romancers, Richardson appears, except as a plot-maker, the -superior of Cooper as a craftsman and stylist. It is proof -presumptive that on the whole the Canadian romancer developed -independently his literary technique. Moreover, -in the fine art of character-drawing, Richardson is more -veracious and incisive—a better artist—than Cooper. When -we compare the American novelist’s Indian characters with -those of the Canadian, we discover that Cooper’s are more -like ‘studies’ from books than pictures from real life, -whereas Richardson’s Indians are very near to the real -Indian, very lifelike. The heroic in them is heroic enough; -that is to say, human and natural. Richardson’s Indian -characters, then, are original creations—absolutely his own. -Also his own are his other characters (soldiers, fur-traders, -French-Canadians, and the rest of the motley), -his plots, all the stirring incidents, and the ‘color’ of the -Canadian background from nature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of his romances, <span class='it'>Wacousta</span>, and <span class='it'>The Canadian Brothers</span>, -the only aesthetic criticisms worth while making are that -not infrequently Richardson forces the dramatic in them -into the melodramatic, that he puts into the mouths of his -characters utterances which are unnatural or not in keeping -with the position and circumstances of the speakers, and -that he suits his historical facts to his own purposes. -Sometimes, too, construction and development are sacrificed -to the ‘theatrical’ in situation, to over-drawing of -character, and to ‘color-writing.’ <span class='it'>The Canadian Brothers</span> -has these defects in a larger degree than <span class='it'>Wacousta</span>. Yet, -on the whole, Richardson’s two chief romances are aesthetically -satisfying, and are clean, strong, wholesome, and -engaging—quite deserving of a place in permanent creative -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Summarily: since Richardson had his genius romantically -formed, and had engaged in the art of fiction, long -<span class='pageno' title='92' id='Page_92'></span> -before he had read Cooper, the only possible influence -Cooper could have had on Richardson was to incite him -to emulate the American romancer. Emulation incited by -a contemporary author does not imply imitation, and has -no significance in original literary creation. Taken, then, -by and large, John Richardson had first-rate powers of -invention, and was a respectable literary craftsman. He -was not a great novelist, but he was sufficiently great as a -creator of historical romances to produce novels which -have been read during almost a century since publication, -and are still read, along with Kirby’s and Sir Gilbert -Parker’s historical romances of life and love and heroism -in far-off days in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Moreover, if not in <span class='it'>Wacousta</span>, at least in <span class='it'>The Canadian -Brothers</span> Richardson embodied in romantic fiction, as -Sangster and Mair did in poetry, the first incipient expression -of the spirit of Canadian nationality. Both on -account of the superior inherent qualities of Richardson’s -romances as creative fiction, and on account of their containing -the earliest expression of the embryonic spirit of -Canadian nationality, Richardson must be marked as of -first-rate importance in the literary history of Canada. He -was indeed the creator of the Canadian nativistic historical -romance as Haliburton was the creator of the nativistic -fiction of satiric comedy and comic characterization. In -truth it may be said that if all Canadian imaginative prose -were lost, save the romances of Richardson and the satiric -comedy of Haliburton, Canada would still have a -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Literary Garland</span> (1838-51) had considerable to -do with promoting letters in Canada, especially by encouraging -native-born writers. Amongst those who contributed -to <span class='it'>The Literary Garland</span> was a young girl, Rosanna -Eleanor Mullins, a native of Montreal, who, in time, became -the wife of J. L. Leprohon, also a native of Quebec. -Rosanna Mullins’ first novel, <span class='it'>Ida Beresford</span>, was written -<span class='pageno' title='93' id='Page_93'></span> -when the author was but sixteen years of age, and was -published serially in <span class='it'>The Literary Garland</span>, in 1848. In -1859 she published <span class='it'>The Manor House of de Villerai</span>, and -in 1864, <span class='it'>Antoinette de Mirecourt</span>, and has several other -novels to her credit. Her characters, properties, and settings -are largely Canadian, and she evidently set out consciously -to create a nativistic literature by writing romances -which should definitively portray life and manners in the -society of the Old French <span class='it'>Régime</span> and after the Fall of -Quebec and Montreal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In fact, Rosanna Mullins, much more than Richardson, -was inspired by a desire to express the incipient national -spirit of Canada. In <span class='it'>The Canadian Brothers</span> Richardson -disclosed an <span class='it'>awakening</span> consciousness in himself of a sense -of the spirit of nationality. Miss Mullins, on the other -hand, was the first Canadian novelist to have a <span class='it'>distinct</span> -consciousness of that spirit and to desire to express it for -its own sake. It is from this point of view, rather than -from the point of view of intrinsic literary merit, that Miss -Mullins’ romances have a right to a permanent place in the -nativistic literature of Canada. Technically she wrote with -a finer pointed stylus than Richardson—with more grace -and a finer limning of character, and with a more engaging -urbanity. In fact, her style was informed by an Irish -and French humaneness that made her work as popular with -the French-Canadians (for whom several of her novels -had been translated into French) as with the English-Canadian -people.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rosanna Mullins is entitled to another distinction. On -the side of nationality she disputes with William Kirby the -right of primacy in calling the attention of the later Canadian -romancers, especially Sir Gilbert Parker, to the wealth -of novelistic material that lay in the life and manners and -culture of society under the old French <span class='it'>Régime</span> and the -Occupation. For Kirby was foreign-born, whereas Rosanna -Mullins was native-born. As a matter of fact, however, -<span class='pageno' title='94' id='Page_94'></span> -it was Kirby’s romantic fiction that opened the eyes of later -Canadian novelists to the abounding material for novelistic -treatment that lay in the social and political history of the -Canadian past.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>William Kirby was born in England, but came to -Canada in 1832, the year which saw the publication of -Richardson’s <span class='it'>Wacousta</span>. He was then but fifteen years of -age and his mind unformed. He lived for the greater part -of his life at Niagara. So that from his fifteenth year -onwards, having taken a deep and special interest in Canadian -history and civilization, Kirby really formed his mind -and imagination on Canadian ideals and absorbed the -Canadian nationalistic spirit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His historical romance <span class='it'>The Golden Dog</span>, which was -published in 1877, or ten years after Confederation, really -belongs to the <span class='it'>émigré</span> literature of Canada. But because of -its constructive and inspirational influences on certain members -of the Systematic School of Canadian fictionists, in -particular on Sir Gilbert Parker, and because Kirby, -though foreign-born, was in spirit essentially a genuine -Canadian man of letters, we must regard <span class='it'>The Golden Dog</span> -as more important in the <span class='it'>development</span> of Canadian fiction -than are Richardson’s and Rosanna Mullins’ romances, and -as worthy of a more significant status in Canadian creative -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Summarily: <span class='it'>Wacousta</span> and <span class='it'>The Golden Dog</span> were the -literary progenitors of a series of romances which have a -Canadian historical basis and which are Canadian in incident -and color. As to his creative and artistic powers, Kirby was -a finer artist than Richardson, in plot-making and character-drawing. -But, in view of certain faults—a somewhat too -theatrical grand manner in character-drawing and a too -great indulgence of his notable gifts in color-writing, Kirby -and Richardson may be classed as equal sinners.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Golden Dog</span> is, aesthetically and artistically, that -is, in plot-making, character-drawing, and in sustaining -<span class='pageno' title='95' id='Page_95'></span> -interest, superior to <span class='it'>Wacousta</span> as an historical romance. -Still <span class='it'>The Golden Dog</span> is a genuinely great novel—great -inherently as an imaginative and artistic creation, and great -as the progenitor of the romantic fiction of Parker, Roberts, -Campbell, Saunders and other creators of the native and -national fiction of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>James De Mille, who was born in New Brunswick, also -must be considered as a creator of Canadian Nativistic -Literature. De Mille was a prolific writer of mysterious, -thrilling, extravagant, and sentimental fiction, showing the -influence of such masters in those genres as Poe and Wilkie -Collins. De Mille certainly possessed a creative imagination -of his own, was considerable of an artist in plot-making -and in sustaining interest, and had a distinct -sense of dramatic values, which saves such an extravagant -tale of adventure as his <span class='it'>A Strange Manuscript found in a -Copper Cylinder</span> from developing into the merely grotesque -and sensational. But because the settings of his novels and -tales are not Canadian, and because they in nowise express -anything of the growing sense of the Canadian national -spirit, they are not, on that side, significant in the literary -history of Canada. They merely increase the quantity of -Canadian Nativistic Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If we have regard for the historic process in all spiritual -and social achievements, and ask: What was it that, on the -psychological or spiritual side, brought about Responsible -Government in the various Provinces that came to form -the original Dominion of Canada, and What was it that -brought about Confederation? we must answer that the -people in the British North American Provinces were -gradually coming to see themselves, their country, civilization, -and institutions from the <span class='it'>Canadian point of view</span>, -and were gradually expressing, with more and more of -conscious fervor and power, in prose and poetry, their -growing interest in and love of Canada and the Canadian -point of view. The nativistic prose writers expressed the -<span class='pageno' title='96' id='Page_96'></span> -growing spirit of ‘Canada First,’ as in the writings of -Haliburton and Howe, and also in the romances of -Richardson, Rosanna Mullins, and Kirby. We turn to -observe how the spirit of national ideals was gradually -expressed in the work of the nativistic poets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nativistic poetry in Canada did not take form till the -last year of the first quarter of the 19th century. In 1825 -Oliver Goldsmith, a great-nephew of the author of <span class='it'>The -Deserted Village</span>, published his idyll or descriptive poem, -<span class='it'>The Rising Village</span>. Oliver Goldsmith was born at Annapolis -Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1781, and died at Liverpool, -England, in 1861, after a long official service in his native -country. <span class='it'>The Rising Village</span>, in substance or theme, aimed -to describe the habitat, sufferings, achievements, and prospects -of the Loyalist settlers. As regards its matter, -therefore, the poem has the semblance of a genuine Canadian -poem. But the form, the metre, rhythm, and rhyme, the -diction and imagery, the characters and the settings, and -even the ‘properties,’ are in slavish imitation of the elder -Goldsmith’s idyll of ‘Sweet Auburn’ in Ireland. That is -to say, the Nova Scotian’s Muse is not the Nova Scotian -or the Canadian but the British Muse transplanted. Moreover, -<span class='it'>The Rising Village</span> is to be distinguished from Howe’s -<span class='it'>Acadia</span> in that Howe, though imitating the form and manner -of the elder Goldsmith, expresses his love of his -homeland, Nova Scotia, whereas the younger Goldsmith, -though a Nova Scotian, fills his poem with an unpatriotic -nostalgia. He loves the land where there is some ‘Sweet -Auburn,’ not his native land which he describes as ‘bleak -and desert.’ The nostalgia is real and pervasive—so much -so that he removes to England and there dies. But since -it is a poem of the habitat and experiences of the Loyalist -settlers in Nova Scotia, and since it is correct in versification -and is musical and possesses naturalistic truth, <span class='it'>The -Rising Village</span> may be regarded as a genuine poem of -<span class='it'>documentary</span> value, and as the beginning of Canadian -nativistic poetry. -<span class='pageno' title='97' id='Page_97'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The strictly Canadian ‘note’ in nativistic poetry is first -clearly heard in the verse of Charles Sangster. He was -born near Kingston, Ontario, in 1822, and published <span class='it'>The -St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, and Other Poems</span>, in 1856, -and <span class='it'>Hesperus and Other Poems</span> in 1860. The title poem -of the first volume is in the Spenserian stanza as employed -by Byron and is also otherwise imitative. But it is distinctly -Canadian in its lyrical interludes, in which there is -a poetic <span class='it'>abandon</span>, to the beauty and magic of Nature in -Canada, as, for instance, in Sangster’s <span class='it'>Lyric to the Isles</span>, -beginning:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Here the spirit of Beauty keepeth</p> -<p class='line0'>  Jubilee for evermore;</p> -<p class='line0'>Here the voice of Gladness leapeth,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Echoing from shore to shore</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Here the spirit of beauty dwelleth</p> -<p class='line0'>  In each palpitating tree,</p> -<p class='line0'>In each amber wave that welleth</p> -<p class='line0'>  From its home beneath the sea;</p> -<p class='line0'>In the moss upon the granite,</p> -<p class='line0'>  In each calm, secluded bay,</p> -<p class='line0'>With the zephyr trains that fan it</p> -<p class='line0'>  With their sweet breath all the day.</p> -<p class='line0'>On the waters, on the shore,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Beauty dwelleth evermore.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Faulty as Sangster’s first poems are in versification and -derivative in diction, we must mark his lyrical interludes, -as in the foregoing example, as expressing a <span class='it'>new</span> note, <span class='it'>the</span> -Canadian note in Canadian poetry. It is, however, a -<span class='it'>nature</span> note, not or hardly the <span class='it'>national</span> note—clear and -confident and strong. In Sangster’s second volume, <span class='it'>Hesperus -and Other Poems</span>, published just seven years before -Confederation, we hear the Canadian national note loudly -vocal and inspiring. We catch it unmistakably in Sangster’s -<span class='it'>Brock</span>—a really noble hymn to the memory of a national -hero, who had ‘saved Canada’ for the Canadians, but a -<span class='pageno' title='98' id='Page_98'></span> -hymn that much more expresses the deeply felt unity of -the Canadian people:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>One voice, one people, one in heart</p> -<p class='line0'>  And soul and feeling and desire.</p> -<p class='line0'>Relight the smouldering martial fire</p> -<p class='line0'>And sound the mute trumpet! Strike the lyre!</p> -<p class='line0'>The hero dead cannot expire:</p> -<p class='line0'>  The dead still play their part.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Raise high the monumental stone,</p> -<p class='line0'>  A nation’s fealty is theirs,</p> -<p class='line0'>And we the rejoicing heirs,</p> -<p class='line0'>The honored sons of sires whose cares</p> -<p class='line0'>We take upon us unawares</p> -<p class='line0'>  As freely as our own.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>We observe for the first time in Canadian poetry, the -consciously felt sentiment of national unity—the first express -utterance of the ideal of Canada and its people as a -political and spiritual entity apart—in Sangster’s line, ‘A -<span class='it'>nation’s</span> fealty is theirs.’ Henceforth we shall often hear -this distinction—Canada and its people as a <span class='it'>nation</span>—in -the verse of Canadian poets. Sangster, then, is important -as the poet who, in aesthetically and artistically respectable -verse, first uttered, <span class='it'>consciously</span> and clearly, in Canadian -nativistic poetry the people’s sense of a national spirit and -destiny.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again: Sangster, in <span class='it'>The Rapid</span> and in <span class='it'>The Falls of -Chaudière</span>, is the first nativistic poet to express in verse -that close or intimate kinship with Nature which we discover -much more profoundly expressed in the poetry of -Roberts, Lampman, and Carman. Sangster utters this new -naturalistic note in these authentically inspired lines from -<span class='it'>The Falls of Chaudière</span>:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I have laid my cheek to Nature’s, placed my puny hand in hers,</p> -<p class='line0'>Felt a kindred spirit warming all the life-blood of my face.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>I have laid my cheek to Nature’s!</span> We shall observe -Lampman lay his cheek to Nature’s with more intimacy, -<span class='pageno' title='99' id='Page_99'></span> -with a more profound sense of spiritual companionship -than Sangster. We shall note Carman ‘place his puny -hand’ in Nature’s—and have Nature as Mother April -‘make him over’—with a far more intimate giving of self -to the ‘heart of the world’ than Sangster. Nevertheless, -we must remark Sangster’s priority—in spirit as well as -in actual poetic production—in expressing that special and -singular kinship with Nature which must be denoted as -peculiarly Canadian. Still, in this respect, he is only the -first forerunner of Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Pauline -Johnson, Campbell, and Duncan Campbell Scott.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A much more lyrically eloquent and influential forerunner -is Charles Mair. He was born at Lanark, Ontario, -in 1838, and published, in 1868, his <span class='it'>Dreamland and Other -Poems</span>. Technically, Charles Mair is a much finer craftsman -than Sangster; for the latter was self-educated, -whereas Mair was a university graduate who was well -read in the modern English poets and had studied the forms -of verse and the mechanics of versification. What, however, -really constitutes Mair as the authentic forerunner of -Roberts, Lampman, Carman and Pauline Johnson as nature -poets, is not the fact that he was an artistic poet of Nature -in Canada, but that his <span class='it'>method of treating Nature</span> was a -<span class='it'>new</span> method with Canadian poets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two ‘features’ mark and distinguish the treatment of -Nature in the poetry of Charles Mair—impressionistic -painting of the face of Nature and the choice of the commonplace -or the lowliest creatures in Nature as the subjects -of his poetry. The first may have been inspired by Keats, -and may be regarded as in the manner of Keats. But the -second feature of Mair’s lyrical poetry—his conscious attempt -to give distinction to the Commonplace in Nature in -Canada;—that is original with Mair himself, and appears -for the first time in Canadian poetry in Mair’s work. It -is <span class='it'>Canadian</span> in and by itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wilfred Campbell has alleged that Mair influenced -<span class='pageno' title='100' id='Page_100'></span> -Roberts and Lampman as Nature poets. All three were -influenced by Keats, and certainly Roberts and Lampman -knew the poetry of Keats more intimately than that of -Mair. At least, Mair in a sense did but anticipate Roberts -and Lampman in actually treating Canadian Nature. But -Mair’s treatment of the commonplace was objective—being -mostly a sort of philosophical or religious reflection on the -meaning of the commonplace, whereas Lampman’s treatment -of the same kind of subject was psychological. Mair -merely looked on and interrogated Nature, Lampman -communed with his lowly companions, such as the trees -and the frogs, entered into their hearts, and spoke out for -them, expressing their moods, feelings, and reflections.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The passage from the objective treatment of Nature to -the subjective interpretation of the commonplace in Nature -by Canadian poets, has its <span class='it'>termini</span> marked by Mair at the -one end and Lampman at the other. Mair merely interrogates -and wonders what the answer ought to be to his -questions. Lampman communes with his lowly and animate -companions in Nature, and, by imaginative sympathy, -answers for them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These distinctions between Mair as an impressionistic -Nature-<span class='it'>painter</span> and an objective <span class='it'>interrogator</span>, and Lampman -as a subjective interpreter of Nature, are nicely -illustrated in Mair’s exquisitely beautiful and sensuously -lovely poem, <span class='it'>The Fire-Flies</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I see them glimmer where the waters lag</p> -<p class='line0'>By winding bays, and to the swallows sing;</p> -<p class='line0'>And, far away, where stands the forest dim,</p> -<p class='line0'>Huge-built of old, their tremulous lights are seen.</p> -<p class='line0'>High overhead they gleam like trailing stars,</p> -<p class='line0'>Then sink adown, until their emerald sheen</p> -<p class='line0'>Dies in the darkness like an evening hymn,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Anon to float again in glorious bars</p> -<p class='line0'>Of streaming rapture, such as man may hear</p> -<p class='line0'>When the soul casts its slough of mortal fear.</p> -<p class='line0'>And now they make rich spangles in the grass,</p> -<p class='line0'>Gilding the night-dews on the tender blade;</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='101' id='Page_101'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>Then hover o’er the meadow-pools, to gaze</p> -<p class='line0'>At their bright forms shrined in the dreamy glass</p> -<p class='line0'>Which earth, and air, and bounteous rain have made.</p> -<p class='line0'>One moment, and the thicket is ablaze</p> -<p class='line0'>With twinkling lamps, which swing from bough to bough;</p> -<p class='line0'>Another, and like sylphids they descend</p> -<p class='line0'>To cheer the brook-side where the bell-flow’rs grow,</p> -<p class='line0'>Near, and more near, they softly come, until</p> -<p class='line0'>Their little life is busy at my feet;</p> -<p class='line0'>They glow around me, and my fancies blend</p> -<p class='line0'>Capriciously with their delight, and fill</p> -<p class='line0'>My wakeful bosom with unwonted heat.</p> -<p class='line0'>One lights upon my hand, and there I clutch</p> -<p class='line0'>With an alarming finger its quick wing;</p> -<p class='line0'>Erstwhile so free, it pants, the tender thing!</p> -<p class='line0'>And dreads its captor and his handsel touch.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Where is thy home? On what strange food dost feed,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Thou fairy hunter of the moonless night?</p> -<p class='line0'>From what far nectar’d fount, or flow’ry mead,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Glean’st thou, by witching spells, thy sluicy light?</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Is not that poem <span class='it'>Canadian</span> definitively and through -and through—and is it not also authentic poetry, far in advance, -aesthetically and artistically, of any poetry previously -written in Canada? They who, with master artistry, -write delineative poetry, shall hardly achieve, in short and -single phrase, so apt and clear and vivid a picture of the -Canadian firefly as Mair’s incisively realistic and genuinely -poetical line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Thou fairy hunter of the moonless night.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>That is masterly, and yet how it fails before such a -tremendously pregnant crystallization of the subjective -treatment of Nature as Bliss Carman’s pervasive thrall of -the senses and the imagination in his imperishable line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The resonant far-listening morn.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The glory that is Carman’s in pure poetry, is not Mair’s, -and the glory that is Lampman’s in the sympathetic interpretation -of the moods and thoughts of lowly animate -<span class='pageno' title='102' id='Page_102'></span> -Nature, is not Mair’s. Yet unquestionably Mair is the -authentic forerunner of those perfervid Nature-worshippers, -Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Pauline Johnson, -Campbell, and Duncan Campbell Scott, the creative Poets -of the Systematic School, who wrote the first native and -national literature of the Dominion of Canada, and wrote -it so that the world heard and has acclaimed them Master -Poets and their poetry authentic Literature!</p> - -<hr class='tbk104'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>The Fireflies</span> is quoted from <span class='it'>Dreamland and Other Poems</span> by Charles Mair.</span></p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='103' id='Page_103'></span>Part II.</h2> -<hr class='tbk105'/> - -<h3>Post Confederation Literature<br/> (1887-1924)</h3> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='105' id='Page_105'></span><h1>CHAPTER VI</h1></div> - -<h3><span class='it'>The</span> Systematic School</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE FIRST RENAISSANCE IN CANADIAN LITERATURE—THE -SYSTEMATIC SCHOOL AND PERIOD—ROBERTS AND HIS -COLLEAGUES.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>he</span> years 1860, 1861, and 1862 may be regarded as -the most significant in the literary history of Canada. -In the year 1860 were born Charles George Douglas Roberts -and Charles William Gordon (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>, Ralph Connor). -In the year 1861 were born William Bliss Carman, Archibald -Lampman, William Wilfred Campbell, E. Pauline -Johnson (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>, Tekahionwake), Margaret Marshall Saunders, -and Frederick George Scott. In the year 1862 were -born Duncan Campbell Scott and Gilbert (now Sir Gilbert) -Parker. The most gifted and eminent of Canadian poets -and imaginative or creative prose writers, these ten Canadians -comprised a single group, and they began, under the -influence of the awakening spirit of Canadian nationality, -the first systematic writing of poetry and prose, inaugurating -a period of original literary creation, which we shall -term, for expository purposes, the First Renaissance in -Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These ten writers were born, bred and educated (intellectually -and aesthetically) in the four Provinces—Nova -Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec—which -formed, on the proclamation of the British North America -Act, 1867, or shortly after the birth of this group of writers, -the Dominion of Canada. From the point of view of -their nativity and education the members of the literary -<span class='pageno' title='106' id='Page_106'></span> -group born in 1860, 1861, and 1862, are the first strictly -so-called <span class='it'>Canadian</span> poets and prose writers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again: they were the first native-born poets and prose -writers to begin, under the Confederacy, a systematic -literary career. The term ‘systematic’ defines their conspectus -and aims. To this literary group the free and -impassioned expression, in verse and prose, of beauty and -truth, as beauty is in Nature in Canada and truth in Canadian -thought, activities, and institutions, appeared as their -own specific function and ideal life. They were thus the -first Canadians consciously to undertake a literary career -which should be, in its way and degree, commensurate with -the growing spiritual, social, political, and commercial life -of the Great Dominion, and to find their inspiration chiefly, -if not wholly, in the natural beauty and sublimity of their -homeland, and in the spiritual import of their country and -of the lives of their compatriots. In short, their literary -conspectus was thoroughly Canadian; and their inspiration -and ideals, too, were Canadian. In fact, their inspiration -and ideals were a moral necessity born of a loyal obedience -to the same creative impulse that was active in other -Canadians who also were bent on constructive achievement -in other spheres of Canadian endeavor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Moreover: the literary group born in 1860, 1861, 1862, -may be distinguished as having been the first Canadian -poets and prose writers who, by actual performance, showed -the nations, largely the peoples of the Motherland and the -United States, that the political and commercially lusty -young Confederacy was, on its own account, decidedly -active in letters. The truth is that, in the decade following -1887, which witnessed the publication of the first work -in verse and in prose by the systematic group of Canadian -men and women of letters, Canadian poetry and imaginative -prose, though they were derivative in form and -frequently derivative in theme, quite gained the decent -regard, and, in some instances, the admiration, of distinguished -<span class='pageno' title='107' id='Page_107'></span> -men of letters in England and in the United States, -and furnished a pledge of greater achievement in literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Canadian poets and prose writers born in 1860, -1861, and 1862, distinguish themselves and the years in -which they were born as the first systematically creative -School and Period in the literary history of Canada. Their -creative activities and their poetry and prose we have -denominated as the First Renaissance in Canadian -Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What is meant by the First Renaissance in Canadian -Literature? In 1880 a young native-born Canadian, -Charles G. D. Roberts, published a book of poems. The -critics of England and the United States thought well of -the verse. There was in it a quality that had not been in -previous books of verse by native-born Canadians. The -poems were marked by a certain noteworthy <span class='it'>artistic finish</span> -in the craftsmanship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was significant. Hitherto native-born Canadian -poets had not been adroit in technique; they had been very -careless about it, and some of them had no respect or feeling -for it at all. Poetry was poetry, they thought, whether -it was well dressed or not. With the publication of his -<span class='it'>Orion</span>, Roberts sounded the death knell of slovenly or -indifferent technique in Canadian poetry. Working with -him, and largely under the influence of his ideal of technical -finish in verse, were Lampman, Carman, Campbell, Pauline -Johnson, Duncan Campbell Scott, Frederick George Scott, -and others. They all cared supremely for fine technique -in poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the second decade after 1887 there arose in Canada -a group of poets who were not solicitous about the technique -of their verse. With them fine artistry in Canadian verse -declined. This Decadent Interim lasted but a few years. -A later band of poets arose who went back to the ‘technical’ -ideals which were exemplified in the poetry of Roberts -and his colleagues. This younger band of poets ‘restored’ -<span class='pageno' title='108' id='Page_108'></span> -the ideals of the first literary group and began the Restoration -Period in Canadian poetry. Collaterally, a similar -course of distinction, decadence, and restoration of technical -ideals can be observed in Canadian imaginative and -aesthetic prose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In another sense the period which began with Roberts -and his <span class='it'>confrères</span> may properly be denoted as the First -Renaissance in Canadian Literature. It happens that the -best of the Pre-Confederation Literature, produced either -by <span class='it'>émigrés</span> or by native sons of the Province, was the work -of ‘old minds.’ Consider, for instance, the historical -romances of Major John Richardson and the satiric humor -of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the poetry of Oliver -Goldsmith, 2nd, and of such <span class='it'>émigrés</span> as Charles Heavysege -and John Reade, the romantic poetic dramas of John -Hunter-Duvar and the prose tales of James De Mille. We -observe that, despite certain engaging novelty in themes -and treatment, it is all the work of old men; that is to say, -of minds which were attempting to ‘transplant’ old traditional -methods and the forms of a past literature in a soil -which was naturally hostile to their growth and gave them -a mean and dry exotic existence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If we fancy that we discover in the best Pre-Confederation -literature the fresh beauty and vitality of youth, we -shall discover, if we look critically, that this vitality and -beauty are the last hectic or pale flowering of an exotic -English literature, and that, commingled with the beauty, -are the wrinkles of sapless age. To be sure, there is -the flame of creative fire in, for example, Richardson and -Haliburton. Notwithstanding, it is the flame which flares -up, with a startling brilliancy, just before it dies out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In truth, then, Pre-Confederation Canadian Literature -was essentially a transplanted Old World literature. Inevitably -it was alien to the soil of Canadian life, genius, -and ideals. It, therefore, lacks real vitality, vigor, and -truth. Except in Nova Scotia, in the time of Haliburton -<span class='pageno' title='109' id='Page_109'></span> -and Howe, it was the outcome of personal, not necessary -social expression.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But, after Confederation, expression of the spiritual -and social needs of the Great Dominion became a national -necessity. This expression, being born out of the spiritual -and social needs of Canada, must be considered, however -derivative the mere forms employed, as a genuine literary -Renaissance. The period or movement begun by the -systematic groups of poets and prose writers born in Canada -in 1860, 1861, and 1862 may, then, properly be denoted -as the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='110' id='Page_110'></span><h1>CHAPTER VII</h1></div> - -<h3>Charles G. D. Roberts</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>ROBERTS SPONSOR TO LAMPMAN—LITERARY FATHER OF -BLISS CARMAN—MASTER OF VERSE TECHNIQUE—FORMS OF -HIS VERSE, AND ITS QUALITIES.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>W</span><span class='sc'>hether</span> Charles G. D. Roberts had a genuine -formative influence on Canadian literature, particularly -Canadian poetry, or whether he should be regarded -merely as ‘the eldest brother’ of the first systematic -group of Canadian poets and prose writers may, possibly, -be a moot question. Of a certainty he was the first native-born -Canadian to take the leading role in making real and -permanent, both by singular influences and by actual production -in poetry and imaginative prose, a native and -national literature in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>First: Roberts was the literary <span class='it'>sponsor</span> of Archibald -Lampman. In 1884, while editor of <span class='it'>The Week</span>, Roberts -published in that periodical the very first poems which -Lampman contributed to the public press (<span class='it'>The Coming of -Winter</span>, and <span class='it'>Three-Flower Petals</span>). This is much more -significant than appears on first view. It must be remembered -that Roberts, though but twenty-four years old at -the time of his editorship, had already published, in 1880, -his <span class='it'>Orion and Other Poems</span>, which had been well received -by the critical press in England and the United States. -This distinction, abetted by his editorial connection with -Goldwin Smith, the founder of <span class='it'>The Week</span>, gave him some -of the glory of a new literary ‘star’ and made him an authority -whose good opinion of another’s verse was very inspiring -when it took the form of introducing a young unknown -<span class='pageno' title='111' id='Page_111'></span> -native poet to the Canadian public. In 1884 Lampman was -a young man, human, sensitive, and shy. Roberts was -the first to recognize Lampman’s authentic genius and the -first to give him that practical encouragement which alone -counts constructively—a first and right start, <span class='it'>per aspera</span> -indeed, but, for Lampman, <span class='it'>ad astra</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts was also the ‘literary father’ of Bliss Carman. -In 1885 Roberts was appointed Professor of Literature at -King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia. It was Roberts -who really trained Bliss Carman in the poetic perception -of Nature and in poetic technique and who inspired him -to begin a poetic career. It all happened in this way: To -Roberts’ home, at Windsor, came Bliss Carman, a cousin -of the elder poet. Here Carman spent several of his growing, -most impressionable, and most receptive years, coming -directly under the pervasive influences—the aesthetic culture -and a tutorship in poetic technique—of the elder poet. -Further: with Windsor as a centre, and Roberts as a -companion and guide, Carman made excursions over the -lovely and glamorous scenes and haunts of beauty near -and beyond Roberts’ home. Carman, with Roberts, dwelt -and communed with Nature intimately, visited the hiding -places of earthly beauty, fed his senses with pure delight -of stream, lake and marsh, woodland and sky, tuned his -heart to hear, with peculiar meaning and joy, the cries of -the denizens of the woodland, the murmurings, dronings, -and shrillings of insects, and the dulcet lilting voices of -birds. Also, in fancy and peaceful reverie, Carman lived -over again all the rare moments and joys of sensation and -spiritual ecstasy experienced by him in that lovely area of -country conscribing Windsor, the land of Evangeline, the -Gaspereau valley, the Basin of Minas, and the Tantramar -marshes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus the young Carman’s senses and imagination discovered -the beauty, glamor, and glory of land and sea. -Inevitably, at length, he was inspired to emulate the elder -<span class='pageno' title='112' id='Page_112'></span> -poet, Roberts, and to begin the systematic writing of the -winning lyrism which, in the years that followed, has given -Carman a name <span class='it'>sui generis</span>, not only amongst the poets of -his homeland, Canada, but also amongst the poets of the -English-speaking races.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again: two years after taking up his residence at -Windsor, Roberts published his really epoch-making volume -of poetry, <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> (1887). This was his second -volume of verse and, in it, his genius and art shone with -greater glory, especially in the eyes of the critics and poets -of the United States who were not likely to think, at any -rate in that day, that anything could come out of Canada, -particularly Nova Scotia, except pulpwood, coal, fish, and -potatoes. Roberts and his poetic work disillusioned the -young Canadian poet’s American cousins and taught them -that Canada produced mind, and even poetic genius.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts was related to Carman by blood and temperament -and poetic tutorship. These facts of various relationship -between Roberts and Carman became known in -the United States; and the light of Roberts’ literary reputation -was reflected on his cousin, Bliss Carman. It was, -therefore, natural that the editor of <span class='it'>The Atlantic Monthly</span> -should, as actually happened, publish in that magazine -Carman’s first significant poem, <span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré</span> -(1887), which became the title poem of his first volume -of verse, <span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré: a Book of Lyrics</span> (New -York, 1893). All this is more significant than it seems.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a young poet, story-teller, or essayist to have his -work published in <span class='it'>The Atlantic Monthly</span> is a literary distinction -by itself. The imprimatur of <span class='it'>The Atlantic -Monthly</span> is as a royal seal in the kingdom of letters on the -American continent. Largely through the sponsorship of -Roberts’ reputation, Carman was favorably known to the -editor of <span class='it'>The Atlantic Monthly</span>. When, therefore, the -magazine published Carman’s first important poem, the -poet was properly and most significantly introduced to the -<span class='pageno' title='113' id='Page_113'></span> -literary world. For <span class='it'>The Atlantic Monthly</span> enters only the -homes of the most cultured readers in the United States, -Canada, and the United Kingdom. The placing of its imprimatur -on the verse of Bliss Carman was a declaration to -the world that Canada had produced another new and engaging -poet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once more: at least in one matter Roberts had a considerable -influence on several of the other members of the -first systematic group of Canadian poets. He was the -first native-born Canadian poet to be solicitous about poetic -technique, and had thus won the notice and even commendation -of critics and poets in England and the United States. -In his <span class='it'>Orion</span> and in his <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> Roberts held up -the ideal of finished technique in poetry. Roberts’ success -from 1880 to 1887 became, therefore, an inspiration to -other poets in the first systematic group, and inspired them -to accomplish a body of verse excellent enough, at least in -technique, for publication in volume form without danger -of discrediting themselves and their country. So, in fact, -it happened: Lampman and Scott (F. G.) published their -first volume of verse in 1888; Campbell his first in 1889; -Carman his first in 1893: Scott (D. C.) his first in 1893; -Pauline Johnson her first in 1895.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still further: it was Roberts’ two volumes of verse -that first called the attention of the literary public in the -United States and in England to the fact that <span class='it'>systematic</span> -literary activity was going on in Canada, and that first -awakened critical curiosity about the new Canadian poets -and their verse whenever a volume by Roberts or any -of his poetic compatriots was published. Roberts’ renown -obtained for the others a ready and just ‘hearing.’ This -achieved, the quality of their verse, especially of their -nature-poetry, brought them, it is fair to say, very favorable -appreciation from the critics and poets of the United -States and England.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally: Roberts is related to the first systematic group -<span class='pageno' title='114' id='Page_114'></span> -of Canadian poets and prose writers, not only pragmatically -as sponsor, inspirer, and leader: but also in a special way. -He was the ‘Voice’ of the Canadian Confederacy. Seven -years after the publication of his <span class='it'>Orion</span>, suddenly the -Canadian people heard Roberts trumpeting a new song. -In it there was nothing classical in theme, and nothing cold -and correctly formal in artistic structure and finish. Roberts -had changed from an Artist to a Prophet, from an -Artificer in verse to a Voice—the Voice of one crying in -the wilderness and trying to make straight the paths of -the Canadian people. He was still a young man but he -had been vouchsafed vision and he called magniloquently -to his compatriots, thus:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O Child of Nations, giant-limbed,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Who stand’st among the nations now</p> -<p class='line0'>Unheeded, unadorned, unhymned,</p> -<p class='line0'>  With unanointed brow,—</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>How long the ignoble sloth, how long</p> -<p class='line0'>  The trust in greatness not thine own?</p> -<p class='line0'>Surely the lion’s brood is strong</p> -<p class='line0'>  To front the world alone!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>He repeated his trumpeting to the Canadian to awake -to a national consciousness of destiny and to achieve that -destiny—he repeated the ‘call’ in language even more magniloquent—in -his <span class='it'>Ode to the Canadian Confederacy</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps these were only ‘occasional’ poems, artificially -inspired. At any rate Roberts’ Vision of Canadian nationality -and his interest in expressing it forsook him. A few -years after uttering the ‘Call’ he left his native Canadian -habitat (in 1895) for New York. Yet in the fifteen years -from 1880 to 1895 in the homeland, or till his removing -to New York, by his own fine artistry and by the influence, -at least of his example, on his contemporaries in Canada, -Roberts was considerably, perhaps chiefly, potent in raising -native Canadian poetry to a degree of technical finish that -<span class='pageno' title='115' id='Page_115'></span> -was never before reached or even attempted by native-born -Canadian men and women of letters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Summarily: as discoverer and sponsor of Lampman, as -inspirer and sponsor of Carman, and as exemplar, at least -in technical ideals, to the first native-born group of systematic -poets of the Dominion, Charles G. D. Roberts wielded -a constructive influence on Canadian native and national poetry. -That without his influence there would still have been a -Systematic School of Canadian Poets, of which Lampman, -Carman, or D. C. Scott might have been the most -conspicuous creator, is a high probability. But it is a -theoretical probability. We cannot, however, gainsay the -fact of Roberts’ constructive influence on his <span class='it'>confrères</span> in -the Systematic School of Canadian Poets. On the grounds, -therefore, of his triple role as sponsor, inspirer, and exemplar, -and of his own creative poetic art, Charles G. D. -Roberts is justly to be distinguished as the Inaugurator of -the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts’ own poetry may be critically appreciated (1) -as a recrudescence of the English classical idyll; (2) as -poetry of nature, with special reference to its distinction -from the nature-poetry of Lampman; (3) as elegiac -poetry; and (4) as poetry of modern eroticism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the outset it is important to emphasize two singular -facts. First, with the single notable exception of Roberts’ -spasmodic ‘Call’ to the Canadian people to achieve a national -destiny, and with the further exception of a national or -Canadian setting and color in some of his nature-poetry, -Roberts’ verse is anything but Canadian. Secondly, -Roberts’ poetry is signally an example of poetry which is -not, to use Mathew Arnold’s formula, ‘a profound and -beautiful application of ideas to life.’ It is characteristic -of the essential Canadian genius that its attitudes to the -universe and to existence are moral and religious, that it -values the fine arts, including literature, as a means for the -ideal enhancement of life, and loves the Beautiful in the -<span class='pageno' title='116' id='Page_116'></span> -fine arts as the only visible instance of the union of the -real and of the ideal, which is, philosophically viewed, our -only pledge of the ultimate supremacy of the Good. The -only really deadly criticism, therefore, that can be applied -against the poetry of Roberts is that he has missed in his -own verse the supreme ethical note or ideal which is in -the poetry of one of his masters, Keats:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Beauty is truth, truth beauty,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and that he did not engage himself to write poetry, with -the intent which was really the aim of Keats, as well as of -Arnold, namely, as a profound and beautiful application of -ideas to life. Aware now of the unethical intent and -quality of Robert’s poetry, we can the better and more -justly appreciate his development as a poet and his -achievements in poetic substance and technique.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was natural and inevitable that an undergraduate -introduced, at College, into the world of letters through the -poetry of the Greek and Latin classics and the highly lyrical -and sensuous poetry of Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson, -should, when he himself felt impelled to write, produce -poetry which, in substance and style, was based on classical -themes, and colored with sensuous images, and that, when -critically estimated, this poetry should be valued as a sincere -but finished academic exercise in verse. Roberts’ first -volume, <span class='it'>Orion and Other Poems</span>, was just such an academic -exercise in verse. Yet it was an exercise by a lad just out -of college who not only informed his verse with a respectable -showing of classical scholarship and with an engaging -Arcadian setting and color but also wrote with so careful -a technique that when his verse was compared with that of -earlier Canadian poets, it was found to be unprovincial -in scope and appeal, and more finished in technique than -any previous Canadian verse. It was indeed derivative, -literary, academic. It was vitiated with youthful crudities -in thought and manner and certain borrowings. But, on -<span class='pageno' title='117' id='Page_117'></span> -the whole, it was as excellent a first book of verse as might -be issued by any young Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate -or, conceivably, by Shelley, Tennyson, or Swinburne in -their undergraduate days. Indeed, critics and poets in -England and in the United States, in reviewing <span class='it'>Orion and -Other Poems</span>, noted the volume as a respectable performance -in verse and a fair promise of excellent future poetry -from the Dominion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts’ first volume <span class='it'>Orion and Other Poems</span> is a significant -disclosure, both positively and negatively, of his -essential genius and art. Positively, the bias or bend of -his genius was towards English neo-classical idyllism and -sensuous impressionism. Negatively, his genius lacked, and -has continued to lack, original imagination or imaginative -power. In his first volume, his ‘properties,’ to use a term -borrowed from the stage and employed by Robert Bridges, -Poet Laureate, are the same ‘properties’ as appear in the -Keatsian idyll. In Roberts’ earliest verse masquerade -mythical Greek deities and heroes, sylvan demi-gods and -demi-goddesses, Arcadian denizens and shepherds, painted -with rich sensuous color against a background of pastoral -or idyllic landscape, to the accompaniment of impressionistic -verbal music; alliteration, consonance, assonance, and -vowel-harmony. All this is a recrudescence, unmistakably, -of the same qualities in Keats, Tennyson, and Swinburne. -In short, Roberts appears as an unoriginal or unimaginative -nature-and-figure-painter and verbal melodist. A single -example from <span class='it'>Orion</span> will suffice:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>      For there the deep-eyed night</p> -<p class='line0'>Looked down on me; unflagging voices called</p> -<p class='line0'>From unpent waters falling; tireless wings</p> -<p class='line0'>From long winds bear me tongueless messages</p> -<p class='line0'>From star-consulting, silent pinnacles;</p> -<p class='line0'>And breadth, and depth, and stillness</p> -<p class='line0'>Fathered me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In that passage criticism at once notes that Roberts, -as a very young poet, begins his professional career as a -<span class='pageno' title='118' id='Page_118'></span> -clever ‘word virtuoso.’ That passage certainly suggests, as -no doubt it imitates, the sensuous impressionism of the -Choric Song in Tennyson’s <span class='it'>Lotus Eaters</span>. Its verbal -music carries the same kind of vague impressionism which -we hear in the gossamer tone-painting of Debussy’s orchestral -prelude <span class='it'>L’Après-midi d’un Faune</span>. No one will -doubt the sincere ambition of Roberts to be a poet, and -the sincerity of his choice of themes and properties, diction, -and poetic style. Yet, while noting the artificiality of it -all, one does wonder that a tyro poet could, in a first volume -of undergraduate verse, so consummately simulate, as -Roberts did, the art of the supreme masters of English -neo-classical idyllism and impressionism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As yet, then, Roberts’ poetry discloses only talent in -him, nothing of genius, or originality, or imagination. His -poetry is, after all, a cleverly sublimated academic exercise. -Literary psychologists cannot escape the feeling that Roberts -deliberately ‘manufactured’ his first volume of verse—cannot -help picturing the young poet diligently figuring -away in his student’s cloister at the properties, forms and -metres of his imitative idyllism and impressionism. It is -all Artifice; all artificial. As yet in Roberts’ verse there -is no ‘note’ of inspiration awakened by the magic and mystery -of the great Dominion—no New World ‘note’ caught -from Canadian Nature, or from Canadian romantic life -and contemporary civilization.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his second volume of poems, <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span>, there -is an advance in variety of inspiration, in his forms and -metres, and in finish of technique. Still, on the whole, the -themes and properties, rhythms, metres, and color are those -of English neo-classical idyllism and impressionism. There -is, however, some suggestion of a change away from his -former too imitative adherence to the subject, manner, and -style of the English idyllists. There is, for instance, a -suggestion of a structural, but not ethical, influence from -Browning. There is, in this regard, a Browningesque coinage -<span class='pageno' title='119' id='Page_119'></span> -of unconventional or awkward diction, an adoption of -a Browningesque metre and an introduction of ‘medley’ as -when he inserts, after the Browning manner, a lyrical -interlude, unexpectedly and with no logical justification, -into the text of a broader, more serious movement and more -ethically informed subject. His second volume of poetry, -<span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span>, shows that Roberts has talent, but is still -unimaginative and artificial. Yet his second volume is -much more significant than his first, not by its being more -various in its themes and forms, but by its exhibiting new -tendencies in the bent of the poet’s mind and imagination. -There is a tendency towards ethical influences and to get -away from his early preoccupation with English neo-classical -idyllism and impressionism. There is also the -merest show of a tendency to occupy his imagination with -ideas of the Canadian ‘spirit’ and the beauty and wonder of -Nature in Canada. There is, however, no distinctive embodiment -of inspirational ideas or moods awakened by the -Great Dominion or the New World.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Notwithstanding, in his second volume Roberts is -taking his first step on the way to the expression of -the essential form and manner of his creative genius -as a poet. He was born to lilt, in simple lyrical -and descriptive verse, the aesthetic sensations and the -emotional nuances of Canadian life and external nature. -In short, Roberts was born to become, as he did become, -the most engaging and artistic, though not the first, native-born -Canadian idyllist. <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> he first appears -as a really significant creative Canadian poet. But whenever, -in his later literary career, Roberts forsakes his light -or simple idyllic and impressionistic treatment of Canadian -life and external nature, as he forsakes it in the monody, -in his poetry of city life, and in his poetry of modern -eroticism, he may be engaging or arresting or impressive, -but in nowise is he creatively significant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the same volume, <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span>, Roberts exhibits -<span class='pageno' title='120' id='Page_120'></span> -two manners. In some poems in the volume he clings to -his old manner of English Classical Impressionism. In -other poems in the same volume he essays his new manner -of Canadian Impressionism. The first is distinguished by -overweighted sensuousness, by over-burdened luxurious -color of descriptive epithet and verbal music. An impressive -example is <span class='it'>Off Pelorus</span>, the sensuous quality of which may -be suggested by the following single stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Idly took we thought, for still our eyes betray us,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Lo, the white-limbed maids, with love-soft eyes aglow,</p> -<p class='line0'>Gleaming bosoms bare, loosed hair, sweet hands to slay us,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Warm lips wild with song, and softer throat than snow!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts’ strictly Canadian Impressionism is colorful -and musical, but the structure of the verse is simple, as, -for instance, <span class='it'>On the Creek</span>, an idyllic lyric, full of Canadian -color, and highly alliterative, beginning:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Dear heart, the noisy strife,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And bitter harpings cease.</p> -<p class='line0'>Here is the lamp of life,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Here are the lips of peace.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts developed other ‘manners’ or styles. But, unquestionably, -this Canadian idyllic impressionism, simple -in thought and form, yet colorful and musical, is his -natural <span class='it'>forte</span>—his <span class='it'>natural, characteristic manner</span>. It is -exemplified, in the same volume, by other Canadian idylls -in the simple style of <span class='it'>On the Creek</span>, as, for instance, <span class='it'>In The -Afternoon</span>, <span class='it'>Salt</span>, <span class='it'>Winter Geraniums</span>, <span class='it'>Birch and Paddle</span>; -by distinct and deliberate suffusions of Canadian Nature in -dactylic hexameters, as in <span class='it'>The Tantramar Revisited</span>, and -in the sonnet-form (somewhat anticipating the nature-poetry -of Lampman), as in Roberts’ genuinely noble sonnets -<span class='it'>The Sower</span>, and <span class='it'>The Potato Harvest</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>We may turn now to a general consideration of Roberts’ -poetic treatment of Nature. In Roberts’ first volume, -in his strictly Arcadian poetry, there is nothing of Canadian -<span class='pageno' title='121' id='Page_121'></span> -Nature, nothing of Canadian scenery, nor the color and -sentiment of Canadian life in the habitat of the distinctive -Canadian spirit. In the second volume, <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span>, -there is a definitive engagement, on his part, with Canadian -Nature, or with Canadian life and sentiment pictured -against Canadian backgrounds; and also a change in the -form and style of Roberts’ poetic composition.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The natural forms of Roberts’ art are light, simple, -lyrical, and descriptive verse, which he treats with charming -naturalness, almost <span class='it'>naiveté</span>, with simple tunefulness of -ballad or folk rhythms, and which sometimes he delicately -suffuses with a contemplative revery, a gentle melancholy, -or a subdued sentimental reflection on the magic and mystery -of Nature and life, somewhat in the manner of Herrick -and Tennyson, and Longfellow. But Roberts’ lyrical -idyllism or nature-description is not always wholly soft or -sentimental, pretty, or gentle, or charming, nor is his new -manner always in folk rhythm in form. At times, even -when simple, his verse is picturesque, even brusque, vigorous, -and overweighted with descriptive details as if, in the -last matter, he must ‘paint in’ all the features and properties -of Canadian Nature and leave nothing of its physiognomy -to be added by the imagination of the reader.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts, however, has one singular limitation, an innate -defect of his genius. He cannot limn the human person -or figure as one of the properties of his poetry of Canadian -woodlands or pastoral scenery and life. In the matter of -human portraiture against a background of Nature Roberts, -as poet, is abstract and faltering in drawing, lifeless, unveracious, -ineffective. Otherwise in the Canadian idyll or -in nature-description he is concrete, veracious, simple but -graphic, nearly always winningly musical and on the whole -satisfying. In short, Roberts discloses in his new manner, -in the Canadian idyll and his Acadian nature-poetry, the -sure possession of the secrets of color, movement and -music, and of real Canadian national sentiment, in the -<span class='pageno' title='122' id='Page_122'></span> -presence of life and nature. He is an adroit nature-colorist -and verbal melodist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Absent, however, from his genius and art are all gifts -in spiritual portraiture and the fine and noble interpretation -of Nature which Lampman discloses in his nature-poetry -and his interpretation of the essential Canadian spirit from -the embodiment of that spirit, as Lampman discerns it, in -Nature in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts’ treatment of Nature may be illustrated by -examples taken from his second volume, <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> -(1887), and from <span class='it'>The Book of the Native</span> (1896), in the -latter of which are some poems that really belong, in form, -and spirit, to the time when he was changing his abstract -<span class='it'>Arcadian</span> manner to his concrete <span class='it'>Acadian</span> manner as in -his <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span>. Illustrative of Roberts’ change to a -Canadian theme and to the modern simple method of -treating Nature, in the pseudo-classical style, an apt example -is <span class='it'>The Tantramar Revisited</span>, composed in the dactylic -hexameter, a form, suggested, no doubt, by Longfellow’s -pretty story of Evangeline. In this poem Roberts treats -Canadian Nature with an impressive originality in properties, -color, and sentiment, and certainly with a pervasive -directness and veracity which prove his sincerity and which -convince the reader that the poet was moved by the beauty -and pathos of his Acadian subject:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt!</p> -<p class='line0'>Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,</p> -<p class='line0'>Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>What a change in Roberts—this change from the abstract, -artificial, academic, over-sensuous treatment of -Nature in Arcadia to his direct, simple, concrete treatment -of real nature in Acadia, with his poet’s eyes directly ‘on -the object.’ There we have the real, the genuine Roberts, -<span class='pageno' title='123' id='Page_123'></span> -the original authentic poet of Canadian Nature and life -and nationality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For an example of his colored realism or idyllic naturalism -tinged with a sort of Wordsworthian plainness or -austerity of style and ethical revery, consider his sonnet -<span class='it'>The Sower</span>. It has been called Roberts’ ‘popular masterpiece.’ -As a sonnet, it is perfect in artistic structure, and -is as faithful to Canadian Nature and sentiment as, say, -Millet’s paintings, <span class='it'>The Reapers</span> and <span class='it'>The Angelus</span>, are true -to French pastoral life and religious sentiment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But this sonnet is a good example of Roberts’ ineffectiveness -in human or spiritual portraiture. How effectively -it pictures for us the land, the sky, the birds, the -human properties of the Acadian landscape in Nova Scotia. -The poem visualizes vividly for us all the features and elements -of external Nature; yet it fails to visualize the Sower -<span class='it'>himself</span>, to limn him effectively, graphically, impressively -against the background of Nature as, on the other hand, -Millet has graphically limned the human figures in his -paintings against the French landscape.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally: a poem which is a really fine example of Roberts’ -characteristic genius and art in the authentic Canadian -idyll and in nature-description, and which, perhaps, contains -his nearest approach to graphic figure-poetry, namely, his -lyric <span class='it'>The Solitary Woodsman</span>, is specially noteworthy. -Though published in <span class='it'>The Book of the Native</span>, it really belongs -to the period of <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> when Roberts was -changing over to his natural and characteristic manner of -Canadian idyllic impressionism. For it is a gentle, natural, -and simple lyrical idyll of Canadian Nature and life, tinged -with a delicate mood of contemplation and pathos. A -touch more of ‘personal detail,’ of moral characterization, -would have made <span class='it'>The Solitary Woodsman</span> as universal and -popular a portrait as the genre picture of the hardy, happy -village blacksmith in Longfellow’s poem with that subject. -Nevertheless, the poem has vigor, action, life-likeness; it is -<span class='pageno' title='124' id='Page_124'></span> -veracious and picturesque. In it Roberts is at his best in -the Canadian lyrical idyll and in figure-portraiture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Strict analysis of Roberts’ nature-poetry reveals both -the positive qualities and the defects of his genius and -art. As a poet of Nature in Acadia he hardly more than -effects <span class='it'>glimpses</span> of Canadian scenery and pastoral life, -colorful, no doubt, and tinged with a homely or even -tender naturalistic sentiment. His pictures of Canadian -scenery and pastoral life are indeterminate <span class='it'>pastels</span> of the -general features of Nature in Canada rather than rich, -broad paintings done with the forthright, broad brush-work -of a master artist. It is all pretty, or charming, and faithful -to Nature in Acadia. But it is all based on superficial -observation and is devoid of poetic, that is to say, profound -and beautiful application of ideas to life. It is not to be -expected that the Canadian people will treasure these -pastels of Canadian scenery and pastoral life. For though -they be beautiful, simple, and realistic, the ethical element -in them is always a reflection, a moral platitude, from the -poet’s own moralizing, or a recrudescence of some older -poets’ moralizings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The public is quick to detect insincerity in a poet. -While it would not be just to accuse Roberts of insincerity -whenever he attempts to moralize in his nature-poetry, or -to give it a moral or religious significance, it is still true -that Roberts’ nature-poetry is too superficial, too obviously -‘an effort’ to make pretty or charming pastels of Canadian -scenery and pastoral life, too lacking in thoroughly humanized -treatment of Nature, to be popular or cherished for -its own sake by the Canadian people.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His pure lyrical pastels, as for instance, <span class='it'>On the Creek</span>, -and <span class='it'>The Solitary Woodsman</span>, are more likely to remain -permanently popular than are his Nature poems in other -forms, as, for example, the genuinely important sonnet-sequence -in his <span class='it'>Songs of the Common Day</span> (1893). In -these sonnets, however, he shows no increase of descriptive -<span class='pageno' title='125' id='Page_125'></span> -power but only the variety of his word-painter’s palette. -Moreover, in these sonnets there is a felt insincerity of -aim. Though fine in structure, faithful to Canadian Nature, -variously treating the aspects of Canadian Nature, and -often sentimental and moralistic, they impress the reader -as having been designed and written deliberately to show -forth the poet’s powers in realistic or naturalistic impressionism, -in the philosophical interpretation of Nature, and -in technical artistry. Notwithstanding, it must be admitted -that in these sonnets Roberts, as an impressionistic painter -of Canadian Nature, is a master, and has his analogues, in -the pictorial painting of Nature, in Corot and Millet, and in -the tonal painting of Nature, in MacDowell and Debussy. -These sonnets were consciously designed to be -‘works of art,’ and to impress the philosophically minded -poets and critics of poetic form. Fine and masterful as -they are in technical artistry, and impressive, too, with a -resurgence of moral ideas, nevertheless they appeal neither -to the popular heart nor to the philosophical imagination. -For they create in the heart of the reader the sense only of -a splendid achievement in poetic artistry, but never any -sense of the poet’s own enrichment of life from his interpretation -of beauty in Canadian Nature, civilization, and -life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Summarily: as an original Poet, Roberts’ <span class='it'>forte</span> is the -treatment of Canadian Nature and pastoral life in impressionistic -pastels, to an accompaniment of verbal music -in folk rhythms or simple lyric forms. Thus accepted and -appreciated he is a satisfying nature-colorist and melodist. -But, impressive and magnificent, as he is, in more formal or -larger poetic genres, as for instance, the sonnet and monody, -he fails to give us in both a vital application of ideas to -life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Consideration of Roberts’ poetry of modern eroticism -reveals only what has been called a variety of Roberts’ -‘ethical heterogeneity.’ This, however, is a defect in the -<span class='pageno' title='126' id='Page_126'></span> -man rather than in the poet, and only negatively affects -Roberts’ significance in the literary history of Canada. -Roberts’ work as a threnodist, romantic novelist, and inventor -of a species of animal psychology in the romance -is considered elsewhere. It is, however, as the inaugurator -of the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature, both -poetry and prose, rather than as a poet of Canadian Nationality -and Nature, that Roberts has a right to a supremely -significant status in the literary history of Canada.</p> - -<hr class='tbk106'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations from Charles G. D. Roberts’ works are found in the -individual volumes mentioned in the text. There is also issued a collection entitled, -<span class='it'>Poems</span> by Charles G. D. Roberts—New complete edition—(Copp, Clark Co., -Toronto, 1907).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='127' id='Page_127'></span><h1>CHAPTER VIII</h1></div> - -<h3>Archibald Lampman</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>AN INTERPRETER OF THE ESSENTIAL SPIRIT OF CANADA—STUDY -OF LAMPMAN’S ‘SAPPHICS’—POWER OF HUMANIZING -NATURE—EXCELLENCE OF HIS SONNETS—CONSUMMATE -ARTIST OF NATURAL BEAUTY.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>n</span> 1887 Charles G. D. Roberts had, with his poem beginning -‘O Child of Nations’ and again with his magniloquent -<span class='it'>Ode to the Canadian Confederacy</span>, issued a ‘call’ -to the Canadian people to realize a national consciousness -and to achieve a national destiny. He appeared as the ‘Voice’ -of Canada. But he was a mere ‘Voice.’ For aside from -simply uttering the ‘call’ he did nothing else to awaken in -the Canadian people a consciousness of their own native -or national spirit and a love of country, except to publish -some impressionistic word pictures of Canadian scenery -and pastoral life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile Swinburne had told the world that out of -Canada or Australia would come a great New Voice of -the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In 1889, or two years after -Roberts had trumpeted his ‘call’ to Canadians, Theodore -Watts-Dunton, poet, novelist, and the most far-visioned of -British critics then living, in an article on Canadian poetry -made the same prophecy as had Swinburne. ‘Canada,’ he -said, ‘had excellent poets, and with the development of a -national consciousness of the history, resources and wealth -of the country, would produce great poets.’ In 1918, or -practically thirty years after the prophecies of Swinburne -and Watts-Dunton and the ‘call’ of Roberts, Sir Herbert -Warren, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Professor -<span class='pageno' title='128' id='Page_128'></span> -of Poetry at Oxford, in an address on ‘Overseas -Poetry,’ as he called it, before the Royal Colonial Institute, -London, also confessed to a vision of great poets arising in -Canada and said that, in his view, so far Canada had produced -only ‘some <span class='it'>good</span> poets.’ It is probable that the -prophecies of Swinburne and Watts-Dunton were merely -generous pleasantries or, possibly, ‘guesses at the truth.’ -In any case what they were really concerned about was the -appearance of a great <span class='it'>Imperial</span> poet in Canada or some -other one of the British Overseas Dominions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What Canadians themselves should be concerned about -is not whether Canada has produced a significant Imperial -poet but whether the Dominion has produced a signally -excellent poet who, if not the prophetic Voice of the Dominion, -is the true <span class='it'>Interpreter</span> of the essential Canadian -spirit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Sir Herbert Warren declared that Canada had -produced only some good poets, he had in mind Roberts, -Carman, Pauline Johnson, Valancy Crawford, W. H. -Drummond, and Robert Service. But the greatest poet -that Canada has produced, greatest as a nature-poet, and -as an interpreter of the essential mind and heart of the -Canadian people and country, is Archibald Lampman. -If Lampman is not great in the sense that Shelley or Keats -or Wordsworth or Tennyson or Browning or Swinburne -is great, at least he is more than a good poet. He is -a consummate artist. But more important, he is a subtle -interpreter of the Canadian national spirit by way of a -new and philosophical interpretation of Nature in Canada. -He is <span class='it'>par excellence</span> the poet of Canadian Nature and -Nationality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For inductive proof of ‘nationality’ in literature, consider -critically, and at some length, from Lampman’s -poetry, an impressive example of wholly indigenous expression -of the Canadian genius and the Canadian view of -Nature and of Life. Justly it may be held that this example -<span class='pageno' title='129' id='Page_129'></span> -of interpretative nature-poetry by Lampman, which -goes under the name of <span class='it'>Sapphics</span>, is, for faultless technic, -for spiritual vision of Nature and for the beautiful application -of noble ideas to life, an indubitable contribution -to poetic art, and is peculiarly Canadian. This is not too -high praise; for the poem itself, with analyses of its form -and beauty, together with a commentary on its spiritual -meaning, will furnish sufficient evidence that it must be -given a unique place in Canadian Literature. For easy -expository purposes the poem may be divided into three -parts, which contain its three themes and their inspiration:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<div class='stanza-inner'> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'>I</p> -<p class='line0'>Clothed in splendor, beautifully sad and silent,</p> -<p class='line0'>Comes the autumn over the woods and highlands,</p> -<p class='line0'>Golden, rose-red, full of divine remembrance,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Full of foreboding.</p> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Soon the maples, soon will the glowing birches,</p> -<p class='line0'>Stripped of all that summer and love had dowered them,</p> -<p class='line0'>Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasure</p> -<p class='line0'>        Ruthlessly scattered:</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Yet they quail not; Winter, with wind and iron,</p> -<p class='line0'>Comes and finds them silent and uncomplaining,</p> -<p class='line0'>Finds them tameless, beautiful still and gracious,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Gravely enduring.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<div class='stanza-inner'> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'>II</p> -<p class='line0'>Me, too, changes, bitter and full of evil,</p> -<p class='line0'>Dream by dream have plundered and left me naked,</p> -<p class='line0'>Gray with sorrow. Even the days before me</p> -<p class='line0'>        Fade into twilight,</p> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Mute and barren. Yet will I keep my spirit</p> -<p class='line0'>Clear and valiant, brother to these my noble</p> -<p class='line0'>Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Grandly ungrieving.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<div class='stanza-inner'> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'>III</p> -<p class='line0'>Brief the span is, counting the years of mortals,</p> -<p class='line0'>Strange and sad; it passes and then the bright earth,</p> -<p class='line0'>Careless mother, gleaming with gold and azure,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Lovely with blossoms—</p> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='130' id='Page_130'></span></p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Shining white anemones, mixed with roses,</p> -<p class='line0'>Daisies mild-eyed, grasses and honeyed clover—</p> -<p class='line0'>You and me, and all of us, met and equal,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Softly shall cover.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The pure beauty of that poem, of its spiritual imagery, -of its rhythmic flow and cadences, <span class='it'>andante tranquillo</span>, and -the noble mood and emotion it induces—how it all affects -the heart and imagination like music heard in dim cathedral -aisles, or recalls us from the vulgar distractions of life -to sequestered retreats in the Canadian wildwood, there to -contemplate existence with a subdued joy and tender peace! -Nay more, we rise from communing with the poet, as he -did from his communion with Nature, anointed with a new -spiritual grace and with a new strength to achieve, amidst -ten thousand vicissitudes of fortune, a right worthy destiny—‘grandly -ungrieving.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Each of the three parts of the poem has its own theme -and inspiration. The first section gives us the poet’s vision -of Nature and of Nature’s own (as well as the poet’s) -autumnal mood. This is an important distinction. It -distinguishes a peculiar Canadian pictorializing and humanizing -vision of Nature. Who can mistake in what land -comes that autumn, ‘clothed in a splendor,’ and ‘beautifully -sad and silent,’ in what land flourish those woods, ‘golden, -rose-red,’ and in what land rise those hills, ‘full of divine -remembrance’? Those are indisputably, unmistakably, -Canadian woods and hills, in their precise autumnal garb -and mood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some would contend that this way of pictorializing Nature -is Grecian or even English. Rather is it peculiarly -Canadian. It is so for this reason: The Greeks, as it were, -‘decked out’ Nature solely for the sensuous enjoyment of a -world made lovely to look upon or pleasant to dwell in. -The external beauty of Nature was with them, as with -Keats and Wordsworth, when these two did not assume -the moralizing attitude, the sufficient reason for their impressionistic -<span class='pageno' title='131' id='Page_131'></span> -word-painting. With Lampman, as with the -Kelts (and Lampman was a Gael on his mother’s side), -the physical loveliness of the face and garb of Nature is -an essential, living aspect of earth. For does not Nature -herself, as if conscious and reflective, change her aspect -and garb becomingly with her seasons and moods? Lampman’s -attitude to Nature is not the attitude of an impressionistic -landscape painter, but of one for whom physical -loveliness is supremely a spiritual revealment. This, however, -might be wholly Keltic, and not Canadian. But it is -Canadian, and not Keltic, because the interior revealment -expresses a special view of Nature and a special mode of -intimate communion between the Canadian heart and the -spirit of Nature in Canadian woods and streams and hills.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Part second of the poem gives us an altogether novel -and original spiritual interpretation of Nature’s mood and -temper. It is a mood or temper, be it remarked, not expressed -by Nature in any land save Canada, and not to be -divined, and sympathized with, by any other racial genius -save by the mind and heart indigenous to Canada, sensitive -emotionally to the varying aspects and manner of Nature -in Canada, as children to the meaning of changes in the -facial expression and manner of a mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The uncritical, having in mind that inveterate sermonizer -Wordsworth, may think that Lampman in this poem -does but ‘moralize’ Nature. Far from it, Lampman -‘humanizes’ Nature in a peculiar way, namely, by reciprocal -sympathy. We must mark that—‘reciprocal sympathy’—as -an original Canadian contribution to the poetic interpretation, -the spiritual revealment, of Nature. Lampman, -as he says himself, is ‘brother’ to Nature. Her -reflections on her own vicissitudes are as his own on his -fortunes of life. The Poet and Nature, though two -physically, are one by mutual bonds of sympathy. The -poet sympathizes with Nature as he himself feels that she -sympathizes with him. Thus does he humanize, not sentimentally, -<span class='pageno' title='132' id='Page_132'></span> -but nobly, the Canadian maples and birches, -which, as he says:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasure</p> -<p class='line0'>        Ruthlessly scattered:</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Yet they quail not . . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>‘Yet they quail not’—there we have envisaged the mood -and temper of Canadian Nature! The Gael, visioning the -maples and birches, with his racial melancholy sentiment -for glories departed, might say of them that they -‘dream, sad-limbed.’ But only a Canadian, or a Canadian -Gael, apprehending, through sympathy, their inmost mood, -could say of them, nobly, inimitably: ‘Yet they quail not.’ -And so Lampman, divining, with a more than Keltic -subtlety of vision, the spirit of the Canadian woods in -autumn, sympathetically responds to their mood, and is -heartened to endure, as they do, ‘silent and uncomplaining.’</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Yet I will keep my spirit</p> -<p class='line0'>Clear and valiant, brother to these my noble</p> -<p class='line0'>Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Grandly ungrieving.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>‘Yet I will keep my spirit clear and valiant!’—Mark -that as the authentic <span class='it'>spiritual</span> note of the Canadian genius. -It is not Canadian, however, merely because it is the expression -of indomitable courage and serenity, but because -the idea, the inspiration, of a self-controlled destiny, -achieved with clearness of vision and valiant heart, first -comes to the mind and heart and moral imagination of the -Canadian poet <span class='it'>as a gift from Canadian woods</span>. He, for -his part, conveys that gift to his compatriots, by his poetic -envisagement of the ‘brotherhood’ of Man and Nature in -this land of glowing birches, noble elms and maples. That -‘note’ of clear-visioned faith and courage and serenity is -in Canadian poetry of earlier days, long before the Confederacy, -as well as in these days of social and commercial -progress. It was in the poetry of Sangster and Mair in -<span class='pageno' title='133' id='Page_133'></span> -Ontario, and in the Gaelic verses of James MacGregor in -Nova Scotia. But it is most articulate and vocal in the -poetry of Archibald Lampman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Considering now the first two parts of Lampman’s -poem as a whole, we become aware that the first distinctively -‘national’ note in the literature of the Canadian Confederacy -is a unique humanizing of Nature, singularly apparent -in the Nature-poetry of Lampman—a sympathetic -identity of mood and temper, a reciprocal sense of -brotherhood, between Man and Nature. This is a psychological -phenomenon by itself, belonging solely to the -Canadian genius and expressing itself, with fine art, solely -in Canadian poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Like other poets, British and American, Canadian poets -have notable pictorializing gifts, and can visualize a scene -so vividly as to give a reader of their verse the intimate -view of an eye-witness of the reality. They can, as aptly -as Wordsworth, also moralize Nature and convey a noble -preachment. But of them all Lampman stands alone in -this—<span class='it'>the power to humanize Nature into personality, and -sympathetically identify her spirit with his own, in mood -and will</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lampman also stands alone in this—<span class='it'>in his love of local -beauty and his power to individualize and vitalize it</span>. This, -too, is a ‘national’ note and a psychological phenomenon -by itself. His is not a love of Nature’s beauty abstracted -from a particular time and place, but of those very scenes -and haunts where first he beheld Nature in all her physical -loveliness and many moods and became her intimate companion -and lover. Lampman so individualizes and vitalizes -his fields and woods, as Campbell his lakes, Roberts his -woods and marshes, and Carman his tide and mists and -April morns, that the reader can localize the region, and -‘time’ the season, of their inspiration with the nicest perception. -So singularly is this quality present, most notably in -poetry of Lampman, though also in the poetry of Roberts, -<span class='pageno' title='134' id='Page_134'></span> -Carman, Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott and Pauline -Johnson, that a reader can, with absolute surety, say not -only, ‘This is Canadian nature-beauty,’ but also, ‘This is -Canadian nature-beauty in Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick, -in Ontario.’ Surely, then, this peculiar imaginative interpretation -of Canadian Nature whereby Lampman and his -<span class='it'>confrères</span>, first, localize Nature, and, next, humanize her -noblest mood and temper into an identity with their own -is a supreme expression of the national spirit and raises -Post-Confederation poetry to the dignity of authentic -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Canadians are, in the eyes of the older nations, a notably -sane and happy people. They are so because they keep -their souls, in the phrase of Lampman, always ‘clear and -valiant,’ having, as Lampman, and even as Roberts and the -other poets of the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature, -a sure vision of the greatness of their country’s destiny -and of the means to it. The peculiar moral qualities -of the Canadian people are an inviolable faith in themselves, -an indomitable courage, and an imperturbable serenity. -The ground and inspiration of these qualities are in Canadian -woods and hills and waters, and Archibald Lampman, -in his nature-poetry, interprets these qualities of the Canadian -people and country with sweet reasonableness and -genuine nobility.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In two of his finest sonnets, rich both in aesthetic and -in spiritual beauty, and worthy both of Keats and Wordsworth, -possibly suggesting the spirit of their finest sonnets, -Lampman has summarized his poetic and philosophical -creed. So beautiful in structure and imagery, so noble in -their expression of the courage and serenity and faith which -obtain in his <span class='it'>Sapphics</span>, and yet so wistful of the heavenly -beauty and so infused with the pathos of life are these -sonnets, that they move the soul and subdue the spirit with -‘thoughts too deep for tears.’ If there is any genuine meaning -to Arnold’s conception of the moral dignity and spiritual -<span class='pageno' title='135' id='Page_135'></span> -function of poetry as ‘the profound and powerful application -of ideas of life,’ these two sonnets by Lampman quite -match the finest sonnets of the same degree of poetic vision -by Keats, Wordsworth, and Arnold:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<div class='stanza-inner'> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'>I</p> -<p class='line0'>Not to be conquered by these headlong days,</p> -<p class='line0'>But to stand free; to keep the mind at brood</p> -<p class='line0'>On life’s deep meaning, nature’s altitude</p> -<p class='line0'>Or loveliness, and time’s mysterious ways;</p> -<p class='line0'>At every thought and deed to clear the haze</p> -<p class='line0'>Out of our eyes, considering only this,</p> -<p class='line0'>What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,</p> -<p class='line0'>This is to live, and win the final praise.</p> -<p class='line0'>Though strife, ill fortune, and harsh human need</p> -<p class='line0'>Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb,</p> -<p class='line0'>With agony; yet, patience—there shall come</p> -<p class='line0'>Many great voices from life’s outer sea,</p> -<p class='line0'>Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,</p> -<p class='line0'>Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.</p> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<div class='stanza-inner'> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'>II</p> -<p class='line0'>There is a beauty at the goal of life,</p> -<p class='line0'>A beauty growing since the world began,</p> -<p class='line0'>Through every age and race, through lapse and strife,</p> -<p class='line0'>Till the great human soul complete her span:</p> -<p class='line0'>Beneath the waves of storm that lash and burn,</p> -<p class='line0'>The currents of blind passion that appal,</p> -<p class='line0'>To listen and keep watch till we discern</p> -<p class='line0'>The tide of sovereign truth that guides it all;</p> -<p class='line0'>So to address our Spirits to the height,</p> -<p class='line0'>And so to attune them to the valiant whole,</p> -<p class='line0'>That the great light be clearer for our light,</p> -<p class='line0'>And the great soul the stronger for our soul:</p> -<p class='line0'>To have done this is to have lived, though fame</p> -<p class='line0'>Remembers us with no familiar name.</p> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly these sonnets breath a higher spiritual air than -do the finest sonnets of Roberts, as, for instance, <span class='it'>The -Sower</span> and <span class='it'>The Potato Harvest</span>. As certainly, in sustained -serenity and moral import, as well as in profound -spiritual beauty, Lampman’s sonnet-sequence <span class='it'>The Frogs</span> -surpasses Roberts’ sonnet-sequence in his <span class='it'>Songs of the -Common Day</span>,—not only technically and in nature-color -<span class='pageno' title='136' id='Page_136'></span> -and music but also in transporting the spirit with inevitable -‘murmurs and glimpses of eternity’:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And slowly as we heard you, day by day,</p> -<p class='line0'>  The stillness of enchanted reveries</p> -<p class='line0'>  Bound brain and spirit with half-closèd eyes,</p> -<p class='line0'>In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray;</p> -<p class='line0'>To us no sorrow or upreared dismay</p> -<p class='line0'>  Nor any discord come, but evermore</p> -<p class='line0'>  The voices of mankind, the outer roar,</p> -<p class='line0'>Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Rapt with your voices, this alone we knew,</p> -<p class='line0'>Cities might change and fall, and men might die,</p> -<p class='line0'>Secure were we, content to dream with you</p> -<p class='line0'>  That change and air are shadows faint and fleet,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And dreams are real, and life is only sweet.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>There we have, not talent cleverly performing an academic -exercise, but serene and noble genius profoundly -and finely interpreting and appreciating Beauty and Good -in the universe and in existence. Indubitably Lampman -is a master of the sonnet, a master whom those greatest -masters of the sonnet, Keats and Wordsworth, would welcome -to their company, and of whose company, as a nature-poet -working in the sonnet or the lyric forms, he really is.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Lampman is more than a philosophical interpreter -of the mystery and wonder of Nature and Life. He is also -a consummate artist in revealing to others his vision of -the natural magic and beauty of Nature in Canada. He is -even a finer colorist and melodist than is Roberts. He is -such because he has finer powers of observation, and notes -not merely the general superficial beauty of the face of -Nature but also the minutest details of Nature’s physiognomy -and garb, and the gentler, more gracious of Nature’s -moods.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Unlike Roberts, Lampman is not a mere sensuous -impressionist. He is an artist with the same gifts as -those of Thomas Gray for discerning, appreciating, -<span class='pageno' title='137' id='Page_137'></span> -and envisaging in lyric verse the subtler and lovelier -beauties of fields and woods and hills and streams and sky, -and for interpreting to the spirit the meaning of pastoral -beauty and life in Canadian woods. Roberts paints -charmingly indeed at times the mere face of Nature. -Lampman not only paints exquisitely and daintily the -physical loveliness and garb of Nature but also conveys -her most winsome moods and her daintiest messages for -the refreshment and sustenance of the spirit. Moreover, -Lampman has Gray’s gift in limning the human figure, of -adding, with graphic nicety, a humanistic touch to his -spiritual portraits. As a poet who paints and interprets -Nature with the intimate vision and delicate brush of the -artist, not with mere impressionism but with minute and -lovely truth and realism, and also as a poet who humanizes -Nature with graphic portraits and interprets Nature subtly -and intimately to the spirit, Lampman is a master by -himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whatever influences Keats may have had on Lampman’s -art, it must be observed that fundamentally, as an -artist and as an interpreter of Nature, with the power to -add here and there graphic bits of human portraiture, -Lampman is nearer to Gray than to Keats or even to -Wordsworth. All these qualities are incisively exemplified -in Lampman’s lyric <span class='it'>Heat</span>. In this poem Nature and -pastoral life in Canada, on a day of sultry summer heat, -are painted with the nicest realistic detail; and in it the bit -of human portraiture, the wagoner ‘slowly slouching at -his ease,’ is as graphic and as true to life as Gray’s bit of -human portraiture, the plowman homeward plodding his -weary way, is graphic and true to English pastoral and -natural life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If any Canadian poet ever entered the sanctuaries of -Nature and revealed the intimate observation and consummate -artistry which marks the art of all the exquisite poets -of Nature—that Canadian poet is Archibald Lampman. He -<span class='pageno' title='138' id='Page_138'></span> -is, however, a greater poet than he is an artist. As a poet -he is the superior of Roberts. As an artist he has no -superior save Duncan Campbell Scott. But as a poet of -Nature, interpreting from Nature the essence of the Canadian -spirit, Lampman is superb, supreme—unmatched, and -even unrivalled by any other poet that Canada has yet -produced.</p> - -<hr class='tbk107'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations from Archibald Lampman’s work in this chapter are from -<span class='it'>The Collected Poems of Archibald Lampman</span>, edited, with a memoir by Duncan -Campbell Scott—new edition, 1923 (Musson Book Co.: Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='139' id='Page_139'></span><h1>CHAPTER IX</h1></div> - -<h3>Bliss Carman</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>AS A WORLD-POET—CREATIVE MELODIST—PERIODS OF HIS -POETRY—SINGING QUALITY AND ITS METHOD—LYRIST OF -THE SEA AND OF LOVE—TREATMENT OF NATURE.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>B</span><span class='sc'>liss carman</span> is the only Canadian-born poet who -reasonably and inevitably challenges comparison with -English and United States poets of admitted distinction. -He is, in the continental sense of the term, more American -than he is Canadian; more English than American; and -more a world-poet than Canadian, or American, or English, -in the sense that famous poets writing in the English -language, from Chaucer to Masefield, are world-poets. -His genius and poetry, as do the genius and poetry of -no other Canadian poet, challenge criticism to define the -qualities of his mind and art. Unless, therefore, those -who have written <span class='it'>con amore</span> about Carman and have denoted -him as the greatest Canadian poet distinguish in -what respect or respects he is so to be designated, the distinction -is unmeaning. Carman is not the greatest Canadian -poet in versatility of genius, variety of themes and -forms, and perfection of technic or craftsmanship. He is -surpassed by Roberts in versatility of genius and variety of -forms. He is not the greatest Canadian nature-colorist or -impressionistic word-painter in verse. There again Roberts -surpasses him. Carman is not the greatest Canadian -poetic interpreter of nature in Canada and of the Canadian -spirit. Lampman is his equal, and, in one respect, his -superior. Nor is Carman the greatest Canadian artist in -narrative verse. Pauline Johnson and Edward W. Thomson -<span class='pageno' title='140' id='Page_140'></span> -surpass him. Further, Carman is not, save in a special -sense, the greatest Canadian melodist. Pauline Johnson -and Marjorie Pickthall have a more dulcet singing lilt and -sensuous music. Finally, Carman is not the greatest, that -is, the nearest to perfection, in technical artistry, of Canadian -poets. Duncan Campbell Scott is his unrivalled master -in that respect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet indubitably Bliss Carman is the very foremost of -Canadian-born poets. In Carman’s genius and poetry -there are an originality and power and beauty and distinction -that, first, make him unique amongst Canadian -poets and that, secondly, compel the critical world to admit -that he is the only Canadian-born poet who, whenever -he is the supreme lyrist and the inspired technician in verse -that he can be, has made a distinct, singular, and enduring -contribution of his own to English or world poetry, and, -on that account, is in the direct line of the Chaucerian -succession. Whenever, that is, Carman excels in sheer -genius, and as a nature-painter, nature-interpreter, story-teller -in verse, melodist and technician, he surpasses each -and all his Canadian compatriot poets at their best in their -specialty. They each excel in one or two powers. Carman -excels in all their combined powers, to the maximal -degree. Moreover, none of his Canadian compatriot poets -is his equal or even rival in originality and power of imagination, -in sheer vision of the metaphysical meanings of -nature and existence, in intensity of passion, in romantic -atmosphere, in satiric humor, in free and potent diction and -inevitable imagery, and in light or ecstatic lyricism. So -great is Carman as a poet of the Sea that he has made a -distinct contribution in this <span class='it'>genre</span> to English poetry. As a -lyric poet of romantic and Spiritual Love, he has no superior, -if even an equal, in Canada or America, and few in -any other country. His Elegies are lovely lyric memorials -of the Spirit. His poems of sheer joy of living or of -satiric humor have no prototypes. His symbolistic or so-called -<span class='pageno' title='141' id='Page_141'></span> -mystical poetry, as an interpretation of the universe -and as a means of solace and serenity in the midst of -seeming Satanic triumphs, are as noble and grateful to the -spirit and as sustaining as the breath of life from his own -Maritime sea-winds and woodsy zephyrs. But when he -sings most freely and liltingly, then is Bliss Carman the -supreme melodist, and Chaucer is heard again in the land, -and the troubadours, and all those upon whom Nature bestowed -the gift of verbal <span class='it'>bel canto</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>While, then, it is the challenging quality of Bliss Carman’s -poetry, as if he were directly of the strain of Chaucer, -Burns, Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, -Masefield, and as if his verse, like theirs, stood, as it does, -upright on its own feet, that gives it its first and most important -general distinction, it possesses other distinctions, -one of which, namely, its special verbal music, of Keltic -origin and form, is unique in Canadian poetry and rare in -modern English poetry. It is these particular distinctions -which stamp Bliss Carman as an extraordinary creative -poet and melodist, and as the one Canadian poet who -has a right to an indisputable place beside the finer and -more compelling poets of England and the United States. -These claims may be abundantly substantiated by a study -of the texts of what may be called the Popular Collected -Poems of Bliss Carman, namely, <span class='it'>Ballads and Lyrics</span> and -<span class='it'>Later Poems</span> (with an appreciation by R. H. Hathaway), -and by a study of such interpretative commentaries as Odell -Shepard’s <span class='it'>Bliss Carman</span> and H. D. C. Lee’s <span class='it'>Bliss Carman: -A Study of Canadian Poetry</span>, together with Hathaway’s -‘Appreciation’ in <span class='it'>Later Poems</span> by Bliss Carman. In this -chapter Carman is considered and treated from the three -sides in which he is unique amongst Canadian poets: namely, -as, in the light of the history of English poetry, a singularly -original and inventive Vowel Melodist; as a Nature-Poet -whose impressionism and ‘readings’ of earth differ -from those of Roberts and Lampman; and as a Philosophical -<span class='pageno' title='142' id='Page_142'></span> -or Mystical Poet who perceives in Beauty the only -manifestation of the union of the Real and the Ideal and -regards it as an intuitive proof of the Supremacy of Good -in the universe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>However well-intentioned the attempts to divide the -poetical activity of Bliss Carman into <span class='it'>Periods</span>, on the whole -they are not pedagogically successful. Three Periods have -been remarked—a so-called Romantic Period, represented -by <span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré</span> and the <span class='it'>Songs of Vagabondia</span> -series; a Transcendental Period, represented by <span class='it'>Behind -the Arras</span>, subtitled ‘A Book of the Unseen,’ which indicates -its mood, and <span class='it'>The Green Book of the Bards</span>; and a Synthetic -Period, in which his appreciation of the beauty of -earth is not contrasted with the evanescence and the mystery -of life, but in which there is a joyous acceptance of -both. This Synthetic Period is represented by <span class='it'>The Book -of the Myths</span>, <span class='it'>Sappho</span>, and <span class='it'>April Airs</span>. Yet in each volume, -from <span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré</span> (1893) to <span class='it'>April Airs</span> -(1916), there is in varying degree the same ‘touch of -manner,’ the same ‘hint of mood,’ the same occupation <span class='it'>both</span> -with the beauty of earth and with the mystery and meaning -of existence and the universe. Really there is no development -of Carman’s genius and art—no periods of growth—after -his first book, <span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré</span>, except an -increase in ready mastery, not of technic, but of <span class='it'>clear expression</span> -of thought and meaning. Some of his finest verbal -melody and some of his most compelling lines are in -his earlier volumes, and with them also embodiments of -his essential thought about life and the universe. But we -do note, in each succeeding volume, a gradual decrease in -Carman’s <span class='it'>sense</span> of world-pain (<span class='it'>weltschmerz</span>), and an increase -in <span class='it'>clearer expression</span> of his thought about the mystery -of life. To use musical language: in his earlier books -Carman heard <span class='it'>discords</span> in the universe. They were really -not discords but <span class='it'>dissonances</span>. As he grew older and reflected -more philosophically, he was able to resolve these -<span class='pageno' title='143' id='Page_143'></span> -dissonances; and as he gradually achieved this, the more he -combined, with clarity and surety, his fine natural powers -of lyrical utterance with, to use Meredith’s phrase, his -’reading of earth,’ his intuitions of the ultimate supremacy -of the Good.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Since he fully recovered from the illness which attacked -him about 1919, Carman has entered on what promises -to be his greatest, most constructive period, the keynote -of which is his characteristic lyrical utterance in the -expressing of a confident synthesis of Sight and Faith, of -Beauty and Goodness. It is all the same verbal melody and -the same love of beautiful sound, color, and form as in -<span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré</span>, but all the felt dissonances that -existed for thought have been resolved, and now existence -is filled with an ineluctable joy and a tender peace which -are a pure gain for the spirit. The poems which represent -the <span class='it'>new</span> Carman or the Carman of the <span class='it'>new</span> and final -period exist, for the most part in manuscript, though a few -have been published fugitively. We quote one of these -new fugitive poems, <span class='it'>Vestigia</span> (1921), in which the notable -qualities, aside from verbal melody and color, are a confident -synthesis of Sight and Faith, Earth and God, and -absolute simplicity and clarity of the diction and images:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I took a day to search for God</p> -<p class='line0'>And found Him not. But as I trod</p> -<p class='line0'>By rocky ledge, through woods untamed,</p> -<p class='line0'>Just where one scarlet lily flamed,</p> -<p class='line0'>I saw his footprints in the sod.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Then suddenly, all unaware,</p> -<p class='line0'>Far off in the deep shadows where</p> -<p class='line0'>A solitary hermit thrush</p> -<p class='line0'>Sang through the holy twilight hush—</p> -<p class='line0'>I heard his voice upon the air.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And even as I marvelled how</p> -<p class='line0'>God gives us Heaven here and now,</p> -<p class='line0'>In a stir of wind that hardly shook</p> -<p class='line0'>The poplar leaves beside the brook—</p> -<p class='line0'>His hand was light upon my brow.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='144' id='Page_144'></span></p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>At last with evening as I turned</p> -<p class='line0'>Homeward, and thought what I had learned</p> -<p class='line0'>And all that there was still to probe—</p> -<p class='line0'>I caught the glory of His robe</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the last flowers of sunset burned.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Back to the world with quickening start</p> -<p class='line0'>I looked and longed for any part</p> -<p class='line0'>In making saving Beauty be . . . .</p> -<p class='line0'>And from that kindling ecstasy</p> -<p class='line0'>I knew God dwelt within my heart.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Of the manuscript poems belonging to this fourth -period, I may merely mention the titles, as, for instance, -<span class='it'>Wa-wa</span>, a mystical interpretation of the wild-goose honk, -<span class='it'>The Truce of the Manitou</span>, and, above all, <span class='it'>Shamballah</span>, -which is the perfection of Carman’s mystical interpretations—a -poem of</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The City under the Star,</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the Sons of the Fire-Mist gather,</p> -<p class='line0'>And the keys of all mystery are.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Fugitive poems representing this final period are <span class='it'>The -Mirage of the Plain</span>, <span class='it'>The Rivers of Canada</span>, <span class='it'>Kaleedon -Road</span>, and <span class='it'>Vancouver</span>, which contain mystical interpretations -’suggested,’ as Carman has said, ‘by the vast spaces -of Canada.’ <span class='it'>Apropos</span> of the mood, manner, and interpretations -of Nature in this period, Carman has observed: ‘All -Nature poems are more or less mystical.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What we really observe, then, in Carman’s genius and -poetry is not genuine, clearly marked Periods, but rather -<span class='it'>Periodicities</span>—waves of poetical activity, in which the crest -of the wave is either lyrical ecstasy, the singing of the -Beauty of Earth for its own sake and out of love of beautiful -sound and color, or mystical ‘readings’ of Earth, -transcendental interpretations of the meaning of the life -of sentient and spiritual creatures, but below the crest of -the wave are poems of transcendentalism if the crest is -lyrical naturalism or poems of lyrical naturalism if the crest -is transcendental. Yet in these periodicities there is a sure -<span class='pageno' title='145' id='Page_145'></span> -and well-demarcated development, not of technic, but of -clarity of thought and expression—from that earlier so-called -mysticism which was only mystification, to the -genuine mysticism which is the immediate intuition of God -in the universe and especially the immediate perception of -the oneness of the spirit of Nature with that of Man and -of God. But all the while, as the development goes on, -even to his final period, Carman remains the superb melodist -and colorist. So that Bliss Carman must be regarded -as at once both the most lyrical of Canadian philosophical -poets and the most philosophical of Canadian lyrical poets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Carman’s prototype in sheer singing quality is Chaucer—the -first, freest, and sweetest of the English poets, whom -Tennyson apostrophized in avian metaphor as a ‘warbler.’ -So in the same way Carman sings with the natural lilt, -abandon, and melodiousness of the lark and linnet. He is -a ‘warbler.’ It is an irrelevant criticism to say, as has been -said, that Carman ‘sings on and on,’ frequently in his earlier -poems, out of his own ecstasy over hearing the beautiful -verbal melody he is making, whether a given poem makes -sense in thought or not. He is not ecstatically singing on -and on from love of beautiful sound, but because he cannot -clearly express what he means in his thinking; and so we -hear the singing as if it were the accompaniment to the -thought which we cannot, any more than he, articulate. -But how lovely, how melodious the accompaniment!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a matter of truth, however, we shall get at the secret -of Carman’s unique singing quality if we ask what is -the <span class='it'>method</span> of his warbling. It is in his method that he -differs from all modern English poets and has made an original -and distinct contribution to English lyrical poetry. This -is the fact: Bliss Carman is a belated troubadour or 16th -century English lutanist or Keltic harpist. Lutanists and -harpists created the text for their songs; and the prime -end was melody or at least melodiousness. The ultimate -element or unit in verbal melody with the lutanists or -<span class='pageno' title='146' id='Page_146'></span> -harpists was the <span class='it'>word</span>, and the core of the word, for melodic -purposes, was the vowel. Poets arose in England, but -more especially in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland, -who aimed to make the melody of unaccompanied -poetry imitate the melody of the lutanists’ and the harpists’ -accompanied verses. The lutanists, harpists, and melodic -poets, who aimed to imitate music, passed, and new generations -of poets substituted metrical and stanzaic structure -and alliterative arrangement of consonants for the old -vowel-melody. The unit in English poetry, after the 16th -century, became the <span class='it'>line</span>, not the word or the vowel in the -word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is the chief glory of Bliss Carman, as a creative poet, -that he brought back into English poetry the <span class='it'>word</span> and the -pure unimpeded <span class='it'>singing vowel</span>, with the same intent as the -Italian <span class='it'>bel canto</span> composers, as the unit in verbal melody. -Some critics have made considerable point of the fact that -Carman is a ‘great’ poet, <span class='it'>in spite</span> of the fact that he employs -chiefly the rhymed octosyllabic line or measure, or iambic -tetrameters and trimeters, with trochaic and anapaestic -substitutions and other metrical mechanics for variety. -The truth is that Carman wrote his poetry as a melodist, -not as a technical musician; that he aimed to <span class='it'>sing</span>, like the -lark or linnet, not to <span class='it'>compose</span>, like a musician. His measures -were chosen, whenever he meant to be lyrical, because -they were <span class='it'>singing</span> measures and his diction was chosen -for the melody inside the words, for the ‘vowel-chime’ in -them. In Carman’s lyrical poetry the word determines the -line, or rather the word alone counts, and the line is insignificant. -Dulcet vowel-melody or delicate vowel-harmony -is Bliss Carman’s chief original contribution to -Canadian and English poetry. Examples are innumerable. -Consider the clarion tones in this line, which as a line by -itself is perfect:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The resonant far-listening morn.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='147' id='Page_147'></span></p> - -<p class='noindent'>There are no closed vowels in those words, and the word -’resonant’ is precisely resonant in vowel-melody and harmony. -It is the open vowels that count melodically in -this stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>But in the yule, O Yanna,</span></p> -<p class='line0'>Up from the round dim sea</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>And reeling dungeons of the fog,</span></p> -<p class='line0'>I am come back to thee!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>What a superb singing line is the first, and what booming -sonorities are in the eloquently descriptive third line, ‘the -reeling dungeons of the fog.’ Repeat it orally (for with -Carman poetry is an <span class='it'>oral</span> art) and all the melody will be -found in the vowels. And what bright vowel-melody resides -in the single words of this line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The glad indomitable sea!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>For an example of just the kind of vowel-melody, dulcet -and delicate, which is of the lutanist or harpist order, all -in the words <span class='it'>per se</span>, not in the lines as lines, consider this -stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>A golden flute in the cedars,</p> -<p class='line0'>A silver pipe in the swales,</p> -<p class='line0'>And the slow large life of the forest</p> -<p class='line0'>Wells back and prevails.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>This is the music or melody which Pan must have piped -and with which he hushed to peace the wild-creatures of -the ancient forests—it is silvery, pastoral reed music, and -in verbal reed melody Carman is a modern Pan.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Carman can make beautiful line-melody, line-harmony -when he wishes to do so; and he is a master of alliteration, -quite the peer of Tennyson or Swinburne. For instance, -these alliterative lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The gold languorous lilies of the glade.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Burying, brimming, the building billows.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='148' id='Page_148'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>Silent with frost and floored with snow.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>And softer than sleep her hands first sweep</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>And down the sluices of the dawn.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>And like green clouds in opal calms.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Behind her banners burns the crimson sun.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>While down the soft blue-shadowed aisles of snow</p> -<p class='line0'>Night, like a sacristan with silent step,</p> -<p class='line0'>Passes to light the tapers of the stars.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Carman is as adept as Kipling in employing, for the -sake of verbal music and variety of rhythm, such devices -as shifting of accent, slurring, and elision, and, further, he -invents beautiful measures, as, for instance, the dimeter -of <span class='it'>Ilicet</span>, or the six-line stanza of <span class='it'>The White Gull</span> (Shelley):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O captain of the rebel host,</p> -<p class='line0'>Lead forth and far!</p> -<p class='line0'>Thy toiling troopers of the night</p> -<p class='line0'>Press on the unavailing fight;</p> -<p class='line0'>The sombre field is not yet lost,</p> -<p class='line0'>With thee for star.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Carman is also singularly adept in the use of what may -be called musical onomatopœia. In this quality his ear -is specially sensitive to <span class='it'>pianissimi</span> in Nature, the soughing -of the winds, the sighings and whisperings of the zephyrs, -the fifings and murmurings of the insects (with Carman -the crickets always ‘fife’ and the bees ‘murmur’), and, to -use his own phrase, all the ‘tiny multitudinous sound’ of -rustling leaves, dancing grasses, crooning brooks, tinkling -rain, which make the instrumentation of the Toy Symphony -of Nature:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Outside, a yellow maple tree,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Shifting upon the silvery blue</p> -<p class='line0'>With tiny multitudinous sound,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Rustled to let the sunlight through.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='149' id='Page_149'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is, however, in the use of rhythmical onomatopœia -that Carman is even more inventively masterly than in -mere sound imitation. An outstanding example of the -imitation of the ‘fife and drum’ marching rhythm, with -an exact imitation of the fife in the word ‘whistle’ and of -the rattle-roll of the drum in the word ‘rallied,’ is Carman’s -lovely nature-lyric <span class='it'>Daisies</span>, second stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune</p> -<p class='line0'>I saw the white daisies go down to the sea</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The bobolinks rallied them up from the dell,</p> -<p class='line0'>The orioles whistled them out of the wood;</p> -<p class='line0'>And all of their singing was, ‘Earth, it is well!’</p> -<p class='line0'>And all of their dancing was, ‘Life, thou art good!’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Always, from his very first book, <span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand -Pré</span>, to his latest, <span class='it'>April Airs</span>, published almost a quarter of -a century later, Bliss Carman has been the master troubadour, -the master melodist, constructing his melody chiefly -by an exquisite but subtle use of vowel-tones, vowel-harmonies. -But never has he aimed to be the consciously -meticulous technical musician, laboring at involved and -intricate metrical and stanzaic structure, assonance and alliteration. -His verbal melody is in the word and vowel -as his ear naturally picked these up from everyday speech, -and is just as spontaneous and simple. His melody did not -come by ‘working at’ it in the study. We may often note -Roberts, and even Lampman, assiduously busied with constructing -the perfect musical line. Carman’s melody -wells out of him in the ‘great outdoors’—natural and -spontaneous as the lark’s or linnet’s. By virtue, then, of -this spontaneous lyrical melodiousness of Carman’s poetry, -a melodiousness <span class='it'>newly based</span> on the vowel-tones and harmonies -in words, simple words of actual humanized speech, -and not on modern intricacies of line or stanzaic structure -and consonantal systems, Bliss Carman is one of the -master-melodists of English poetry. -<span class='pageno' title='150' id='Page_150'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus as a melodist in general. Canada, however, has -produced no poet who is Carman’s equal as a lyrist of the -Sea and of Love. It is indubitable that he has made a -distinct and superb contribution to the authentic Sea Poetry -in the English language. His sea ‘speech’ is the native -speech of his soul, the expression of an innate personal -sympathy with the moods, powers, and deeds of the Sea, -a sympathy which is, in Carman, an <span class='it'>identity</span> of the spirit -in Nature with the spirit in the Man or Poet. Melodiously -he declares this personal sympathy and identity with the -Sea in his autobiographical poem, <span class='it'>A Son of the Sea</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I was born for deep-sea faring;</p> -<p class='line0'>  I was bred to put to sea;</p> -<p class='line0'>Stories of my father’s daring</p> -<p class='line0'>  Filled me at my mother’s knee.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I was sired among the surges;</p> -<p class='line0'>  I was cubbed beside the foam;</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>All my heart is in its verges,</span></p> -<p class='line0'>  <span class='it'>And the sea-wind is my home</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>All my boyhood, far from vernal</p> -<p class='line0'>  Bourns of being, came to me</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Dream-like, plangent, and eternal</span></p> -<p class='line0'>  <span class='it'>Memories of the plunging sea</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>No English poet of distinction so often even mentions -the Sea or creates such Homeric epithets for the Sea as does -Bliss Carman. A catalogue of Carman’s original epithets -for the Sea, if complete, would be a poetic phenomenon -by itself. Some of the most apt and fetching may be -noted—‘the hollow sea,’ ‘the curving sea,’ ‘the old gray sea,’ -‘the plunging sea,’ ‘the shambling sea,’ ‘the brightening sea,’ -‘the troubling sea,’ ‘the lazy sea,’ ‘the open sea,’ ‘the heaving -sea,’ ‘the eternal sea,’ ‘the ruthless noisy sea,’ ‘the misty sea,’ -‘the ancient ever-murmuring sea,’ and that supreme achievement -in English poetry, Carman’s inevitable, perfect line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The glad indomitable sea!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>For lovers of sea poetry Carman’s <span class='it'>Ballads of Lost -<span class='pageno' title='151' id='Page_151'></span> -Haven: A Book of the Sea</span> (1897) is a genuinely unique -anthology by itself—‘one hundred pages,’ as a London -critic has said, ‘of salt sea without a trace of Kipling, and -yet having a sea-flavor as unmistakable as his, and with a -finer touch—with less repetition, less of mere technicality, -and a more varied human interest.’ For Carman the Sea -is a <span class='it'>human personality</span>. Its moods and deeds embrace all -the contradictory moods and deeds of human beings. But -whatever mood or deed of the Sea is expressed by Carman, -he does it with pure and perfect lyricism. Carman is said -to have no gifts for spiritual portraiture. Yet what English -or American poet has matched Carman’s portrait of -the Sea as a shambling, fierce, grim, rollicking, burly, cruel, -crooked, old man, and at the same time created such a -brave and lilting song of the Sea, as in <span class='it'>The Gravedigger</span>, -with its inimitable burly refrain?—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,</p> -<p class='line0'>He makes for the nearest shore;</p> -<p class='line0'>And God, who sent him a thousand ship,</p> -<p class='line0'>Will send him a thousand more;</p> -<p class='line0'>But some he’ll save for a bleaching grave,</p> -<p class='line0'>And shoulder them in to shore,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,</p> -<p class='line0'>Shoulder them in to shore.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>When a poet gives us such realistic portraiture and -such inimitable lyrical melody and rhythm as does Carman -in <span class='it'>The Gravedigger</span>, it is a futile criticism to find fault with -his sea poems on the side of lack of dramatic elements, and -weakness in narrative, since the <span class='it'>strength</span> of the poems was -meant by the poet to be their inherent passional intensity -and melody. Carman’s sea poems were not meant to be -strictly dramatic narrative tales of the sea, but to be ballads -or songs of the <span class='it'>romance</span> of the sea. We may remark, -as a general observation, that as a balladist of the Sea, -Carman does not aim at dramatic narration, but at singing, -with the freedom and picturesque vernacular and technical -slang of sailors, as they would sing their chanteys, the -<span class='pageno' title='152' id='Page_152'></span> -romance, happy or grim, of the sea. As songs, his so-called -ballads of the Sea are a supreme achievement in -verbal melody, the glory of Canadian sea poetry, and one -of the glories of English poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As the master melodist or musician of the Sea, Carman -brilliantly achieved, but he is equally the master melodist -or musician of Romantic and Spiritual Love. His Love -Poetry is best represented in <span class='it'>Songs of the Sea Children</span> -(1904) and in <span class='it'>Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics</span> (1904). -Earlier he had written lightly, as it were flirtingly, about -love. But in <span class='it'>Songs of the Sea Children</span>, while he wrote -as daintily or delicately as in his earlier poems dealing with -the passion, he has at last realized the spiritual intent and -meaning of pure devoted love, and has been moved deeply -and inspired by the passion. Though copyright restrictions -forbid full quotation, the spirit or mood or temper, and -the pure melody, of <span class='it'>Songs of the Sea Children</span> may be -gathered from this single stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O wind and stars, I am with you now;</p> -<p class='line0'>And ports of day, Good-bye!</p> -<p class='line0'>When my captain Love puts out to sea,</p> -<p class='line0'>His mariner am I.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>The rhymeless stanzas of the love poems in <span class='it'>Sappho</span> are -high-minded, but are a poetical <span class='it'>genre</span> by themselves. They -are a <span class='it'>tour de force</span> in ‘poetical restoration,’ and, perhaps -for the first time, we actually observe Carman at work in -the study as the technical verbal artist and musician. They -have a technical perfection, and a quiet beauty of their -own, and though there is in them a large degree of spontaneity, -naturally they are not informed with the characteristic -Carman lyrical ecstasy and melody. They are, -as love poems, perfect as the love poetry of Sappho was -fleckless with a Greek perfection of form and grace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bliss Carman is not properly called a nature-<span class='it'>interpreter</span>. -To understand his point of view we must contrast -his with that of Lampman. For Lampman Nature is one -<span class='pageno' title='153' id='Page_153'></span> -kind of being and Man is another—two separated entities—and -Man may only commune with Nature by ‘reciprocal -sympathy.’ So Lampman goes out to his Canadian maples -and elms, fields and streams, and <span class='it'>talks to</span> them, <span class='it'>as if</span> they -were human, and can sympathize with him. This is all -simulated imaginative sympathy and communion on the -poet’s part. The maples and elms, fields and streams, are -really dumb, and the poet does but attribute to them what -speech or answer he wants back from them for the solace -of his spirit. Always with Lampman, Nature and Man -are <span class='it'>two</span>. He does but humanize Nature for his own purposes, -by conscious, deliberate <span class='it'>objective symbolism</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Carman, on the other hand, is a spiritual monist. Nature -and Man are not two. There is, in Carman’s poetical -psychology and metaphysic, no mind <span class='it'>and</span> matter. The -whole universe is spiritual through and through, and the -vital spirit which is in Nature is the same spirit which -is in Man and which is God. The universe is wholly spirit. -We may call this ‘the higher pantheism;’ but even in pantheistic -doctrine, matter does exist as alien to mind or -spirit. Carman has no such attitude. He differs from -Lampman in conceiving himself as able, by spirit or will, -to <span class='it'>identify himself personally with Nature</span>. This power -of personal identification with Nature begets personal sympathy; -and the communion which the poet has with Nature -is a ‘heart-to-heart talk,’ for spirit with spirit can meet. -This new philosophy of personal identity of the human -spirit with Nature is expressly declared by Carman:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I blend with the soft shadows</p> -<p class='line0'>Of the young maple trees,</p> -<p class='line0'>And mingle in the rain-drops</p> -<p class='line0'>That shine along the eaves . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>No glory is too splendid</p> -<p class='line0'>To house this soul of mine,</p> -<p class='line0'>No tenement too lowly</p> -<p class='line0'>To serve it for a shrine.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='154' id='Page_154'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>But specially to be noted is the fact that Carman does -not stand apart from Nature, from the woods, and flowers, -and hills, and streams, and become an <span class='it'>interpreter</span> of Nature’s -moods and emotions. Nay, the poet enters into the -tree or flower and becomes one with their soul or spirit, -their body becomes his body, and their voice, as heard in -his poetry, is but his voice articulating to the world what -they are unable to articulate. Nature, in Carman’s poetry, -is become vocal; and the poet himself is her very Voice. -Metaphors in the nature-poetry of Carman are not metaphors -at all; they are direct experiences of spirit:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Just where one scarlet lily flamed,</p> -<p class='line0'>I saw His footprint in the sod.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>I caught the glory of His robe</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the last fires of sunset burned.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>This personal identity of the human spirit with the -spirit in (or of) Nature, this personal sympathy with the -poet’s <span class='it'>kin</span> in wild Nature, and this taking on as a body the -matter and form of a tree or flower or bird or other -creature of Nature, and becoming vocal for them, and thus -uttering <span class='it'>their</span> thoughts, and feelings, and emotions, is new -in Nature poetry, and original with Bliss Carman. It is -not Greek; it is not English; but it is Canadian and unique. -It is Carman’s most notable contribution to world poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This spiritual monism in Carman’s poetical attitude to -Nature explains the seemingly strange commingling of -songs of pure delight in the beauty and bounty of Nature -and of joy in existence with poems which are the expression -of a poet who has ‘kept watch o’er man’s mortality.’ -It explains such contradictions as the joyousness of some -poems and the metaphysical questings of others in Carman’s -From the <span class='it'>Green Book of the Bards</span> (1903). It -explains, in particular, why Carman, who, when he wishes, -can surpass Roberts as a nature-colorist and whose poetry -is actually rich in idyllic impressionism, never seems to set -<span class='pageno' title='155' id='Page_155'></span> -out, with conscious intent, to be a nature-colorist or word-painter -for the sake of sheer impressionism. No other -Canadian poet can make or has made such a brilliant use -of primary colors or such an exquisite use of -delicate tints and evanescent play of light on color as -has Bliss Carman. In all his nature description or impressionism, -Carman’s aim has been two-fold—first, ‘to -better the world with beauty,’ and to compel appreciation -of Nature wherever her sweet or solacing spirit abides, to -reveal the haunt where Nature affords spiritual communion -and refreshment. His aim, in short, is to have -men go out and meet Mother Nature. To effect this, not -to show how flashily she is dressed, Carman paints her face -and garb sometimes brilliantly, sometimes with a grey-eyed -loveliness. Carman’s poetry of Nature is only Nature -herself ‘calling’ to each vagabond to rise and go out to -meet her, ‘wherever the way may lead.’ This two-fold -aim of Carman’s nature-painting or poetic impressionism is -compellingly expressed in <span class='it'>A Vagabond Song</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—</p> -<p class='line0'>Touch of manner, hint of mood;</p> -<p class='line0'>And my heart is like a rhyme,</p> -<p class='line0'>With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry</p> -<p class='line0'>Of bugles going by.</p> -<p class='line0'>And my lonely spirit thrills</p> -<p class='line0'>To see the frosty asters on the hills.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;</p> -<p class='line0'>We must rise and follow her,</p> -<p class='line0'>When from every hill of flame</p> -<p class='line0'>She calls and calls each vagabond by name.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The quiet or subdued call of Nature is winsomely uttered -in <span class='it'>The Deserted Pasture</span> where</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The old gray rocks so friendly seem,</p> -<p class='line0'>So durable and brave . . .</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='156' id='Page_156'></span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>There in the early springtime</p> -<p class='line0'>The violets are blue,</p> -<p class='line0'>And adder-tongues in coats of gold</p> -<p class='line0'>Are garmented anew . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And there October passes</p> -<p class='line0'>In gorgeous livery,—</p> -<p class='line0'>In purple ash and crimson oak,</p> -<p class='line0'>And golden tulip-tree.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Though the keynote of Carman’s poetry is Joy in the -universe, he is no mere hedonist. The beauty he loves is -uranian, the Joy he aims to get from Beauty and to share -with the world through his poetry is <span class='it'>spiritual</span> joy. What -he has always been sure of was that the dissonances in the -world and in existence were resolvable, but he himself -gradually had to resolve those dissonances, and win full -and complete joy in Nature, in Love, and in Religion. If -we call him a Philosophical Poet, we must do so only after -we understand that his belief in the supremacy of the Good -or of God is intuitively derived. Carman is not philosophical -by virtue of having employed the faculty of relational -thinking for the attainment of his belief in the moral -meaning of life and the universe. He perceived Beauty -in the world, and, after much obfuscation of the immediate -meaning of Beauty, Carman at length perceived it as a -symbol and pledge of the union of the Real and the Ideal. -Only in the sense that Beauty is a symbol of perfection -does Carman regard Nature as a symbol of God; and only -in the sense that God, like Beauty, can be directly or immediately -perceived, is Carman a mystical poet. If there -is one thing of indubitable ill that science and philosophy -have accomplished, it is their dogmatizing that because -science and metaphysics with their categories cannot find -out God as an actuality, much less can the senses. The -pseudo-mystics took science and philosophy at their word, -and said the only way to find God is by the use of the -religious imagination. Whereupon they so strained the -<span class='pageno' title='157' id='Page_157'></span> -imaginative faculty to achieve what they called mystical -union with God that their mysticism only resulted in mystification. -Science, with its categories, only cast a veil -over Truth, over the face of God. Pseudo-mysticism only -placed an opaque void between God and the Sons of God -called Men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is because Carman was in his early manhood caught -on the wheels of agnostic science, transcendental metaphysics -and pseudo-mysticism that in his earlier poems -this lover of Beauty sings entrancingly of Beauty and winsomely -paints her dwelling-places, but while doing this he -also mystifies his readers with regard to the meaning of -his poetry. The music is all accompaniment to something -that Carman himself does not in his own soul clearly understand. -Hence the wistfulness and melancholia observable -in many of Carman’s earlier poems; hence his sad engagement -with the problem of death, as in <span class='it'>Pulvis et Umbra</span> and -<span class='it'>The Eavesdropper</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Carman could not have written <span class='it'>Vestigia</span> at that period. -For that poem is based on an immediate <span class='it'>sense</span>-intuition of -God in Nature and in the heart of Man. It was his gradual -negation of the categories of science and metaphysics and -vacuous pseudo-mysticism, and an instinctive return to an -intuitive perception of the meaning of Beauty in Nature -and Love and Religion that cleared his vision, and gave -him a sure and clear understanding of the supremacy of -the Good or God, and that thus won for him triumphant -spiritual Faith, Joy in existence, and Peace with God. This -is the true mysticism, the true union with God.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is an interesting excursion in spiritual history to -trace Carman’s gradual escape from ‘mystical mystification’ -into the triumphant faith of true, earth-born, sense-perceived -mysticism, as in <span class='it'>Behind the Arras</span> (1895), <span class='it'>By -the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies</span> (1898), <span class='it'>Last Songs -from Vagabondia</span> (1901), <span class='it'>From the Book of Myths</span> -(1902), <span class='it'>From the Book of Valentine</span>s (1905), and <span class='it'>Collected -<span class='pageno' title='158' id='Page_158'></span> -Poems</span> (1904). It was a ‘mystified’ Carman who -wrote <span class='it'>Pulvis et Umbra</span>. It was a truly mystical Carman, -possessed of a triumphant faith who a full twenty years -afterwards wrote <span class='it'>Te Deum</span>, the concluding verses of which -follow:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>So I will pass through the lovely world, and partake of beauty to feed my soul.</p> -<p class='line0'>With earth my domain and growth my portion, how should I sue for a further dole?</p> -<p class='line0'>In the lift I feel of immortal rapture, in the flying glimpse I gain of truth,</p> -<p class='line0'>Released is the passion that sought perfection, assuaged the ardor of dreamful youth.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The patience of time shall teach me courage, the strength of the sun shall lend me poise.</p> -<p class='line0'>I would give thanks for the autumn glory, for the teaching of earth and all her joys.</p> -<p class='line0'>Her fine fruition shall well suffice me; the air shall stir in my veins like wine;</p> -<p class='line0'>While the moment waits and the wonder deepens, my life shall merge with the life divine.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The immediate sense-perception of God through Beauty -and the acceptance of Beauty as a factual proof of the -union of the Soul with Nature, of the Real with the Ideal, -and thus a proof of the supremacy of Good in the universe—this -is the formula of Carman’s philosophical ‘reading’ -of Nature and Existence. Always a poet of fine and assured -artistry and of lyrical eloquence and spiritual power, -Bliss Carman stands alone amongst Canadian poets as a -verbal melodist, as a lyrist of love and the sea, and as a -mystical interpreter of the moral and spiritual meaning of -nature and existence. As an original verbal melodist and -poetic impressionist and as an unexampled creator of songs -of the sea, Bliss Carman has added significantly to English -and to world poetry and to him, therefore, we may apply -the distinction Great.</p> - -<hr class='tbk108'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Quotations in this chapter, with the exception of a few lines, are from -<span class='it'>Later Poems</span>, and from <span class='it'>Ballads and Lyrics</span>, by Bliss Carman, (McClelland & -Stewart: Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='159' id='Page_159'></span><h1>CHAPTER X</h1></div> - -<h3>Duncan Campbell Scott</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>INFLUENCES ON HIS WORK—OLD WORLD CULTURE—AUSTERE -INTELLECTUALISM—MUSIC AND PAINTING—ASSOCIATION -WITH LAMPMAN—SCOTT, CARMAN, AND LAMPMAN -COMPARED—INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH POETS—TECHNICAL -EXCELLENCIES—REVELATION OF THE INDIAN HEART—MYSTICAL -SYMBOLISM.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>n</span> the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott there is more -and finer expression of the pageantry of Nature in -Canada and of the essential Canadian spirit than in the -verse of any other Canadian poet. But, paradoxically, the -genius and poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott are also more -informed with an Old World culture and art than are the -genius and verse of any other Canadian poet. Unless the -reader and the critic of D. C. Scott’s poetry first realize -that the mind and art of the poet are a product of Canada -and of the Old World, a rare commingling of Canadian -and European cultures, they will fail to understand how -he is at once the least prolific and, to give him his outstanding -distinction, the most exquisite artist of Canadian -poets, not excepting Lampman and Bliss Carman. In his -poem <span class='it'>Frost Magic</span>, Scott has written the formula of his -own exquisite artistry:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>That line, however, rather distinguishes the characteristic -excellence of his poetry on the technical side. It does not -disengage the quality which makes him unique amongst -Canadian poets. His <span class='it'>differentia</span>—the quality or power -which distinguishes his poetic genius and craftsmanship -from the mind and the art of all other Canadian poets—is -Style. Duncan Campbell Scott is the one Canadian -poet of whose verse it may be said that, after the manner -<span class='pageno' title='160' id='Page_160'></span> -of the English tradition, it possesses <span class='it'>Style</span>. Lampman’s -and Carman’s, Pauline Johnson’s and Marjorie Pickthall’s, -poetry each possess a style. But in their cases the style -is imitable; it is a <span class='it'>manner</span>, original or ingenious no doubt, -but not an essential and inevitable expression, of their poets’ -minds or personalities. Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry -has style, quite as individualistic as the others’, but it is -an essential expression of his personality and character, -and is therefore inimitable, or like the man himself, is in -‘the grand manner’—which is not at all a manner but just -that subtle spiritual quality which distinguishes individuals -in species. The genius and poetry or art of Duncan -Campbell Scott, then, impose on us a special and somewhat -recondite study in literary psychology.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The key to Duncan Campbell Scott’s genius and poetry -is this singular, if not anomalous, spiritual fact that his -Art always, corresponds with, and never contradicts, his -Thought and Life. In this ‘tri-unity’ of complete ‘correspondence’ -of Thought, Life, and Art, Scott’s analogue -is Matthew Arnold. The English poet was, above all -things, the austere intellectualist. So, too, Duncan Campbell -Scott is the austere intellectualist. But, unlike Arnold, -Scott’s ‘austerities and rejections’ are not those of the -substance of poetry but of its temper and technic. While -it is true that Scott is the remorseless idealist as man and -active citizen, and while the light that chiefly plays on his -poetry is the ‘dry light’ of the intellect or imaginative -reason, it is equally true that in his heart there is the warm -fire of love of humanity and Nature and all the humanizing -arts, and that the dry intellectual light which most notably -illumines his poetry is colored, at times delicately or subtly, -at times brilliantly, at other times magically, with the substance -and color of Nature in Canada and of modern music -and painting. As in the man and citizen, as in his Thought -and Life, there is a high plane of refined and serene vision, -feeling, and deed, so in his poetic Art and Style the outstanding -<span class='pageno' title='161' id='Page_161'></span> -qualities are serene Dignity and exquisite Beauty. -It is always a manly and refined art; and its sensuous -Beauty is made spiritual by sincerity, delicacy or nobility -of thought and by imaginative truth. Never in it is there -sentimentality, or vulgarity, but always <span class='it'>humane</span> beauty and -dignity which derive from delicacy of spiritual vision and -sincerity, and from restraint in technical artistry. As an -example of these excellences in Duncan Campbell Scott’s -poetry—of its dignity and beauty, refinement and restraint—we -quote this surpassing compliment to woman’s spiritual -loveliness and charm, <span class='it'>Portrait of Mrs. Clarence Gagnon</span> -(from Scott’s <span class='it'>Beauty and Life</span>):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Beauty is ambushed in the coils of her</p> -<p class='line0'>Gold hair—honey from the silver comb</p> -<p class='line0'>Drips and the clustered under-tone is warm</p> -<p class='line0'>As beech leaves in November—the light slides there</p> -<p class='line0'>Like minnows in a pool—slender and slow.</p> -<p class='line0'>A glow is ever in her tangled eyes,</p> -<p class='line0'>Surprise is settling in them, never to be caught;</p> -<p class='line0'>Thought lies there lucent but unsolvable,</p> -<p class='line0'>Her curved mouth is tremulous yet still,</p> -<p class='line0'>Her will holds it in check; were it to sleep</p> -<p class='line0'>One moment—that white guardian will of hers—</p> -<p class='line0'>Words would brim over in a wild betrayal,</p> -<p class='line0'>Fall sweet and tell the secret of her charm,</p> -<p class='line0'>Harm would befall the world, Beauty would fly</p> -<p class='line0'>Into the shy recesses of the wood—</p> -<p class='line0'>Be seen no more of mortals, be a myth</p> -<p class='line0'>Remembered by a few who might recall</p> -<p class='line0'>A nerveless gesture, a frail color, a faint stress,</p> -<p class='line0'>Some vestige of a vanished loveliness.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>This ‘strong and delicate art’ of Scott’s was itself the -outcome of years of training in delicate perception or -visioning of Nature and the human Spirit and in the practice -of spiritual refinement and restraint in art or technical -craftsmanship; and also of assiduous cultivation in the -technical appreciation of modern music and painting. Born -in 1862, Duncan Campbell Scott did not publish verse till -he was some years past his majority, and did not publish -<span class='pageno' title='162' id='Page_162'></span> -his first book of poems till he was thirty-one years of age -(<span class='it'>The Magic House and Other Poems</span>, 1893). For more -than forty years he has been in the Civil Service of Canada, -and for some years has been Deputy Superintendent General -(a title and function equivalent to Deputy Minister) -of the Department of Indian Affairs of the Dominion. -Archibald Lampman was a contemporary and a close friend -of Scott. Lampman was a student of the poetry of Keats -and much influenced by the verse of the English poet. In -1894 Scott married an accomplished lady, who was a violin -virtuoso. He had published fugitive poems in magazines -before 1893. (His poetry was later the subject of a very -complimentary critical appreciation by William Archer in -<span class='it'>Poets of the Younger Generation</span>). He had finished his -academic studies at the public schools and at Stanstead -College by his seventeenth year, and had then entered the -Civil Service of Canada. So that the three influences on -his mind and art are, first, that which began with his friendship -with Lampman; secondly, his marriage with a cultured -musician, and, thirdly, his long tenure of office in the Department -of Indian Affairs of the Dominion of Canada. -To his association with Lampman, rather than to his teachers -at school and college, must be attributed his reading of -the English poets and the cultivation of poetic technics. -It is not until after his marriage and after his long association -with certain Canadian painters that we find in -his poetry any ‘color’ from music and painting. His connection -with the Department of Indian Affairs resulted in -those lyrics and legends which have for themes the Indian, -the French-Canadian, and the Beauty of Nature. Lampman -as co-student of the English poets, especially Keats -or the idyllic impressionists, and as a co-worker in creative -poetry, especially the poetry of Nature, was the most potent -or subtle influence on Scott. This, however, was an influence -<span class='it'>ab extra</span>. The most important <span class='it'>inner</span> influence on -Scott was his own intellectual rigorism and austere respect -<span class='pageno' title='163' id='Page_163'></span> -for chaste or faultless craftsmanship. But for this rare -virtue, which was innate in him, Scott would or might -have been a more prolific poet, and might have been a -close imitator of the English impressionists or Lampman -himself as a nature-poet, or of Bliss Carman as a lyrist -of Nature and of Love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There is no denying that Lampman had considerable -influence, negative and positive, on Scott, and that the -negative influence was the more important. At any rate, -by choice Scott decided to be a poet who, while caring as -much for Nature as did Lampman and Carman, would care -supremely for refined perfection of technical artistry in -his verse. It is easy to observe the general differences -between Lampman and Carman and Scott in attitudes, and -in methods of poetic conception. Lampman is the more -subjective, the more interested in his own emotions; Scott -is the more objective, disclosing a delight in the object -for its own sake or a philosophical interest in humanity and -life. Lampman is the more passionate; Scott the more -restrained or austere (without being ascetic). Lampman -is the more sensuously luscious (though not always); -Scott the more lucid and luminously colorful. Carman is -the more naturalistically sensuous, and his pigmentation is -limited to the pageant of Spring and Autumn; Scott is the -more imaginatively sensuous, and paints every phase of -the pageantry of Nature in the cycle of the seasons of the -whole year. Carman is more a melodist, basing his melody -on vowel-chime in words; Scott is more the musician, the -technical virtuoso—or, in other words, Carman <span class='it'>sings</span> or -<span class='it'>lilts</span>, like the lark; Scott <span class='it'>performs</span>, like the violin or flute -virtuoso, though each in his way is as entrancingly lyrical. -Carman is the more vernacular in diction, employing considerably -the actual speech of everyday life; Scott is the -more recondite, and therefore the more meaningful, in -diction—‘a word virtuoso.’ But it is not true to say, as -has been said, that Scott is a ‘poet’s poet.’ He is, when -<span class='pageno' title='164' id='Page_164'></span> -he aims to be, just as lyrical, musical, colorful, and simple -in diction as Lampman or Carman, but he is also more -delicate or chaste, more fanciful or imaginative, more -lucid or luminous, and always more subtle in diction and -exquisite craftsmanship. So that whenever Scott envisages -or interprets Nature in Canada and the essential -spirit of Canada, more than any other native-born poet he -puts more of Canada in it and does it with a singular and -surpassing beauty of diction, imagery, music, color, and -general technical artistry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus, in outline, as regards the Canadian influences -on Scott’s genius and poetry. It is necessary also to note -the influence of Old World culture on his genius and art. -For, like Bliss Carman’s, there is a challenging quality in -Scott’s poetry which compels favorable comparison of it -with the verse of English and United States poets of distinction. -But while influences of certain English poets -are remarked, this does not mean that Scott is derivative -in inspiration or method of treatment, but that the influence -was either on his ideals of what poetry is or on his meticulous -practice of technical artistry in verse; or, in a phrase, -their influences have been those of inspiring him to distinction -in Style and Technic. In Scott’s noble monody in -memory of his father, <span class='it'>In the Country Churchyard</span>, the formal -structure and the elegiac elevation of thought fill the -heart with a serene beauty which discloses the influence of -Gray. There is a distinct Wordsworthian spirit and flavor -to <span class='it'>Above St. Irénée</span>. A haunting beauty, which is of the -quality of Tennyson, pervades Scott’s title poem of his -first volume, <span class='it'>The Magic House</span>. Unmistakable is the influence -of Rossetti on the form and tone-color of Scott’s -sonnet sequence, <span class='it'>In the House of Dreams</span>, but there is -enough of Scott’s own originality and ingenuity in inventing -Western-world metaphors and in vowel-melody and -alliteration to distinguish it as Scott’s or as Canadian or -Western. The sonnet form is Rossettian, the mediaeval -<span class='pageno' title='165' id='Page_165'></span> -atmosphere and setting are Pre-Raphaelite, as are also the -personages:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The Lady Lillian knelt upon the sward,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Between the arbor and the almond leaves;</p> -<p class='line0'>    Beyond the barley gathered into sheaves;</p> -<p class='line0'>A blade of gladiolus, like a sword,</p> -<p class='line0'>Flamed fierce against the gold; and down toward</p> -<p class='line0'>    The limpid west, a pallid poplar wove</p> -<p class='line0'>    A spell of shadow; through the meadow drove</p> -<p class='line0'>A deep unbroken brook without a ford.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The first line of the octave is, of course, Rossettian, -but the fourth line (‘A blade of gladiolus, like a sword’) -is not only Western but the phrase ‘like a sword’ is a common -simile with Scott. In the sestet, quite Western is the -picture in the second and third lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>On the soft grass a frosted serpent lay,</p> -<p class='line0'>  With oval spots of opal over all.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>The extraordinary ingenuity of the tone-unisons (not harmonies) -in the third line (‘With oval spots of opal over -all’) must have struck the fancy of the poet himself, because -he repeats the very same vowel unisons, thus turning -art into artifice, in <span class='it'>Spring on Mattagami</span> (from <span class='it'>Via Borealis</span>, -1906, reprinted in <span class='it'>Lundy’s Lane and Other Poems</span>, -1916):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>While like spray from the iridescent fountain,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Opal fires weave over all the oval of the lake.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>Quite Rossettian, at least in word-painting of fabrics and -jewelry, is Scott’s picture of the drowned lady in his poem -<span class='it'>After a Night of Storm</span> (from <span class='it'>Beauty and Life</span>, 1921). -It is here quoted, not only to show the Rossettian influence, -but also to furnish an example of how Scott works as -lovingly and as painstakingly as a lapidary at his technic:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>After a night of storm,</p> -<p class='line0'>They found her lovely form</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='166' id='Page_166'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>They said she was a wondrous thing to see,</p> -<p class='line0'>All dazzling in her bridal dress,</p> -<p class='line0'>A miracle of foam and ivory.</p> -<p class='line0'>Her satin gown was smoothened by the wave,</p> -<p class='line0'>Her rippled ribbons, all her wandering laces</p> -<p class='line0'>Set in their places.</p> -<p class='line0'>Her hands were loosely clasped without a gem,</p> -<p class='line0'>But clad with mitts of silken net.</p> -<p class='line0'>Diamonds in the buckles of her shoon</p> -<p class='line0'>All fairly set,</p> -<p class='line0'>And one great brooch the color of the moon</p> -<p class='line0'>Held her lace shawl.</p> -<p class='line0'>A snood had slipped back from her hair,</p> -<p class='line0'>Her face was piteous, so fair, so fair,</p> -<p class='line0'>And gleaming small</p> -<p class='line0'>Upon her breast there seemed to float</p> -<p class='line0'>A wedding ring,</p> -<p class='line0'>Threaded upon a crimson and green string</p> -<p class='line0'>Around her throat.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Surely there is the art of a poet who has lingered long -in the studios and ateliers, watching painters, lapidaries, -and designers at work on pigments, precious stones, and -delicate fabrics! Again, whose influence do we find or -feel in certain parts of <span class='it'>Spring on Mattagami</span> and <span class='it'>The -Anatomy of Melancholy</span>?—is it the influence of Keats or -of Swinburne? It might be either in these lines from -<span class='it'>Spring on Mattagami</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>She would let me steal,—not consenting or denying—</p> -<p class='line0'>  One strong arm beneath her dusky hair,</p> -<p class='line0'>She would let me bare, not resisting or complying,</p> -<p class='line0'>  One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair;</p> -<p class='line0'>Then with the quick sob of passion’s shy endeavor</p> -<p class='line0'>  She would gather close and shudder and swoon away . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>But there is no mistaking the Swinburnian manner of -imaginative color and of alliterative and sensuous music -in these lines from <span class='it'>The Anatomy of Melancholy</span> (from -<span class='it'>Beauty and Life</span>):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Lifted the dragon-guarded lid—and lo!</p> -<p class='line0'>  Faint and uncertain,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Frail rose-ghosts of rose-gardens all in blow</span></p> -<p class='line0'>  Haunted the room,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='167' id='Page_167'></span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>The spangled dew, the shell-tints and the moonlight</span></p> -<p class='line0'>  Lived in the fume. . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>All the English poets mentioned were, however, not -formative influences. At best what seems imitations of -the manner of Gray, Tennyson, Rossetti, Keats, Swinburne -are but recrudescences, quite unconscious and original, -in Scott’s poetry. Scott is a nature-colorist, or impressionist, -verbal musician and metrist, romanticist, and -philosophical interpreter of Nature and Life on his own -account. The real formative influences in Scott’s genius -and art were the climate, atmosphere, seasons, and the color -and drama of varied Nature and Humanity, of Canada; -his compatriot poet of Nature, Lampman, and perhaps -Carman, and these three English poets, Browning, Arnold -and Meredith; and, finally, his appreciation and knowledge -of the technic of music and painting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Considering his qualities as a verbal musician and -metrist, we may note that while Scott employs all the technical -artifices of other Canadian and English poets, such as -vowel-melody and harmony, alliteration and consonantal -changes, beautiful measures and rhythms, he differs from -his compatriot poets by informing, as did Browning, the -substance of his poetry with an intimate use of the technical -language of music, allusions to musical literature, and -the aesthetic values of music. The texts of his poems show -that he is acquainted technically with the music of Bach, -Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, such romantic moderns as -Raff and MacDowell and such ultra-moderns as Debussy -and Ravel. To anyone who has heard Beethoven’s Fifth -(C-minor) Symphony, how arresting and emotionally impressive -is the allusion to the principal motive of that great -work, in these lines from Scott’s <span class='it'>The Fragment of a -Letter</span>!—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Then quick upon the dark, like knocks of fate,</p> -<p class='line0'>There fell three axe-strokes, and then clear, elate</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='168' id='Page_168'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>Came back the echoes true to tune and time,</p> -<p class='line0'>Three axe-strokes—rhythmed and matched in rhyme.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>Again: it is not poetical pedantry on Scott’s part when, -in his elegiac monody <span class='it'>On the Death of Claude Debussy</span>, he -rhapsodizes the forms, content, properties, color, and -musical structure—‘the mood pictures’—of Debussy’s -opera <span class='it'>Pellèas et Mélisande</span>, his orchestral prelude <span class='it'>L’Après-midi -d’un Faune</span>, and his orchestral sketches <span class='it'>La Mer</span>. No -musical journalist or critic, writing in prose, has done this -so summarily and with such vividness and veracity as -Scott has accomplished it in twenty-five lines of trimeter -and tetrameter unrhymed iambics and trochaics. It is for -the sake of illumination and the substance of true poetry -that Scott thus finely incorporates his knowledge of music -into the text of his poetry. And, as Browning made compelling -use of the technical language and meanings of musical -structure, notably in his <span class='it'>Abt Vogler</span>, so, in the Debussy -monody, Scott twice finely affects the spirit and illuminates -the substance of his poem with such recondite musical -technology as:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And under all, the <span class='it'>pedal-point</span></p> -<p class='line0'>Of the deep-bas(s)ed ocean,</p> -<p class='line0'>Hidden under the mists,</p> -<p class='line0'>Chanting, infinitely remote,</p> -<p class='line0'>At the foot of enchanted cliffs.</p> -<p class='line0'>Then with a turn of illumination,</p> -<p class='line0'>An <span class='it'>enharmonic</span> change of vision,</p> -<p class='line0'>Death and Debussy</p> -<p class='line0'>Become France and her heroes,</p> -<p class='line0'>As if all her sacred heroes</p> -<p class='line0'>Were in that one form,</p> -<p class='line0'>Clasped in the bosom of France,</p> -<p class='line0'>Enfolded with her ideals and aspirations.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>The felicity of the phrase ‘the pedal-point of the deep-bas(s)ed -ocean’ is apparent to anyone who is musically -trained and who immediately hears the sustained stationary -bass of the sea reverberating while mingling with its -thunder are chords and progressions of wave plashings and -<span class='pageno' title='169' id='Page_169'></span> -wind harmonies, all combining to make the sublime Symphony -of the Sea. Still more remarkable and illuminating -is Scott’s use of the phrase ‘an enharmonic change . . . . -Death and Debussy.’ In music an enharmonic change is -but a change in notation of intervals and chords, the sound -of them remaining the same. And so how felicitous -Scott’s use of ‘an enharmonic change of vision!’—Death, -Debussy (who died in the last year of the late war), -France, and her war heroes. These terms are all synonymous -of ‘one form,’ the spirit of France; there is only -an enharmonic change in notation or name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this is, on Scott’s part, a brilliant and—as far as -Canadian poetry is concerned—a unique achievement in -incorporating musical ideas and essences and technics -to color, illuminate, and enhance poetic meanings. But -Scott surpasses himself in this matter, creating something -really unique in poetic literature, in his <span class='it'>Variations on a -Seventeenth Century Theme</span>. It is the most ingeniously -conceived poem, if not in English poetry, at least in continental -American poetry; and it is a signal illustration of -that Old World culture which was remarked as part of the -challenging quality in Scott’s poetry. The poem is ‘programmatic’ -in scheme, comprising ten sections which are -‘free variations’ on a Nature theme (the yellow of the -primrose), inspired by two lines from Henry Vaughan -(17th century):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>It was high spring, and all the way</p> -<p class='line0'>Primrosed, and hung with shade.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The ten sections or ‘variations’ or ‘movements’ of the -poem are such niceties in imitation of the forms of music -that they should be properly indicated with form or tempi -nomenclature, inasmuch as the poet has not done this at -the head of each section or ‘variation.’ Variation I is a -Prelude (in the old style), the diction of which is Chaucerian -or early 15th century English. Variation II is a -<span class='pageno' title='170' id='Page_170'></span> -triple-time Vivace movement (old form of the Scherzo)—a -fetching bit of lively ballad-song. Variation III is a -Largo movement, noble and impressive. A short Nocturne -follows in Variation IV, which is succeeded by a movement -that may be styled Dramatico, a short poignant ‘play -within a play,’ dealing with the tragedy of romantic love. -Variation VI is an Intermezzo, a contrasting change on -‘Youth is a blossom yellow at the edge.’ Variation VII -is a Funeral March for fairies, and is fairy-like in imagery -and music. By itself it is as pretty and winning a poem -for children as any in our language:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>For dead fairies go nowhere,</p> -<p class='line0'>Leaving nothing in the air.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Their clear bodies are all through</p> -<p class='line0'>Made of shadow, mixed with dew.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>When they change their fairy state,</p> -<p class='line0'>They, like dew, evaporate.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>But we fairies that remain,</p> -<p class='line0'>The dead fairy’s funeral feign,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Place within a shepherd’s purse</p> -<p class='line0'>Primrose pollen; for a hearse</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Lady-birds we harness up</p> -<p class='line0'>To an empty acorn cup.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>This we bury, deep in moss:—</p> -<p class='line0'>Then we mourn our grievous loss,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Mourn with music, piercing thin,</p> -<p class='line0'>Cricket with his mandolin,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Many a hautboy, many a flute,</p> -<p class='line0'>Played by them you fancy mute . . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>Variation VIII is a very human Burlesca—a ‘<span class='it'>genre</span> picture’ -of the comedy of life in Old London, with the ‘motive’ of -a socially outcast old woman looking at pots of primroses, -labelled ‘Only a quarter,’ and fingering a coin, trying to -decide whether to buy primroses or spend it on beer for -herself and ‘dear old Jerry.’ The pathos of its realism is -<span class='pageno' title='171' id='Page_171'></span> -relieved by the piquancy of the spiritual portrait of the -outcast old woman, in whose soul there is still a fine redeeming -loyalty to a real heart-love. Variation IX is a -Folk Song in the manner of Burns. It is followed by a -Finale, which returns to the Vaughan theme, and closes -with its couplet. The Finale is ennobled with tender reflections -or philosophical interpretations of the drama of -earth and existence, in which Scott beautifully maintains -and expresses Serene Faith in the permanence of Beauty -and Love. From this magnificent and genuinely unique -poem, we quote Variation IX, as an example of Scott’s -gifts as a song-writer. If it is in the manner of Burns -or an imitation of one of his best-known songs, it is as -informed also with the spirit of Herrick, but it is melodious, -by vowel-music, alliteration, and rhythm, in a way -which was not in the power of Herrick or Burns:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>My Love is like the primrose light</p> -<p class='line0'>  That springs up with the morn,</p> -<p class='line0'>My Love is like the early night</p> -<p class='line0'>  Before the stars are born.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>My Love is like the shine and shade</p> -<p class='line0'>  That ripple on the wood,</p> -<p class='line0'>(The shadow is her dark green plaid,</p> -<p class='line0'>  The light her silver snood).</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>They never meet with eager lips,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And mingle in their mirth,</p> -<p class='line0'>They only touch their finger-tips,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And circle round the earth.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>My Love’s so pure, so winsome-sweet,</p> -<p class='line0'>  So dancing with delight,</p> -<p class='line0'>That I shall love her till they meet,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And all the world is night.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>In that song-lyric we find Scott’s characteristic dignity and -beauty. But fine and beautiful as it all is, the music of it -is not the <span class='it'>natural</span> melodiousness of Herrick or Burns, of -the lark or linnet, but the music of the adroit technical -<span class='pageno' title='172' id='Page_172'></span> -musician who is a ready master of all the resources of -modern versification and metrics.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As regards these technical resources of verbal melody -and music—vowel—‘tone-color’ and harmonies, alliteration, -assonance, rhythm of line and stanza and other metrical -structure, and even what is called in music as such -’suspension’—Scott challenges the art of Keats, Tennyson, -Swinburne, Arnold, and the Laureate, Sir Robert Bridges. -In one instance, Scott has made the most happy and ingenious -use of what musicians call ‘chord suspension’—that -is, the retaining in any chord some notes (or tones) -of the preceding chord. Scott achieves it finely in this -cadence:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>With the thrushes fluting <span class='it'>deep, deep</span>,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Deep</span> on the pine-wood hill.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>This effect of ‘suspension’ in verbal music is not new -in poetry, but it is infrequent in the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon -people. A melodious example is the opening stanza -from Collins’ <span class='it'>Ode to Evening</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,</p> -<p class='line0'>May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,</p> -<p class='line0'>      Like thy own solemn <span class='it'>springs</span>,</p> -<p class='line0'>      <span class='it'>Thy springs</span>, and dying gales.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>With Collins the ‘suspension’ is an artifice rather than -an inspiration. With Scott, it is, in the example instanced, -an inspiration. No other modern poet, certainly no other -Canadian or American poet, has Scott’s gift of verbally -phrasing, with the utmost concreteness, imitative realism, -and charm the ‘notes’ of bird songs and their meaning. In -the cadence quoted, the effect of the ‘suspension’—‘deep, -deep, deep’—is a happy realistic imitation of the tone-color -of the thrush’s flute-like notes, and the triple reiteration -affects the imagination with that charm which we distinguish -as ‘haunting.’ Carman has not this gift of concreting -bird-songs. Carman uses only the general epithet. -One bird simply ‘whistles;’ another ‘flutes.’ Carman -<span class='pageno' title='173' id='Page_173'></span> -would have written the lines quoted from Scott not only -without ‘suspension’ but also without any concrete, realistic -imitation of the thrush’s notes and suspensions, thus:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>With the thrush’s fluting</p> -<p class='line0'>On the pine-wood hill.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Scott not only makes a masterly and felicitous use of -concrete tone-color epithets in phrasing the songs of birds, -but he also knows how important and eloquent in music as -such, as well as in the songs of birds, are pauses or silences, -and uses this appreciation of silences exquisitely. Scott’s -artistry in both these respects is finely shown in these -lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Hidden above there, half asleep, a thrush</p> -<p class='line0'>Spoke a few <span class='it'>silver words upon the hush</span>—</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Then paused self-charmed to silence</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Scott, in truth, on the side of exquisite realistic concretion -of the notes and cadences of bird-songs, has the -ear of a <span class='it'>naturalist</span>—and a better ear than Thoreau or Burroughs. -Scott is the ‘bird-musician’ <span class='it'>par excellence</span>. Witness -the naturalist’s exquisite ear for concrete realism in -these lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>She would hear the partridge drumming in the distance,</p> -<p class='line0'>Rolling out his <span class='it'>mimic thunder</span> in the sultry noons;</p> -<p class='line0'>Hear beyond the silver reach in <span class='it'>ringing wild persistence</span></p> -<p class='line0'>Reel remote the <span class='it'>ululating laughter</span> of the loons.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>Carman would have stopped with the general word ‘drumming’ -in the phrase ‘hear the partridge drumming’—not so -Scott; he must realistically concrete the reverberance of -the drumming in the phrase ‘rolling out his mimic thunder.’ -And what realistic concretion is in the phrases ‘in ringing -wild persistence,’ and ‘ululating laughter!’ Carman half -hears. Scott hears with the ear of the naturalist <span class='it'>and</span> the -musician.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again, only the ear of the naturalist and the musician in -Scott could have so exquisitely, veraciously, concreted the -<span class='pageno' title='174' id='Page_174'></span> -‘note’ of the white-throat sparrow and the lovely cadences -of the vireo as in these lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>While the white-throat never-resting,</p> -<p class='line0'>Even in the deepest night <span class='it'>rings his crystal bell</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>And:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>A vireo turns his <span class='it'>slow</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Cadence</span>, as if he gloated</p> -<p class='line0'>Over the last phrase he floated;</p> -<p class='line0'>Each one he moulds and mellows</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Matching it with his fellows</span>:</p> -<p class='line0'>So have you noted</p> -<p class='line0'>How the oboe croons,</p> -<p class='line0'>The canary-throated,</p> -<p class='line0'>In the gloom of the violoncellos</p> -<p class='line0'>And bassoons.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Scott knows the ‘voices’ of instruments as intimately as -those of birds and other feathered wild creatures. How -finely he combines a concrete use of his two-fold musical -knowledge in this respect in the following ingenious and -original bit of verbal instrumentation:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Puff at his velvet horn</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>The reader must be a naturalist and, as well, have been a -bandsman or orchestral instrumentalist to feel the felicitous -realism and descriptive exactitude of Scott’s art, or rather -inspiration, in inventing that figure of the owl as a musician. -The humor of it also is exquisite.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Scott surpasses all other Canadian poets in a genius for -inventing single and double terminal rhymes, and he excels -in this gift, without ever dropping to impossible or -bizarre rhymes, except when the comedy of life in a subject -naturally requires the use of a vulgarism as in this couplet -from the Burlesca movement (VIII) of <span class='it'>Variations on a -Seventeenth Century Theme</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>But I keeps my quarter,</p> -<p class='line0'>Though—perhaps I’d orter.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='175' id='Page_175'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>As ready and expert as Carman with such other musical -resources as vowel-melody and harmony, assonance, consonantal -tone-color and alliteration, Scott is more lyrically -melodious than even Carman. Melodiousness—dulcet melody -of combined vowel and consonant and rhythm—is the -supreme musical quality of Scott’s poetry. Not Tennyson -nor Swinburne have surpassed the melodiousness of this -stanza from Scott’s <span class='it'>The Lover to His Lass</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet,</p> -<p class='line0'>Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,</p> -<p class='line0'>Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot</p> -<p class='line0'>See her for the garments of the light and the night.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Matching the melodiousness of Scott’s poetry is its -inimitable ‘color-music,’ a combination of sensuous color -and alliteration, which quite rivals Swinburne. Scott’s -poetry indeed abounds in the most ingenious and sensuously -musical alliterative lines in Canadian verse. Outstanding -examples are these:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Dark with sordid passion, pale with wringing pain.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Shall find amid the ferns the perfect flower.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Rubies, pale as dew-ponds stained with slaughter.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>See Aldebaran like a red rose clamber.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The long, ripe rippling of the grain.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Flush and form, honey and hue.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Still pools of sunlight shimmering in the sea.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Languorously floating by the lotus leaves.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Frail rose-ghosts of rose-gardens all in blow.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='176' id='Page_176'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Such magical melody and color are not artifice or even -art with Scott. It is all an inspiration, clear spontaneity -of genius. If it were artifice or art it would be confined -to mere phrases or lines; but Scott as readily and as magically -fills stanzas with the same magical melody and color as -in <span class='it'>The Voice and The Dusk</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The slender moon and one pale star,</p> -<p class='line0'>A rose-leaf and a silver bee</p> -<p class='line0'>From some fool’s garden blown afar,</p> -<p class='line0'>Go down the gold deep tranquilly.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>There is a sylvan <span class='it'>earthly</span> music in the poetry of Carman, -Pauline Johnson, and Marjorie Pickthall. But the -music of Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry is the melody -of a fairy fantasy, an <span class='it'>unearthly</span> lyrical melody suffused -with color which is imaginative rather than earth-born. -Yet its vowel and alliterative melody, rhythmical refinement, -and translucent or sensuous color are never unreal -but only serve to etherealize real experience, to transport us -with exquisite sensation of ineffable, unimagined beauty. -To figure him under the title of one of his own most -melodious and romantically imaginative poems, Duncan -Campbell Scott is <span class='it'>The Piper of Arll</span>—and, like Debussy, regales -us with:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The complaint of the wind</p> -<p class='line0'>In the plane-trees,</p> -<p class='line0'>The far away pulse of a horn,</p> -<p class='line0'>Ripples of fairy color,</p> -<p class='line0'>Rhythms of Spain,</p> -<p class='line0'>The overtones of cymbals,</p> -<p class='line0'>The sobs of tormented souls,</p> -<p class='line0'>Cries of delight and their echoes . . . .</p> -<p class='line0'>Fauns’ eyes in the vapor,</p> -<p class='line0'>Flutes of Dionysus,</p> -<p class='line0'>Haunting his ruined fane,</p> -<p class='line0'>Veils of rain, quenching the tulip gardens,</p> -<p class='line0'>Sea-light at the roots of islands . . . .</p> -<p class='line0'>And under all, the pedal-point</p> -<p class='line0'>Of the deep based ocean,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='177' id='Page_177'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>Hidden under mists,</p> -<p class='line0'>Chanting, infinitely remote,</p> -<p class='line0'>At the foot of enchanted cliffs.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It is a question difficult of settlement whether Duncan -Campbell Scott is greater as a verbal colorist and nature-painter -than as a melodist. But there can be no doubt -that as a verbal colorist and nature-painter he has the eye -both of the naturalist <span class='it'>and</span> the impressionist. And it is -indubitable that as a colorist or impressionist he has put -more of the pageantry of Nature in Canada into his poetry -than has even Bliss Carman. All the Canadian seasons -are in it, and every phase of the light, color, and sound -of the Canadian year is in it—done by ready, flexible, -graphic stroke or exquisite touch, in rich or luminous and -translucent coloring, with romantic eye and fantasy, and -with singular ingenuity and power. It must be confessed -that there is a seeming display of musical theory and technics, -of musical learning, which almost savors of pedantry, -in those of Scott’s poems which contain musical thought -and imagery. This would be sophistication, were Scott -not sincere and did he not sincerely use it all to enhance -the poetic effect of his verse on the tonal sensibilities and -the imagination. But there is no sophistication, no mere -display of knowledge of pigments and the technic of -painting in his work as a verbal colorist. He is a word-painter, -a nature-colorist, an impressionist,—by innate -genius. As a matter of fact, too, almost all his verbal -melody is associated with color. So that, by genius rather -than by art, Duncan Campbell Scott may be regarded as -the supreme verbal colorist amongst Canadian poets. He -is this for three reasons—inclusiveness of the seasons and -phases of Nature in Canada, magic of pigmentation, and -novelty and imaginative power of coloring and description.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If the poems of Scott abound in arresting and compelling -phrases, lines, and stanzas of alliterative beauty, -the number of brilliant and luminous color phrases, lines, -<span class='pageno' title='178' id='Page_178'></span> -and whole stanzas in his poems is astounding. The following -will serve in illustration:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Bright as a sun spot in a globe of dew.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The leaves dry up as pale as honeycomb.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Or peacock tints on pools of amber gloom.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Like the curve of a fragile ivory hand.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>                          the light slides there</p> -<p class='line0'>Like minnows in a pool—slender and slow.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Blown on a gold black flute.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>A miracle of foam and ivory.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>In loops of silver light.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The gold moted wood-pools pellucid as her eyen.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Tawny like pure honey.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Fragile as frost pansies.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Rubies, pale as dew ponds stained with slaughter.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>How luminous, translucent, yet graphic and vivid, are all -those colorful lines. They are the ‘painting’ of a poet -who has, above all things, the eye of the naturalist and -also a fairy fantasy. If in those lines we find in Scott -a genius for exquisite and translucent verbal coloring, -corresponding to the art of Constable or Corot in imaginative -vision or fantasy, we discover the romantic pigmentation -of Rossetti (as a painter) and the rich luminous -impressionism of Monet, in the lines following the final -apostrophe to Beauty in Scott’s noble <span class='it'>Ode for the Keats’ -Centenary</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>For Beauty has taken refuge from our life</p> -<p class='line0'>That grew too loud and wounding . . .</p> -<p class='line0'>Beauty is gone, (Oh, where?)</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='179' id='Page_179'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>To dwell within a precinct of pure air</p> -<p class='line0'>Where moments turn to months of solitude;</p> -<p class='line0'>To live on roots of fern and tips of fern,</p> -<p class='line0'>On tender berries flushed with the earth’s blood.</p> -<p class='line0'>Beauty shall stain her feet with moss</p> -<p class='line0'>And dye her cheek with deep nut-juices</p> -<p class='line0'>Laving her hands in the pure sluices</p> -<p class='line0'>Where rainbows are dissolved.</p> -<p class='line0'>Beauty shall view herself in pools of amber sheen</p> -<p class='line0'>Dampened with peacock-tints from the green screen</p> -<p class='line0'>That mingles liquid light with liquid shadow.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It is not necessary to illustrate the variety of Scott’s -pigmentation. That is as remarkable as its luminous -beauty. What is most compelling in his Nature-painting -is the unique ingenuity, power, and romantic beauty of his -color phrases, metaphors, and similes. The naturalistic -and imaginative intensity of them is a poetic phenomenon -by itself. Consider these phrases: ‘Sun, like a gold sword,’ -‘A blade of gladiolus, like a sword,’ ‘A burning pool of -scent and heat,’ ‘Within the windless deeps of memory,’ -‘Bent like a shield between the silver seas,’ ‘With gulfs of -blue and summits of rosy snow.’ Consider also these -lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The west unrolled a feathery wind.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The poignard lightning searched the air.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Stars like wood daffodils grow golden in the night.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>                         and dawn</p> -<p class='line0'>Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces;</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and, finally, consider the compelling romantic fantasy of -color and simile in this stanza from <span class='it'>The Piper of Arll</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>There were three pines above the cone</p> -<p class='line0'>That, when the sun flared and went down,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Grew like three warriors reaving home</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>The plunder of a burning town</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It was said that there is more of Canada in the poetry -of Duncan Campbell Scott than in the verse of any other -<span class='pageno' title='180' id='Page_180'></span> -Canadian poet. So far this appears to be true of Scott’s -painting of Nature in Canada. Scott, it must be observed, -is a Nature <span class='it'>painter</span>, never a Nature <span class='it'>interpreter</span>, as were -Lampman and Carman. Yet there is in Scott’s poetry a -decided interpretative or philosophical element. It is on -the side of his philosophical poetry that Scott’s verse contains -more of the Canadian <span class='it'>spirit</span> than does the verse of -any other Canadian poet. As a philosophical poet Scott -is, first, an interpreter of humanity and life in Canada—and -his interpretations possess highly novel distinction and -spiritual import. His philosophical poetry is contained in -three volumes, <span class='it'>Labor and the Angel</span> (1898), <span class='it'>New World -Lyrics and Ballads</span> (1905), and <span class='it'>Via Borealis</span> (1906).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his <span class='it'>New World Lyrics and Ballads</span>, Scott aims to -reveal the kind of mind or thought which the strange -humanity of the Northwest in Canada—the Indian heart -in the wild North of Canada—contains. In the volume -Indian themes predominate, and the so called Ballads are -more aptly named Legends, because Scott’s Ballads are art -and the product of a reflective mind <span class='it'>thinking into</span> Indian -mind the thoughts of a civilized man, whereas the genuine -Ballad is a spontaneous story told in simple verse. Moreover, -Scott’s genius is lyrical; but in these so called Ballads -he attempts dramatic situation and emotion. It all lands -him in recondite psychological symbolism, as, for instance, -in <span class='it'>The Mission of the Trees</span> or in <span class='it'>The Forsaken</span>, which is -later attempted in <span class='it'>The Half-Breed Girl</span> (from <span class='it'>Via Borealis</span>), -a striking essay in Indian introspection. What we -get from these poems is Scott’s perception and revealment -of spiritual Beauty in loneliness—his half-mystical intuition -that the spirit in civilized man, in the Indian soul, and in -Nature everywhere is one and the same spirit, and that -civilization has only resulted in veiling the face of God -and in separating his creatures from one another and from -the Creator.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This vague mystical intuition of the mystery and yet -<span class='pageno' title='181' id='Page_181'></span> -identity of spirit in man and Nature is beautifully, perhaps -too sensuously, envisaged in Scott’s <span class='it'>Spring on Mattagami</span> -(from <span class='it'>Via Borealis</span>). This poem is seductively musical -and highly impressionistic, but shows the influence of -Meredith (<span class='it'>Love in a Wilderness</span>) in its interpretation of -the conflict of Love and Law in the universe. What -counts and solaces, however, is the Vision or Light of a -higher Love and a deeper Law that lie behind the seemingly -meaningless conflict of the visible love and law. After -all, the poet, like the rest of mortals, can only ‘trust’ in -the supremacy of Good in the universe:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Vaster than the world or life or death my <span class='it'>trust</span> is</p> -<p class='line0'>Based in the unseen and towering far above.</p> -<p class='line0'>Hold me, O Law, that deeper lies than Justice,</p> -<p class='line0'>Guide me, O Light, that stronger burns than Love.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>This abstract mystical symbolism is Old World, not -Canadian, not Scott’s own philosophy of the spirit for the -Canadian spirit. His own is found in his poem <span class='it'>Labor and -the Angel</span>. It is original and noble in conception; and, -consistently with its serious didactic purpose and ideas, or -symbolism, its diction is vernacular, its form and rhythm -are suited to plain narrative; and the whole is devoid of -Scott’s luxuriant color and sensuous melody. It is a dramatic -poem in the sense that it is designed to affect the -heart and the imagination with dramatic force and truth. -As a criticism of life in the Arnoldian sense, we see in the -poem the influence of Matthew Arnold. But its thought -and style show more notably the influence of Browning -and Meredith, especially in its syntactical ellipses, bald and -abrupt lines.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In its way, <span class='it'>Labor and the Angel</span> is as finely and as impressively -achieved as Tennyson’s <span class='it'>Princess</span>. It answers -a question which is particularly pertinent to Canada where -work—the gaining of material subsistence—necessarily is -paramount, because inevitable and pressing. As with -Browning, so with Scott, Woman is man’s life-star and -<span class='pageno' title='182' id='Page_182'></span> -inspiration. In the poem <span class='it'>Labor and the Angel</span>, the Man -and the Girl are common humanity, but the Girl, who is -also the Angel of Labor, is the man’s companion and helpmate:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Down on the sodden field</p> -<p class='line0'>A blind man is gathering his roots,</p> -<p class='line0'>Guided and led by a girl;</p> -<p class='line0'>Her golden hair blows in the wind,</p> -<p class='line0'>Her garments, with flutter and furl,</p> -<p class='line0'>Leap like a flag in the sun;</p> -<p class='line0'>And whenever he stoops, she stoops,</p> -<p class='line0'>And they heap up the dark colored beets</p> -<p class='line0'>In the barrow, row upon row.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Labor, the kind which is mere toil and drudgery, is -without meaning and unspiritual. But Woman was designed -by God as the power which shall inspire men to -spirituality in all things. As Man, every man would be -‘blind’ and purposeless and futile. But as Man, companioned -and inspired by Woman and idealizing labor for -the end of her companionship and love and the spiritual -fruits of that love, every man, who is obedient to the ideal, -transmutes the lowliest labor into spiritual purpose, meaning -and result:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>She offers no tantalus cup</p> -<p class='line0'>To the shrunken, the desperate lips,</p> -<p class='line0'>But she calms them with lethe and love</p> -<p class='line0'>And deadens the throb and the pain.</p> -<p class='line0'>For Labor is always blind,</p> -<p class='line0'>Unless as the light of the deed</p> -<p class='line0'>The Angel is smiling behind.</p> -<p class='line0'>‘Effort and effort,’ she cries,</p> -<p class='line0'>‘Up with the lark and the dew,</p> -<p class='line0'>Still with the dew and the stars,</p> -<p class='line0'>This is the heart beat of life,</p> -<p class='line0'>Feel it athrob in the earth.’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Man and Labor, Woman and Love as the star and inspiration -of man in all his work—what nobler dignity -could any poet give to Woman, and what other consolation -<span class='pageno' title='183' id='Page_183'></span> -of philosophy could he conceive and sing that would, as -it does, for men more surely</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Make mortal flesh seem light and temporal!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Labor and the Angel</span> is unique amongst poems by Canadians, -and its noble philosophy of the spirit challenges -poems of similar quality by Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, -and Emerson.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Duncan Campbell Scott—austere intellectualist, superb -verbal musician, luminous Nature-painter, and impeccable -technical virtuoso of verse amongst Canadian poets—it is -by him that we are also given in <span class='it'>The Height of Land</span> the -finest expression of the true spiritual mysticism, the immediate -perception of God—an intuition in which Life appears</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock:</p> -<p class='line0'>A Something to be guided by ideals—</p> -<p class='line0'>That in themselves are simple and serene</p> -<p class='line0'>Of noble deed to foster noble thought,</p> -<p class='line0'>And noble thought to image noble deed,</p> -<p class='line0'>Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate,</p> -<p class='line0'>Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt</p> -<p class='line0'>Whether the perfect beauty that escapes</p> -<p class='line0'>Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing</p> -<p class='line0'>Mingled of both, a greater boon than either:</p> -<p class='line0'>Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest</p> -<p class='line0'>The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain,</p> -<p class='line0'>And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Seek we in the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott for -the choice and ineluctable goods of the spirit,—music, color, -high thought and serene philosophy—and we shall always -be rewarded with Beauty ‘golden and inappellable.’</p> - -<hr class='tbk109'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations in this chapter are chiefly from <span class='it'>Beauty and Life</span>, by Duncan -Campbell Scott, (McClelland & Stewart).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='184' id='Page_184'></span><h1>CHAPTER XI</h1></div> - -<h3>Wilfred Campbell</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>AS AN OBJECTIVE NATURE PAINTER—HUMANIZED SUBSTANCE -OF HIS VERSE—PATRIOTISM AND BROTHERHOOD—DRAMATIC -MONODY—POETICAL TRAGEDIES AND DRAMAS.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>n</span> the early nineties of the last century three young -Canadian poets, who were employed in the Civil Service -Departments at Ottawa, were closely associated in a -systematic way as men of letters. They were Wilfred -Campbell, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell -Scott. In the Toronto <span class='it'>Globe</span> they conducted a department -of literary criticism and ‘causerie’ under the caption ‘The -Mermaid Inn.’ Oddly, these three young Canadian men -of letters were singularly dissimilar in poetic temperament, -attitudes, vision, and ideals. As a poet Lampman was an -interpreter of the inner meaning of the beauty and moods -of Nature. He and Nature communed with each other -by reciprocal sympathy, and he cared greatly for style and -craftsmanship in poetry. Duncan Campbell Scott loved -beauty for its own sake as a spiritual delight or source of -ecstasy, but perfection of form, style, artistry—‘art for -art’s sake’—pre-empted all other considerations in poetry. -Wilfred Campbell occupied a middle ground. He was an -objective Nature-painter, with tendencies to be more interested -in Nature as a habitat or background of the human -spirit which had come from God and was going to God. -He was solicitous about form and imagery, color and -melody in poetry, but for him these were always a means -to an end, never a mere end in themselves. Or, harking -back to influences, we may say that Lampman wrote poetry -<span class='pageno' title='185' id='Page_185'></span> -with the eye and the spirit of Keats and Wordsworth; Scott -with the eye of Matthew Arnold for naturalistic and moral -beauty and chaste artistry; and Campbell in the spirit of -Longfellow and Emerson, and, sometimes, of Tennyson.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With Campbell it was the substance or matter,—the -ideas, thought, and meanings for the spirit—not the formal -elements or manner of poetry, that counted for most. It -is the substance of poetry, its meanings for the spirit, that -counts always for most with the people. For this reason, -though Campbell is not the greatest of the poets of the first -Systematic School, he is, and will remain, as he has been -called, ‘the poet of the people’s choice.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A distinct evolution—and advance in vision—from objective -nature-painting of the spirit can be observed in -the successive volumes of Campbell’s verse. Naturally, -until he had reflected on his aims as a poet, he did not announce -his poetic creed in his first volume of verse. He -did this in his fourth volume, <span class='it'>Collected Poems</span> (1905) in -his poem <span class='it'>Higher Kinship</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>There is a time at middle summer, when,</p> -<p class='line0'>In weariness of all this saddening world,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>The simple nature aspects seem to me</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>As a close kindred</span>, sweet and kind and true,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Giving me peace and comfort, and a joy</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Not of the senses, but of the inward soul</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The restful day, the sunny leaf and wind,</p> -<p class='line0'>The path of blue like windows shining down,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Do give to life a beauty and a calm</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>And a sweet sadness, that this mighty world</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>And all its myriad triumphs cannot give</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O let me live with Nature at her door,</p> -<p class='line0'>And taste her home-brewed pleasures, simple, glad,—</p> -<p class='line0'>The beauty of the day, the splendor of the night,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Not in the great palace halls, great cloister domes,</p> -<p class='line0'>The smoke of cities and the thronging din,</p> -<p class='line0'>But out with air and woodlands, shining sun,—</p> -<p class='line0'>These my companions, this my roof, my home!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='186' id='Page_186'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>‘Not of the senses’—Campbell is not a lover of impressionism -for its own sake, but he loves the simple, -colorful aspects of Nature for the joy, comfort and peace -which they give to ‘<span class='it'>the inward soul</span>.’ He has his equals as -an impressionistic colorist, but he is supreme when he paints -a phenomenon or aspect of Nature in monotone or in subdued -tones as in pastel, or when he etches a scene with a -Whistler-like feeling for atmosphere, shadow, and chiaroscuro, -and for line. In 1888, when he was in his twenty-seventh -year, Campbell published a booklet of twenty lyrics, -<span class='it'>Snowflakes and Sunbeams</span>. In these first lyrics he disclosed -the eye of monotonist and etcher for the beauty of -Nature. The verse in this rare little volume is marked, -too, by a grace and melody which enhance the pictures. -What but a ‘symphony in white’ is his <span class='it'>Snow</span>—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Folding the forest.</p> -<p class='line0'>  Folding the farms,</p> -<p class='line0'>In a mantle of white,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And the river’s great arms,</p> -<p class='line0'>Kissed by the chill night</p> -<p class='line0'>From clamor to rest,</p> -<p class='line0'>Lie all white and shrouded</p> -<p class='line0'>  Upon the world’s breast.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus, through several stanzas, he paints Nature in -white, seemingly for the joy of the senses but really for -‘the inward soul.’ For a moment he obtrudes the ‘message’ -which the snow conveys to the moral imagination—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Falling so slowly</p> -<p class='line0'>  Down from above,</p> -<p class='line0'>So white, hushed and holy,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Folding the city</p> -<p class='line0'>Like the great pity</p> -<p class='line0'>  Of God in his love;</p> -<p class='line0'>Sent down out of heaven,</p> -<p class='line0'>  On its sorrow and crime,</p> -<p class='line0'>Blotting them, folding them</p> -<p class='line0'>  Under its rime.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='187' id='Page_187'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beautiful as an original image is the thought of the -snow descending hushed and holy, ‘like the great pity of -God in his love,’ but it is a sentimental obtrusion, out of -character with the snow-picture as such. We find Campbell -frequently creating the most engaging Nature pictures, -and here or there in a poem recalling the eye from the pure -visual delights to let the moral imagination reflect on -some suggestion, some similitude, for ‘the inward soul.’ -What a pretty pastel, for instance, he paints with spare use -of mere tints, in the first two stanzas of <span class='it'>In the Study</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>    Out over my study,</p> -<p class='line0'>    All ashen and ruddy</p> -<p class='line0'>Sinks the December sun,</p> -<p class='line0'>    And high up over</p> -<p class='line0'>    The chimney’s soot cover</p> -<p class='line0'>The winter night has begun.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>    Here in the red embers</p> -<p class='line0'>    I dream old Decembers,</p> -<p class='line0'>Until the low moan of the blast,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Like a voice out of Ghost-land,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Or memory’s lost-land,</p> -<p class='line0'>Seems to conjure up wraiths from the past.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>But Campbell does not continue the strict painting of the -objective picture. He introduces something ‘for the inward -soul,’ as he does, in the concluding stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>   Then into the room</p> -<p class='line0'>   Through the firelight and gloom,</p> -<p class='line0'>Some one steals,—let the night wind grow bleak,</p> -<p class='line0'>   And ever so coldly,—</p> -<p class='line0'>   Two white arms enfold me,</p> -<p class='line0'>And a sweet face is close to my cheek.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>This is not a fault in Campbell’s poetry. It is an -essential part of his art. As in Longfellow, so in Campbell -the <span class='it'>humanized substance</span> of his verse is consciously designed -for the popular heart, and ensures popular acceptance. -Campbell would rather do this than to write always for -<span class='pageno' title='188' id='Page_188'></span> -art’s sake, as in these sheer pictorial stanzas from <span class='it'>A Winter’s -Night</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>    Shadowy white,</p> -<p class='line0'>Over the fields are the sleeping fences,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Silent and still in the fading light,</p> -<p class='line0'>As the wintry night commences.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>    <span class='it'>Calm sleeping night</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Whose jewelled couch reflects the million stars</span></p> -<p class='line0'>    That murmur silent music in their flight. . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet, he can employ delineative line with swift and sure -artistry just to make a picture for its own sake, disclosing -absolute mastery in economy of means, as in his -<span class='it'>Rododactulos</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The night blows outward in a mist,</p> -<p class='line0'>And all the world the sun has kissed.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Along a golden rim of sky,</p> -<p class='line0'>A thousand snow-piled vapors lie.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And by the wood and mist-clad stream,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>The Maiden Morn stands still to dream</span>.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>That is an exquisite bit of naturalistic etching with a -poetic meaning intrinsically in the picture of the Maiden -Morn standing and dreaming in the mist. The picture -itself delights both the visual faculty and the imagination. -Campbell also possessed the faculty of painting vividly, as -with a single sweep of the brush, as in his <span class='it'>Lake Huron</span> (in -October) and its memorable lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Miles and miles of lake and forest,</p> -<p class='line0'>Miles and miles of sky and mist;</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and these still more vivid lines:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Miles and miles of crimson glories,</p> -<p class='line0'>Autumn’s wondrous fires ablaze.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Campbell did not aim or strive to be a word-virtuoso. -But what he could achieve as an artist was to make at will -a dainty or a glorious <span class='it'>picture</span>, and so <span class='it'>localize</span> the picture -<span class='pageno' title='189' id='Page_189'></span> -that one can immediately tell which section of the Canadian -land or waters is delineated. He surpassed all his contemporaries -in the gift of ‘flashing’ a vivid picture in a -single line, as, for instance:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The stars came out in <span class='it'>gleaming shoals</span></p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>or this tremendous line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Where wrinkled suns in awful blackness swim.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The last line quoted also discloses in Campbell a power -which is not in any other Canadian poet—the Miltonic -power of conveying by description ideated sensations of -unending space and movement. Matching almost any -piece of sheer description of immensity by Milton is -Campbell’s compelling panorama of Lazarus in his flight -from Heaven to Hell and the sensations of illimitable -depths downward that it creates in the reader, as in these -stanzas from his poem <span class='it'>Lazarus</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Hellward he moved, like a radiant star shot out</p> -<p class='line0'>    From heaven’s blue with rain of gold at even,</p> -<p class='line0'>    When Orion’s train and that mysterious seven</p> -<p class='line0'>    Move on in mystic range from heaven to heaven.</p> -<p class='line0'>Hellward he sank, followed by radiant rout.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The liquid floor of heaven bore him up</p> -<p class='line0'>    With unseen arms, as in his feathery flight</p> -<p class='line0'>    He floated down toward the infinite night;</p> -<p class='line0'>    But each way downward, on the left and right,</p> -<p class='line0'>He saw each moon of heaven like a cup</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Of liquid, misty fire that shone afar</p> -<p class='line0'>    From sentinel towers of heaven’s battlements;</p> -<p class='line0'>    But onward, winged by love’s desire intense,</p> -<p class='line0'>    He sank, space-swallowed, into the immense,</p> -<p class='line0'>While with him ever widened heaven’s bar.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>’Tis ages now long-gone since he went out,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Christ-urged, love-driven, across the jasper walls.</p> -<p class='line0'>    But hellward still he ever floats and falls,</p> -<p class='line0'>    And ever nearer come those anguished calls;</p> -<p class='line0'>And far behind he hears a glorious shout.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='190' id='Page_190'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Campbell had a gift, too, for vivid color epithets and -for vowel and alliterative word-melody. Indeed he was -a master of color and verbal melody. Some of his more -original and striking alliterative lines are:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Flooding the silence in a silvern dream.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Low flutes the lake along the lustrous sedge.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>But dawns and sunsets fell on mute dead faces.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Belled with bees, a pollened bevy.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Out of the murmurous moods of your multitudinous mind.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Dim mists of darkness rise from marsh and mere.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The waking world leaps to the day’s desire.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>The harmonies that float and melt afar.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>Deep-sounding and surgent, the armies of storm sweep by.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>None of Campbell’s contemporaries surpassed him in -painting a simple but vivid <span class='it'>genre</span> picture, and enhancing it -with verbal melody, as he does, for instance, in his <span class='it'>Canadian -Folksong</span>, beginning:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The doors are shut, the windows fast;</p> -<p class='line0'>Outside the gust is driving past,</p> -<p class='line0'>Outside the shivering ivy clings,</p> -<p class='line0'>While on the hob the kettle sings;</p> -<p class='line0'>    ‘Margery, Margery, make the tea,’</p> -<p class='line0'>    Singeth the kettle merrily.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>As a poet of humane patriotism, which has regard for -international or world relations, and which is not mere -‘drum and trumpet’ patriotism, Campbell stands in a class -<span class='pageno' title='191' id='Page_191'></span> -by himself. He had a Keltic love of place or home. It -was a passion with him, but the passion embraced the -Anglo-Saxon peoples. So that his patriotic poetry contains -a large element of the ideal of Anglo-Saxon unity and of -the imperialistic destiny of the British peoples. Thus we -find him singing with equal warmth of Scotland, the homeland -of his ancestors (as in <span class='it'>The World-Mother</span>), of -England (as in his <span class='it'>To England</span>), of the United States (as -in his <span class='it'>To the United States</span>), and of Canada, his homeland -(as in <span class='it'>Canada</span>.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sincere and profound sense and love of brotherhood -is the key-note of his patriotic poetry. There is no magniloquent -bombast in it, whereas it must be admitted that -Roberts’ <span class='it'>Canada</span> and his <span class='it'>Ode to the Confederacy</span> have at -least an air of pomp of words which sound like mere magniloquence -or bombast. But there is in Campbell’s <span class='it'>Canada</span> -a sincere sense of history, of historical background and -heroic origins, as well as of a people whom the vastness of -their habitat should impel to a great and noble destiny. -Besides, Campbell sings of the homeland in simple octameter -couplets, the very simplicity of which impresses the -spirit with a deep sense of truth and reality. The poem, -with a slight change or two for choral singing would, if -set to dignified and sonorous music, be fitted to be an inspiring -and inspiriting National Hymn. It is a colorful, -lyrical poem, a Song, suffused with the qualities of the -Canadian spirit and the beauties of the Canadian habitat. -We quote a few excerpts:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O land, by every gift of God</p> -<p class='line0'>Brave home of freedom, let thy sod</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Sacred with blood of hero sires,</p> -<p class='line0'>Spurn from its breast ignobler fires.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Keep on these shores where beauty reigns,</p> -<p class='line0'>And vastness folds from peak to plains,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='192' id='Page_192'></span></p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>With room for all from hills to sea,</p> -<p class='line0'>No shackled, helot tyranny.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Spurn from thy breast the bigot lie,</p> -<p class='line0'>The smallness not of earth or sky.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Breed all thy sons brave stalwart men,</p> -<p class='line0'>To meet the world as one to ten.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Breed all thy daughters mothers true,</p> -<p class='line0'>Magic of that glad joy of you,</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Till liberties thy hills adorn</p> -<p class='line0'>As wide as thy wide fields of corn.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>And round earth’s rim thine honor glows,</p> -<p class='line0'>Unsullied as thy drifted snows.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Wilfred Campbell, then, appears as a lyrist of Nature -and poet of the Spirit, who is an adroit and vivid objective -colorist and etcher, but who, for the most part, tinges his -lyricism of Nature with meanings for the ‘inward soul.’ -With equal dexterity and truth he painted an impressionistic -or a <span class='it'>genre</span> picture. But in doing this, he was unexcelled -by his contemporaries in Canada in economy of means for -expression. While, however, he was thus given to painting -or delineating Nature in Canada, he also appears as a poet -who ‘hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.’ He gave proof -of this in a singular way. Whatever other distinctions -belong to him, Campbell has never been equalled, by another -Canadian poet, in the Dramatic Monologue. Perhaps, in -view of the special meaning which Browning has given -to this species of poetry, it were better to use the formula -Dramatic Monody. For this phrase better describes -Campbell’s poignant, compelling <span class='it'>Unabsolved</span>, <span class='it'>The Mother</span>, -and <span class='it'>Lazarus</span>. But however categorized, these poems reveal -the fact that Campbell’s genius was essentially dramatic. -This dramatic instinct in him, Campbell developed -to a high degree until he essayed the five-act poetic drama. -<span class='pageno' title='193' id='Page_193'></span> -It is as a Poetic Dramatist that Campbell achieved a distinct -and fixed place in Canadian creative poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first poet to attempt nativistic or native poetic -drama in Canada was Charles Mair, who published at Toronto, -in 1886. <span class='it'>Tecumseh: A Drama</span>. Many of its characters -are Canadian and much of its setting and color are -Canadian. Mair had created a work of real interest, of -excellent structure and dramatic development, and had used -impressively Canadian properties, character, and environment. -The verse is genuinely artistic and colorful and -dramatic, and the poem as a whole is worthy of critical -consideration; but only as the first example of Canadian -native poetic drama is <span class='it'>Tecumseh</span> to be regarded as significant -in the literary history of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Much superior to the dramatic poetry of Mair is that -of Wilfred Campbell. It is considerable in quantity, comprising -the following (as he called them) ‘poetical tragedies -and dramas:’ <span class='it'>Mordred</span>, <span class='it'>Hildebrand</span>, <span class='it'>The Brockenfiend</span>, -<span class='it'>Robespierre</span>, <span class='it'>Daulac</span>, <span class='it'>Morning</span>, <span class='it'>Sanio</span>, and <span class='it'>The Admiral’s -Daughter</span>. The quality of his poetical tragedies and dramas -distinguishes him as the first really important creator of -poetic drama in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The titles of his poetic tragedies and dramas clearly indicate -that, with one exception, his subjects were derivative -and his treatment traditional. With the exception of his -<span class='it'>Daulac</span> he took his subjects from Arthurian legend and -European romantic history. He was considerably under -the influence of Tennyson. Though he gave us an interesting -and arresting poetic drama with his <span class='it'>Daulac</span>, it is -specially notable as a drama which is Canadian in subject, -character, and setting. He was not so successful with it -as with his poetic drama based on Arthurian legend and -romantic history. The reason is that in a large degree he -possessed an ‘Old World,’ a Keltic imagination, and his -<span class='pageno' title='194' id='Page_194'></span> -imagination was deeply impressed and moved by the romance -of mediaeval heroic exploits:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Old, unhappy, far-off things,</p> -<p class='line0'>And battles long ago.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The heroism of Daulac, his combats and other heroic -exploits were so near in time to the age of Campbell himself -that they could not affect the poet’s imagination so -pervasively and compellingly as do the older mediaeval -romances of heroic exploits. Campbell did not feel the -<span class='it'>Daulac</span> story as he had felt the Arthurian or romantic -legends of Europe. He, therefore, did not, because he -could not, put into his <span class='it'>Daulac</span> the same power of imagination -and dramatic characterization and reality that he put -into his other dramas. But <span class='it'>Daulac</span>, notwithstanding, is a -noble poetic drama; and since it is Canadian through and -through, in subject, in setting, and in authorship, we may -estimate it as the first native poetic drama of genuine art -and power in the creative literature of Canada.</p> - -<hr class='tbk110'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations from Wilfred Campbell’s work in this chapter are from -<span class='it'>The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell</span> (Hodder & Stoughton, Limited: -Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='195' id='Page_195'></span><h1>CHAPTER XII</h1></div> - -<h3>Pauline Johnson</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>HER ANCESTRY AND ITS INFLUENCES—LITERARY AND -MUSICAL QUALITIES OF WORK—STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN -SPIRITUAL VISION—PICTURESQUE COLOR VERSE.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>he</span> name, life, and poetry of Pauline Johnson affect -the heart and imagination with the arresting pathos -which attaches to the imperishable memory of a belated and -beautiful spirit who came singing new and winning music -of earth, and man, and love. She was the most elementally -human of all Canadian poets. In some respects Pauline -Johnson was the most original and engaging singer in the -company of the Canadian lyrists who were born in 1860, -1861, and 1862—Roberts, Carman, Lampman, Campbell, -and Duncan Campbell Scott.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson’s grandfather, who attained special -glory for his valorous deed of setting fire, with his own -hands, to the city of Buffalo in the War of 1812, was distinguished, -in times of peace, by his tribesmen with the honorable -and poetic sobriquet, ‘The Mohawk Warbler,’ not -because he could actually ‘warble’ like a present-day lyric -tenor, but because he possessed a ready flow of language -which he used with impassioned and dramatic eloquence. -The old warrior’s granddaughter, in her ballads and poems -of Indian wrongs and Indian heroic deeds, wrote with the -same dramatic intensity and the same gift for dramatic picture; -and in her songs of Nature and of love sang with a -lyrical lilt as natural, musical, free, and passionate as the -warblings of the thrush or lark or linnet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The distinctive qualities of Pauline Johnson’s genius -<span class='pageno' title='196' id='Page_196'></span> -and poetry are here noted summarily. In general: As a -story-telling balladist she must be ranked with the best -Canadian poets who have essayed the same <span class='it'>genre</span>, though -in some of her ballads there are lines which are rhetorical -and melodramatic. On the whole, however, her story-telling -ballads are unsurpassed by her Canadian <span class='it'>confrères</span>, -in emotional intensity, rapid movement, terse phrasing, and -dramatic pictorial vividness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a verbal musician, and as a nature-painter and etcher, -Pauline Johnson again must be given a very high place. -Some of her poems are marked by absolutely avian <span class='it'>abandon</span>; -others by haunting melody; and others by sweetly flowing -rhythm and winning cadences, and by sensuous vowel-harmonies -and faultless rhymes. Many of her poems -disclose the gift to paint in words a picture from Nature -with the impressionist’s mastery of sensation and color. -Some of them are low-keyed and full of shadows, suggested -sensations, and mystery. Others are dainty word-etchings, -picturesquely or subtly drawn and subdued in tone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In particular: Pauline Johnson has yet, by other Canadian -poets, to be equalled as a lyrist of the passion and -pathos of romantic love, and as an inventor of picturesque, -veracious, vivid, beautiful, and compelling poetic figures -and images. Her love poems are full of the most poignant -passion and pathos. It would be easy to make a catalogue -of a half hundred or more poetic figures and images which -are unique in descriptive aptness or in emotional ‘tang.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In short, the supreme spiritual and aesthetic qualities of -Pauline Johnson’s poetry are its real sincerity, its naiveté -of thought, its simplicity of structure, its lovely color images, -its winning music, its passion, pathos, and womanly -tenderness. But first place must be given to its dulcet and -insinuating music and to its original and arresting poetic -figures and images.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson, taking the date engraved on the monument -to her memory at Vancouver, was born in 1861. She -<span class='pageno' title='197' id='Page_197'></span> -died at Vancouver in 1912. She was the youngest child -of a family of four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson -(Onwononsyshon) of Brantford, Ontario, Head Chief of -the Six Nations Indians, and his wife, Emily S. Howells, -who was of English parentage and born at Brixton, England. -Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) was born on her -father’s estate, which is on the Reserve apportioned the -Mohawk Tribe by the Canadian government. It must, -therefore, pique the imagination to know that Pauline -Johnson was of pure Indian and pure English descent, but -that though she travelled from coast to coast in Canada -and the United States and twice to England, her freedom -of movement was ‘privileged’ and she was always, wherever -she went, a ‘ward’ of the Canadian government.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In Pauline Johnson’s case there are nice, though not -recondite, problems in literary psychology and interpretive -criticism. For instance: Was Pauline Johnson’s genius -Indian, or English? Was it inherited, or was she a ‘born’ -poet, or how else may her gifts and tastes be explained? -The poet herself always insisted, with considerable pride, -on her Indian origin. Some critics, reasoning by quasi-inductions, -abetted her in this belief. Yet, so far as her -genius is concerned, the only one of her Indian ancestors -who had anything like literary gifts was her grandfather, -‘The Mohawk Warbler,’ and his gifts were those of the -‘tongue’ in compelling eloquence rather than aesthetic -sensibility and the power of expressing in words the beauty -and the music in Nature. On the other hand, Pauline -Johnson’s English ancestors were a family who possessed -distinct literary tendencies and habits. The most distinguished -member of the branches of that family was W. D. -Howells, the American novelist, poet, and essayist. It is -most probable that she inherited her literary gifts from her -English ancestors. For in <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>—her complete -poems—there is not one concept, or bit of color, or rhythm, -or anything else, that may be described as specifically Indian. -<span class='pageno' title='198' id='Page_198'></span> -Rather it is all British or Universal. We do find -in her poems Indian themes, protests against British ruthlessness -in governmental treatment of the Indian, and the -celebration of Indian valor and love. But these are human -utterances. Moreover, of the ninety poems in <span class='it'>Flint -and Feather</span>, only eight concern the Indian, and these only -on the side of episodes which formed good material for -romantic story-telling in verse. In these fine ballads -Pauline Johnson became indeed the ‘Voice’ of her inarticulate -Indian fellows, but the voice itself was that of a -woman cultured in the forms and music of English poetry. -Pauline Johnson’s loyalty to the Indian side of her ancestry, -and her pride in it, were admirable; but, if heredity is -to be accepted as a real cause of genius, her taste for -literature, and her bent towards literary expression, must -have come from her mother’s side. For her mother was -both a cultured and a romantically-minded woman. If, -however, we are to grant the poet any gift from her Indian -ancestry, we must remember her brilliant career as a reciter -or dramatic reader. If she inherited this dramatic -gift, then she got it from her eloquent grandfather, ‘The -Mohawk Warbler.’ Though she used it conspicuously in -her dramatic readings, the gift is also observable in the -vividly graphic qualities, and in the emotional intensity, of -her story-telling ballads.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson was the first genuinely Canadian -‘daughter of the soil’ who indubitably was born a poet; -and her poetic development was one not in artistic craftsmanship, -but in vision. The first important fact in her -spiritual history is that at a very early age the future poet -evinced an original and intense taste for verse, expressing -this taste both by a fondness for memorizing verses read to -her and for composing childish jingles about familiar domestic -objects. A pretty illustration of Pauline Johnson’s -early predilection for poetry is furnished in the Biographical -Sketch to <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>, in which it is related -<span class='pageno' title='199' id='Page_199'></span> -that when she was but four years old (1865) she was asked -by a friend who was going to a distant city what he should -bring her as a gift, and that the child-poet replied, ‘Verses, -please!’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The second important fact in Pauline Johnson’s spiritual -history is that from the time she could pen words intelligently -up to the close of her public-school days she -devoted much of her leisure to self-cultivation in the appreciation -and the writing of verse. Before she was twelve -years old (1873), Pauline Johnson had thoroughly read -Shakespeare and the British romantic poets, Scott and -Byron, and with their texts cultivated her native sense of -poetic diction and imagery, of verbal rhythm and music -(vowel-harmony, rhyme, consonance, assonance, alliteration), -and of color-epithets for brilliant and subtly impressionistic -word-painting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson, with rare good sense, did not publish -any of her verses till considerable time after she had completed -her formal schooling and her personally conducted -studies of versification, verbal music, and poetic imagery. -But as soon as she began to offer her verses to editors, she -seems to have found ready acceptances. The first periodical -to welcome her verse was a small New York magazine, -<span class='it'>Gems of Poetry</span>, published, presumably, in the early ’80’s of -the last century. This, however, can not be regarded as a -significant event. Really significant was the fact that <span class='it'>The -Week</span> (founded by Goldwin Smith) was the first Canadian -magazine to publish her verse. This fact assured her the -recognition and sponsorship of Goldwin Smith, himself an -eminent man-of-letters and a poet, and also, possibly, of -Charles G. D. Roberts, who was literary editor of <span class='it'>The -Week</span> in 1883-1884, and who was the first editor to stand -sponsor for Archibald Lampman. The imprimatur of <span class='it'>The -Week</span>, or the sponsorship of Goldwin Smith and Roberts, -automatically elected Pauline Johnson to the company of -the Systematic Group of Canadian poets born in 1860, -<span class='pageno' title='200' id='Page_200'></span> -1861 and 1862, and introduced her to the English-speaking -world as a new and authentically gifted singer, in whose -music, though formally composed in the English manner -of versification, would, in due time, be heard the hitherto -unheard melancholy over-tones and wildwood notes of the -aboriginal Canadian spirit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next important date in Pauline Johnson’s history is -the year 1892, when a happy social and literary <span class='it'>soirée</span> -launched the Indian poet on a public career which, seemingly, -would not affect, save negatively, Pauline Johnson’s -function and art as a lyrist. From that date and for -sixteen years (1892-1908), Miss Johnson assiduously applied -her gifts as a reciter and dramatic reader in Canada, -the United States, and England, all the while publishing -intermittently in the periodical press her best verse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1895, simultaneously at London, England, Boston, -and Toronto, appeared her first volume of poems, <span class='it'>The White -Wampum</span>. In 1903 her second volume of poems, <span class='it'>Canadian -Born</span>, was issued at Toronto. In 1912, also at Toronto, -there was published the definitive and inclusive edition of -her collected poems, <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>. All three, upon -their appearance, were highly praised in reviews by the -critics of England, the United States, and Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is important to appreciate the significance of Pauline -Johnson’s sixteen years of travelling over Canada, the -United States, and England, as a reciter and dramatic -reader. Possibly they reduced the amount of her poetic -output. But there are no evidences in <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span> -that the experiences gained during these years diminished -or increased her powers of poetic vision or craftsmanship. -Pauline Johnson was self-deceived when, in a letter, she -expressed her belief that the fugitive verses published in -<span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>, pages 135-156, surpass her poems in -<span class='it'>The White Wampum</span> and in <span class='it'>Canadian Born</span>. ‘My later -fugitive verse,’ she declared, ‘is, of course, my best work, -as it is more mature.’ There are only fifteen of these so-called -<span class='pageno' title='201' id='Page_201'></span> -fugitive poems; but imaginative, musical, and tender -as they are, notably <span class='it'>In Grey Days</span>, <span class='it'>Autumn’s Orchestra</span>, -<span class='it'>The Trail to Lillooet</span>, <span class='it'>The Lifting of the Mist</span>, <span class='it'>The King’s -Consort</span>, and <span class='it'>Day Dawn</span>, they are all in the early manner -of the poet. They are lovely and winning poems, pervaded -with seductive music, tone-color pictures of nature -and of life, tinged with a tender pathos. But they show -no advance in technique, verbal music, imagery, or emotional -nuance—no lately acquired powers to express -rhythmic ecstasy with a newer and more musical lilt than -obtains in <span class='it'>The Song My Paddle Sings</span> (1892); or to paint -with more suggestive impressionism a nature picture full -of color, half-lights, or mystery, or more finely to etch a -verbal portrait than she has done in <span class='it'>Erie Waters</span>, <span class='it'>Marshlands</span>, -<span class='it'>Shadow River</span>, and <span class='it'>Joe</span>; or to catch and envisage -a mood or emotional nuance with subtler spirituality than -she accomplished in <span class='it'>The Camper</span>, <span class='it'>Lady Lorgnette</span>, <span class='it'>Lullaby -of the Iroquois</span>, <span class='it'>Prairie Greyhounds</span>, <span class='it'>Lady Icicle</span>, and <span class='it'>The -Prodigal</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All these poems, whose titles have just been quoted, were -composed in the decade from 1892 to 1902, and belong to -Pauline Johnson’s first two volumes which together contained -sixty-seven poems of indubitable lyric and imaginative -quality. Of the poems composed by Pauline Johnson -in the decade from 1902 to 1912, only twenty-three -were deemed by the poet worthy to stand beside her poems -from <span class='it'>The White Wampum</span> and in <span class='it'>Canadian Born</span> which, -with the later twenty-three, form the contents of the -original edition of <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>. Five posthumously -published poems were added to the later editions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If, then, in <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span> we discover no advance -in the technique of Pauline Johnson’s art, wherein did her -new experiences gained by travel, by meeting men and -women of foreign lands and by learning the ways of the -world, work changes worth while? Solely in the poet’s -heart and imagination. Here was a development, not in -<span class='pageno' title='202' id='Page_202'></span> -craftsmanship and art, but in spiritual vision. It was, too, -an evolution simple and natural in its stages, and is readily -traceable in the poems contained in <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>. Mr. -Melvin O. Hammond, an observant and judicious Canadian -critic, in a review of <span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span> (<span class='it'>The Globe</span>, -Toronto, Nov. 9th, 1912), was the first to disclose these -stages of Pauline Johnson’s development in spiritual vision. -They are four:—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>First, Pauline Johnson appeared as the ‘voice’ of the -Indian people, who before her coming had been dumb or -inarticulate. Her point of view was, at this stage, Indian, -and she passionately protested against the abuses the Indians -of Canada have suffered (as in <span class='it'>The Cattle Thief</span> and -<span class='it'>A Cry from An Indian Wife</span>) or, as passionately, sang -of Indian valor and love (as in her <span class='it'>Ojistoh</span>).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Next, her point of view became Canadian. She turned -from lamenting the free and glorious past of her Indian -ancestors to paint in verse the land of her birth, ‘Canadian -life and scenery in the broad outdoors of the North and -West,’ not merely impressionistically picturing woods, skies, -plains, but also apostrophizing and humanizing both -natural creatures and objects, as if they were conscious of -their estate, function, and value to man, and had moods of -their own, as, for example, <span class='it'>The Sleeping Giant</span> (Thunder -Bay), and the dainty, fetching lyric <span class='it'>The Homing Bee</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The third stage in Miss Johnson’s development in vision -was also Canadian. But, in this stage, her point of view -became broadened in scope. She turned to remark the -progress of the Canadian national spirit and the civilization -which binds the Dominion from ocean to ocean. This she -accomplished with extraordinary virility in rhythm, with apt -descriptive epithet, and with pictorial suggestiveness in her -<span class='it'>Prairie Greyhounds</span>—a song represented as sung by the -trans-continental trains in their passage from East to West, -and West to East. The poem gives the reader vivid ideated -<span class='pageno' title='203' id='Page_203'></span> -sensations of the swish and roar and onward rush of the -trains, the sweep of the vast territory of the Dominion, -and the vision of the Greater Canada that is to be.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The final stage in Pauline Johnson’s increase in scope -of spiritual vision was marked by cosmopolitanism, pure -humanity, and by mysticism. She had lost the Indian and -the Canadian points of view when she composed <span class='it'>Give -us Barrabas</span> (commemorative of the exile of Dreyfus). -She was wholly a human being and sexless when she composed -her subtly sympathetic <span class='it'>The City and the Sea</span>, and -<span class='it'>Fasting</span>. She was genuinely mystical when she composed -her <span class='it'>Penseroso</span> wherein she sang persuasively:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Soulless is all humanity to me</p> -<p class='line0'>To-night. My keenest longing is to be</p> -<p class='line0'>Alone, alone with God’s grey earth that seems</p> -<p class='line0'>Pulse of my pulse and consort of my dreams.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>To authenticate the claim that Pauline Johnson’s genius, -art, and poetry are highly original and sometimes unique, -it is only necessary to cite such of her poems as represent -the stages of her development and the special qualities of -her poetic vision and artistry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beginning with the first stage, we must observe that her -passionate protesting against the abuses which the Indians -of Canada had suffered as, for instance, in her poems <span class='it'>The -Cattle Thief</span>, and <span class='it'>A Cry from an Indian Wife</span>, is no proof -that the fierce intensity of her utterance is a recrudescence -of ancestral Indian fire of spirit or ferocity in herself. The -poems in which this so-called Indian emotional intensity -was expressed by her did, no doubt, spring out of imaginative -sympathy with her father’s race, but these poems -could have been written with the same show of emotional -intensity by any other poet who realized with equal imaginative -sympathy the wrongs that the Indians of Canada -had suffered and who had the gift of fiery expression.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson is fundamentally Indian when she -<span class='pageno' title='204' id='Page_204'></span> -is most pagan; that is, when, first, she realizes and expresses -poignantly her racial sense of haunting presences in the -natural world, and when, secondly, she expresses a melancholy -regret for the passing of her Indian race and a yearning -for free and pagan communion with the moods of -Nature, with the wild creatures of Nature, and with the -spiritual presences, which, to the imagination of the aboriginal -Indian, haunted the woods, the streams, the mists, -the clouds, and the sunsets before the hated British race -destroyed the Indian’s ancestral habitat and robbed him -both of his material and spiritual birthright. Moreover, in -the two or three poems in which she protested against the -wrongs which the Indians of Canada had suffered, Pauline -Johnson was really, if unconsciously, <span class='it'>affecting</span> to be the -‘voice’ of her Indian race. For she soon turned from such -affected poetic frenzy to expressing her admiration of the -British and her love of Canada as a free commonwealth -under British allegiance and protection, and to revealing in -colorful and musical verse the spirit and beauties of the -land of her birth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson, then, is essentially Indian, not when -frenzied, but only when she expresses in verse the inner -secrets of the joy and the pathos of her imaginative communion -with past and contemporary Nature in Canada,—when -she sings, with free and infectious lilt, outdoor life -in Canada or impressionistically paints Canadian woods, -skies, plains, snow, waters, or apostrophizes and humanizes -the creatures and objects of nature as if they had a psychology -of their own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All the world knows Pauline Johnson’s lilting and infectious -lyric of Canadian outdoor life, <span class='it'>The Song My -Paddle Sings</span>. It is unsurpassed for suggested or ideated -sensations of wind and stream, of the spirit of motion, of -free life in the open, and wins one both by its vivid pictures -of outdoor life and by its simple but musical <span class='it'>abandon</span>. After -<span class='pageno' title='205' id='Page_205'></span> -a two-stanza apostrophe to the West wind, closing with</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Now fold in slumber your laggard wings</p> -<p class='line0'>For soft is the song my paddle sings—</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>we hear the poet lilting the inspiriting song itself, opening</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>August is laughing across the sky,</p> -<p class='line0'>Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,</p> -<p class='line0'>Drift, drift,</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the hills uplift</p> -<p class='line0'>On either side of the current swift.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Specially to be noted in this poem is the descriptive and -musical realism which the poet effects by a sort of refrain -in the third line of each stanza, a monosyllabic accent which -precisely conveys to the sensibility the actual sensations experienced -in canoeing through slow-moving and rushing -or weltering waters—‘drift, drift,’ ‘dip, dip,’ ‘swirl, swirl,’ -‘dash, dash,’ ‘reel, reel,’ ‘sway, sway,’ ‘swings, swings.’ This -is supreme in descriptive and imitative naturalism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For examples of Pauline Johnson’s poetic power to -humanize objects and creatures in Nature <span class='it'>The Sleeping -Giant</span> and <span class='it'>The Homing Bee</span> may be cited. The latter is -also notably suffused with delicate color, moves with -a light, tripping music, and is dainty in structure, thus -exemplifying several of the other qualities of her art. The -opening lines indicate the ‘key’ in music and color:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>You are belted with gold, little brother of mine,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Yellow gold, like the sun</p> -<p class='line0'>That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine</p> -<p class='line0'>    When feasting is done.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In the Canadian idyll, Pauline Johnson displayed a -delicate sense of color values, and sang as well of airy things -<span class='pageno' title='206' id='Page_206'></span> -in Nature with an airy music, sometimes touched with a -reflective melancholy, as, for instance, in <span class='it'>Shadow River</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The tones of melancholy, of sadness, observed sometimes -in Pauline Johnson’s poetry were not all born of a -mystical yearning for union with Nature. Sometimes they -were the expression of a poignant sense of the defeat of -romantic love. Hers was a simple, warm or passionate, -confiding, sensitive, but strong nature; and sensitive and -passionate but strong natures, if they belong to poets, tend -to express poignantly, rather than bitterly, any spiritual -cataclysm in their lives, and, for solace or support, to turn -to Nature or to religion. It was so with Pauline Johnson.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Charles Mair, author of <span class='it'>Dreamland and Other Poems</span>, -and <span class='it'>Tecumseh: A Drama</span>, is the authority for the belief -that Pauline Johnson went through an experience of romantic -love which, in its joy, gave wings of ecstasy and -a warm emotional coloring to her nature-poetry, but which, -when her love suffered a defeat that meant a spiritual -cataclysm for her, drew from her the most poignant expression -of yearning for union with Immortal Love. The -important truth is that whichever emotion she expresses, -she remains unequalled as a lyrist of the ecstasy and the -pathos of romantic love. But her poems of the ecstasy of -love are never merely the expression of subjective emotions. -They also have an idyllic or nature setting which so colors -her nature-poetry itself with the passion of love as to distinguish -it, both as nature-poetry and as love poetry, from -anything else of the kind in Canadian Literature. The -ecstasy is somewhat subdued in <span class='it'>Idlers</span>; but is passionate and -transporting, warmly colored with the light and tints of -Nature, and set to verbal music in perfect harmony with -the emotion and the nature-setting in <span class='it'>Wave-won</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The fact of the defeat of love, in Pauline Johnson’s -case, may be observed in her <span class='it'>Overlooked</span>, a poem which -<span class='pageno' title='207' id='Page_207'></span> -is notable for the invention on her part of a metaphor that, -for originality and beauty, is worthy of the Greek idyllists -or of Catullus, namely:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O Love, thou wanderer from Paradise.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>At length Pauline Johnson’s merely human passion of -yearning for union with the mortal companion is transmuted -into a spiritualized yearning—which, however, has -not in it the sad wistfulness of the poetry of Marjorie Pickthall—for -union with Immortal Love. Defeat of romantic -love in Pauline Johnson’s case passed, first, into renouncement, -and, at last, into resignation and the total giving of -self to Immortal Love, as in <span class='it'>Brier</span>—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Because, dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm</p> -<p class='line0'>  Bends back the brier that edges life’s long way,</p> -<p class='line0'>That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm,</p> -<p class='line0'>  I do not feel the thorn so much to-day.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Because I never knew your care to tire,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Your hand to weary guiding me aright,</p> -<p class='line0'>Because you walk before and crush the brier,</p> -<p class='line0'>  It does not pierce my feet so much to-night.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Because so often you have hearkened to</p> -<p class='line0'>  My selfish prayers, I ask but one thing now,</p> -<p class='line0'>That these harsh hands of mine add not unto</p> -<p class='line0'>  The crown of thorns upon your bleeding brow.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson possessed extraordinary, if not quite -unique, gifts as a story-telling balladist. Examples of her -art in this species are her compelling story of Indian love -and revenge, <span class='it'>Ojistoh</span>, her melodramatic Indian tale, <span class='it'>The -Cattle Thief</span>, and her <span class='it'>Wolverine</span>, a poem of Western -<span class='it'>chevalerie</span>, in which species, however, she does not rank with -Isabella Valancy Crawford.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her poetry of the development of the Canadian national -spirit and civilization, by which she marks a broadening in -her own spiritual vision, is notably exemplified in two -poems, <span class='it'>The Riders of the Plains</span> and <span class='it'>Prairie Greyhounds</span>. -<span class='pageno' title='208' id='Page_208'></span> -In the former, however, she is more British than Canadian. -But she is Canadian in her <span class='it'>Prairie Greyhounds</span>. In this -poem she achieves an extraordinary virility of rhythm, -employs apt and dramatic epithets and fills the picture with -a vivid suggestiveness of the vastness of Canada and the -vision of the greater autonomous and powerful Dominion -that is to be. <span class='it'>Prairie Greyhounds</span>, moreover, is a supreme -achievement in suggested or ideated sensations of motion. -The reader feels himself as if actually aboard the west-bound -and east-bound Canadian Pacific trains, experiencing, -as does a living passenger on a ‘fast express,’ the -swish, and roar, and onward rush of the trains.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a verbal musician Pauline Johnson must be given -a very high place amongst Canadian poets. There is an -avian <span class='it'>abandon</span> and ecstasy, an avian lilt and warbling, in -<span class='it'>The Birds’ Lullaby</span> and in <span class='it'>The Songster</span>. There are flowing -rhythm and haunting melody of rhyme, vowel-harmony, -alliteration and cadences in <span class='it'>The Trail to Lillooet</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Song of fall, and song of forest, come you here on haunting quest,</p> -<p class='line0'>Calling through the seas and silence, from God’s country of the west.</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the mountain pass is narrow, and the torrent white and strong,</p> -<p class='line0'>Down its rocky-throated canon, sings its golden-throated song.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>You are singing there together through the God-begotten nights,</p> -<p class='line0'>And the leaning stars are listening above the distant heights</p> -<p class='line0'>That lift like points of opal in the crescent coronet</p> -<p class='line0'>About whose golden setting sweeps the trail to Lillooet.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Pauline Johnson has also achieved what may be noted -in literary history as the first strictly Canadian ‘cradle-song’—Canadian -in music and in setting—her <span class='it'>Lullaby of -the Iroquois</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a nature-colorist and etcher Pauline Johnson again -must be given a very high place. For a <span class='it'>genre</span> etching of -the human figure against a background of nature her <span class='it'>Joe</span>, -which she herself sub-titles ‘An Etching,’ is as vividly presented -and as fetching as a <span class='it'>genre</span> drawing by Murillo. Her -<span class='it'>Lady Lorgnette</span> is as daintily graphic and colorful and -piquant and romantic as anything done by the brush of -<span class='pageno' title='209' id='Page_209'></span> -Romney or Gainsborough or by the later modern ‘society’ -miniaturists. She had the pictorial artist’s eye to spy out -a picture in Nature, as in <span class='it'>At Husking Time</span>. She had the -impressionist’s mastery of sensuous pigmentation, as in -<span class='it'>Under Canvas</span>. She could make a picture low-keyed, full -of shadows and suggested sensations and mystery, as in -<span class='it'>Nocturne</span> and in <span class='it'>Moonset</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally: Pauline Johnson is certainly not surpassed, -if equalled, by any other Canadian lyrist as an inventor of -beautiful color epithets and of picturesque, vivid, and compelling -metaphors. They are to be found everywhere in -her poetry. Consider these as examples—‘Russet needles -as censers swing to an altar,’ ‘The sea-weeds cling with -flesh-like fingers,’ ‘Beaten gold that clung like coils of -kisses love inlaid,’ ‘The brownish hills with needles green -and gold,’ ‘O Love, thou wanderer from Paradise,’ ‘Swept -beneath a shore of shade, beneath a velvet moon,’ ‘Like -net work threads of fire,’ and this,</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Purple her eyes as the mists that dream</p> -<p class='line0'>At the edge of some laggard, sun-drowned stream</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and many more as novel, colorful, musical, veracious and -compelling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a woman Pauline Johnson was a rare and beautiful -spirit. As a poet she was of all Canadian poets the most -pervasively true to her Canadian origin and habitat. She -is not to be given always the status of Lampman and Carman -and Duncan Campbell Scott, yet to her unquestionably -belongs a place beside these Canadian singers. Her poetry -had a magic of music and a color of leafy lawns and lovely -grey-eyed and tawny dusks and clear ecstatic morns, which -were all her own. She was indeed a ‘Mohawk Warbler,’ -and her songs are</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Free and artless as the avian lays</p> -<p class='line0'>Heard in Canadian woods on April days.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk111'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations in this chapter from Pauline Johnson’s poems are from <span class='it'>Flint -and Feather</span>, by E. Pauline Johnson, (Musson Book Co., Limited: Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='210' id='Page_210'></span><h1>CHAPTER XIII</h1></div> - -<h3>Parker <span class='it'>and</span> Scott (F. G.)</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>PARKER AS A SONNETEER OF SPIRITUAL LOVE—ORIGIN AND -THEME OF A LOVER’S DIARY—MUSICAL AND COLORFUL -LYRICAL VERSE—SCOTT’S POETRY A REFLECTION OF HIS -PERSONALITY—DISTINGUISHED AS THE ‘POET OF THE SPIRIT’—CHIEF -QUALITIES OF HIS POETRY.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>t</span> was as a poet, not as a creator of historical romances, -that Sir Gilbert Parker first appeared as a man of letters -and first appealed to the literary public. As a poet he was -appreciated in Australia and in England, but not in Canada. -That as a poet he has been unknown and unappreciated -in his homeland, Canada, is due to the fact that he was -expatriate when he published his two volumes of poems, -the second of which was ‘privately printed,’ and that his -greater reputation as a novelist, particularly of old romantic -Canada, made him known in the Dominion exclusively -as a writer of fiction. Sir Gilbert Parker, however, -ranks high as a sonneteer of spiritual love, and as -lyrist in <span class='it'>genre</span> verse which has attained special reputation, -particularly as texts of songs for <span class='it'>salon</span> and recital repertory.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sir Gilbert Parker was born in Ontario, in 1862. Never -robust, he left Canada in 1886 to seek recovery of health -in the warmer and more salubrious climate of Australia. -While in Australia he began publishing sonnets and lyrics -in magazines. The sonnets were collected and published -in a volume entitled <span class='it'>A Lover’s Diary</span>; first edition, 1894; -second edition, 1898. Before the publication of <span class='it'>A Lover’s -Diary</span> Parker had removed to London. While in England -he privately printed a volume of lyrics entitled <span class='it'>Embers</span>. -<span class='pageno' title='211' id='Page_211'></span> -These two volumes, the first revised, and enlarged with -twenty-five sonnets, and the second, with the addition of -other lyrics, were collected and published as Volume 17 of -<span class='it'>The Works of Gilbert Parker</span> (1913). The volume containing -his collected poems is distinguished by a critical -Introduction by Sir Gilbert Parker himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the Introduction Parker explains the origin and -theme of <span class='it'>A Lover’s Diary</span>. It is a sonnet-sequence, the -composition of which was begun when the poet was twenty-three -and still resident in Canada. The sequence is a -‘hopeless love, in form of temptation, but lifted away from -ruinous elements by self-renunciation, to end with the inevitable -parting, poignant and permanent, a task of the -soul finished and the toil of the journey of understanding -paid.’ He adds: ‘The six sonnets . . . beginning with <span class='it'>The -Bride</span>, and ending with <span class='it'>Annunciation</span>, have nothing to do -with the story further than to show two phases of the -youth’s mind before it was shaken by speculation, plunged -into sadness of doubt and apprehension, and before it had -found the love which was to reveal it to itself, transform -the character, and give a new impulse and direction to -personal forces and individual sense.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a poet of romantic love Parker is concerned with -the spiritual <span class='it'>meaning</span> of it. <span class='it'>A Lover’s Diary</span> is not concerned -with the mere emotions of romantic love but with -its spiritual thrall, and with it as a process of spiritual redemption -and exaltation. As an interpreter of spiritual -love, Parker contrasts with Robert Norwood whose sequence, -<span class='it'>His Lady of the Sonnets</span> (1915), though having -a spiritualizing intent, is highly sensuous and impressionistic -in diction and imagery. Parker breathes a less earthly air. -His sonnet-sequence is addressed more to the imaginative -reason than to the aesthetic imagination. It is much more -mystically conceived and much more chastely lovely with -the ‘white beauty’ of the spirit than is Norwood’s sequence. -<span class='pageno' title='212' id='Page_212'></span> -Both sequences, however, are authentic and noble poetic -creations.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In pure beauty of conception, imagery, and artistry, -and in the spiritual exaltation of love, the following sonnet -from Parker’s <span class='it'>A Lover’s Diary</span>, is characteristic of the -whole sequence:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>It is enough that in this burdened time</p> -<p class='line0'>The soul sees all its purposes aright.</p> -<p class='line0'>The rest—what does it matter? Soon the night</p> -<p class='line0'>Will come to whelm us, then the morning chime.</p> -<p class='line0'>What does it matter, if but in the way</p> -<p class='line0'>One hand clasps ours, one heart believes us true;</p> -<p class='line0'>One understands the work we try to do,</p> -<p class='line0'>And strives through Love to teach us what to say?</p> -<p class='line0'>Between me and the chilly outer air</p> -<p class='line0'>Which blows in from the world, there standeth one</p> -<p class='line0'>Who draws Love’s curtains closely everywhere,</p> -<p class='line0'>As God folds down the banners of the sun.</p> -<p class='line0'>    Warm is my place about me, and above,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Where was the raven, I behold the dove.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Parker’s lyrical verse, like his sonnet-sequence, is the -poetry of a young man who still possesses the enthusiasms -of youth for all the lovelier and happier things in existence, -and who rejoices in living. From the text of Parker’s -lyrics it is plain that he had the gifts of a lyrist in the -original Greek meaning, of one who wrote poems to be -<span class='it'>sung</span> to the accompaniment of the lyre. He was gifted -to turn a sentiment either seriously or playfully with simplicity -and directness of diction and with winning musical -lilt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In truth, if he had turned to song composition, he was -more ideally equipped to write the texts of poems for songs -than was the greatest of American song composers, the -late Edward MacDowell, who, for lack of singable lyrical -texts, was compelled to compose his own poems as well -as their musical settings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There is a spontaneity of lyrical lilt, lyrical verve, in -Parker’s lighter poems, which he composed both in literary -<span class='pageno' title='213' id='Page_213'></span> -English and in ‘Irishy.’ As an example of the musical and -colorful qualities of his lyrics in literary English, the following -poem from <span class='it'>Embers</span> will aptly serve:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still—</p> -<p class='line0'>  There was winter in my world and in my heart;</p> -<p class='line0'>A breath came from the mesa, and a message stirred my will,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And my soul and I arose up to depart.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I heard the desert calling, and I knew that over there</p> -<p class='line0'>  In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows,</p> -<p class='line0'>Was a woman of the sunrise with the star-shine in her hair</p> -<p class='line0'>  And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still—</p> -<p class='line0'>  There is summer in my world, and in my heart;</p> -<p class='line0'>A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will</p> -<p class='line0'>  Blinds my footsteps as I rise up to depart.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>As an example of his musical quality and humor in -‘Irishy,’ the following lyric from <span class='it'>Embers</span> is apt and fetching:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>It was as fine a churchful as you ever clapt an eye on;</p> -<p class='line0'>  Oh, the bells was ringin’ gaily, and the sun was shinin’ free;</p> -<p class='line0'>There was singers, there was clargy—‘Bless ye both,’ says Father Tryon—</p> -<p class='line0'>  They was weddin’ Mary Callaghan and me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>There was gatherin’ of women, there was hush upon the stairway,</p> -<p class='line0'>  There was whisperin’ and smilin’, but it was no place for me;</p> -<p class='line0'>A little ship was comin’ into harbour through the fair-way—</p> -<p class='line0'>  It belongs to Mary Callaghan and me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Shure, the longest day has endin’, and the wildest storm has fallin’—</p> -<p class='line0'>  There’s a young gossoon in yander, and he sits upon my knee;</p> -<p class='line0'>There’s a churchful for the christenin’—do you hear the imp a-callin’?</p> -<p class='line0'>  He’s the pride of Mary Callaghan and me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>As a composer of song texts, Parker is rivalled only by -his Canadian compatriot, Arthur Stringer, whose poems in -‘Irishy’ have been most winningly and humorously set to -music by their compatriot, Gena Branscombe (Mrs. J. F. -Tenney). It is indeed as a poet, whose lyrics are inevitable -<span class='pageno' title='214' id='Page_214'></span> -texts for songs which have literary charm and simple -humanity that Sir Gilbert Parker has been most admired -and appreciated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For this view we have the authority of Sir Gilbert himself. -In the Introduction to the volume of his poetry in -his Collected Works, he says: ‘<span class='it'>Mary Callaghan and Me</span> has -been set to music by Mr. Max Muller, and has made many -friends, and <span class='it'>The Crowning</span> was the Coronation ode of <span class='it'>The -People</span>, which gave a prize, too ample I think, for the best -musical setting of the lines. Many of the other pieces in -<span class='it'>Embers</span> have been set to music by distinguished composers, -like Sir Edward Elgar, who has made a song-cycle of -several, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Mr. Arthur Foote, Mrs. -Amy Woodforde Finden, Robert Somerville, and others. -The first to have musical setting was <span class='it'>You’ll Travel Far and -Wide</span>, to which in 1895 Mr. Arthur Foote gave fame as -<span class='it'>An Irish Folk Song</span>. Like <span class='it'>O Flower of All the World</span>, -by Mrs. Amy Woolforde Finden, it has had a world of -admirers, and such singers as Mrs. Henschel helped to -make Mr. Foote’s music loved by thousands, and conferred -something more than an ephemeral acceptance of the -author’s words.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Both, then, as a poet of mystical vision and sublimated -emotion, and of human sentiment and instincts which add -to the humanity and gaiety of life, Sir Gilbert Parker appears -as a poet who has authentic creative gifts and who -is a master craftsman in the ‘art’ of verse. In novelty and -variety his sonnets and lyrics have significantly enhanced -the quality of Canadian poetry, and have in their own degree -and way given the work of the poets of the Systematic -School and Period the character of a genuine ‘renaissance.’</p> - -<hr class='tbk112'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Another poet who rightfully belongs to the Systematic -School and Period of Canadian Literature is Frederick -George Scott. In 1888, or in the year following the publication -of Roberts’ <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> (1887), Canon Scott -<span class='pageno' title='215' id='Page_215'></span> -published his first book of verse, <span class='it'>The Soul’s Quest and -Other Poems</span>. This volume was succeeded by five other -volumes of verse, up to 1907, in which year he published -<span class='it'>The Key of Life: A Mystery Play</span>. In 1910 appeared his -<span class='it'>Collected Poems</span>. During the World War he published a -booklet of war verse, <span class='it'>In the Battle Silences</span> (1916).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The forms and qualities of Canon Scott’s poetry were -determined by his own moral personality and by his conception -of the ‘end’ of poetry. It is a fact that in no other -verse written by a Canadian is there such an absolute -identification of the man and the poet as in the poetry of -Canon Scott. The poetry reflects the whole personality of -the man. In the world, Canon Scott is a distinguished -example of the ‘Christian gentleman’—‘a man of liberal -culture and wide sympathies whose life has thrilled with -the larger life, political, social, and religious, a man of -strong courage born of reverent unquestioning faith.’ To -Canon Scott, therefore, the aim of poetry is not ‘art for -art’s sake,’ but the inspiration and consolation of the people -in their hour of doubt or darkness. His conception of the -‘end’ determined the forms and manner of Canon Scott’s -poetry. For if, like the ancient Hebraic poets, he was to -inspire and console his people, he must present his thoughts -in simple forms and in diction and imagery readily understood -by the people.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Canon Scott stands out from the rest of the members of -the Systematic School and Period as <span class='it'>par excellence</span> the -Poet of the Spirit; and his verse is distinguished from the -bulk of the verse of his colleagues in the Systematic School -as the Poetry of Faith and Consolation. There is nothing -original and distinctive in his forms: they are traditional -and simple. There is nothing original and distinctive -in his message: it, too, is traditional and simple—a -message of faith and courage and of joy in existence. -His distinction is in his ‘art,’ his power to convey -<span class='pageno' title='216' id='Page_216'></span> -beautifully, sweetly—and above all, convincingly—to -the human soul noble or profound thoughts for its sustenance, -refreshment, and consolation. But while the -ethical and spiritual ‘notes’—which must be distinguished -from didacticism—are supreme in his poetry, Canon Scott -is also solicitous about the craftsmanship in his verse. -Though his verse forms are thoroughly socialized and -though he never aims to be a ‘word virtuoso,’ nevertheless -he is always the ‘artist’ in verse technique.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The chief qualities of Canon Scott’s poetry are piquant -phantasy rather than imagination, ingenious imagery, sympathy -with his kind, tenderness, wistfulness, simple or profound -thought expressed in simple diction and in simple -but dulcet verbal melody. Also in his verse is a two-fold -<span class='it'>Canadianism</span>. The self-reliant faith and courage in it is -Canadian, and the color and the naturalistic imagery are -derived from the woods, and fields, and streams, and hills -of his Canadian homeland, more particularly from Nature -in the Laurentian district. Indeed, Canon Scott has been -given the sobriquet of ‘the Poet of the Laurentians.’ But -while he impregnates and suffuses his verse with color and -naturalistic imagery from Nature in the Laurentians, he -always transmutes his naturalistic perceptions into spiritual -imagery and import. He does not do this with bald and -stark didacticism, but with exquisite artistry, and yet with -an intimacy, apt felicity, and naturalness that make it all -an achievement in winning a reader to see the beauty and -dignity of the familiar and commonplace in Nature. Canon -Scott’s poetry, in a phrase, is the acme of <span class='it'>spiritual realism</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of his diction, rhythm, and melody, and his Canadian -imagery in verse, Scott’s <span class='it'>Dawn</span> furnishes a short and impressive -example:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The immortal spirit hath no bars</p> -<p class='line0'>  To circumscribe its dwelling-place;</p> -<p class='line0'>My soul hath pastured with the stars</p> -<p class='line0'>  Upon the meadow-lands of space.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='217' id='Page_217'></span></p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>My mind and ear at times have caught</p> -<p class='line0'>  From realms beyond our mortal reach,</p> -<p class='line0'>The utterance of Eternal Thought</p> -<p class='line0'>  Of which all nature is the speech.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And high above the seas and lands,</p> -<p class='line0'>  On peaks just tipped with morning light,</p> -<p class='line0'>My dauntless spirit mutely stands</p> -<p class='line0'>  With eagle wings outspread for flight.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>How lowly, and yet how beautiful and compelling, are -these figures in the first stanza of that poem—‘pastured with -the stars,’ ‘meadow-lands of space.’ But both are derived -from Canon Scott’s boyhood days in his homeland. They -are Canadian.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There is a Wordsworthian humanity in his poem <span class='it'>The -Cripple</span>, a sympathy with his kind and a tender wistfulness -in his <span class='it'>Van Elsen</span>. There is nobility of thought in his -<span class='it'>Samson</span>, and in <span class='it'>Thor</span>, and a grandeur of vision in his -<span class='it'>Hymn of Empire</span>, which is a Canadian imperial and -patriotic poem in a kind by itself. But in one poem—a -sonnet—Canon Scott has achieved what is perhaps the most -ingenious imagery in Canadian poetry, and one of the -most extraordinary in English literature. This is his sonnet -<span class='it'>Time</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I saw Time in his workshop carving faces;</p> -<p class='line0'>Scattered around his tools lay, blunting griefs,</p> -<p class='line0'>Sharp cares that cut out deeply in reliefs</p> -<p class='line0'>Of light and shade; sorrows that smooth the traces</p> -<p class='line0'>Of what were smiles. Not yet without fresh graces</p> -<p class='line0'>His handiwork, for oftimes rough were ground</p> -<p class='line0'>And polished, oft the pinched made smooth and round;</p> -<p class='line0'>The calm look, too, the impetuous fire replaces.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Long time I looked and watched; with hideous grin</p> -<p class='line0'>He took each heedless face between his knees,</p> -<p class='line0'>And graved and scarred and bleached with boiling tears.</p> -<p class='line0'>I wondering turned to go, when lo, my skin</p> -<p class='line0'>Feels crumpled, and in glass my own face sees</p> -<p class='line0'>Itself all changed, scarred, careworn, white with years!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='218' id='Page_218'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far as derivative influences may in general be observed -in the poets of the Systematic School and Period -of Canadian Literature, Roberts, Lampman, and Carman -are Hellenistic and impressionistic in feeling and thought. -They were devoted to creating poetry that would delight -the aesthetic senses and sensibilities. But Frederick George -Scott is Hebraic in feeling and thought. He created -poetry to satisfy the heart and the religious imagination, -and to sustain and console the human spirit in its sojourn -on earth. He achieved these ends simply yet beautifully. -His poetry is pervaded with the most elemental and enduring -‘heart’ qualities. They give it such a direct and compelling -human appeal as to win a significant and distinctive -place for it in the authentic native and national poetry of -Canada.</p> - -<hr class='tbk113'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>The quotations in this chapter are from <span class='it'>A Lover’s Diary</span> and <span class='it'>Embers</span>, by -Sir Gilbert Parker, (Copp, Clark Co., Limited: Toronto); and from <span class='it'>Poems</span>, by -Frederick George Scott, (Constable & Co.: London).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='219' id='Page_219'></span><h1>CHAPTER XIV</h1></div> - -<h3>Minor Poets</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE TERM ‘MINOR’ DEFINED—ETHELWYN WETHERALD—JEAN -BLEWETT—FRANCIS SHERMAN—A. E. S. SMYTHE—S. -FRANCES HARRISON—ARTHUR STRINGER—PETER -MCARTHUR—ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>t</span> is proper to distinguish Roberts, Lampman, Carman, -Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, Frederick George -Scott, and Pauline Johnson as the ‘major’ poets of the First -Renaissance in Canadian Literature. Though of necessity -with them the writing of verse was in a sense an avocation, -in another sense it was a vocation. They were systematic -both in the writing and the quantitative publishing of it. -Contemporary with them, but, for the most part, later in -production and publishing, were other poets who wrote -with beauty and distinction in poetic style. They followed -the aesthetic and artistic ideals of the ‘major’ poets, but -they were not as systematic as Roberts and his <span class='it'>confrères</span> -in writing or in quantitative publishing. These are denoted -in this work the ‘minor’ poets of the Systematic School -or Period. But nothing invidious as to quality of verse -is intended by the distinction. For a few of these so-called -‘minor’ poets of the Systematic Period wrote some poetry -as fine in aesthetic substance and artistic finish as the poetry -of Roberts and his colleagues. The term ‘minor’ is meant -to distinguish these poets as being, first, <span class='it'>later</span>, for the most -part, than Roberts and his <span class='it'>confrères</span>, and as being, secondly, -<span class='it'>less eminent</span> than the early systematic group of Canadian -poets. The number of these so-called minor or later poets -<span class='pageno' title='220' id='Page_220'></span> -is legion. They ‘flourished’ from 1887 to 1907, or from -the publication of Roberts’ <span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span> to the appearance -of Robert Service’s <span class='it'>Songs of a Sourdough</span> (the beginning -of the Decadent Interim). Detailed appreciation -of the minor poets of the Systematic Period would, therefore, -require a volume by itself. Here we may only recall -the salient names, and specially remark the verse, of some -of the minor poets whose lyrical poetry is particularly -representative or noteworthy, or has become genuinely -popular.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Worthy of a place beside the major poets of the Systematic -Period is Ethelwyn Wetherald. In 1895 she published -<span class='it'>The House of the Trees and Other Poems</span>; in 1902, <span class='it'>Tangled -in the Stars</span>; in 1904, <span class='it'>The Radiant Road</span> and in 1907, -an edition of her collected poems, <span class='it'>The Last Robin</span>; <span class='it'>Lyrics -and Sonnets</span>. Perhaps the outstanding aesthetic quality -of her poetry is a tender, subdued, melancholy, spiritual -grace, ‘a grey-eyed loveliness,’ which undoubtedly derives -from the characteristic pensiveness of her Quaker ancestry. -But in all her verse, which is authentic poetry, she discloses -pretty sentiment, reflective beauty, ingenious imagery, and -fine craftsmanship. <span class='it'>The Hay Field</span>, which is Canadian in -inspiration, setting, and color is an apt example of Ethelwyn -Wetherald’s art:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>With slender arms outstretching in the sun</p> -<p class='line0'>  The grass lies dead;</p> -<p class='line0'>The wind walks tenderly and stirs not one</p> -<p class='line0'>  Frail, fallen head.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Of baby creepings through the April day</p> -<p class='line0'>  Where streamlets wend,</p> -<p class='line0'>Of child-like dancing on the breeze of May,</p> -<p class='line0'>  This is the end.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>No more these tiny forms are bathed in dew,</p> -<p class='line0'>  No more they reach</p> -<p class='line0'>To hold with leaves that shade them from the blue</p> -<p class='line0'>  A whispered speech.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='221' id='Page_221'></span></p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>No more they part their arms and wreathe them close</p> -<p class='line0'>  Again, to shield</p> -<p class='line0'>Some love-full little nest—a dainty house</p> -<p class='line0'>  Hid in a field.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>For them no more the splendour of the storm,</p> -<p class='line0'>  The fair delights</p> -<p class='line0'>Of moon and star-shine, glimmering faint and warm</p> -<p class='line0'>  On summer nights.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Their little lives they yield in summer death,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And frequently</p> -<p class='line0'>Across the field bereaved their dying breath</p> -<p class='line0'>  Is brought to me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>A poet who has won a distinct and fixed place in the -popular heart and imagination of Canadians is Jean Blewett. -Her first volume, <span class='it'>Heart Songs</span>, appeared in 1897 and immediately -won a wide popularity. This was increased by -her next volume, <span class='it'>The Cornflower and Other Poems</span> -(1906). Her Collected Poems were published in 1922. Jean -Blewett is essentially a ‘woman’s poet.’ By this is meant -that she appeals to the domestic heart and the imagination, -that she sings of the joys of home, the ways of children, -the love of husband and wife. But Jean Blewett does this -in an extraordinary way. She treats homely subjects indeed, -but while she treats them in a homely or rather home-like -way she does it with a simple and ingratiating sincerity -and charm of sentiment and artistry which are quite her -own and in the employment of which she is alone in Canada. -If her poems deal with homely subjects, her artistry is by -no means bourgeois. She rises and falls with the inherent -dignity of her subject. But her human treatment of a -homely subject never issues in vulgarity, or vivid ‘vaudeville’ -verse. As an example of her genuine artistry and -dignity of treatment in a high or serious subject we quote -her <span class='it'>Quebec</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Quebec, the gray old city on the hill,</p> -<p class='line0'>Lives with a golden glory on her head,</p> -<p class='line0'>Dreaming throughout this hour so fair, so still,</p> -<p class='line0'>Of those days and her beloved dead.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='222' id='Page_222'></span></p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The doves are nesting in the cannons grim,</p> -<p class='line0'>The flowers bloom where once did run a tide</p> -<p class='line0'>Of crimson when the moon rose pale and dim</p> -<p class='line0'>Above a field of battle stretching wide.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Methinks within her wakes a mighty glow</p> -<p class='line0'>Of pride in ancient times, her stirring past,</p> -<p class='line0'>The strife, the valour of the long ago</p> -<p class='line0'>Feels at her heart-strings. Strong and tall, and vast</p> -<p class='line0'>She lies, touched with the sunset’s golden grace,</p> -<p class='line0'>A wondrous softness on her gray old face.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>When her subject gives her a chance for sweep of -imagination and for a pearly beauty of imagery, Jean -Blewett rises brilliantly to her theme, as in <span class='it'>What Time the -Morning Stars Arise</span>, a really splendid war poem commemorating -the heroic deed of Lieutenant Reginald Warneford, -aviator, who unassisted destroyed a German armed -Zeppelin, containing 28 men, on June 7th, 1915. We quote -the first and last stanzas:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Above him spreads the purple sky,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Beneath him spreads the ether sea,</p> -<p class='line0'>And everywhere about him lie</p> -<p class='line0'>  Dim ports of peace and mystery.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>He sees the white mists softly curl,</p> -<p class='line0'>  He sees the moon drift pale and wan,</p> -<p class='line0'>Sees Venus climb the stars of pearl</p> -<p class='line0'>  To hold her court of Love at dawn.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Jean Blewett is chiefly loved by the people for her <span class='it'>forte</span>—her -sincere, simple singing of true love and faith, of -childhood, and the field flowers, and the joys of the Canadian -Spring and Winter. But, as a <span class='it'>genre</span> poet, she is -gifted with a whimsical humor which is quite unique in the -poetic literature of Canada. <span class='it'>For He was Scotch and So -Was She</span> is a fetching example of Jean Blewett’s humor -and humorous treatment of a simple or homely subject and -is to be found in many Canadian anthologies.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Francis Sherman, one of the truest and most individual -<span class='pageno' title='223' id='Page_223'></span> -poets that Canada has produced, is a relative of Charles G. -D. Roberts and Bliss Carman. His literary output has been -meagre, comprising only one regularly published volume, -a small, thin booklet, <span class='it'>Matins</span> (1896), and three or four -privately printed pamphlets of verse. But the quality is -sufficient to fix his place in the company of the authentic -Canadian poets of the First Renaissance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sherman’s poetry shows a distinct tendency to mysticism. -He was, evidently, influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite -School. But he had an independent individuality. He -possessed, as a poet, eyes and feelings of his own; and -could express what he saw and felt, with ready and confident -artistry. The Pre-Raphaelite influence on Francis -Sherman and his own natural gifts for individual expression -are disclosed in <span class='it'>Between the Battles</span> (from <span class='it'>Matins</span>):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Let us bury him here</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the maples are!</p> -<p class='line0'>He is dead,</p> -<p class='line0'>And he died thanking God that he fell with the fall of the leaf and the year.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Where the hillside is sheer,</p> -<p class='line0'>Let it echo our tread</p> -<p class='line0'>Whom he led;</p> -<p class='line0'>Let us follow as gladly as ever we followed who never knew fear.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Ere he died, they had fled;</p> -<p class='line0'>Yet they heard his last cheer</p> -<p class='line0'>Ringing clear,—</p> -<p class='line0'>When we lifted him up, he would fain have pursued, but grew dizzy instead.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Break his sword and his spear!</p> -<p class='line0'>Let his last prayer be said</p> -<p class='line0'>By the bed</p> -<p class='line0'>We have made underneath the wet wind in the maple trees moaning so drear:</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>‘O Lord God, by the red</p> -<p class='line0'>Sullen end of the year</p> -<p class='line0'>That is here,</p> -<p class='line0'>We beseech Thee to guide us and strengthen our swords till his slayers be dead!’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='224' id='Page_224'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Many of Sherman’s poems have the ‘great out-of-doors’ -world in Canada as their theme, and are marked by grave, -meditative beauty, disclosing, on his part, intimate communing -with and brooding on Nature’s moods. These -qualities of Francis Sherman’s mind and art are observed -in the following sonnet, quoted from his <span class='it'>In Memorabilia -Mortis</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I marked the slow withdrawal of the year,</p> -<p class='line0'>Out on the hills the scarlet maple shone—</p> -<p class='line0'>The glad, first herald of triumphal dawn.</p> -<p class='line0'>A robin’s song fell through the silence—clear</p> -<p class='line0'>As long ago it rang when June was here.</p> -<p class='line0'>Then, suddenly, a few grey clouds were drawn</p> -<p class='line0'>Across the sky; and all the song was gone,</p> -<p class='line0'>And all the gold was quick to disappear.</p> -<p class='line0'>That day the sun seemed loth to come again;</p> -<p class='line0'>And all day long the low wind spoke of rain,</p> -<p class='line0'>Far-off, beyond the hills; and moaned, like one</p> -<p class='line0'>Wounded, among the pines; as though the Earth,</p> -<p class='line0'>Knowing some giant grief had come to birth,</p> -<p class='line0'>Had wearied of the Summer and the Sun.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>A rare spirit and exquisite craftsman, as a poet, is -Albert Ernest Stafford Smythe. He was born in Ireland -in 1861. He is Keltic through and through; and because -he is Keltic in his reactions to the universe, in his perceptions -of spiritual meanings in all things, he divines God -in men and God in Nature, or God <span class='it'>as</span> man and God as -Nature—spiritual presences everywhere. In a word, Albert -E. S. Smythe exemplifies in his genius and art, as -notably and profoundly as Lampman in his, but in a different -way, what Wordsworth called <span class='it'>natural piety</span>. Smythe’s -spiritual perceptions of divinity everywhere rise to a refined -mysticism which he expresses with a ‘white beauty’ -in exquisitely finished verse. As contrasted with other -Canadian mystical poets Smythe is the poet of the <span class='it'>Cosmic</span> -Spirit and Beauty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1891 he published <span class='it'>Poems; Grave and Gay</span>, and in -1923, <span class='it'>The Garden of the Sun</span>. A sonnet (<span class='it'>The Seasons of -<span class='pageno' title='225' id='Page_225'></span> -the Gods</span>) and a lyric (<span class='it'>Anastasis</span>) from the second volume -suffice to disclose his qualities in his role as the poet of the -Cosmic Spirit and Beauty. As a sonneteer, Smythe is not -surpassed by any of his older or younger contemporaries. -<span class='it'>The Seasons of the Gods</span> is lofty in conception, noble in -thought, rich in naturalistic imagery, dulcet in verbal -melody, and perfect in formal artistry. It is music of a -soul ‘in tune with the Infinite’:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I sat with May upon a midnight hill</p> -<p class='line0'>Wrapped in a dusk of unremembered years</p> -<p class='line0'>And thought on buried April—on the tears</p> -<p class='line0'>And shrouds of March, and Youth’s dead daffodil</p> -<p class='line0'>All withered on a Mound of Spring. And still</p> -<p class='line0'>The earth moved sweetly in her sleep, the Spheres</p> -<p class='line0'>Wrought peace about her path, and for her ears</p> -<p class='line0'>Climbed the high music of their blended will.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The God who dreamed the Earth, as I this frame</p> -<p class='line0'>That makes me thrall to death and coward of birth—</p> -<p class='line0'>Dreamed He not March below some vanished Moon—</p> -<p class='line0'>Under an earlier Heaven’s auroral flame</p> -<p class='line0'>The cosmic April flowering into mirth</p> -<p class='line0'>Of May and joy of Universal June?</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>With what lyrical eloquence, subdued, yet direct and -compelling, Smythe calls the soul, in pure poetry, to achieve -its spiritual destiny, in this lyric, simple in diction and -structure, but sublimated, in thought:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>What shall it profit a man</p> -<p class='line0'>To gain the world—if he can—</p> -<p class='line0'>And lose his soul, as they say</p> -<p class='line0'>In their uninstructed way?</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The whole of the world in gain;</p> -<p class='line0'>The whole of your soul! Too vain</p> -<p class='line0'>You judge yourself in the cost.</p> -<p class='line0'>’Tis you—not your soul—is lost.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Your soul! If you only knew—</p> -<p class='line0'>You would reach to the Heaven’s blue,</p> -<p class='line0'>To the heartmost centre sink,</p> -<p class='line0'>Ere you severed the silver link,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='226' id='Page_226'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>To be lost in your petty lust</p> -<p class='line0'>And scattered in cosmic dust.</p> -<p class='line0'>For your soul is a Shining Star</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the Throne and the Angels are.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And after a thousand years,</p> -<p class='line0'>With the salve of his bottled tears,</p> -<p class='line0'>Your soul shall gather again</p> -<p class='line0'>From the dust of a world of pain</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The frame of a slave set free—</p> -<p class='line0'>The man that you ought to be,</p> -<p class='line0'>The man you may be to-night</p> -<p class='line0'>If you turn to the Valley of Light.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The number of women poets in the period under review -is noteworthy. Along with Ethelwyn Wetherald and Jean -Blewett must be mentioned appreciatively the names and -poetry of Virna Sheard, Helena Coleman, Elizabeth Roberts -MacDonald (sister of C. G. D. Roberts), Helen M. -Merrill, Annie Campbell Huestis, Agnes Maule Machar -(<span class='it'>pseud.</span> ‘Fidelis’), Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, Alma Frances -McCollum, and S. Frances Harrison (<span class='it'>pseud.</span> ‘Seranus’). -Their outstanding contemporaries amongst the men were -Arthur Stringer and Peter McArthur. It is impossible to -review in detail the poetry of all these lyrists. They followed -the ideals of the older systematic group as regards -original inspiration and artistic craftsmanship. But the -work of some of them may briefly be remarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1891 S. Frances Harrison published <span class='it'>Pine, Rose, and -Fleur de Lis</span>, a volume of really poetical verse. She is, -however, more to be noted as the compiler of the first -noteworthy anthology of Canadian verse (<span class='it'>A Canadian -Birthday Book</span>, 1887), which is distinguished by the fact -that it contains a poem by the Indian Chief Tecumseh, the -first French-Canadian poem, and some of the earliest -poems of Bliss Carman (a series of quatrains). Arthur -Stringer is a lyrical poet and a poetic dramatist. His art -in the latter respect is appreciated in another chapter. In -1907 he published <span class='it'>The Woman in the Rain and Other -<span class='pageno' title='227' id='Page_227'></span> -Poems</span>, and in 1911, <span class='it'>Irish Poems</span>. His lyrical poetry in -general is distinguished by a warm humanity and by careful -craftsmanship. But he achieved a special distinction -with his poems in ‘Irishy.’ Many of them have been set to -music, and, amongst Canadian-born poets, his only rival -in that field is Sir Gilbert Parker. By themselves Stringer’s -poems in ‘Irishy’ are a novel and real, if not important, -contribution to the <span class='it'>genre</span> and humorous poetry of Canada. -In 1907 Peter McArthur (‘The Sage of Ekfrid’) -published <span class='it'>The Prodigal and Other Poems</span>. He is never a -mere aesthete in form, but he is a rare Nature and humorous -poet—with the lightest and happiest touch in both -departments, as in his <span class='it'>Corn-Planting</span> and in <span class='it'>To the Birds</span>. -He humanizes Nature in a way altogether different from -other Canadian poets, perhaps whimsically but always with -an intimate, colloquial quality of diction, and a piquancy -which makes his Nature poetry spiritually refreshing, even -to formalists and dilettanti.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Properly Isabel Ecclestone Mackay belongs to the minor -poets of the Systematic Period. For in 1904 she published -her first volume of verse, <span class='it'>Between the Lights</span>. But with -that, she turned to writing fiction, and did not publish any -books of verse till the appearance of <span class='it'>The Shining Ship and -Other Poems</span> (1919) and <span class='it'>Fires of Driftwood</span> (1923). Her -first venture in verse was not better than passable or than -good journalistic verse. But in <span class='it'>Fires of Driftwood</span> she -disclosed a real mastery of form, color, and music, along -with a spiritual sentiment which is new in Canadian poetry. -She is occupied most with the vicissitudes and meaning of -life, but occasionally she paints objective Nature with winning -color and music. It is, however, in her poetry <span class='it'>of</span> -childhood (rather than <span class='it'>for</span> children), as in <span class='it'>The Shining -Ship</span>, that Isabel Ecclestone Mackay most displays original -genius and has achieved genuine distinction. The poems -in <span class='it'>The Shining Ship</span> are marked by the rarest of psychological -<span class='pageno' title='228' id='Page_228'></span> -gifts in a poet—insight into the real heart and mind -and imagination of children, and by a diction and phrasing -which appeal to the child mind as immediately and as -winningly as do the child poems of Eugene Field and R. -L. Stevenson. In fact, as Stevenson’s <span class='it'>A Child’s Garden -of Verse</span> is to English Literature, so Isabel Ecclestone -Mackay’s <span class='it'>A Shining Ship and Other Poems</span> is to Canadian -Literature.</p> - -<hr class='tbk114'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Sources of quotations in this chapter:</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>The Hayfield</span> is found in <span class='it'>The Last Robin</span>, by Ethelwyn Wetherald (Ryerson -Press: Toronto).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Quotations from Jean Blewett’s work, in <span class='it'>Jean Blewett’s Poems</span> (McClelland -& Stewart: Toronto).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>From Francis Sherman’s <span class='it'>Matins</span> (Copeland and Day: Boston).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>From Albert E. S. Smythe’s <span class='it'>Grave and Gay</span>; and from <span class='it'>The Garden of the -Sun</span> (Macmillan Co.: Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='229' id='Page_229'></span><h1>CHAPTER XV</h1></div> - -<h3>Elegiac Monodists</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE ELEGIAC MONODISTS OF CANADA—CHARLES G. D. -ROBERTS—BLISS CARMAN—WILFRED CAMPBELL—DUNCAN -CAMPBELL SCOTT—WILLIAM MARSHALL—JAMES DE MILLE.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>C</span><span class='sc'>anadian</span> Literature is rich—not relatively but absolutely—in -Dirges, Epicedes, Elegies, Threnodies, and -Elegiac Monodies. That Canadian Elegiac Monodies, or -long ‘In Memoriam’ poems inspired by the death of a real, -not a mythical or imagined, person, have genuine distinction, -is indisputable. In number they equal the monodies -of English Literature; and in manner, in variety of form, -and in several qualitative excellences they surpass the -monodies of American Literature. Modern English literature -possesses five great threnodies or monodies; Milton’s -<span class='it'>Lycidas</span>, Shelley’s <span class='it'>Adonais</span>, Tennyson’s <span class='it'>In Memoriam</span>, -Arnold’s <span class='it'>Thyrsis</span>, and Swinburne’s <span class='it'>Ave atque Vale</span>. American -Literature has to its credit two fine and noble monodies: -Emerson’s <span class='it'>Threnody</span> (for his son) and Whitman’s -<span class='it'>When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d</span> (for Lincoln). -Canadian Literature boasts of six threnodies or monodies, -which all enhance New World Literature and at least -two of which are a distinct contribution to the elegiac -poetry of English Literature. The Canadian monodies are -Roberts’ <span class='it'>Ave!</span> (to Shelley), Carman’s <span class='it'>A Seamark</span> (to -Stevenson), Campbell’s <span class='it'>Bereavement of the Fields</span> (to -Lampman), Duncan Campbell Scott’s <span class='it'>Lines in Memory of -Edmund Morris</span> (a Canadian painter), William E. Marshall’s -<span class='it'>Brookfield</span> (to R. R. MacLeod), and James De -<span class='pageno' title='230' id='Page_230'></span> -Mille’s <span class='it'>Behind the Veil</span> (which is sort of Dantean ‘Vision’ -of the Beloved in Heaven).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That Canadian poets should have essayed the Elegiac -Monody and have excelled in it is consistent with the -genuine, the essential mood, the spiritual attitudes of the -Canadian people. For while the literary traditions, forms, -and methods of Canadian poets are English, the bases of -Canadian culture and civilization are much more New -England and Scots than English, or, in short, Puritan and -Calvinistic. It was as natural for the 19th century native-born -Canadian, as it was for an 18th century New England -Puritan and Loyalist and a Scots Calvinist, to be preoccupied -with thoughts of ‘otherworldliness.’ The meaning -of life and death is almost a <span class='it'>congenial</span> subject of reflection -to the characteristic Canadian. Fortunately the -<span class='it'>habitat</span> of the Canadian mind, Nature in Canada, recalled -Canadian poets from exclusive occupation with spiritual -prosperities and great departures to thoughts of ‘the soul’s -inherent high magnificence’ in daily mundane life and to -the joys, consolations, spiritual transports, and peace which -Nature affords the distracted human spirit. Another factor -saved Canadian poets from moralistic preachments when -they were moved to express in verse their sorrow over -some great departure. They had the example of the form -and color of the English elegies, from Milton to Swinburne, -to save them from chill gravity and barren moralism. The -Canadian monodists, on their own account, also loved fine -technic in verse, and strove to achieve it according to their -capacity. It was therefore natural that Canadian poets not -only should essay the elegiac monody but also write that -species of poetry with genuine distinction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The subjects of all Canadian elegiac monodies are either -presented against a background of Nature or are suffused -with ‘the color of life’ and the beauty of Nature. The -first, and in many ways the noblest, Canadian monody is -<span class='pageno' title='231' id='Page_231'></span> -Charles G. D. Roberts’ <span class='it'>Ave!</span> (sub-titled <span class='it'>An Ode for the -Centenary of Shelley’s Birth</span>). It is a poem of thirty-one -ten-line stanzas, in decasyllabics, closing with a rimed -couplet, iambic pentameter. The poem is not so much, as -Roberts called it, an ‘ode’ as an elegiac monody, with the -subject presented against a pastoral background. That it -was written ostensibly to commemorate Shelley’s birth, not -his death, must not cause us to conceive the poem as other -than an elegy. The centenary of Shelley’s birth occurred in -1892, when Roberts was 32 years of age. Naturally he -seized the opportunity to memorialize in verse the spirit -of one of his masters, but he also laments the passing of -Shelley and his influence, after the manner of the true -elegiac monody. The poem divides not strophically but -symphonically. The first theme is a picture of the naturalistic -beauties of the Tantramar marshes and the tides that -rush in over it from the Bay of Fundy, and the influences -that Nature about Tantramar had on Roberts as a poet. -He develops this theme by marking how ‘strangely akin’ -Tantramar’s marshes seem</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>                      to him whose birth</p> -<p class='line0'>    One hundred years ago</p> -<p class='line0'>With fiery succor to the ranks of song</p> -<p class='line0'>Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong;</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and how, like these marshes, with the incoming and the -outgoing floods of Fundy’s tides, Shelley’s</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>                      compassionate breast,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace,</p> -<p class='line0'>Was tortured with perpetual unrest.</p> -<p class='line0'>  Now loud with flood, now languid with release,</p> -<p class='line0'>Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife</p> -<p class='line0'>  Of tides from the salt sea of human pain</p> -<p class='line0'>That hiss along the perilous coasts of life</p> -<p class='line0'>  Beat in his eager brain;</p> -<p class='line0'>But all about the tumult of his heart</p> -<p class='line0'>  Stretched the great calm of his celestial art.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='232' id='Page_232'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few stanzas are devoted, as they say in symphonic -music, to the ‘working out’ of this similitude in all its -aspects. Then in stanza XXII Roberts formally announces -the elegiac theme as such:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Lament, Lerici, mourn the world’s loss!</p> -<p class='line0'>  Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>Roberts develops the lyrical genius of Shelley in eight -stanzas, and in the final two stanzas returns to the original -theme of the Tantramar marshes where on the inner ear -of the Canadian poet</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>                              once more</p> -<p class='line0'>Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It was remarked, in a preceding chapter, that we miss -the ethical note in Roberts’ genius and poetry. Here is -the exception. In his <span class='it'>Ave!</span> he became morally or religiously, -as well as imaginatively, sublimated. In that poem -he treats life and death with the moral beauty and significance -of his exemplars and models, Shelley’s <span class='it'>Adonais</span>, -Arnold’s <span class='it'>Thyrsis</span>, and Swinburne’s <span class='it'>Ave atque Vale</span>. In -form and substance Roberts’ <span class='it'>Ave!</span> is a true elegiac monody.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But is it a great poem? Fault has been found with it -on the side of structure or coherency. The poem appears -coherent when it is remembered that the structure is symphonic -rather than strophic. For though the poem begins -with a Canadian setting, which on the face of it is as far -away as possible from Shelley and Shelley’s England where -he was born and the Italy where he died, it is the thought -of the Canadian marshes and the floods and unrest of the -tides that suggests to Roberts the inner spirit and genius and -life and death of Shelley. So that naturally Roberts passes -from the Canadian setting and its suggestions to the subject -proper of his poem, namely, Shelley; then to memorializing -Shelley’s genius and lamenting his passing, and, -finally, back to the Canadian setting which suggested the -whole poem. Surely that is coherent logic, unity in variety -of structure! -<span class='pageno' title='233' id='Page_233'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nor is there any real contradiction between the diction -and imagery of the poem and the high magnificence of -the soul which the poem commemorates. The ‘properties,’ -of course, are not classical—heroes and nymphs, and all -the mythical personages of the Greek pastoral poets. There -is genuine spiritual dignity in the Canadian setting of the -<span class='it'>Ave!</span>—the atmosphere and color of the grassy Canadian -flatlands, and tides, and mists, and air, and life, and sky. -The poem, too, is in the grand manner and is marked by -a spiritual sweep and lyrical eloquence which convey to -the heart and the imagination of the reader the sense of -profound emotion and of sincerity on the part of the poet. -So that, in spite of alleged structural and dictional faults, -Roberts’ <span class='it'>Ave!</span> is distinguished by sensuous beauty and -splendor, by imaginative sweep, by emotional intensity and -moral and spiritual dignity. But above all it is, as a pastoral -elegy or monody, much more Canadian than English. -As such, it is a really fine and distinctive contribution to -Canadian creative literature. If it is not a great poem, it -is a magnificent, compelling, and noble achievement in -great poetry—a poem which surpasses any monody in -American Literature and which indubitably takes an important -status amongst the elegiac monodies of England.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1895 Bliss Carman published <span class='it'>A Seamark</span><a id='r1'/><a href='#f1' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[1]</span></sup></a> (sub-titled -<span class='it'>A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson</span>). It is a poem -of thirty-eight stanzas in rimed iambic tetrameter. It is -all in the inimitable lyric manner of Carman, and commemorates -Stevenson as ‘the master of the roving kind.’ -Altiloquence is never a quality of Carman’s poetry, as it -is of Roberts.’ Subtlety in simplicity is the formula of -Carman’s genius. And he will color all his homely or -simple images with the most apt felicity of phrase and the -most insinuating verbal melody. For this reason, some -<span class='pageno' title='234' id='Page_234'></span> -miss the high spiritual, mystical, and religious note in -poems which are even more sublimated, though less grandiloquent, -than Roberts’ verse. On the face of <span class='it'>A Seamark</span>, -it seems as if Carman, in commemorating the death of -Stevenson ‘as the master of the roving kind,’ composed a -colorful musical lyric, but not a highly spiritualized poem. -How simple or homely, and yet how felicitous and colorful, -are the images in Carman’s musical lines, announcing -the death of Stevenson on the island of Vailima:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Our restless loved adventurer,</p> -<p class='line0'>On secret orders come to him,</p> -<p class='line0'>Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef,</p> -<p class='line0'>And melted on the white sea-rim.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The hasty reader does not suspect or surmise the deeper -meaning that is to come. But Carman and Stevenson were -kin of mind and heart, and their kinship was a kinship of -the love of searching out the haunts and ways of the joy -and beauty that are on the face and in the heart of Nature. -So that these master rovers are not careless, irresponsible -vagabonds, but are spiritual nomads with a spiritual function -and bent on a divine errand. Thus does Carman -magnify their office:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O all you hearts about the world</p> -<p class='line0'>In whom the truant gypsy blood,</p> -<p class='line0'>Under the frost of this pale time,</p> -<p class='line0'>Sleeps like the daring sap and flood</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>That dream of April and reprieve!</p> -<p class='line0'>You whom the haunted vision drives,</p> -<p class='line0'>Incredulous of home and ease,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Perfection’s lovers</span> all your lives!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>What it was given to Carman to discern in the universe -was the eternal meaning of youth and to hear the ever-young -voice of earth singing in the heart of man and in -the earth, in everything, and to be himself the lyric voice -of the world. Stevenson was also such a lyric voice -of earth. Carman, then, does highly spiritualize his subject -<span class='pageno' title='235' id='Page_235'></span> -when he first presents Stevenson in the manner of the outward -aspect by which he was commonly conceived, a restless -loved adventurer, who when he died was laid down, -as Carman puts it in novel and arresting paradox:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Beyond the turmoil of renown,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and, next, discloses the inner meaning of the ‘wander-biddings’ -that were in the soul of Stevenson who, even in -death, still kept</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>The journey-wonder on his face.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>For when Stevenson died, men sorrowed and surmised not -why they grieved. But Carman in <span class='it'>A Seamark</span> reveals -why. Men thought a prince of joy had passed forever. -But Carman discloses the higher spiritual truth:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>He ‘was not born for age.’ Ah no,</p> -<p class='line0'>For everlasting youth is his!</p> -<p class='line0'>And part of the lyric of the earth</p> -<p class='line0'>With spring and leaf and blade he is.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In form, and in musical, colorful, simple yet subtle, -spiritualization of the meaning and value of men in whom -the lyric spirit of earth is supreme and vocal, there is not -another elegiac monody in English like, or comparable to, -Carman’s <span class='it'>A Seamark</span>. It, too, like Roberts’ <span class='it'>Ave!</span> enhances -both the quality and quantity of the Canadian and the English -elegy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wilfred Campbell was a myriad-minded man and had -an inherited Keltic imagination which felt acutely the magic -and mystery of earth and existence. He conceived, most -beautifully and nobly, the passing of Archibald Lampman -not as a bereavement suffered by mere persons but rather -by the great and constant ‘companion’ of Lampman, -namely, Nature. With a peculiar and lovely sense of the -poetic significance of death, Campbell ennobled the spirit -of Lampman, and perpetuated the meaning of his poetry, -in an elegiac monody which bears the felicitous title -<span class='it'>Bereavement of the Fields</span>. -<span class='pageno' title='236' id='Page_236'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The poem is in a seven-lined pentameter stanza, and -is infused with Canadian Nature-color throughout. The -diction and the structure are simple, and there is no attempt -at sublimated imagination. The poem is rather in the subdued -and gentle manner of Lampman himself. That is to -say, there is a gentle melancholy running through the poem, -but the melancholy is relieved by a simple spiritual beauty -which conveys the rare essence of the spirit of Lampman, -who passed from earth:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Leaving behind him, like a summer shower,</p> -<p class='line0'>A fragrance of earth’s beauty, and the chime</p> -<p class='line0'>Of gentle and imperishable rhyme.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>If poetry can be accepted as literary criticism, then -Campbell has estimated better than the best prose critic the -significance and worth of Lampman as a poet and his place -in the company of the great:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Outside this prison-house of all our tears,</p> -<p class='line0'>Enfranchised from our sorrow and our wrong,</p> -<p class='line0'>Beyond the failure of our days and years,</p> -<p class='line0'>Beyond the burden of our saddest song,</p> -<p class='line0'>He moves with those whose music filled his ears,</p> -<p class='line0'>And claimed his gentle spirit from the throng,—</p> -<p class='line0'>Wordsworth, Arnold, Keats, high masters of his song.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Campbell’s threnody is simple, sensuous, and impassioned, -without being impressionistic and rhetorical. It is -a sincere and noble affirmation of the supremacy of the -spirit of beauty in the world, wherein, as Lampman’s exemplar, -Keats, once said, imperishably:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Altogether in another form and with a fresh and novel -poetic conception and impressive artistry, Duncan Campbell -Scott wrote his <span class='it'>Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris</span><a id='r2'/><a href='#f2' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[2]</span></sup></a>. -Scott’s art is singularly informed by a color and beauty -<span class='pageno' title='237' id='Page_237'></span> -derived from his intimate and exquisite appreciation of the -fine arts, especially music and painting. More than any -other Canadian poet, Scott is the ‘artist in words.’ He is -concerned above all things to employ poetic diction and -imagery with the same love of refined expressiveness and -emotional nuance as inspired such musical composers or -tone-painters as Ravel, Debussy, and MacDowell, and such -painters as Constable, Watteau, and Monet. Or to borrow -from musical criticism, Scott loves his performance, his -executant artistry with words and imagery, more than he -loves his poetic ideas.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Edmund Morris was a Canadian painter and his spirit -perceived in Canadian Nature and in the Indian aborigines -in Canada something which no other painter had perceived -or attempted to envisage. Scott and Morris were companions -and kindred spirits—the one an artist in words; -and the other an artist in pigments. It was natural, then, -that Scott, on the tragic death of his friend, should commemorate -the loss which both the living friend and the -country suffered by the passing of Edmund Morris. But -it was impossible for Scott to write any conventionalized -elegiac monody. Under inner compulsion, he wrote of life -and death with all his original genius for conceiving, as he -phrases his mode of conception,</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Meanings hid in mist;</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and with all his gifts in exquisite craftsmanship:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Scott’s <span class='it'>Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris</span> is in some -respects unique, but particularly in form, and its simple, -intimate, direct address to the spirit. It is not a pastoral -elegy in the third person but a dramatic monologue, or an -epistle in verse from one spirit to another. There is nothing -like it in all English Literature, not even in Browning. But -intimate, even familiar, and colloquial as it is, the poem -<span class='pageno' title='238' id='Page_238'></span> -is radiant with a ‘white beauty’ of imagery and chaste -artistry. More notably still, it subdues the turbulence of -our souls in the presence of a great loss by death, transports -the imagination to the mount of spiritual vision, refines -faith, sustains hope, and fills the spirit with a serene peace. -It leaves upon us imperishably the inward sense that ‘it is -not death to die’:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Just as the fruit of a high sunny garden,</p> -<p class='line0'>Grown mellow with autumnal sun and rain,</p> -<p class='line0'>Shrivelled with ripeness, splits to the rich heart</p> -<p class='line0'>And loses a gold kernel to the mould,</p> -<p class='line0'>So the old world, hanging long in the sun,</p> -<p class='line0'>And deep enriched with effort and with love,</p> -<p class='line0'>Shall, in motions of maturity,</p> -<p class='line0'>Wither and part, and the kernel of it all</p> -<p class='line0'>Escape, a lovely wraith of spirit, to latitudes</p> -<p class='line0'>Where the appearance, throated like a bird,</p> -<p class='line0'>Winged with fire and bodied all with passion,</p> -<p class='line0'>Shall flame with presage, not of tears, but joy.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>All through this elegiac monody there is a singularly -sweet humanity and yet in it are heard the constant overtones -of ‘the soul’s inherent high magnificence,’ and the -whole is suffused or informed with the color of Canadian -Nature and character and life. So that the poem is a -novel and important contribution to the elegiac monody -in English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In another style and with another but winning effect -upon the heart and the imagination, is William Edward -Marshall’s monody <span class='it'>Brookfield</span>. It is a poem of forty-five -stanzas in the Spenserian form. Structurally viewed, however, -his <span class='it'>Brookfield</span> is considerably an achievement in that -form. Its theme is the heart and mind of a simple man, -a friend of the poet, who taught the poet to love communion -with the simple creatures and the life of Nature, and to -observe in Nature, not the garment, but the very spiritual -presence of God. There is no metaphysic of Nature in -<span class='it'>Brookfield</span>. There is but the apprehension of divinity in -<span class='pageno' title='239' id='Page_239'></span> -the little wild creatures and in the streams and hills, and in -the mists, and in all the varied life of the universal mother. -Marshall’s master was Keats, and while <span class='it'>Brookfield</span> cannot -critically be called an example of sensuous impressionism, -yet it is warmly colored with pigmentation from the palette -of Nature. But the loveliest strands running through the -warp and woof of the poem are those of love and the -heavenly vision. The sweet, gentle, even tender, Nature-quality -as well as the spiritual note in the poem, may be -apprehended from the following stanza:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Ah, he was richly dowered of the earth!</p> -<p class='line0'>The grain of sand, the daisy in the sod,</p> -<p class='line0'>Awoke his heart; and early he went forth,</p> -<p class='line0'>Through field and wood, with young eyes all abroad;</p> -<p class='line0'>And saw the nesting birds and beck and nod</p> -<p class='line0'>Of little creatures running wild and free,</p> -<p class='line0'>(Which know not that they know, yet are of God)</p> -<p class='line0'>And kept his youth, and grew in sympathy,</p> -<p class='line0'>And loved his fellows more, and had love’s victory.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Literary critics in the United States, in reviewing Marshall’s -<span class='it'>Brookfield</span> signalized both its sensuous and spiritual -beauty as extraordinary, and in line with the quality of the -best English elegiac monodies. In Canada it received high -praise from Sir Andrew MacPhail, who sponsored it by -publishing it in <span class='it'>The University Magazine</span>, and from Dr. -Archibald MacMechan. ‘No such poem,’ said the latter, -‘has appeared in Canada since Roberts’ <span class='it'>Ave!</span> In dignity -and depth of feeling the <span class='it'>Ave!</span>, De Mille’s <span class='it'>Behind the Veil</span>, -and <span class='it'>Brookfield</span> stand together—a noble trio.’ Marshall’s -<span class='it'>Brookfield</span> is Canadian in subject and setting and is indeed -a beautiful and noble application of ideas to life—a genuinely -original contribution to the creative poetic literature -of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>James De Mille’s <span class='it'>Behind the Veil</span>, published posthumously -in 1892, is a kind of elegiac monody. The poet -himself does not so sub-title it. He designates it simply as -<span class='pageno' title='240' id='Page_240'></span> -‘A Poem.’ Whether the ‘Loved One’ who has been lost to -the poet was a real person or an imagined companion of -the spirit, it is impossible to surmise from the poem. But -the poem itself is concerned with life and death and yearning -for union with the Beloved in Heaven, and is thus a -spiritualized elegy. Essentially, however, it is a reflective -or philosophical poem. If it is reflective, it is also highly -melodramatic both in substance and in form. Part of its -melodramatic quality derives from its metrical structure -which suggests Poe’s <span class='it'>Raven</span>. It is written in stanzas of -five lines in trochaic tetrameter—a form totally unsuited -to its intended high spiritual dignity of theme. A taste of -its quality is afforded from the following stanzas:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>        Through the darkness rose a vision,</p> -<p class='line0'>          Where beneath the night I kneeled,</p> -<p class='line0'>        Dazzling bright with hues Elysian—</p> -<p class='line0'>Congregated motes of glory on an ebon field</p> -<p class='line0'>And a form from out that glory to my spirit stood revealed.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>        ‘Son of Light’—I murmured lowly—</p> -<p class='line0'>          ‘All my heart is known to thee—</p> -<p class='line0'>All my longing and my yearning for the Loved One lost to me—</p> -<p class='line0'>May these eyes again behold her?’—and the Shape said, ‘Come and see.’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It is impossible to read one hundred and twenty-five -stanzas or 625 lines like the preceding, in which the feminine -endings make fixed caesural pauses that prevent enjambement -and thus inhibit rhythmical variety, without the -reader’s feeling himself in the realm of the musically melodramatic. -So that the high seriousness of the poem suffers -a loss in impressiveness because of the metre and rhythm -of the poem. It is plain that De Mille was not an adroit -verbal musician. The spiritual dignity and seriousness of -the poem can be commended, but on the whole, it is not -poetry, and is not a significant contribution to the Canadian -monody.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<div class='footnote'> -<p class='footnote'> -<span class='footnote-id' id='f1'><a href='#r1'>[1]</a></span> - -<span class='it'>A Seamark</span> is found in the collection <span class='it'>Ballads and Lyrics</span>, by Bliss Carman -(McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).</p> - -</div> - -<div class='footnote'> -<p class='footnote'> -<span class='footnote-id' id='f2'><a href='#r2'>[2]</a></span> - -<span class='it'>Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris</span> is from <span class='it'>Lundy’s Lane and Other Poems</span> -(McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).</p> - -</div> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='241' id='Page_241'></span><h1>CHAPTER XVI</h1></div> - -<h3>Novelists</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE FICTIONISTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC SCHOOL—THE HISTORICAL -ROMANCERS—LIGHTHALL—SAUNDERS—PARKER—MARQUIS—MACLENNAN -AND McILWRAITH—AGNES C. LAUT—WILFRED -CAMPBELL—CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. THE ROMANCERS -OF ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY—THOMPSON SETON—ROBERTS—SAUNDERS—FRASER. -THE EVANGELICAL -ROMANCERS—RALPH CONNOR—R. E. KNOWLES.</p> -</div> - -<h4><span class='it'>I. The Historical Romancers.</span></h4> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>W</span><span class='sc'>hen</span> William Kirby published, in 1877, <span class='it'>The Golden -Dog</span>, he led the way in Canadian historical -romance. Major John Richardson had written historical -novels years before, but Richardson’s material was largely -first hand, from contact with a life and with a setting -similar to what he described. We might argue that Kirby -‘discovered’ to the fictionists who were to come after him -the wealth of material that lay in the unknown and almost -forgotten Canadian past, for he founded his work on Canadian -history and infused it with Canadian incident and -color; and although Mrs. Leprohon’s romances had a considerable -vogue both in English and in French, the circulation -of her novels was chiefly local and not anything like -so widespread as that of Kirby’s single masterpiece. -Yet it is problematic just how much the historical or -romantic fiction of the Post-Confederation period (beginning, -say, in 1888) owes to Kirby and how much it owes -to a stirring impulse of nationality. That impulse produced -tangible evidences in our literature because of a -conscious realization of national ideals and a sensing of -<span class='pageno' title='242' id='Page_242'></span> -the spirit of a courageous and romantic past in a country -that, superficially viewed, had barely reached the stage of -‘growing pains.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1888 William Douw Lighthall published <span class='it'>The Young -Seigneur</span>, a socio-political study of life and institutions in -Canada, which according to the author himself; ‘arose out -of my ideas as a young man concerning an ideal of Canadian -nationality to which I gave the color of this province -(Quebec) as I knew it in the old Seigneuries.’ Possibly -the ‘thesis’ overpowered the romantic or novel elements, -for this book is not regarded as equal in literary merit to -its successors. <span class='it'>The False Chevalier</span> (1898) was a historical -romance set partly in Canada and partly in France. -It is an attempt to depict an actual romance found in a -packet of documents at the house of the De Léry’s at -Boucherville near Montreal. It is rich in atmosphere and -color both of the old land and the new and is filled with -engaging incident, but lacks somewhat in effective novel -construction, and in convincing characterization. It is in -<span class='it'>The Master of Life</span> (1910) that Dr. Lighthall has produced -a unique and masterly piece of fiction. With -Hiawatha as its hero, it is purely aboriginal in setting and -color and exhibits the author’s wide knowledge of Indian -history and archaeology. It was the result of Dr. Lighthall’s -sympathies with the Iroquois Indians, derived originally -from the ancient family records of the Schuylers -(from whom the Lighthalls are descended). They, as -leading British officers and statesmen, had much to do with -keeping the Iroquois steadfast to the British Crown. Although -the impetus to its writing originated in this way, -<span class='it'>The Master of Life</span>, in its development is an example of -rare constructive imagination and is pervaded with a richly -poetic interpretation that apprehends nature as filled with -spiritual presences and nature’s beauty as the garment of -the Great Spirit. -<span class='pageno' title='243' id='Page_243'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The year 1889 saw the publication of a work of pure -romance in <span class='it'>My Spanish Sailor</span> by (Margaret) Marshall -Saunders. This was a love story of the sea in which a -Nova Scotian girl and a Spanish sea-captain are the leading -characters. Again in <span class='it'>Rose à Charlitte</span> (1898), afterwards -published as <span class='it'>Rose of Acadie</span>, Miss Saunders essays romance, -colored, it is true, by a seemingly historic atmosphere, but -yet rather a record than a history, for the Acadian habits -and customs which one might think of as belonging to a -past age were current among the people in the Bay of St. -Mary settlement when visited by Miss Saunders in the -summer of 1897. Here the descendants of the Acadians -had lived apart from the English and preserved their language, -traditions, customs, and their unique manner of -life. ‘The elements of strength and weakness of the people, -their patient devotion, their openness, simplicity and -generosity, their love of gossip and light-heartedness, with -the shadows of the tragic past brooding over them, are all -caught in a true perspective.’ Thus it is not until the year -1896 that we come upon a truly legitimate successor to <span class='it'>The -Golden Dog</span>. In that year appeared Gilbert Parker’s <span class='it'>Seats -of the Mighty</span>, which became one of the most popular of -his novels. The story has a strong and fairly unified and -coherent plot. It exhibits Parker’s powers of characterization -and presents to us a gallery of vividly limned historic -portraits—Robert Moray, Doltaire, Gabord, De la Darant, -Bigot, Vaudreuil, Montcalm, Wolfe—in the main true to -type, human, and universal. There is not, however, an -unerring accuracy in atmosphere and color and characterization. -The writer was not sufficiently saturated with his -subject and occasional touches of modernity and tinges -of contemporary color subtract from the excellence of -artistry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Parker’s fiction really began with his short stories -of ‘Pretty Pierre’ in 1890. It is related that upon coming -<span class='pageno' title='244' id='Page_244'></span> -to London from Australia he brought to Archibald Forbes, -then noted as a war correspondent, a collection of stories. -Forbes’ comment was: ‘You have the best collection of -titles I ever saw.’ Parker took his manuscripts home and -promptly burned them. A day or so afterwards, while -passing a shop window filled with armor and other curios, -he noticed the leather coat and fur cap of a trapper. He -went at once to his room and began to write <span class='it'>The Patrol of -the Cypress Hills</span>, the first story in the series <span class='it'>Pierre and -His People</span>. These stories dealt with the life of early -Western Canada and were followed from time to time by -other volumes: <span class='it'>A Romany of the Snows</span>, published in England -under the title, <span class='it'>An Adventurer of the North</span>, picturing -French-Canadians in the woods and rural settlements; -<span class='it'>The Lane That Had No Turning</span>, stories of that Quebec -settlement which is the background of the novel <span class='it'>When Valmond -Came to Pontiac</span>; <span class='it'>Cumner’s Son</span>, sketches of life in -the South Seas and in Australia; <span class='it'>Donovan Pasha</span>, tales of -Egypt and the Soudan; <span class='it'>Northern Lights</span>, more modern -stories of Western Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parker became a prolific writer of novels and his settings -range from Canada and the South Seas to England, -Egypt, and South Africa. The treatment varies from an -almost immediate transcript of near present conditions as -in <span class='it'>The Judgment House</span> to the re-creation of the historic -past in <span class='it'>The Battle of the Strong</span>, from the delicate imaginative -romance in <span class='it'>When Valmond Came to Pontiac</span>, to a -pathological study in <span class='it'>The Right of Way</span>; he gives us a combination -of melodrama and mysticism in <span class='it'>The Weavers</span>, -the revealment of innate greatness of character in <span class='it'>The -Translation of a Savage</span>, while in <span class='it'>You Never Know Your -Luck</span>, he cleverly expands a tenuous short story thread to -the full proportions of a novel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Besides <span class='it'>The Seats of the Mighty</span>, the novels of Gilbert -Parker that will be likely to command most attention because -<span class='pageno' title='245' id='Page_245'></span> -of intrinsic worth are: <span class='it'>The Right of Way</span>, <span class='it'>The Battle -of the Strong</span>, <span class='it'>When Valmond Came to Pontiac</span>, <span class='it'>The -Weavers</span>, and <span class='it'>The Judgment House</span>. <span class='it'>The Right of Way</span> is -a compelling study in abnormal psychology. There may -be improbabilities in the development of the story of -Charley Steele, but there is a living force in his character -and he stands forth as one of the realities of fiction. <span class='it'>The -Battle of the Strong</span> depicts the Channel Islands in the -eighteenth century, and was written in a mood of defiance. -Parker was going to get away from a Canadian background. -He would write no more novels of Canada. But, -as Sherlock Holmes ‘returned,’ so Canada was too much a -part of Gilbert Parker’s life to remain out of his writings, -and he found, himself unable to get away from it for very -long. <span class='it'>The Battle of the Strong</span>, however, was based on a -thorough and sympathetic study of the country and people -of the Channel Islands and the characters and incidents are -colored with a simple, engaging humor. <span class='it'>When Valmond -Came to Pontiac</span> is a delightful excursion into romance in -which the Napoleonic tradition shows its influence in a little -out-of-the-way village of Quebec. It has much of the -charm of Booth Tarkington’s <span class='it'>Monsieur Beaucaire</span> and is -structurally the nearest to artistic perfection of any of -Parker’s novels. <span class='it'>The Weavers</span> rises to a more Imperialistic -sweep, dealing as it does with internal and international -politics of Egypt, while <span class='it'>The Judgment House</span>, a novel of -London and South Africa, is his greatest literary conception; -in it his imaginative vision has apprehended big -interests, big business, big ideals, big expansion, Imperial -ends, conceived and carried out by big men, struggling -and striving and achieving in a big world. His more -recent novels, although some of them, as <span class='it'>The Money Master</span>, -show considerable skill in characterization, are largely -novels of incident and of accidental circumstance and have -not the broad grasp of men and events nor the innate emotional -depth and power of those just outlined. -<span class='pageno' title='246' id='Page_246'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The outstanding qualities of Parker’s work are:—</p> - -<hr class='tbk115'/> - -<p class='pindent'>(1) The strong dramatic quality. It is no surprise to -us to learn that he was in his college days a most enthusiastic -Shakespeare student and an ‘elocutionist’ of some -reputation. The power to portray dramatic situations -is exhibited in his very earliest writings. One need but -open almost any of his novels and read the first paragraph -to find that one is projected into an imaginative -world of action, although the story may begin with a sentence -of pure narration or description.</p> - -<hr class='tbk116'/> - -<p class='pindent'>(2) Skill in descriptive characterization. How effectively -action, explanation, and description are combined -to make his characters vivid, cannot be better exhibited -than in the introduction of Valmond in <span class='it'>When Valmond -Came to Pontiac</span>. Yet there is a tendency to cast some -of his characters in moulds, so that they become types -rather than individuals. ‘Donovan Pasha’ is but ‘Pretty -Pierre’ amid new conditions and circumstances. ‘Krool’ -of <span class='it'>The Judgment House</span> recalls forcibly ‘Soolsby’ of <span class='it'>The -Weavers</span>.</p> - -<hr class='tbk117'/> - -<p class='pindent'>(3) His versatility is apparent from the survey already -made of his works. And to the list of poems, short -stories, and novels, might be added his book on the Great -War—<span class='it'>The World in the Crucible</span>—and his articles on agricultural -questions and land settlement.</p> - -<hr class='tbk118'/> - -<p class='pindent'>(4) His breadth of literary canvas. It may seem a -simple matter to place one part of a story in England and -another in Africa, or part in Canada and another part in -the South Seas, but it requires a very broad grasp of material -and a wide knowledge of people, and a keen sense of -atmosphere to do it effectually. He has been described as -the product of the British Empire, and there is little doubt -that the breadth of his experience is the basis of his breadth -of literary vision. -<span class='pageno' title='247' id='Page_247'></span></p> - -<hr class='tbk119'/> - -<p class='pindent'>(5) A sense of the supernatural and touches of mysticism -are consequent to his strong dramatic powers and -show in many of his short stories, e.g. <span class='it'>The Tall Master</span> -and <span class='it'>The Flood</span> in <span class='it'>Pierre and His People</span>, and in some of -his novels, notably in <span class='it'>The Weavers</span>.</p> - -<hr class='tbk120'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Summing up our impressions of Sir Gilbert Parker, we -find that he has a breadth of vision not excelled or even -equalled by any other Canadian writer. Comparing him -with Norman Duncan, we see that Duncan is a finer workman -but in a narrower range. Parker comes close to taking -a place with the front rank modern British novelists -and yet he does not quite do it. Why? Perhaps because -of the fact that a man’s excellences are very often the -cause of his defects. He is nothing if not dramatic. He -reaches always for the spectacular climax where nature is -often satisfied to take things quietly. He has just a little -too much of a tendency to play to the gallery. He verges -nearer to the melodramatic than do his contemporary British -novelists—in fact, he frequently falls to it. There is -not enough innate value in his incidents, there is more stage -play.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet on the whole, Parker’s work is fresher. There is -more of the clear air of the out-of-doors. There is not -the morbidity of tone, nor the feeling of helplessness that -is found in the fiction of Hardy, Meredith, Bennett, Galsworthy, -Philpotts, Trevena and other leaders of the modern -British novelists. We can forgive Parker many lapses because -at the end—the total effect is the feeling that the -good comes uppermost. Take even Pierre, half-breed -gambler, a sort of half-Ishmaelite, yet with a sense of -fair-play, a chivalry, a kindness that never leaves him. -And so nearly all his characters and most of his books -inspire us finally with divine lessons of hope and encouragement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The historical romances of Charles G. D. Roberts—<span class='it'>The -<span class='pageno' title='248' id='Page_248'></span> -Forge in the Forest</span> (1896), <span class='it'>A Sister to Evangeline</span>, <span class='it'>The -Prisoner of Mademoiselle</span>, <span class='it'>The Raid From Beauséjour</span>—while -they are Canadian in setting and color, do not show -the same imaginative reach and the same emotional power -as the romances of Parker. The themes and settings of -Roberts’ romances are rather narrow. They are concerned -chiefly with minor incidents of the early history of Acadia, -or we might say rather with a minor treatment of these -incidents, for the historical episodes about which these -stories are centered were, no doubt, of themselves important -enough to the early French colony. The difficulty is -that, despite the skill of Roberts in depicting local color -and reproducing atmosphere in exquisite smooth flowing -prose, he evinces little gift of characterization and the -personages of the story are more or less mechanical puppets -speaking by the will and with the words of the showman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Somewhat unique in early romantic fiction is <span class='it'>The Forest -of Bourg Marie</span>, by S. Frances Harrison (‘Seranus’), first -published in 1898. The bygone civilization of the old -seigneuries casts its glamor over a newer and more -sophisticated Quebec, in its turn influenced by the hectic -glitter of great cities of ‘the States,’ to which were attracted -restless youth of French-Canada. Thus Mikel Caron, -forest-ranger for the county of Yamachiche, links to the -present the past grandeur of the Seigniory of Bourg Marie, -while Magloire le Caron (Mr. Murray Carson in the -States), villain of the piece, is the hybrid product of three -civilizations. The writer’s style alters itself to harmonize -with the varying spirit and mood of her story—stately and -poetic in its descriptions of departed greatness; nervous and -gauche in the passages where the turbulent current of a -fevered modernity breaks through.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In <span class='it'>Marguerite de Roberval</span> (1899), T. G. Marquis -turned back to the times of Jacques Cartier and applied -<span class='pageno' title='249' id='Page_249'></span> -his constructive imagination as well as his industry in research -to building a story of Old France and the New -around a most romantic and dramatic love episode.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the same year appeared <span class='it'>The Span o’ Life</span> written in -collaboration by William MacLennan and Jean N. MacIlwraith. -Its historical basis is found in the memoirs of a -Scottish Chevalier, who shared in the ill-starred rebellion -of Prince Charles and afterwards became a soldier of fortune -in the army of France, thus being present at the siege -of Louisbourg and afterwards escaping to Quebec and -joining the French forces there. The plot element of the -story is somewhat weak and it is of value chiefly for its -inside history of the siege conditions in the two greatest -forts of New France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far the concern of Canadian historical fiction, as we -have seen it, has been chiefly with New France and the conflicts -between the French and English in North America. -It remained for Agnes C. Laut to realize quite independently -the amazing wealth of romantic history that lay back -of the opening up and exploiting of the middle and far -West of Canada. While yet a schoolgirl and knowing only -the formal, conventional, and statistical outlines of Canadian -history as then taught, she came accidentally upon a -copy of Gunn’s <span class='it'>History of Manitoba</span> and sat up all night -thrilled with the story of the Selkirk settlers. Thus originated -the impulse, fulfilled later (1900), in <span class='it'>The Lords of -the North</span> and (1902) in <span class='it'>Heralds of Empire</span>, to reveal -what she felt, to show that Canada’s history was one page -of glory. It had never been told in a way that the youth -of the land would realize this, and she felt that, lacking -this realization, we lacked a truly national spirit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Lords of the North</span> presents a vivid picture of Canada’s -fur trade at the most flourishing period of that industry. -It follows the conflict between the rival fur companies—the -North-West and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Across -<span class='pageno' title='250' id='Page_250'></span> -its pages flit the voyageur, the trader, Indians, missionaries, -settlers, buffalo hunters—all the romantic figures of -the Canadian West of the period of 1815 to 1821. <span class='it'>Heralds -of Empire</span> will be remembered for its characterization of -Pierre Radisson, the man of action—the man who dared -and who did—the man with the true pioneer spirit. Miss -Laut’s style is forcible and direct. Her sentences are brief -and crisp. The story runs on without effort. Description -never wearies because it is the natural and necessary setting, -painted with quick, bold vivid strokes. Of the larger matters -of plot structure—the architectonics of fiction, she can -hardly be said to have achieved mastery, but she writes -with such energy and enthusiasm for her subject that in a -measure this defect may be overlooked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wilfred Campbell also essayed the historical romance -but with indifferent success. His <span class='it'>Ian of the Orcades</span> with -its historical Scottish setting was more congenial to his -genius than <span class='it'>A Beautiful Rebel</span>. It has arresting incidents, -vigorously drawn characters, and considerable intensity of -emotions, but it wins us rather by Campbell’s power to suffuse -the text with what Matthew Arnold called ‘natural -magic.’ It is more in keeping with the ‘old world imagination’ -of Campbell which has been defined in the study of -his poetry. <span class='it'>A Beautiful Rebel</span>, a story of Canada and -the United States in the war of 1812, is lacking in imaginative -color, is defective in structure, and the incident is -too slight for the significance of the theme. The comment -of the author has a way of appearing obtrusively as a -digression, or at times in the mouths of the characters. -What value <span class='it'>A Beautiful Rebel</span> has as historic fiction lies -chiefly in its representation of the part played in the war by -American sympathizers living as Canadian settlers.</p> - -<h4><span class='it'>II. The Romancers of Animal Psychology.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>In the field of romance of wild and of domestic animal -<span class='pageno' title='251' id='Page_251'></span> -psychology, Canadian writers have shown a distinct and -unique inventive genius and a corresponding artistry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ernest Thompson Seton attracted the attention of the -world by his romances of wild life in Canada because he -combined in them the skilled observation of the scientist, -the vision of the artist, the insight of the psychologist, the -sympathy of the humane man; and, perhaps, more than all -that, the spirit of youthful wonder at, and interest in, -the ways and doings of the creatures of the field and wood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He brought to his writings of animal life a new point -of view—namely, that human beings and wild animals are -kin; that animals are motivated with passions and desires -and, to some extent, ideas, just as human beings are. Thus -he wrote with sympathy and with creative imagination and -revealed the new life and being of wild animals, and he -hoped to achieve the practical result of quickening the -sympathies of man toward animals and stopping the -thoughtless extermination of many of our harmless wild -creatures.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His books such as <span class='it'>Wild Animals I Have Known</span> -(1898), <span class='it'>The Trail of The Sand-Hill Stag</span>, <span class='it'>The Biography -of a Grizzly</span>, <span class='it'>Lives of the Hunted</span>, are studies of animal -psychology and behavior. <span class='it'>Lives of the Hunted</span>, for example, -contains life-histories of Krag, the mountain Ram; -of Johnny Bear; of Coyotito, the Escaped Coyote. Krag’s -whole history from birth to death is faithfully sketched -and, incidentally, much is learned about the habits of the -mountain-sheep. From these life-histories we gain, not -merely knowledge and information but wisdom, since animal -life and human life are akin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some of the earlier animal stories were written in -dialogue—the animals being made to talk. But, very wisely, -the author soon adopted the narrative style and removed -his sketches from the character of fairy stories to that of -real interpretations of animal life. -<span class='pageno' title='252' id='Page_252'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>In <span class='it'>Two Little Savages</span> he gives the adventures of two -boys who lived in the woods as Indians and learned much -about Indian life and all kinds of wood-lore. Other stories -of a similar type are employed for the teaching of different -phases of woodcraft. <span class='it'>Wood Myth and Fable</span> advances a -step further and from incidents in animal life, and other -occurrences in nature, the writer points a definite moral -lesson. This escapes preachiness by the adroit epigrammatic -wit of the ‘moral.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A somewhat different literary ideal inspired Charles -G. D. Roberts to undertake the pure romance of animal -psychology and behavior. ‘It may be that this arose as -a natural development from Roberts’ early attempts to depict -a narrative from actual occurrences and experiences -in the woods. At any rate <span class='it'>Earth’s Enigmas</span> (1896), followed -by numerous other volumes such as <span class='it'>The Kindred of -the Wild</span>, <span class='it'>The Watchers of the Trails</span>, <span class='it'>The Haunters of -the Silences</span>, <span class='it'>Red Fox</span>, <span class='it'>The Feet of the Furtive</span>, <span class='it'>More Animal -Stories</span> have established the place of Roberts as the -supreme artist in the field of animal romance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Roberts’ treatment of animal psychology differs from -that of Thompson Seton or Marshall Saunders. He makes -his wild animals either wholly human or too human. They -move in their world with a sort of super-animal (or super-human) -knowledge, and Roberts’ discloses a subconscious -motivation of conduct in the wild animals that outdoes the -present clay psycho-analyists in their revealments of human -motivation. For this reason they appeal not to the heart -but to the analytic imagination and the aesthetic sense. -They awaken the interest of the intellect rather than the -sympathetic emotions. They lack humor and pathos, but -in imaginative sweep and artistic structure they are supreme -creations. As examples of a literary prose style -they stand almost alone in their particular field of fiction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not all Roberts’ animal stories are of this ‘intellectual’ -<span class='pageno' title='253' id='Page_253'></span> -type. Human interest and humor is added by showing -animals in relationships, more or less accidental, to mankind, -in such volumes as <span class='it'>The Backwoodsman</span>, <span class='it'>Hoof and -Claw</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The peculiar <span class='it'>forte</span> of Marshall Saunders is the romance -of the domesticated animal or animal pet. <span class='it'>Beautiful Joe: -The Autobiography of a Dog</span>, first published in 1894, is -one of the literary phenomena of the world. It has been -translated into fourteen or more languages and has sold -over a million copies. With acute perceptive sympathy and -engaging artistry, Miss Saunders has commingled strangely -but veraciously the mind and life of the domestic animals. She -envisages truthfully their ‘near humanity’ and -reveals them as akin to man in feelings, passions, desires, -and the motivation of conduct, but keeps them on a level -below man. Her animals are not human, but they appeal -more to the heart of the humanity in us than those of Roberts, -Thompson Seton, or W. A. Fraser; particularly do -they appeal more to the spirit and heart of youth. Her -<span class='it'>Golden Dicky</span>, the story of a canary and his friends; <span class='it'>Bonnie -Prince Fetlar</span>, the autobiography of a pony, and <span class='it'>Jimmy -Goldcoast</span>, the story of a monkey, have all the engaging -qualities of her earlier work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>W. A. Eraser, in <span class='it'>Mooswa and Others of the Boundaries</span> -(1900), and in <span class='it'>The Outcasts</span> (1901) achieved a distinct -success by working with much the same material as Roberts -and Thompson Seton and to some extent combining the -style and treatment of both. He is not so scientific as -Thompson Seton; nor is he so literary or so psychoanalytic -as Roberts. <span class='it'>The Sa’-Zada Tales</span> (1905) in which -the animals at the zoo are represented as conversing with -their keeper, Sahib Zada, and with one another, exhibit the -intimate knowledge of wild animal life gained, no doubt, -during the author’s residence in Asiatic countries, but they -are not as distinctively original in manner, nor as high in -<span class='pageno' title='254' id='Page_254'></span> -literary quality as his other animal tales. Fraser, however, -has a peculiar field in which he excels—in his novel -<span class='it'>Thoroughbreds</span> (1902), and in his volume of short stories -<span class='it'>Brave Hearts</span> (1904), he shows a sympathetic understanding -of the life of the race horse and he presents vividly and -with sometimes a rollicking humor, at others a tender -pathos, many incidents and expressions of the racing field. -He is an apostle of clean sport and a true lover of the racing -horse and his enthusiasm gives to these stories a directness -and coherence not always found in some of his later -stories and novels with different subjects and settings.</p> - -<h4><span class='it'>III. The Evangelical Romance.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>The pioneer writer of the ‘evangelical romance’ in Canada -was ‘Ralph Connor’ (Reverend Charles W. Gordon). -Back of all his books stands the missionary spirit. Indeed -it was that missionary spirit which led to the finding of his -literary gift. The story of that finding dates back to 1896. -He had been attending a meeting of the Home Mission -Committee of the Presbyterian Church at Toronto, and -afterwards tried to impress upon the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, -then editor of <span class='it'>The Westminster</span>, the duty of the magazine -to educate the committee and the people to a greater liberality. -The editor’s reply was: ‘Articles are no good if -they have only facts and statistics and exhortations. Give -me a sketch, a story, a thing of life rather than a report. . .’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The result of this advice was a series of sketches of -missionary life in the foothills of the Rockies, which were -featured as <span class='it'>Tales of the Selkirks</span> in <span class='it'>The Westminster</span> -(1897) and appeared in book form the following year as -<span class='it'>Black Rock</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the first sketches were ready it was deemed advisable -to conceal the identity of the author. The editor -telegraphed the query, ‘What name?’ The reply came, -‘Sign sketch Cannor.’ ‘Can—Nor, that would betray the -<span class='pageno' title='255' id='Page_255'></span> -face of a mask,’ says the editor. ‘Perhaps the operator -made a mistake. Likely it should be Connor.’ And running -over the alphabet of masculine names, he decided -that ‘Ralph’ would just about fit with ‘Connor.’ Thus the -christening of the missionary novelist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ralph Connor’s novels fall into several groups. <span class='it'>Black -Rock</span> and <span class='it'>The Sky Pilot</span> are tales of the Rocky Mountain -foothills, both telling of the wild life of the West and of -the work of the missionary. <span class='it'>The Man From Glengarry</span> -and <span class='it'>Glengarry School Days</span> deal with the life of the author’s -boyhood in Eastern Ontario. <span class='it'>The Prospector</span> and <span class='it'>The -Doctor</span> combine East and West, by following their leading -characters through the University of Toronto and transferring -them to Western Canada. <span class='it'>The Foreigner</span> has a -Manitoba setting and concerns itself with the problem of -the assimilation of the foreigner. <span class='it'>Corporal Cameron</span> and -<span class='it'>The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail</span>, carry a young Scot to -Canada and through the ranks of the Mounted Police. -The Great War gave material for <span class='it'>The Major</span>; labor troubles -for <span class='it'>To Him That Hath</span>; while in <span class='it'>The Gaspards of Pine -Croft</span>, the author reverted to a setting not so far from that -of his first novel for a story more emotional and psychological -in nature than his others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The circulation of Ralph Connor’s novels has been -phenomenal and has reached somewhere between two and -a half and three millions, yet it cannot be said that he has -established a reputation as a literary artist. His stories -carry the reader because of action, incident, and tense emotional -situations. They always have an underlying ethical -and spiritual significance and they promulgate a belief in -the presence of some redeeming virtue in every human -being, so that, despite adverse critical opinion, they continue -to touch the responsive chord in the heart of a common -humanity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>None of his later works has quite come up to the standard -<span class='pageno' title='256' id='Page_256'></span> -of <span class='it'>Black Rock</span> or <span class='it'>The Sky Pilot</span> in consistency of -characterization and in unity of total effect. Indeed <span class='it'>The -Sky Pilot</span> is the most artistically finished of all his works, -because of the natural coherence of its parts in their development -of the central theme. Dramatic power he has to a -marked degree, so far as the presentation of individual -scenes is concerned, such as the fight in the lumber camp, -the horse race, the barn-raising, and many other thrilling -episodes; but his grasp of dramatic values is not broad -enough to escape melodrama. The constructive dramatic -instinct which weaves each separate incident into a chain -of cause and effect dependent upon the character and -motives of the leading personages of the story is very little -in evidence. Whole chapters might be lifted bodily from -some of these novels without interfering with the main -thread of the story.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His imagination is reproductive rather than creatively -constructive. The stories of the foothills are built upon -his own missionary experiences at Banff and elsewhere; -the Glengarry tales deal with his schoolboy experiences and -his knowledge of the rough life of the lumber woods and -the drive; the stories of east and west are also drawn from -his own experiences in college and in the missionary field. -As a result of this his characters tend to become types and -although fairly individual and distinctive they are inclined -to act mechanically and to operate without sufficient inherent -motivation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first novel of Robert E. Knowles, <span class='it'>St. Cuthbert’s</span> although -a romance of a Presbyterian congregation, is not -strictly an ‘evangelical novel.’ It has more to do with -showing the Presbyterian Church as an institution which -dominated the life of the Presbyterian community. The -doings of the Kirk session; the relations of the minister -with the various elements of his flock, the pious and the -profligate, are described with rare fidelity. The tender -<span class='pageno' title='257' id='Page_257'></span> -undercurrent covered by Scottish reserve; the sympathetic -understanding of human nature as the greatest and most -essential quality of ministry; the dry, pawky Scottish -humor; the distinctive and consistent characterization—these -elements make <span class='it'>St. Cuthbert’s</span> a piece of genuine literature. -<span class='it'>The Dawn at Shanty Bay</span> is in reality a short story. -There is one underlying motive, and only one, dominating -the whole—it is the fight between parental love and parental -dignity. It should rank as one of the sweetest ‘Christmas -Carols’ in English literature. His remaining novels—<span class='it'>The -Undertow</span>, <span class='it'>The Web of Time</span>, <span class='it'>The Attic Guest</span>, and -<span class='it'>The Singer of the Kootenay</span> are of the evangelical type -and are fashioned much to the same pattern, showing inconsistencies -in development and a lack of structural -unity.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='258' id='Page_258'></span><h1>CHAPTER XVII</h1></div> - -<h3>Short Story Writers</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE SHORT STORY FICTIONISTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC SCHOOL—E. -W. THOMSON—DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT—CHARLES -G. D. ROBERTS—GILBERT PARKER—ERNEST THOMPSON -SETON—W. A. FRASER.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>here</span> is, on this continent, a literary tradition that -Edgar Allan Poe is the creator of the short story. -The truth is that Poe applied a new method to the short -narrative or prose tale in that he gave the short story a -higher unity of effect towards an impressionistic climax. -He did not originate or create it; he simply improved its -technique. But with the school of Poe this method crystallized -into a formula, and the so-called American short -story became an invention rather than an imaginative creation. -Thus it depends upon a cumulation of effects rising -to a climactic peak of emotional intensity, or upon a plot -that induces suspense by a clever interplay of incident. Its -processes are for the most part mechanical. The telling -or the reading of a short story of this type is far more a -coldly-calculated intellectual exercise than it is an appeal -to warm-hearted human emotions. With aesthetic, moral, -or spiritual values it has little to do. Hence it has not that -permanency that makes for true literature. Based on incident -and accidental circumstance rather than character -it engages the reader temporarily by its cleverness, but it -does not acquaint him with living characters to whom he -loves to return for an enlargement of that acquaintanceship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Canadian species of short story is distinguished by -<span class='pageno' title='259' id='Page_259'></span> -a high artistic unity of structure and effect and in that -respect reflects the influence of Poe upon all modern short -story writing, but there is this difference, that it achieves -its unity of effect and its dramatic interest not by mechanically -constructed climaxes but by developments arising out -of the inherent traits and dispositions of the personages of -the story. Its basis is the solid rock of character. The -Canadian short story as a distinctive type does not present -the excessively climactic plot; nevertheless, it is more truly -a real story than either the plot story of the American and -French writers or the fine psychological situations of successful -English story writers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As we see it, this peculiar quality of the Canadian short -story is rooted in some quality of Canadian nationality. -No Canadian writer can be said to have originated the -method. Each appears to evolve some modification of it -particularly adapted to his own field.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Old Man Savarin and Other Tales</span>, by Edward William -Thomson (1895) contains a number of stories of Canadian -life differing widely in emotional interest. There is the near -burlesque of <span class='it'>Old Man Savarin</span>, with the incident of the -fist fight which lasted for four hours, although the two -combatants never reached within striking distance of each -other all that time; <span class='it'>McGrath’s Bad Night</span> portrays a -pathetic picture of a family on the verge of starvation, -to which is added the greater pathos of the breakdown of -a man’s principles of honesty; <span class='it'>The Privilege of the Limits</span>, -wherein the author captures and presents effectively the -dry, pawky humor of the Scot; the sorrowful dillusionment -of youthful imagination in <span class='it'>The Shining Cross of -Rigaud</span>; superstitious terror overcome by plain common -sense in <span class='it'>Red Headed Windego</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The stories with Eastern Ontario and Quebec for their -setting show a loving intimacy and understanding of the -plain people—the habitant, the river driver, the lumberman, -<span class='pageno' title='260' id='Page_260'></span> -the farmer; and the author is at his best in his -delineation of the Glengarry Scot or the Quebec habitant. -Thomson is scarcely a stylist. There is a freedom, even -looseness, in his story structure, and he employs sometimes -the device of introducing a narrator for his tale. But in -his stories of the Canadian type and setting his warm -friendliness for his characters radiates a glow of enthusiasm -that captures and holds the reader. Not all Thomson’s -stories, however, are of this type—in <span class='it'>Petherick’s -Peril</span>, there is an approach to the horror tale of Poe; and -in <span class='it'>The Swartz Diamond</span> there is the trap-springing device -of the surprise ending, while <span class='it'>Boss of the World</span> is an example -of the ‘tall story’ which produces its humor by the -exaggeration of its ideas—these stories we surmise to be -the result of influences which surrounded E. W. Thomson -in his editorial offices in a Boston magazine publishing -firm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>In the Village of Viger</span> (1896), by Duncan Campbell -Scott is a little volume of prose tales of French Canada, -published in Boston by Copeland and Day. These stories -affect the heart and imagination with a reality and sense of -actuality as if one had dwelt in Viger and had daily come -face to face with Mademoiselle Viau, the little milliner; -Madame Laroque, gossip and reformer; Monsieur Cuerrier, -kind-hearted postmaster; brandy-tippling Paul Arbique -and his wife; Hans Blumenthal, the expatriate German -watchmaker; Pierre, and the lovely but intriguing -Eloise of No. 68 rue Alfred de Musset; Jean Francois, -the mysterious blind peddler; Paul Farlotte who was always -saving up to revisit France, and gave up the project -on the day he dreamed that his mother had died—and all -the rest in this gallery of lovable characters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The reality and veracity of Dr. Scott’s character delineation -produces exquisite and infallible character-vignettes, -or Rembrandtesque word-etchings, lovely in -<span class='pageno' title='261' id='Page_261'></span> -‘values’ and in spiritual <span class='it'>chiaroscuro</span>—depths within depths -of a single character as in Charles Desjardins in the tragic -story of <span class='it'>The Desjardins</span>. Yet in his handling of the -tragic he awakens, not a pity that produces fear or horror -or disgust, but a gentle pity that engenders sympathy. We -appreciate the ‘little milliner’s’ loyalty—begotten of pure -love—to her rascal lover, a common thief. The skilful -sympathetic handling of the subject gives to love a new -dignity and to loyalty a new grandeur. The pathos moves -to a rise and fall, but never so overwhelms the emotions -as to cause tears; rather does it subdue the soul and -leave in the heart of the reader a gentle welling up of -sympathy, a benignant sense of fellowship with finite and -erring humanity, and a tender peace. When a reader -finishes one of Dr. Scott’s stories of the pathetic episode—The -<span class='it'>Little Milliner</span>, <span class='it'>The Desjardins</span>, <span class='it'>Sedan</span>, <span class='it'>Paul Farlotte</span>—he -experiences no violent wrench of the heart-strings—sheds -no tears—but is gently and sweetly touched; feels -with the unfortunate and afflicted; sees the veil that obscures -the hard workaday world lifted; and beholds life -and the world suffused with a ‘grey-eyed loveliness.’ This -is all superb artistry in emotional and spiritual love, by one -who has had intimate glimpses into the human heart and -into the stern face of sublimity in human character and in -life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So, too, his treatment of the comedy in human character -and existence. Human destiny and fate are too dear and -pathetic to him to allow him to engage his art in any -raucous laughter. The smiles he evokes are based on sympathetic -fellow-feeling, on tenderness. We are amused, -yet not unsympathetic, at the rage of Madame Laroque, -defeated in a long-cherished love, and hope of ultimate -marriage, by the elopement of her ward, Cesarine, with -the postmaster (<span class='it'>The Wooing of Monsieur Cuerrier</span>); the -futilities of old Paul Farlotte, who would see ‘la belle -<span class='pageno' title='262' id='Page_262'></span> -France’ before he dies, envisage a comic character, but -subdue our laughter with the pathos of frustrated desire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These themes, we see, are chosen from character and -life in a typical French-Canadian village, yet the sentiments, -the ideals of human love and character and conduct, and -the natural and spiritual color, are Canadian and even universal. -They depend not upon mere accidents of circumstance, -but upon lasting and universal human emotions and -human relationships—permanent literary values. In these -stories, Dr. Scott achieves structural unity and harmony of -emotional tone with an entire absence of any striving for -effect—with that finished art that conceals the artifice of -the craftsman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Always a careful workman rather than a prolific -writer, it was not until 1923 that Duncan Campbell Scott -published another volume of short stories, <span class='it'>The Witching of -Elspie</span>. Some of these are French-Canadian in their setting, -but those most exquisitely wrought deal with the lonely -and heart-searching life of the Hudson Bay posts. Although -Scott’s method was fully formed in his first volume, -there is here a very evident advance in artistry, a greater -economy in expression, but a deeper intensity of effect. -Here he shows a remarkable skill in the almost imperceptible -transition from explanation or description to the -inside of the mind of the varying personages of the story -and back again to description or explanation—one of the -most artistic touches of the work of a finished craftsman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Charles G. D. Roberts developed, in the story of animal -psychology, a species of Canadian short story that depends -not so much upon emotional and artistic effects and a unity -of impressionistic tone as upon intellectual and stylistic -effects and novelty of theme. Scott worked with an artistry -so exquisite that his stories possess the simplicity and -directness which conceal art. Roberts wrought his animal -and romantic short stories with an artistry so much in the -<span class='pageno' title='263' id='Page_263'></span> -manner of the prose-poet that they reveal the stylist consciously -aiming to impress the intellect with niceties of -structure, and the sensibility with word-painting, always -<span class='it'>couleur de rose</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Roberts is the psychologist he is also most the -true structural stylist. But for an example of more impressionistic -color, of sheer word-painting, of prose-poetry -<span class='it'>couleur de rose</span>, the following paragraphs from <span class='it'>The Watchers -in the Swamp</span> are convincing:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote-right90percent'> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Under the first pale lilac wash of evening, just where the slow -stream of the Lost-Water slipped placidly from the open meadows -into the osier-and-bulrush tangles of the swamp, a hermit -thrush, perched in the topmost spray of a young elm tree, was -fluting out his lonely and tranquil ecstasy to the last of the -sunset.</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'> • • • •</p> - -<p class='noindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>It was high morning in the heart of the swamp. From a sky of -purest cobalt flecked sparsely with silver-white wisps of -cloud, the sun glowed down with tempered, fruitful warmth -upon the tender green of the half-grown rushes and already -rank water-grasses—the young leafage of the alder and willow -thickets—the wide pools and narrow, linking lanes of unruffled -water already mantling in spots with lily-pad and arrow-weed. -A few big red-and-black butterflies wavered aimlessly above -the reed-tops. Here and there, with a faint elfin clashing of -transparent wings, a dragon-fly, a gleam of emerald and amethyst -fire, flashed low over the water. From every thicket came -a soft chatter of the nesting red-shouldered blackbirds.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>These stories are lyrical poems in prose; as an impressionistic -stylist in the medium of the animal short story -Roberts is inimitable. We find the same mellifluous prose -(as Mr. T. G. Marquis discriminatingly terms it) in his -romantic short stories, <span class='it'>By the Marshes of Minas</span>, in which -themes, settings, and color are authentically Canadian -(Acadian).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gilbert Parker’s short stories exhibit many of the qualities -of his longer fiction. They are not always as artistically -constructed as those of Duncan Campbell Scott, nor -are they as finely written as those of Roberts, but in the -<span class='pageno' title='264' id='Page_264'></span> -main they are based on sufficient character motivation and -have a sustained dramatic power. Ernest Thompson Seton -and W. A. Fraser are engaging tellers of short tales abounding -in incident and humor, with a sound basis of characterization, -yet of the short story writers of the Systematic -School, Duncan Campbell Scott has produced the most -uniformly excellent work.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='265' id='Page_265'></span><h1>CHAPTER XVIII</h1></div> - -<h3>William Henry Drummond</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE NEW CANADIAN GENRE OF IDYLLIC POETRY—WILLIAM -HENRY DRUMMOND, INTERPRETER OF THE HABITANT—POET -OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN CANADA.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>he</span> Canadian <span class='it'>voyageur</span> and <span class='it'>habitant</span>, the lumberman, -and peasant of French Canada are ‘children of nature’—human, -simple, shy, warm-hearted, honest, and manly. -They were not always thus sympathetically conceived or -regarded by most of their English-speaking compatriots. -They, therefore, needed a sympathetic interpreter who -would reveal their inward spirit and true character, mental -and moral. Strangely, but according to the inscrutable -methods of Providence, the man who was to be the friend -and sympathetic interpreter of the French-Canadian peasant, -was born in Ireland in 1854. He was William Henry -Drummond.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Drummond emigrated to Canada when but a mere lad, -before Old Country education and culture had any chance -to mould his mind and imagination and moral attitudes. -While, then, Drummond himself was an <span class='it'>émigré</span>, his verse, -like that of Isabella Valancy Crawford and for the same -reasons of formative influences in Canada, is Canadian. -It is indeed regional, but it is also indigenous poetry—in -substance, in diction, in imagery, and in craftsmanship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>William Henry Drummond, like the <span class='it'>dramatis personae</span> -of his poems, the <span class='it'>voyageur</span> and <span class='it'>habitant</span>, was a ‘child of -nature.’ No other kind of man, save this large-bodied, -warm-hearted, open-minded lover of human kin and of -the creatures that live in the wild, who saw and felt the -common things of life, as the <span class='it'>habitant</span> saw and felt them, -<span class='pageno' title='266' id='Page_266'></span> -could have been a truthful interpreter of the <span class='it'>habitant</span>. The -merely scholarly poet, the poet of a hothouse refinement, -the poet who went to work at the craftsmanship of poetry -as if he were carving arabesques in verse, could not have -the imaginative insight into the mind and heart of the -French-Canadian peasant and the sympathy with him that -would make it possible for such a poet, with kindly, playful -humor, to express the elemental feelings and thoughts—the -real humanity—of the <span class='it'>habitant</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Drummond was above all things a human poet. -His sympathies were inclusive. By intuition he could -feel just as the <span class='it'>habitant</span> felt about good and evil -in the universe. Drummond’s heart was warm and -large and religious, which meant that he could -call nothing that was made in the image of God common -or outcast. Though he was well read in the modern -poets and was a student of literature, he was not a bookish -man. He distinguished between the literature which possessed -only aesthetic and artistic beauties and that which -was the embodiment of the finer goods of the spirit, the -inalienable satisfactions of existence. He loved only the -literature that was human and beautiful—simple, pure, -and true.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As, then, a ‘child of nature,’ with a large, sympathetic -heart and a Keltic vision of the ‘divinity’ which is in all -men and also in the wild creatures that are near to Nature, -and with a gift of ready expression in rhythmical verse, -Drummond was uniquely fitted to be the interpreter of his -simple, kindly, reticent, but genuinely human and sincere, -fellow-being, the Canadian <span class='it'>habitant</span>. Thus singularly fitted -to be, as he has been called, ‘the Poet of the Habitant,’ -Drummond, in his verse, actually performed a social and -a literary service for his country. On the social side, to -the English-speaking Canadian, who up to the last decade -of the 19th century considered the <span class='it'>habitant</span> as little better -<span class='pageno' title='267' id='Page_267'></span> -than a chattel, Drummond revealed the human, lovable, and -admirable virtues of the humble French-speaking compatriot, -and also engendered in the English-speaking -Canadian a sincere respect and affection for his French-speaking -fellow countryman. On the literary side, Drummond -created a gallery of <span class='it'>genre</span> pictures and spiritual portraits -which constitute a unique contribution, not only to -Canadian poetic Literature, but also to English Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Under what inspiration or vision, hitherto not vouchsafed -to any other Canadian poet, did Drummond write, -and what really novel and important contributions did he -make to Canadian poetry and to world literature?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He discovered and presented to the world, for the first -time, the New Romance in Canada, as Kirby and Sir -Gilbert Parker had discovered and presented the Old Romance. -He created a new form of the Canadian Idyll. -He placed on the stage of the world a group of new Characters -and, through them, originated a new species or type -of World Humor. Pre-eminently Drummond is the Poet -and Humorist of the New Social Democracy in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Until the publication of Drummond’s first creative work, -<span class='it'>The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems</span> (1897), -the French-Canadian, in general, was appreciated only according -to the types seen in the towns and cities. In particular, -the French-Canadian <span class='it'>voyageur</span> and <span class='it'>habitant</span> were -appreciated only as the merry hearts who had sung the -old <span class='it'>chansons</span> on the rivers of Quebec Province—and, as -their English-speaking compatriots fancied, in the academic -and eviscerated English translations in which they heard -these <span class='it'>chansons</span>. No one, up to the time of Drummond’s -first volume, had revealed the mind and heart of the real, -the living <span class='it'>habitant</span>, <span class='it'>voyageur</span>, lumberman, and peasant in -Old Quebec. No one before Drummond had sung their -heart songs in the patois that is theirs when attempting -to express their thoughts and emotions to their supercilious -<span class='pageno' title='268' id='Page_268'></span> -and not too respectful English-speaking compatriots. But -Drummond produced truthful, naturalistic pictures of the -real, the <span class='it'>living</span> French-Canadian <span class='it'>habitant</span>, lumberman, and -peasant as they expressed their thoughts and emotions about -life and their fellows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He did not do this by a sort of reporting. He did it -by letting them talk for themselves in their own patois. -Thus he gave to his pictures of the French-Canadian <span class='it'>habitant</span>, -lumberman, and peasant, a racy and dramatic realism -which distinguishes them as ‘characters’ apart in Canadian, -in English, and in world literature. This is the first reason -why William Henry Drummond must be regarded as an -absolute creator of literary species. He created a new -form of romantic genre poetry, gave it reality, veracity, -and ideality. This is what Louis Fréchette meant when -in his Introduction to Drummond’s first volume, he hailed -Drummond as ‘the pathfinder of a new land of song.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In what way did Drummond give true <span class='it'>ideality</span> to the -life and character which he presented also with a convincing -realism and veracity? There is a species of romance which -is the sheer invention of the fancy or imagination. It presents -a life and character that have never existed and could -not be possible anywhere on earth. That kind of romance -is so ‘fantastic’ as to be absolutely unreal. There is another -kind of romance which is based on real imagination of -supposed real life and real personages. This sort of romance -is typified by fairy tales, not the fairy tales of all -lands, but of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. The -people actually believe in the real existence of fairies, and -imagine these invisible creatures in the forms of human -beings. Romances about them and their doings are, therefore, -not fantastic, but are based on a kind of reality. -Again: there is a species of romance based upon the imagining -of real personages in impossible situations and doing -impossible things. It exists in Canadian Literature in those -<span class='pageno' title='269' id='Page_269'></span> -romances in which the Indian conducts himself in ways that -could only be possible with men of civilized natures and -civilized ideas. This kind of romance is not unreal; it is -<span class='it'>too ideal</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In poetically conceiving and presenting the French-Canadian -<span class='it'>habitant</span>, lumberman, or peasant, Drummond -might have drawn them as fantastic, or fanciful, or absolutely -ideal characters. Or, he might have drawn them, -as Service, for instance, has limned his characters of the -trails and mining camps, with an accentuated or rude -realism. Drummond employed none of these methods. He -presented the French-Canadian <span class='it'>habitant</span>, lumberman, and -peasant as they really <span class='it'>appear</span> on the outside, and as they -ideally <span class='it'>are</span> on the inside, to the vision which sympathetically -divines their feelings, emotions, aspirations, sorrows, joys, -and consolations. Drummond’s poetic eye perceived the -ideal spirit of the French-Canadian <span class='it'>habitant</span> as it shines -through the outer, rude, homely, simple, hesitant creature -whom the English-speaking compatriot only too often, till -Drummond’s time, took to be of a lower and less spiritual -order than himself. By this combined realistic and idealistic -treatment of the character and life of the French-Canadian -<span class='it'>habitant</span>, lumberman, and peasant, Drummond -created a new species of Canadian <span class='it'>genre</span> poetry, a new form -of the Canadian Idyll.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a creator, Drummond is entitled to another distinction. -He originated a new and distinct type of Humor. -There were humorists before and since Drummond. There -was the prose humor of Haliburton’s <span class='it'>Sam Slick</span>. There -was the verse humor of Howe and of Lanigan. There was -the prose humor of De Mille and of Mrs. Cotes. There -have been the prose humor of Leacock and the verse humor -of Service. But the only humor of all these that is likely -to perdure as world literature is that of Haliburton. -Drummond has created a humor which also is likely to -<span class='pageno' title='270' id='Page_270'></span> -live in permanent literature. It is distinguished from all -the other humor written in Canada by the fact that it is -never satiric or malicious or ungenial, or mere humor for -the sake of raising a laugh or to ridicule another. It is -humor with <span class='it'>pathos</span>. Just as Haliburton is unique as a -satiric humorist, so Drummond is unique as a sympathetic -and interpretative humorist. He is a Master of Humor -and of Pathos.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His work is so well known throughout the world that -it is hardly necessary to quote examples of his humor. Mere -excerpts will not suffice. We may, however, recall, as -outstanding examples, <span class='it'>The Wreck of the Julie Plante</span>, <span class='it'>How -Bateese Came Home</span>, <span class='it'>The Curé of Calumette</span>, <span class='it'>Dominique</span>, -<span class='it'>The Corduroy Road</span>, <span class='it'>Little Bateese</span>, <span class='it'>Johnnie Courteau</span>, and -<span class='it'>When Albani Sang</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few words on Drummond’s use of a patois or dialect -and on his verse technique will be sufficient. It is by his -patois that he gives not only naturalness but also veracity -to the speech of his characters. His dialect is pure and -clean and is felt by the reader as natural and genuine. As -to technique, Drummond is a master of simple but flowing -rhythm and obtains his rhymes with an ease and naturalness -that disclose him as an original inventor of rhyme. He -elected to be ‘The Poet of the Habitant,’ and as such he is -unique. Yet his poetry in this form, as well as in other -forms, clearly shows that if he had essayed the writing -of verse on traditional themes and in a traditional manner, -he could have been a poet of considerable distinction. It -is best, however, to leave him with his natural distinction -and glory about him—the Poet of the Habitant. As the -discoverer of the New Romance in Canada, as the Creator -of the New Canadian Idyll, and as the Master of a unique -species of Canadian Humor and Pathos, William Henry -Drummond made a signally original contribution to the -quantity and quality of the creative literature of Canada.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='271' id='Page_271'></span><h1>CHAPTER XIX</h1></div> - -<h3><span class='it'>The</span> Vaudeville School</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE DECADENT INTERIM IN CANADIAN LITERATURE—THE -VAUDEVILLE SCHOOL OF POETS—ROBERT W. SERVICE, ROBERT -J. C. STEAD, AND OTHERS.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>N</span><span class='sc'>ot</span> ineptly, though somewhat jocosely, we may group -Canadian Poets in the Post-Confederation period, -from 1887 to 1907, into three Schools, and label them with -characteristic sobriquets. Already Archibald Lampman, -Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, with Pauline -Johnson and Frederick George Scott, have been called ‘The -Great Lakes School.’ This is a dignified sobriquet, and -derives its descriptive aptness from the native environment, -or from the themes, of these poets, or from both. Again: -Charles G. D. Roberts and Bliss Carman have been named -‘The Birchbark School.’ This is a jocose, playful sobriquet, -and was applied to these poets because ‘they use the -mottled scrolls of the Red Man’s papyrus to build a canoe, -or as a vehicle for verse, with equal dexterity.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By similar tokens, the throng of verse-makers whose -vogue formed a decadent interim in Canadian poetry, beginning -with the publication of Robert Service’s <span class='it'>Songs of -a Sourdough</span> (1907) and ending with the publication of his -<span class='it'>Rhymes of a Rolling Stone</span> (1913), may be signalized as -‘The Vaudeville School.’ On account of the themes of -their verse, its special and distinguishing technique, -and its particular appeal to popular or vulgar taste, this -sobriquet, as applied to Robert Service, Robert Stead, Paul -Agar, George B. Field, Milton W. Yorke (<span class='it'>pseud.</span> Derby -Bill), Robert T. Anderson, John Mortimer, James P. -<span class='pageno' title='272' id='Page_272'></span> -Haverson, Charles W. MacCrossan, Hamilton Wigle, and -others, is just, apt, and veracious. It must be understood, -however, to convey nothing of scorn or contempt or derision, -but to be only a pedagogical formula for summarizing the -qualities of the verse, the ideals, the methods, and the -craftsmanship of the great majority of the poets here -named ‘The Vaudeville School.’ They might have been -dubbed ‘The Sourdough School,’ were it not that of them -all only Service deals with those picturesque and picaresque -humans known in the slang of the Canadian gold-mining -camps as ‘Sourdoughs,’ and were it not that this name, -used as sobriquet, would be derisive rather than sincerely -descriptive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As used here, the term Vaudeville harks back to its -original French connotation. As applied to the verse of -Service, Stead, Haverson, Field, Yorke, and the others, -it means, first, entertainment which appeals to popular or -vulgar or low taste in verse. It means, secondly, arresting -or violent methods in the technique of vividness. In fact, -it is on the side of the technique of vividness in verse-color -and verse-rhythms rather than on the side of the picturesque -and often picaresque matter—characters and situations—of -the verse of this School that the term Vaudeville is most -apt and veracious, and that it is applied here as a descriptive -epithet in the ‘working’ vocabulary of literary criticism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The sublimation of the technique of emotional vividness, -to the exclusion of all regard for the intrinsic and the aesthetic -beauty and moral dignity of poetry</span>—this is the -essential formula of the verse of the Vaudeville School -of Canadian poets. Their aims or motives were sincere -and human. One motive was genuinely aesthetic: they -wished to write verse that would escape the emotional -<span class='it'>deadness</span> of the traditional themes and manner of Canadian -poetry. The other motive was pragmatic: they wished -to write rhythmic and rimed social documents in verse -<span class='pageno' title='273' id='Page_273'></span> -which would have such novelty of theme and such dramatic -or theatrical or ‘sensational’ content as immediately to create -a demand for the ‘new poetry’ and make it readily marketable. -Thus should ‘the art of poetry’ become at once both -pleasurable and profitable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How were these ends to be achieved? ‘I am one who -left off singing Alleluias,’ said Dante, poet of the immortal -‘Vision’ of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Thus Dante, -desiring to get away from the conventional deadness of -saying that he, as a poet, was a messenger from Heaven -to reveal spiritual beauty to his fellows, makes use of one -of the principles of the technique of vividness. He employs -the unusual phrase, the lively, arresting phrase that -would be sure to strike and vividly impress the average -mind or imagination. In short, Dante invents and uses -picturesque slang: for ‘singing Alleluias’ is slang, but how -poetically suggestive it is, how vivid!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Canadian Vaudeville verse-makers realized the -poetic suggestiveness and the vividness of the picaresque -speech of the Far West and the High North. They also -knew how these sections of the country were rich in picturesque -and picaresque characters and in the ‘wild and -woolly’ life which produces strange and violent drama and -melodrama, which is all the more appealing to the imagination -of men and women because it is real and ‘stranger -than fiction.’ It was a life full of moral (or immoral) color -of speech, and action—of compelling interest. Thus ready -to hand in Canada lay for immediate use the materials and -the basal technical principle—the recipe—for the ‘making,’ -not the ‘creation,’ of Vaudeville poetry. What was that -recipe? Simply this. <span class='it'>Lilt in plangent anapaestic metres -or rhythms the picaresque melodrama of the mining camps -in the High North and the melodrama of the ‘chevalerie’ of -the Far West.</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>A single stanza from <span class='it'>The Shooting of Dan McGrew</span> -<span class='pageno' title='274' id='Page_274'></span> -by Robert Service (<span class='it'>Songs of a Sourdough</span>, 1907) affords -ample proof and illustration of the vaudeville qualities of -this decadent verse:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;</p> -<p class='line0'>In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;</p> -<p class='line0'>Then his lips went in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm;</p> -<p class='line0'>And, ‘Boys,’ says he, ‘you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn;</p> -<p class='line0'>But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke they’re true,</p> -<p class='line0'>That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew.’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>That is an impressive characteristic example of the -technique of vividness, by the Canadian master of them all. -But let no one call it poetry. Service’s astounding vogue -for six years—it is now vanished—was not due to the -<span class='it'>poetry</span> in his verse, but to the arresting or violent <span class='it'>drama</span> -and <span class='it'>melodrama</span> in it, made more arresting or compelling -by the infectious swing or lilt of the anapaestic rhythm. -This rhythm is his only <span class='it'>forte</span> in verbal music, though he -also employs alliteration successfully. This <span class='it'>forte</span> is seen -to be a limitation and a weakness, as it also was and is in -his alleged artistic foster-father, Rudyard Kipling. For -as soon as Service attempts to employ another rhythm better -suited to higher thought than the picaresque matter of -strictly ‘Sourdough’ Songs, the results are disastrous. He -fails to hold the attention; and, inasmuch as there are no -compensating rhythmic values, all that is left is the strained -and bizarre effect of cheap melodrama. A singular example -of this kind of weakness and failure in Service is -his <span class='it'>My Madonna</span>, in which he aims consciously and seriously -to achieve a <span class='it'>tour de force</span> in religious sentiment, but falls -into flat <span class='it'>bathos</span> of melodrama (<span class='it'>Songs of a Sourdough</span>).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If proof is wanted that the recipe for writing Vaudeville -verse is simply to lilt in anapaestic metre and rhythm the -<span class='pageno' title='275' id='Page_275'></span> -melodrama of the Far West <span class='it'>chevalerie</span>, proof and illustration -are furnished by a stanza from <span class='it'>Sergeant Blue</span> by -Robert Stead (<span class='it'>Kitchener and Other Poems</span>, 1917):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Sergeant Blue of the Mounted Police was a so-so kind of a guy;</p> -<p class='line0'>He swore a bit, and he lied a bit, and he boozed a bit on the sly;</p> -<p class='line0'>But he held the post at Snake Creek Bend for country and home and God,</p> -<p class='line0'>And he cured the first and forgot the rest—which wasn’t the least bit odd.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The amazing and pathetic fact about Robert Service -is that he really possessed authentic poetic genius, and -sometimes did write pure poetry. At his best Stead has -written some satisfying <span class='it'>genre</span> poetry and story-telling -ballads. But Stead could not rise beyond the homely-pathetic -and the melodramatic in Western <span class='it'>chevalerie</span> into -the realm of pure poetry. He kept always to the level of -his lowly subject. Service, however, fell or rose to the -level of his subject. In short, while most of Service’s verse -is popular Vaudeville, considerable of it violent melodrama, -and much of it drama simply, some of his verse is genuinely -poetical, charged with pure beauty and poetic significance. -How nobly Service has conceived, how passionately -expressed in lovely color-images and pervasive vowel -and alliterative music, and how philosophically interpreted -Nature in his poem <span class='it'>The Mountain and the Lake</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I know a mountain thrilling to the stars,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow;</p> -<p class='line0'>Glimpsing the golden dawn o’er coral bars,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Flaunting the vanished sunset’s garnet glow;</p> -<p class='line0'>Proudly patrician, passionless, serene;</p> -<p class='line0'>  Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break;</p> -<p class='line0'>Virgin and vestal—oh, a very Queen!</p> -<p class='line0'>  And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake. . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In that poem Service has given us an arresting and -memorable picture of pure beauty in Nature. It is beautiful -and unforgettable because it has poetic <span class='it'>Style</span>. Stead -and the other members of the Vaudeville School, with the -<span class='pageno' title='276' id='Page_276'></span> -exception at times of Service when at his best, lacked -genius for style in verse, without which verse, whether -its subject or theme be low or high, realistic or idealistic, -cannot rise to the dignity of poetry. Service, Stead, and -the rest are never authentic Realists. They could not avoid -the melodramatic in the matter of their verse and the -plangent and vivid in its technique. Always they deliberately -set out to assault the senses and the sensibilities. -Kipling could be realistic and by virtue of his style rise -to the dignity of poetry. But for the lack of style, the -hectic realism of Service and Stead never rises above the -crudely melodramatic or Vaudevillian. As picaresque -realists they are, to quote Mr. E. B. Osborn, ‘far behind -the Australian and compare very unfavorably with the -minor masters of Quebec.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Many of the most effective pieces in Service’s first -volume (<span class='it'>Songs of a Sourdough</span>) were deliberate imitations -of Kipling. But later he gave some promise of developing -an independent manner of his own, the manner which is -disclosed in <span class='it'>The Mountain and the Lake</span>, and which indubitably -revealed in him innate original powers for painting -the beauty and sublimity of Nature in the Arctic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Service did not hold to his own manner; and Stead and -the other Vaudevillians were innately incapable of any -manner of their own. At length the vogue of the Vaudeville -poets passed, having in no way affected the stream of -aesthetic and artistic poetry which began with the Systematic -School and which flowed on, pure and undefiled, if -placid and noiseless, through the poetry of the later generation -and into the Restoration Period or Second Renaissance -in Canadian Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fundamental to the point of view of the criticism which -follows is this proposition:—The poetry of the Vaudeville -School for the most part must be regarded, not strictly as -an aesthetic phenomenon, but rather as an envisagement of -<span class='pageno' title='277' id='Page_277'></span> -certain phases of the civilization of Canada in that period—that -is, as a series of <span class='it'>social documents</span>. There is nothing -wrong in treating contemporary phases of civilization in -poetry with such vividness and veracity that they really -become social documents of the period which they envisage; -but they are of no aesthetic worth if they are not consecrated -to and by art. How a social document, when sublimated -by fine art, can become authentic poetry may be discovered -by turning to Pauline Johnson’s musical and swift-moving -lyric <span class='it'>Prairie Greyhounds</span>, descriptive of the transcontinental -trains and their service to Canadian civilization, -or to Mr. C. G. D. Roberts’ noble sonnet <span class='it'>The Train Among -the Hills</span>, or to his equally fine sonnet of the soil <span class='it'>The -Sower</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It must be realized that the sources of poetic inspiration -in Canada have considerably shifted from the Atlantic, -the Land of Evangeline, the Great Lakes, and the Laurentians -to the Prairies, the Rockies, and the ice-clad wildernesses -of the High North. Now, it was inevitable that under -the inchoate and unsettled conditions of civilization in these -Far West and High North sections of the Dominion, the -mere inspiration to write verse should have been uppermost -and that considerations of form should have appeared -secondary or insignificant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The themes treated in the Vaudeville verse were necessarily -new; and when the Western or Yukon poets published -their verses the newness of their themes and their -naïve disregard of technical niceties were mistaken in the -East for originality, vigor, freshness, and breeziness in art, -and were welcomed and read by all classes of Canadians -with avidity as ‘real,’ not ‘hothouse,’ poetry. There we -have the explanation of the astonishing vogue of the verses -of Service and Stead, and of their imitators. But their -verses, far from being examples of genuine originality in -invention of poetic themes and of really new art, exemplify -<span class='pageno' title='278' id='Page_278'></span> -the total absence of art; and far from being ‘real’ poetry, -are totally devoid of the chaste speech, lovely imagery, -dulcet music, and exquisite emotion which constitute true -poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a distinct moral fault on the part of Service that -he should have chosen to give us in verse what he had better -written in prose. The right form for social documents of -picaresque communities is prose. Further: it is a law of -aesthetics, a law exemplified most finely in Homer, that, -whenever possible, all the elements in a work of art should -each be intrinsically beautiful. Service deliberately chose -themes which disregarded that law. We could forgive -him for that if he had redeemed the vulgarity of the themes -by beautiful craftsmanship in versification. His poetry is -bad not because it is wicked or picaresque or risqué, but -because it is aesthetically bad through and through.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>During the Vaudeville Period Roberts, Campbell, Carman, -Duncan Campbell Scott, Canon Scott, Pauline -Johnson, Arthur Stringer, Albert E. S. Smythe, Ethelwyn -Wetherald, Jean Blewett, Helena Coleman, Virna Sheard, -the late Marjorie Pickthall, Katherine Hale, Jean Graham, -Peter McArthur, Richard Scrace, Lucy M. Montgomery -and a host of others published aesthetically satisfying -poetry. For their spirit was of the spirit which inaugurated -the First Renaissance in Canadian poetry. But the spirit -of Service and the lesser poets of the Vaudeville School was -identical with that which animated the early Canadian -verse-makers before the times of Breakenridge, Sangster, -Mair, and John Reade. In spirit and in craftsmanship -the poetry of the Vaudeville School was essentially a recrudescence -of the poetry that made glad the hearts of the -‘Bush’ and ‘Clearing’ settlers of Canada in the first and -second quarters of the last century.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That a New Poetry will arise in Canada and that it will -originate and flourish in the Canadian Far West, is highly -<span class='pageno' title='279' id='Page_279'></span> -probable, because the prairie-lands of the West, their endless -fields of grain sheening in the sun and billowing in rhythmic -swaying to the winds and the mighty vastnesses of land -and sky awaken moods and appreciations of Nature similar -to those stirred in men by the sea. It was, in Bliss Carman’s -fine phrase, ‘the glad indomitable sea’ and the inland -seas that inspired the Maritime and Lake poets who began -the First Renaissance of Canadian Poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But if any of the future Canadian poet, Western or -Eastern, should prefer or incline to turn back to the ways -of Service and Stead, let him reflect that since beauty is -our clearest manifestation of the union of the real and the -ideal, that is, of perfection, not to love and promote beauty -in poetry is so far forth to refuse to love and promote the -Godlike in the hearts of mankind, for perfection is the essence -of the Godhead. To become a poet may not be a -moral duty. But if one elects the office of poet, then to -perfect oneself, as far as possible, in poetic artistry for the -sake of beautifully or compellingly embodying in verse -whatsoever is lovely in Nature or noble in ideas, is to attain -to high moral dignity in one’s own soul as a poet and to -impress on the world the high spiritual function of poetry.</p> - -<hr class='tbk121'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Sources of quotations in this chapter:</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Poems of Robert W. Service—<span class='it'>The Songs of a Sourdough</span> (Ryerson Press: -Toronto); <span class='it'>The Rhymes of a Rolling Stone</span>, (Ryerson Press: Toronto).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Poems of Robert Stead—<span class='it'>Kitchener and Other Poems</span>—or in <span class='it'>The Empire -Builders</span> (Musson Book Co.: Toronto).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='280' id='Page_280'></span><h1>CHAPTER XX</h1></div> - -<h3><span class='it'>The</span> Restoration Period</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE RESTORATION OR SECOND RENAISSANCE PERIOD IN -CANADIAN LITERATURE—NEW FORMS, THEMES, AND SOCIAL -IDEALS—THE POETS—MARJORIE PICKTHALL—ROBERT -NORWOOD—KATHERINE HALE—AND OTHERS.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>W</span><span class='sc'>e</span> call the period beginning with the publication of -Marjorie Pickthall’s first volume of verse, <span class='it'>Drift of -Pinions</span> (1913), and on to the present, the Restoration or -Second Renaissance Period in Canadian Literature. It is -a ‘restoration’ period because it marks a return, after the -Decadent Interim of the Vaudeville School (1907-1912), -to the aesthetic and artistic ideals of the first systematic -group of native-born Canadian writers. It is a ‘renaissance’ -because the writers of the period undertook the systematic -production of original authentic literature, and because they -wrote under the inspiration of new themes, ideals, and -forms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By 1913 when the Canadian public had tired of the -picaresque themes and the plashing anapaests of Robert -Service, and the vogue of the Vaudeville School had passed, -there was a demand for clean and sweet sustenance of the -soul and refreshing new verbal music for the spirit. It -was a demand for pure Beauty—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>                        of fragrance made,</p> -<p class='line0'>Woven and rhymed of light.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Marjorie Pickthall was the first to give the Canadian -public sweet draughts of a new poetic wine of life. She -engaged the attention of the Canadian public with the same -immediacy and delight as the early lyrics of Tennyson and -<span class='pageno' title='281' id='Page_281'></span> -Swinburne captivated the English lovers of poetry. Set for -the most part to a new or, so far as Canada was concerned, -a strange music of trochaic, anapaestic, and syncopated -metres and rhythms, rich in vowel-harmonies and the tone-color -of consonance, assonance, and exquisite alliteration, -her songs changed the world about her into an earthly -paradise. At first Marjorie Pickthall arrested attention as -a young unknown poet singing shyly from a corner in a -daily newspaper or magazine, but singing with a rare beauty -of imagery and of color from Nature, and with a fresh -and dulcet verbal melody, heard as overtones above the -more plashing, plangent rhythms of Service and his colleagues. -It seemed as if Pan had come again to earth, so -idyllic was the Nature-beauty and so simple and dulcet was -the melody of her poetry, as in, for instance, <span class='it'>The Little -Fauns to Proserpine</span>, daintily suggestive of their shadowy -figures:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Browner than the hazel-husk, swifter than the wind,</p> -<p class='line0'>Though you turn from heath and hill, we are hard behind,</p> -<p class='line0'>Singing, ‘Ere the sorrows rise, ere the gates unclose,</p> -<p class='line0'>Bind above your wistful eyes the memory of the rose.’</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Now the vintage feast is done, now the melons glow</p> -<p class='line0'>Gold along the raftered thatch beneath a thread of snow.</p> -<p class='line0'>Dian’s bugle bids the dawn sweep the upland clear,</p> -<p class='line0'>Where we snared the silken fawn, where we ran the deer.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Through the dark reeds wet with rain, past the singing foam</p> -<p class='line0'>Went the light-foot Mysian maids, calling Hylas home.</p> -<p class='line0'>Syrinx felt the silver sprite fold her at her need.</p> -<p class='line0'>Hear, ere yet you say farewell, the wind along the reed.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>There was no appeal on the part of Service and the -other Vaudevillians to the spirit, to the religious imagination. -It was inevitable, then, that the Canadian public—and -the world—should be arrested by the spiritual beauty, -tenderness, wistfulness, and the engaging music of such a -poem as Marjorie Pickthall’s <span class='it'>Mary Shepherdess</span>, the following -<span class='pageno' title='282' id='Page_282'></span> -three stanzas of which illustrate how the thought -is ‘woven and rhymed of light’:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>When the heron’s in the high wood and the last long furrow’s sown,</p> -<p class='line0'>With the herded cloud before her and her sea-sweet raiment blown,</p> -<p class='line0'>Comes Mary, Mary Shepherdess, a-seeking for her own.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Saint James he calls the righteous fold, Saint John he calls the kind,</p> -<p class='line0'>Saint Peter seeks the valiant men all to loose or bind,</p> -<p class='line0'>But Mary seeks the little souls that are so hard to find,</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>All the little sighing souls born of dust’s despair,</p> -<p class='line0'>They who fed on bitter bread when the world was bare,</p> -<p class='line0'>Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>One will seek far in English poetry for a picture of the -human figure limned as graphically as it is in Marjorie -Pickthall’s line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>With the herded cloud before her and her sea-sweet raiment blown;</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>and one will seek far in English poetry to find a line musically -so in harmony with the spiritual picture of ‘all the little -sighing souls’ eyeing, wistful and afraid, the wonder of the -shining spectacle of Heaven, as her line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Not once, or even for a moment, could the earthward -vision of the Vaudevillian poets conceive, and much less -could they write, such a poem of the pure in heart who -shall see God as Marjorie Pickthall’s <span class='it'>The Lamp of Poor -Souls</span>, and its subdued, sacramental music, ending thus:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Shine, little lamp, fed with sweet oil of prayers.</p> -<p class='line0'>Shine, little lamp, as God’s own eyes may shine,</p> -<p class='line0'>When He treads softly down His starry stairs</p> -<p class='line0'>And whispers, ‘Thou art Mine!’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Shine, little lamp, for love hath fed thy gleam.</p> -<p class='line0'>Sleep, little soul, by God’s own hands set free.</p> -<p class='line0'>Cling to His arms and sleep, and sleeping, dream,</p> -<p class='line0'>And dreaming, look for me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Francis Thompson or Alice Meynell could have written -the whole poem possibly with a more immaculate artistry, -<span class='pageno' title='283' id='Page_283'></span> -but not with any finer appeal to the religious or mystical -imagination, and not with a melody a whit more winning -as an end in itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Having thus tasted the chief engagements of Marjorie -Pickthall’s poetry, we must in a more detailed way disclose -her genius and art as they appear in her lyrical poems in -<span class='it'>The Drift of Pinions</span> (1913), <span class='it'>The Lamp of Poor Souls</span> -(1916), and the posthumous volume <span class='it'>The Wood Carver’s -Wife</span> (1922)—the last of which contains a lyric drama -(the title-poem of the volume) and several lyrics. It is -as an adroit and exquisite craftswoman (or ‘artist’), rather -than for originality of imaginative conception, that, from -her first printed essays in verse to the last, Marjorie Pickthall -appeals as a specially gifted poet in Canada, and must -be accorded an honorable, possibly high, place in Canadian -poetic literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Technically, her poetry is distinguished by an extraordinarily -successful use of color epithets and verbal melody, -especially alliteration. The defects of her poetry are -not, on the whole, technical, but are defects, or rather limitations, -of genius. Broadly viewed, her poetry lacks breadth -of range and eloquence of style. By ‘style’ is not meant -Matthew Arnold’s conception or formula of what he called -‘the grand style.’ Marjorie Pickthall’s verse is free, flowing, -airy, graceful, tripping, musical; in a word, feminine. -But by thus much does it lack originality and seriousness -in the substance of its style, the qualities which give us the -sense of having met with beauty which is not a mere finely -distilled essence of loveliness, but which has strength, and -dignity, and power over the heart and the imagination.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The key to the defects or limitations in Marjorie Pickthall’s -poetry was not her imagination but her ‘heart.’ She -loved and had sympathy only or specially with all little -creatures and things, with tender, frail, and helpless creatures -and things; and she felt profoundly a sort of injustice -<span class='pageno' title='284' id='Page_284'></span> -in their fate, which begot in her a wistful wondering about -the justice of the ways of God. She therefore inevitably -impressed on her poetry her own feminine feeling for the -little and helpless creatures of earth, her own sympathy with -the evanescence of all the animate ‘little things’—children, -flowers, moths, birds, and ‘the little stars of Duna’—that -<span class='it'>for her</span> made existence tolerable or happy. Everywhere in -her verse appears her preoccupancy with the very word or -with suggestions of the word ‘little.’ It is this ‘heart’ -limitation that causes her to show what would seem at -first sight to be a mannerism, namely, her predilection for -certain substantives and epithets, as, for instance, ‘moth,’ -‘dove,’ ‘stars,’ ‘silver,’ ‘golden.’ It is not really a mannerism; -but a necessity of her heart and mind. For the creatures -and things her heart most loved, inevitably filled -her consciousness and excluded other creatures and things.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But while Marjorie Pickthall, by limitation of genius, -failed to attain to the sheer reaches in style and poetic -substance which mark the work of Lampman, Carman, and -D. C. Scott, and while she did not possess the ecstatic lilt -of Carman, still she must be ranked as a supreme lyrist -of the lovely, evanescent little things in the world. She -must be ranked high also as a technical artist. If her poetry -does not disclose her as able to achieve the finer strength -and beauties of technique in poetic style, that distinguish -the poetry of Lampman, Carman, and D. C. Scott, she is -less often at fault technically than the older poets. Her -technical artistry was not an acquired accomplishment; it -was a gift of Nature. For while the older poets won their -way, by hard striving, to their perfection in technique, -Marjorie Pickthall, as early as her sixteenth year of age, -displayed a precocious virtuosity, which was almost an -instinct, in adroit and ingenious verbal coloring and melody.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the invention of winsome and vivid color epithets -and images and in her power for alliterative music in verse, -<span class='pageno' title='285' id='Page_285'></span> -Marjorie Pickthall was, perhaps, surpassed by Pauline -Johnson. But Miss Pickthall was the more ingenious of -the two poets. The following examples are impressive:—‘Dark -with the green silence under the gold weather,’ ‘And -close the cowslips’ cups of honeyed gold,’ ‘Yellow for the -ripened rye, white for ladies’ wearing,’ ‘Where cling the -moths that are the longings of men,’ ‘Thy lips are bright -as the edge of the sword,’ ‘On the great green lawns o’ -heaven,’ ‘He saw the moonlit rafters of the world,’ ‘Clear-footed -from the frontiers of the world,’ ‘And hear new -stars come singing from God’s hand,’ ‘To the wind that -cried last night like a soul in sin.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nature was Marjorie Pickthall’s chief mistress. In the -pictorial treatment of Nature the poet displayed special -gifts. It is not true to say that she had the Greek ‘feeling’ -for Nature, or that the Nature in her verse was that of the -ancient Greeks. It was impossible for Marjorie Pickthall, -an Anglo-Canadian, to have a Greek imagination; and they -who claim that she had the ancient Greek feeling for -Nature, might as rightfully claim that she had the ancient -Gaelic or Keltic feeling for Nature, or the ancient Semitic -feeling for the presence of God, or the medieval Breton -feeling for Nature and the mystery of religious faith, which -some have remarked as ‘mysticism’ in Marjorie Pickthall’s -poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The truth is that, first, Marjorie Pickthall had a mind -and imagination which were naturally pagan, and that, -secondly, Nature was to her but the material for her fanciful -and pretty treatment in verse. But to the Greeks, -Nature, as perceived and embodied in their mythology and -poetry, was their vision of the real face and heart of Nature. -They actually <span class='it'>believed</span> in gods, goddesses, heroes, -muses, naiads, mermaids, satyrs, fauns, as being Nature -herself. This is what we mean by saying that the Greeks -were pagans. But Marjorie Pickthall had, by native gift, -<span class='pageno' title='286' id='Page_286'></span> -only the sensibility and imagination that were naturally -pagan in a love of and preference for thus <span class='it'>visualizing</span> -Nature. She had saturated her mind, by reading, with the -mythology of the Greeks; and her naturally pagan sensibility -and imagination re-colored and re-expressed this -material in a delightful pagan—not Greek—way in verse. -Marjorie Pickthall had no such lively sense of the <span class='it'>reality</span> -of divinity in Nature as had the Greeks. But she did have -a lively pagan, if Anglo-Canadian, imagination. And so, -with imaginative ‘<span class='it'>make-believe</span>’ she peopled Nature with -spirits, mermaids, pixies, fauns, elfs, playing with the Old -Nurse Nature, or with themselves, and rejoicing in the -sights, sounds, and the shy forest creatures, which they see -and hear amongst the woodlands, streams, hills. She thus -paganly <span class='it'>poetizes</span> Nature, beautifully, winningly; but it is -all a <span class='it'>tour de force</span> of the senses and imagination, achieved -in her ‘closet,’ where she was temporarily shut off from the -roar and turmoil of great cities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Had she steeped herself as thoroughly in ancient Gaelic -lore, myths and legends, she would have written as engagingly -of the Nature of the Kelts. In her single poetic -essay in Gaelic ‘feeling’ for Nature—the Gael’s innate love -of Nature and the Homeland, his nostalgia—she failed in -a double way; first, by infelicitously giving her poem a -German title, <span class='it'>Wanderlied</span>, and, secondly, by a dull and commonplace -imitation, if not a parody, of Ethna Carbery, -Nora Hopper, Moira O’Neil, Katharine Tynan. When she -was sincerely and naturally pagan, as in most of her verse, -she succeeded admirably. But when she attempted to write -a ‘literary’ poem in the pagan spirit, as in <span class='it'>Wanderlied</span>, she -failed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>More of her imagery is derived from <span class='it'>actual Nature in -Canada</span> than from mythological Nature in ancient Greece. -The coloring from Canadian woods in Spring, Autumn, -and Winter is in her verse, also visualizations of Canadian -<span class='pageno' title='287' id='Page_287'></span> -fields and flowers, and the subtle handwork of ‘the Frost -King,’ and even Canadian domestic felicities made possible -by Nature, such as the winter arabesque on the windowpanes -in contrast with the inviting glow of burning logs -on the hearth:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Here where the bee slept and the orchis lifted</p> -<p class='line0'>Her honeying pipes of pearl, her velvet lip,</p> -<p class='line0'>Only the swart leaves of the oak lie drifted</p> -<p class='line0'>In sombre fellowship.</p> -<p class='line0'>Here where the flame-weed set the lands alight,</p> -<p class='line0'>Lies the bleak upland, webbed and crowned with white.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Build high the logs, O love, and in thine eyes</p> -<p class='line0'>Let me believe the summer lingers late.</p> -<p class='line0'>We shall not miss her passive pageantries,</p> -<p class='line0'>We are not desolate,</p> -<p class='line0'>When on the sill, across the window bars,</p> -<p class='line0'>Kind winter flings her flowers and her stars.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>And what but Canadian is this compelling line from <span class='it'>The -Young Baptist</span>?—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Clear-footed from the frontiers of the world!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In short, if we were making a formula for Marjorie -Pickthall’s Nature poetry, we would employ this sub-title—‘Lyrics -in the Greek and the Canadian Modes of Pictorializing -Nature.’ Thus we should, by a single phrase, escape -absurdly alleging that an Anglo-Canadian mind possessed -Greek imagination and feeling for a mythological Nature; -and thus also make clear the fact that Marjorie Pickthall, -an Anglo-Canadian poet, was gifted not only with a lively -pagan sense of the beauty of a vanished world, but also with -a responsive sensibility to the beauty of a real and present -world of Nature in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In two respects, then, Marjorie Pickthall may be regarded -as having made original contributions to Canadian -literature. First, she winsomely <span class='it'>pictorialized</span>, not, as with -Lampman, spiritually interpreted, the face and pageantry -of Nature. Secondly, she subtilized verse technique in -<span class='pageno' title='288' id='Page_288'></span> -verbal coloring and melody. She had a light and tender -fancy, and, certainly for Canada, a rare artistry. She -brought Titania and Ariel to earth again; and suffused existence -with magical illusion, rhymed of light. The monument -she herself raised to her genius and memory is not -large and imposing; but it is, like her own spirit, chaste, -exquisite, beautiful—and enduring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Another significant creative poet of the Second Renaissance -Period is Robert Norwood. Miss Pickthall was an -objective poet. Whenever her imagination concerned itself -with the spiritual realm it was to interpret only her own -<span class='it'>private</span> experience, strictly from a personal point of view. -Norwood is an interpreter of the Spirit to the Spirit—universalizing -his imaginative experiences. He is, to be -sure, a colorist and a musician in verse; but he is these -secondarily in aim, whereas primarily he is the singer and -interpreter of the meaning of Spiritual Love. In this field -he has made a really original contribution to native Canadian -poetry. In another field, however, he has made a still -greater contribution to Canadian poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The faculty of love, which is the deepest function of -man’s spiritual nature, is the imagination, the idealizing -faculty. The greatest and most spiritualizing power in -the world is love because its ultimate object is the heart of -the universe; that is, Immortal Love, which is God, for God -is Love. The greatest and most spiritualizing earthly object -of love is Woman, because it is the idealization, the -love, of Woman that most inspires men to achievement -in this life and to the deserving of union and companionship -on earth and in the life to come. That is to say, the -spiritual love of Woman is the chief inspiration of human -creative ideals and activities—of material achievement, of -creation in the fine arts, and of religion. Thus did Goethe -apostrophize this divine function of woman:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Das Ewig Weibliche</p> -<p class='line0'>Zieht uns hinan</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='289' id='Page_289'></span></p> - -<p class='noindent'>—the eternal woman-soul draws us forever upwards and -on; and thus has Robert Norwood also declared Woman’s -spiritualizing function:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Much have I learned of woman and the part</p> -<p class='line0'>She plays in shaking from the laden bough</p> -<p class='line0'>Life’s blossoms; all that has been, and is now,</p> -<p class='line0'>And ever shall be: Science, music and art,</p> -<p class='line0'>Religion, these, as from a fountain start</p> -<p class='line0'>The river, have been hers—man to endow.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It is Norwood’s mastery of verbal color and music and -his power of spiritual vision and exaltation—his interpretation -and treatment of Ideal Love—that constitute his -novel quality of fresh excellence in the poetry of the Second -Renaissance. Certainly in his sonnet-sequence <span class='it'>His Lady -of the Sonnets</span> (1915), he has enhanced the quality of Canadian -poetry. Uppermost in his heart and imagination is -the refining redemptive, transmuting power of Love, an absolute -joy in the thought of the spiritual union and companionship -of the Lover and the Beloved. To him Love -is a holy ideal; and Loving is the fusion of soul and soul, -of spirit and spirit, until the Lover and the Beloved become -one soul, one spirit, enamored of holiness in thought, -speech, and deed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As an example of Norwood’s sensuously colorful and -musical envisagement of the Ideal Love we quote the following -sonnet:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I meet you in the mystery of the night,</p> -<p class='line0'>A dear Dream Goddess on a crescent moon;</p> -<p class='line0'>An opalescent splendour like a noon</p> -<p class='line0'>Of lilies; and I wonder that the height</p> -<p class='line0'>Should darken for the depth to give me light—</p> -<p class='line0'>Light of your face, so lovely that I swoon</p> -<p class='line0'>With gazing, and then wake to find how soon</p> -<p class='line0'>Joy of the world fades when you fade from sight.</p> -<p class='line0'>Beholding you I am Endymion,</p> -<p class='line0'>Lost and immortal in Latmian dreams;</p> -<p class='line0'>With Dian bending down to look upon</p> -<p class='line0'>Her shepherd, whose aeonian slumber seems</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='290' id='Page_290'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>A moment, twinkling like a starry gem</p> -<p class='line0'>Among the jewels of her diadem.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>As an example of his power for spiritualizing Love, the -following sonnet from the same sequence will suffice:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Last night I crossed the spaces to your side,</p> -<p class='line0'>As you lay sleeping in the sacred room</p> -<p class='line0'>Of our great moment. Like a lily’s bloom,</p> -<p class='line0'>Fragile and white were you, my spirit-bride,</p> -<p class='line0'>For pain and loneliness with you abide,</p> -<p class='line0'>And Death had thought to touch you with his doom,</p> -<p class='line0'>Until Love stood angelic at the tomb,</p> -<p class='line0'>Drew sword, smote him and Life’s door opened wide.</p> -<p class='line0'>I looked on you and breathed upon your hair—</p> -<p class='line0'>Your hair of such soft, brown, translucent gold!</p> -<p class='line0'>Nor did you know that I knelt down in prayer,</p> -<p class='line0'>Clasped hands, and worshipped you for the untold</p> -<p class='line0'>Magnificence of womanhood divine—</p> -<p class='line0'>God’s miracle of Water turned to Wine!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In his exquisitely wrought, sensuously colored, yet -spiritually elevating verse surely we discover something -that has never before been in Canadian poetry. It is a -fresh achievement in Canadian poetry, even though it is -not always impeccable in rhythm and rhyme. It is, too, -authentic poetry, as if Dante or Keats or Tennyson or -Swinburne had returned to earth and their genius were -reincarnated, in a notable degree, in the genius of Robert -Norwood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Katherine Hale (Mrs. John Garvin) is a poet by herself. -For she was a poet of considerable distinction for a decade -before she published the volume which revealed her as -having found her métier in creative poetry, as in her <span class='it'>Morning -in the West</span> (1923). The eye and the ear are supreme -in her processes of perception. Music and pictorial art -were her first aesthetic loves, and had most to do with -determining her attitudes and appreciations of the spiritual -world. So that, at length, the inner eye and the inner ear -became the faculties by which she perceived beauty in the -external world as well as in the heart of mankind. All her -<span class='pageno' title='291' id='Page_291'></span> -reactions to what she saw and heard in the external world -were in terms of color beauty and tonal beauty, perhaps -more in terms of color than of tone. She became a musical -critic of distinction, and one of our foremost ‘color-writers.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When, therefore, Katherine Hale felt the ‘urge’ to -create poetry, her reactions to the spiritual world also were -in terms of color and music. It is found that her development -in poetic writing follows the same order as her development -in prose writing. She began as a critic of music -and reviewer of literature, but capped all her prose with a -finished and arresting work in ‘color-writing,’ <span class='it'>Canadian -Cities of Romance</span> (1922). She began her poetic creation -with the musical or lyrical qualities of her verse much more -accentuated than the color qualities, and her themes and -forms much more earth-born and conventional than romantic -and spiritualized in meaning. But always in her -first three books of verse there was the feeling for pictorial -or color values and for subtle emotional and spiritual -nuances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At length, as in <span class='it'>Morning in the West</span>, her latest volume, -she found her true mode, and poetry became for her the -beautiful sketching and etching and painting of the romance -of the Canadian spirit. This poetry of the spirit she suffused -with all the subtle variations of imaginative ‘color,’ -half-lights, shadows, and chiaroscuro of Nature and social -life in Canada from the days of the Scots factor and Western -<span class='it'>chevalerie</span> to the era of the transcontinental railways.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her first two books of verse, <span class='it'>Grey Knitting</span> (1914) and -<span class='it'>The White Comrade</span> (1916), by their very titles suggest the -color ‘note.’ But the gift or power of embodying spiritual -beauty in lyrical music is always uppermost, as for instance -in <span class='it'>The Ultimate Hour</span> or <span class='it'>In Noonday</span> containing the unforgettable -alliterative and musical line:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>With dear indefinite delight;</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='292' id='Page_292'></span></p> -<p class='noindent'>or in this stanza from <span class='it'>The Answer</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Unaltered aisles that wait and wait forever,</p> -<p class='line0'>O woods that gleam and stir in liquid gold,</p> -<p class='line0'>What of your little lover who departed</p> -<p class='line0'>    Before the year grew old?</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>In addition to the winsome color and musical qualities of -her earlier lyrical verse, we discover a refined spiritual -quality in such a sonnet as <span class='it'>The First Christmas</span>, and a noble -spiritualization of romantic love in her sonnet <span class='it'>At Noon</span>, -beginning:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Thou art my Tower in the sun at noon.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Katherine Hale’s long poem <span class='it'>The White Comrade</span> -(1916) discloses notable gifts in blank verse and the power -to make a dramatic picture that enthralls the mystical or -religious imagination. Her rare gifts of delicate fancy, -elfin enchantment from Nature and simple Orphean music, -reminding us of Bliss Carman’s light lyrism, is finely exemplified -in her spiritualized lyric <span class='it'>I Used to Wear a Gown -of Green</span>, in which beauty and pathos are tenderly commingled:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I used to wear a gown of green</p> -<p class='line0'>  And sing a song to May,</p> -<p class='line0'>When apple blossoms starred the stream</p> -<p class='line0'>  And Spring came up the way.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I used to run along with Love</p> -<p class='line0'>  By lanes the world forgets,</p> -<p class='line0'>To find in an enchanted wood</p> -<p class='line0'>  The first frail violets.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>And ever ’mid the fairy blooms</p> -<p class='line0'>  And murmur of the stream,</p> -<p class='line0'>We used to hear the pipes of Pan</p> -<p class='line0'>  Call softly through our dream.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>But now, in outcry vast, that tune</p> -<p class='line0'>  Fades like some little star</p> -<p class='line0'>Lost in an anguished judgment day</p> -<p class='line0'>  And scarlet flames of war.</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='293' id='Page_293'></span></p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>What can it mean that Spring returns</p> -<p class='line0'>  And purple violets bloom,</p> -<p class='line0'>Save that some gypsy flower may stray</p> -<p class='line0'>  Beside his nameless tomb!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>To pagan Earth her gown of green,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Her elfin song to May—</p> -<p class='line0'>With all my soul I must go on</p> -<p class='line0'>  Into the scarlet day.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>All these—the poetry of her first three books, <span class='it'>Grey -Knitting</span>, <span class='it'>The White Comrade</span>, and <span class='it'>The New Joan</span>—were -but her short flights preparatory to making her eagle flight, -by which she should discover the meaning of Canadian -history and civilization in which is envisaged the Canadian -national spirit. In <span class='it'>Morning in the West</span> Katharine Hale -is no longer the individual lyrist fluting in the band of -other Canadian lyrists. In that volume she sounds the -diapason of Canadian nationality. She invents new forms -of lyrism, and her themes are colored with new tones and -lights of an impressionism which is the acme of realism and -yet is finely spiritualized, as in the series of verbal color-sketches -<span class='it'>Going North</span> and <span class='it'>A Study of Shadows</span>. But always -we are being taken by the poet through Canada, and -made to see what has been for us the most invisible, or, if -visible, the most elusive of all things, namely, the forms -and variation of the Canadian spirit and habitat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The new forms of her lyrism may be exemplified in this -example, <span class='it'>Enchantment</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>I never see a blue jay</p> -<p class='line0'>But I think of her;</p> -<p class='line0'>Never hear that hoarse ‘dear—dear’</p> -<p class='line0'>From a tree-top stir,</p> -<p class='line0'>And the answering call</p> -<p class='line0'>Far, far away,</p> -<p class='line0'>And the flash of azure—</p> -<p class='line0'>Oh, she would stay</p> -<p class='line0'>Listening in the forest,</p> -<p class='line0'>Loitering through the silence,</p> -<p class='line0'>Hearing calls and singing</p> -<p class='line0'>All the livelong day!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='294' id='Page_294'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her new themes and new vision and spiritual import in -them—the envisagement of the qualities of the Canadian -spirit—are notably presented in <span class='it'>Cun-ne-wa-bum</span>, <span class='it'>Buffalo -Meat</span>, and most poignantly in <span class='it'>An Old Lady</span>, which is an -incisively graphic and dramatic <span class='it'>picture</span> of the whole history -of Canadian civilization from the early days of the Hudson’s -Bay Company to the 20th century social life in Ottawa -in these days of automobiles and bridge parties. Yet -it is no mere picture, but possesses a simple pathos, tenderness, -and wistfulness which spiritualize the realism in the -poem, and raise it to the plane of literature. This, then, -is Katherine Hale’s novel contribution to the poetic literature -of Canada:—Canadian nature and civilization envisaged -with a spiritual realism which has national perspective -and native color and atmosphere. It is a new and -distinct achievement in creative poetry in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Another significant poet of the Second Renaissance -period, whose verse deserves special mention, is Lloyd -Roberts. Early in 1914 he published a volume of verse -entitled, <span class='it'>England Over Seas</span>. Lloyd Roberts is the son of -Charles G. D. Roberts. No doubt, he inherited his poetic -gifts from his father, and, no doubt, learned the principles -of technical artistry from him. But, as a matter of fact, -in his own published verse, Lloyd Roberts shows qualities—love -of Nature and the gift of a singularly lyrical lilt—that -are nearer the verse of his father’s cousin, the inimitable -lyrist of the seasons, the vagrom heart, and the open road, -Bliss Carman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In <span class='it'>England Over Seas</span>, the younger Roberts is an enchanting -lover of Nature, a vivid colorist, and a melodious -verbal musician. Nature is, in his own phrase, ‘the star’—always -the theme and in the foreground. Of his qualities -as a nature-painter and a verbal melodist, the following is -an excellent example:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Crimson and gold in the paling sky;</p> -<p class='line0'>  The rampikes black where they tower on high—</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='295' id='Page_295'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>And we follow the trails in the early dawn</p> -<p class='line0'>  Through the glades where the white frosts lie.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Down where the flaming maples meet;</p> -<p class='line0'>  Where the leaves are blood before our feet</p> -<p class='line0'>We follow the lure of the twisting paths</p> -<p class='line0'>  While the air tastes thin and sweet.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Leggings and jackets are drenched with dew;</p> -<p class='line0'>  The long thin barrels are cold and blue;</p> -<p class='line0'>But the glow of the Autumn burns in our veins,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And the eyes and hands are true.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Where the sun drifts down from overhead</p> -<p class='line0'>  (Tangled gleams in the scarlet bed),</p> -<p class='line0'>Rush of wings through the forest aisle—</p> -<p class='line0'>  And the leaves are a brighter red.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Loud drum the cocks in the thickets nigh;</p> -<p class='line0'>  Gray is the smoke where the ruffed grouse die.</p> -<p class='line0'>There’s blackened shell in the trampled fern</p> -<p class='line0'>  When the white moon swims the sky.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The number of the poets of the Second Renaissance is -legion. Amongst them are Arthur S. Bourinot, Gertrude -Bartlett, Bernard F. Trotter (deceased), Arthur L. Phelps, -Lucy M. Montgomery-MacDonald, Grace Blackburn, -Beatrice Redpath, Laura E. McCully, Louise Morey Bowman, -Florence Randal Livesay, Norah Holland, Amy -Pennington, Carroll C. Aikins, Wm. A. Creelman, Andrew -D. Merkel, Alexander Louis Fraser, Peter MacLaren -MacDonald, Clare Giffen, Erica Selfridge, Charles T. -Bruce, Marian Osborne, H. J. Maclean. It were worth -while to review in detail the work of Arthur S. Bourinot -as represented in his <span class='it'>Laurentian Lyrics</span> (1915), and -<span class='it'>Lyrics From the Hills</span> (1923), and Arthur L. Phelps as -represented in his <span class='it'>Poems</span> (1921) and <span class='it'>A Bobcaygeon Chapbook</span> -(1923). Bourinot attracted attention by his noble -and moving sonnet <span class='it'>To The Memory of Rupert Brooke</span> and -his tender and musical war lyric beginning:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='296' id='Page_296'></span></p> - -<p class='noindent'>But he is also an artist in colorful lyrism of Nature in -Canada, especially of the Laurentian district. Phelps is -a refined, perhaps it were better to say, dainty lyrist; but -he has also attempted new forms, and has been successful -with realistic ‘free verse.’ The others, with a few exceptions, -are systematic poets, but are not notable for -spiritual vision or for originality in forms or substance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is, however, from the point of view of a fresh vision -of earth and life and of originality in forms and substance -that the work of Florence Randal Livesay, Grace Blackburn, -Beatrice Redpath, Louise Morey Bowman, and Wilson -MacDonald must be specially remarked. For their -work displays a distinct advance in modernism over the -work of Marjorie Pickthall, Robert Norwood, and Katherine -Hale (earlier manner). In fact, there is in their work -fresh origination in themes, structures, music, and social -ideals. Florence Randal Livesay won distinction by her -<span class='it'>Songs of Ukraina</span> (1916). Though formally called translations, -they have such original elements of form and -matter that they are no more translations in the ordinary -meaning than is Fitzgerald’s <span class='it'>Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam</span>. -Mrs. Livesay’s work in the <span class='it'>Songs of Ukraina</span>, like that of -Fitzgerald, has a turning of phrase and of imagery and a -grace and music which are all her own and entitle the <span class='it'>Songs</span> -to the distinction of creative verse. In 1923 she published -<span class='it'>Shepherd’s Purse</span>. Here her genius flowered independently -in what is essentially spiritual realism. But it is not a -heavy spiritual realism. It exhibits a rare and light fancy -for elusive emotional nuances; and all the poems have a -piquancy, daintiness, and exquisite humanity which win one -to the love of the evanescent beauty that is in all things -human. The poems too have an air of the qualities which -are in the <span class='it'>vers de société</span> and the ‘Blue China’ poetry of -Andrew Lang and Austin Dobson. Mrs. Livesay has made -a genuinely novel contribution to Canadian poetry. -<span class='pageno' title='297' id='Page_297'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Outstanding in other ways is the verse of Grace Blackburn, -Beatrice Redpath, Louise Morey Bowman, and Wilson -MacDonald. There is more strength and spiritual -perceptiveness in the poetry of Grace Blackburn and -Beatrice Redpath than in that of Louise Morey Bowman. -All show equal originality and finish in the technical treatment -of their themes, but Louise Morey Bowman shows at -times an airy fancy which is almost so ethereal as to be -altogether abstract and unearthly. On the whole, exquisite -technique is their chief distinction; they are artists.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wilson MacDonald in his <span class='it'>Songs of the Prairie Land</span> -(1918) and <span class='it'>The Miracle Songs of Jesus</span> (1921) discloses -an absorption in mystical psychology and psychoanalysis -which, by its daring and his method of suffusing the matter -with ingenious and subtilized novelty or beauty of diction -and imagery, adumbrates Goethe of the <span class='it'>Faust</span> tradition. -It is at once realistic and ultra-spiritualistic. His technique -is just as original and individualized as the matter of his -poems. If any Canadian has the right to the distinction of -possessing <span class='it'>sheer</span> creative genius, that right belongs to Wilson -MacDonald as a Seer and as an Artist working in a -field of spiritual vision which he has pre-empted.</p> - -<hr class='tbk122'/> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Sources of quotations in this chapter:</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Marjorie Pickthall—<span class='it'>The Wood Carver’s Wife and Other Poems</span> (McClelland -& Stewart: Toronto).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Robert Norwood—<span class='it'>His Lady of the Sonnets</span> (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Katherine Hale—<span class='it'>The White Comrade</span> (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto); -<span class='it'>Morning in the West</span> (Ryerson Press: Toronto).</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Lloyd Roberts—<span class='it'>England Overseas</span> (Elkin Mathews: London).</span></p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='298' id='Page_298'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXI</h1></div> - -<h3>Fiction Writers</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE COMMUNITY NOVEL—MONTGOMERY—KEITH—MCCLUNG—LE -ROSSIGNOL. INSTITUTIONAL FICTION—PACKARD—SULLIVAN—DUNCAN—WALLACE -AND OTHERS. REALISTIC -ROMANCE—SERVICE—CODY—STEAD, ETC. HISTORICAL FICTION—SNIDER—ANISON -NORTH—TESKEY—MCKISHNIE—COONEY. -IMAGINATIVE FICTION—PICKTHALL—MACKAY. -MISCELLANEOUS TYPES—MCKISHNIE—SULLIVAN—HÉMON—SIME. -THE NEW REALISM—SALVERSON—DE LA ROCHE—CORNELL, -ETC.</p> -</div> - -<h4>1. <span class='it'>The Community Novel.</span></h4> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>U</span><span class='sc'>ntil</span> the ‘nineties’ the production of Canadian fiction -had been spasmodic and scattered, but the success of -Gilbert Parker, Marshall Saunders, and other Canadian -writers who gained a hearing first in lands alien to their -own, and whose work came back to Canada ‘with an alienated -majesty,’ proved that Canada was rich in literary -material. The first decade of the twentieth century saw a -marked increase in fiction writing in Canada. The new -writers were influenced not only by the example of their -compatriots but by that of the fiction writers of Great -Britain and the United States. They began to realize that -life around them was as interesting as Barrie’s Thrums or -Bret Harte’s California. There was, too, a growing reading -public ready to appreciate stories that presented the -adventure, the humor, and the pathos of the daily life of -themselves, their neighbors, or their fellow-Canadians in -other parts of the country and sometimes of other racial -origins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hence arose the Community Novel or type of story. One -<span class='pageno' title='299' id='Page_299'></span> -of the earlier examples is Adeline M. Teskey’s <span class='it'>Where the -Sugar Maple Grows</span> (1901). In telling of the origin of -this book, Miss Teskey wrote that when reading Ian MacLaren’s -<span class='it'>Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush</span> she said within herself, -‘I know just as interesting people in Canada.’ Her -sketches of village characters, depicted with a homely but -effective simplicity of style, showed that she was right. A -delightfully humorous novel of Cranfordian flavor, <span class='it'>The -Specimen Spinster</span>, by Kate Westlake Yeigh, (1906), essayed -a larger canvas instead of the smaller etchings and -gave an insight into the social relationships of the rural -village.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The year 1908 may be said to mark the real beginning of -the Second Renaissance in Canadian fiction, for in that -year there were published three novels of the Community -type—<span class='it'>Anne of Green Gables</span>, by L. M. Montgomery; -<span class='it'>Duncan Polite</span>, by Marian Keith; <span class='it'>Sowing Seeds in Danny</span>, -by Nellie L. McClung. There appeared also a charming -collection of short tales, <span class='it'>Little Stories of Quebec</span>, by James -Le Rossignol. This date is still further significant as the -year in which Marjorie Pickthall published her first important -short story, <span class='it'>La Tristesse</span>, in <span class='it'>The Atlantic Monthly</span>, -although her work differs greatly in setting and artistic -method from the fiction of the Community type.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>L. M. Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward -Island, and spent her childhood in Cavendish, a seashore -farming settlement which figures as ‘Avonlea’ in her stories. -That her life has been spent chiefly within the limits of the -little island province and the bounds of an Ontario country -parish does not narrow her outlook although she confines -herself to themes bounded by rural experiences, for her -forte is the portrayal of what she has seen and knows. She -has imaginative and creative gifts, but she uses these in -enabling us to see the beauty, the humour, and the pathos -that lies about our daily paths.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Anne of Green Gables</span>, her first novel, has an interesting -<span class='pageno' title='300' id='Page_300'></span> -history. Upon being asked for a short serial story for -a Sunday School weekly, she cast about for a plot idea. A -faded note book entry suggested: ‘Elderly couple apply to -orphan asylum for a boy; a girl is sent to them.’ The -writing of a serial was started, but time did not allow the -author to complete it for the purpose intended. As she -brooded over the theme it began to expand and the result -was a book which may be confidently labelled a ‘Canadian -classic.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In Anne we have an entirely new character in fiction, -a high-spirited, sensitive girl, with a wonderfully vivid -imagination; wise beyond her years, outspoken and daring: -not always good but always lovable. Her longing for a -real home, and an interest in her very quaintness, ends in -her being established as a member of the Green Gables -family. It is Anne who dominates the whole story. There -are other characters, quaint too, and well-drawn, but the -introduction of Anne into the community—Anne, so unconventional -so imaginative, and so altogether different -from the staid, prosaic, general attitude of the neighbourhood—proves -to be the invasion of a peculiar ferment, and -the incidents which discover the process of fermentation -are most delightfully odd and mirth-provoking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Anne of Avonlea</span> follows the career of the orphan heroine -and deals with two eventful years of school teaching. -Miss Montgomery understands children thoroughly and -makes her child characters of all types perfectly natural and -lifelike. The same creative faculty which gave us in -Anne an entirely new shadow-child shows itself in the portrayal -of the mischievous but lovable Davy Keith, his -demure twin sister Dora, the imaginative Paul Irving, and -the many individualities of the pupils of Avonlea School.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Plot interest is not a strong feature of this or of any of -L. M. Montgomery’s novels. There are, nevertheless, -several threads of action which bind together the series of -incidents and secure continuity and unity. The nature -<span class='pageno' title='301' id='Page_301'></span> -descriptions reveal at once the author’s intimacy with -nature and her poetic attitude of mind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Here is a typical passage:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote100percent'> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>A September day on Prince Edward Island hills; a crisp wind blowing -up over the sand dunes from the sea; a long, red road, winding -through fields and woods, now looping itself about a corner of thick -set spruce, now threading a plantation of young maples with great -feathery sheets of ferns beneath them, now dipping down into a hollow -where a brook flashed out of the woods and into them again, now -basking in the open sunshine between ribbons of goldenrod and of -myriads of crickets.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Chronicles of Avonlea</span>, a volume of short stories, contains -some of her most finished work, showing that perfect -art that conceals all art, and abounding in a strong vein of -simple humour that is found in all her work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Story Girl</span> and <span class='it'>The Golden Road</span> are written with -even less attention to a central plot than the earlier ‘Anne’ -books. They are somewhat loosely connected series of incidents -in which the same characters take part. But the -community type of fiction does not demand thrilling plots. -Other writers can write plot stories, but most other writers -do not hold before us the mirror of Canadian country life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Kilmeny of the Orchard</span> is in a sense but an expanded -short story. It is a prose love idyll and does not, perhaps, -bulk very large when compared with the other books. It -is really one of the extended ‘chronicles’ of Avonlea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The story of Anne Shirley continues through several -volumes—<span class='it'>Anne of the Island</span> pictures her college days; -<span class='it'>Anne’s House of Dreams</span> sees her established as mistress -of her own home; while <span class='it'>Rilla of Ingleside</span> carries over the -history into the second generation, Rilla being the daughter -of Anne. There is no new development of method or treatment -in these. In <span class='it'>Emily of New Moon</span> (1923) Miss -Montgomery created a new child character, with a new -environment, new conditions, and a new group of minor -personages, yet in effect it is of the same type and in the -same literary field as her previous novels. The chief difference -<span class='pageno' title='302' id='Page_302'></span> -to be observed is that she employs a more analytic -psychological method in depicting her heroine—a method -that tends to produce an adult’s story of youth. In a way -it marks an advance in literary technique but is not as yet -entirely divorced from that minute objective observation -which makes equal appeal to the young in years and the -young in heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The particular type of rural community which is the -background of Marian Keith’s stories may be duplicated in -many parts of Canada and is quite common in older Ontario—a -community originally settled by Scottish Presbyterians -and afterwards leavened with just enough English -and Irish to throw into relief the chief characteristics of -each nationality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One cannot escape the fact of a marked similarity to -the work of J. M. Barrie in his tales of Thrums. There -is, however, this difference: Barrie is more restrained in -his emotions, more abbreviated and less poetic in his -descriptions, more pawky and less boisterous in his humor; -in fine, Barrie is Scotch, Marian Keith is Scottish-Canadian.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As in most novels of the community type, the interest -lies in incident and characterization. The noblest character -of all her stories, the best drawn, is the grand old mystic -Highlander, ‘Duncan Polite,’ the spiritual watchman of -Glenoro. The incidents of this story are woven mainly -around the path of the young minister, while the other -Glenoro novels centre about the personages of chief interest -in a rural community—<span class='it'>Silver Maple</span>, the school teacher; -<span class='it'>Treasure Valley</span>, the young doctor. <span class='it'>The End of the Rainbow</span> -and <span class='it'>The Bells of St. Stephens</span> are studies of town life. -<span class='it'>Lizbeth of the Dale</span> and <span class='it'>In Orchard Glen</span> are character -studies of a boy and a girl respectively. The same qualities -prevail in all these. <span class='it'>Little Miss Melody</span> builds an engaging -picture of the community of Cherry Hill around a fresh -and original young girl character. The keynote of Marian -Keith’s stories is ‘service.’ Her work as a whole gives a -<span class='pageno' title='303' id='Page_303'></span> -faithful picture of the social and religious life of a certain -type of rural Canadian settlement, and Canadian town.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. McClung’s ‘community’ depicted in <span class='it'>Sowing Seeds -in Danny</span> was a little western town, with certain elements -of the usual population crossing its pages. The poor immigrant -girl, the young English gentleman learning to -farm, the doctor, the preacher, the would-be politician are -faithfully portrayed. Most interesting of all is Mrs. Watson, -the hard-working washerwoman and her family of -nine children. The fortunes of Pearlie Watson are the -theme of a sequel, <span class='it'>The Second Chance</span>, in which the setting -in a rural settlement, while <span class='it'>The Black Creek Stopping -House</span> is a collection of short stories. Later the career of -Pearl Watson is continued in <span class='it'>Purple Springs</span>, but this novel -shades into a sort of politico-propagandist treatise. Human -interest and news quality with a ready-made style to correspond -has caught the public interest in Mrs. McClung’s -work rather than any conspicuous artistry of method.</p> - -<h4>2. <span class='it'>The Institutional Novel.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>From looking at the life of fixed communities or localities, -the next step is to consider them in their relation to -what we might call certain ‘institutions’ of our national -life, growth, or conditions. We saw that R. E. Knowles -in <span class='it'>St. Cuthbert’s</span> made the Scottish Presbyterian Church -the dominating influence of that story. In this sense, the -life of the railroad or construction camp is an ‘institutional’ -rather than a local or community life. This has been excellently -portrayed by Frank L. Packard in his collection -of short stories, <span class='it'>On the Iron at Big Cloud</span>: Alan Sullivan’s -<span class='it'>The Passing of Oul-I-But</span> contains some splendid stories -of this type. Here also we would place the sea stories of -Norman Duncan and Frederick William Wallace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Norman Duncan’s peculiar field is the ragged coasts -and savage seas of Newfoundland and the hard, cruel, -<span class='pageno' title='304' id='Page_304'></span> -tempest-battered life of the Newfoundland fisherman. -When <span class='it'>The Way of the Sea</span> was published (1904), Frank -T. Bullen, himself a master-maker of sea stories, wrote in a -foreword: ‘I am absolutely certain that with the exception of -Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling no writing about the -sea has ever probed so deeply and so faithfully into its -mysteries as his.’ Duncan’s fidelity to his subject appears -not only in his truthful description of the life and way of -the sea, but even more in his realization and presentation -of the religious side of the Newfoundland fishermen—whose -stern creed was born out of a never-ceasing struggle -for existence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Norman Duncan, although he produced several novels, -of which <span class='it'>Dr. Luke of the Labrador</span> is the most artistically -constructed, is essentially a writer of short stories. Indeed, -some of his novels were made simply by piecing together, -with connecting material, stories that had first appeared in -magazine form. As a short story writer he exhibits the -finest and most desirable qualities—substantial character -foundation, economy of language, sufficiency of emotional -causation, and a breadth of human sympathy. His <span class='it'>Battles -Royal Down North</span> and <span class='it'>Harbor Tales Down North</span> are two -collections of a high order of excellence. His power to -portray action makes his juvenile books—such as <span class='it'>Billy -Topsail and Company</span>—very acceptable to the youthful -mind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frederick William Wallace writes chiefly of Nova Scotia -sailors and deep sea fishermen. He is more objective in his -treatment of themes than is Duncan. While Wallace’s gift -may be said to lie in his skill in producing vivid visualizations -of seamanship, Duncan’s lies in realizing seamen. -Wallace observes and describes the life of the sailor and -the fisherman; Duncan realizes and interprets the soul. -Consequently in <span class='it'>Blue Water</span> (1920), <span class='it'>The Shacklocker</span> (a -collection of short stories), and <span class='it'>The Viking Blood</span>, have -much more plot and action to them than have Norman Duncan’s -<span class='pageno' title='305' id='Page_305'></span> -novels and short stories; but they are not so intimate -and convincing in character analysis, neither are they so -careful nor so finished in their technique—the two styles are -quite in harmony with the differing methods of treatment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Commercial life in its sociological relationships falls under -our definition of an ‘institutional’ aspect of national -life. Here must be placed Alan Sullivan’s <span class='it'>The Inner Door</span> -which reveals inside conditions and labor problems in connection -with the operation of a large rubber factory; also -his story of the somewhat spectacular development of a -chain of allied industries at a strategic point for power and -for raw material—told in <span class='it'>The Rapids</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There are, in this period, some notable examples of Incidental -Literature. Louis Hémon, a native of France, -lived but a short time in Canada, yet wrote, in <span class='it'>Maria Chapdelaine</span>, -(English translations by W. H. Blake and by Sir -Andrew Macphail), a chastely poetic novel of French -Canadian life. Miss J. G. Sime in <span class='it'>Our Little Life</span> presents, -if we view it from one angle, a meticulous study of -the life of a Montreal seamstress, with her pathetically frustrate -love story; but more than all that, <span class='it'>Our Little Life</span> -is an observation of the life of the Canadian people by an -English mind. The literary artistry of both these works -is indisputable. Some criticism has been aimed at both on -the score of inaccuracy of minor facts. Whether or not -there are such minor inaccuracies, there still remains the -grand result that the color, the atmosphere, the outward -semblance, are portrayed as they have scarce ever been -before; that the inmost soul of the characters is understandingly -and consistently revealed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Education in its institutional aspect appears in many -novels only incidentally. As a dominant motive or a circumscribing -setting its development is comparatively recent. -<span class='it'>Miriam of Queen’s</span>, by Lilian Vaux Mackinnon (1921), -shows the molding influence of university life; <span class='it'>The Hickory -Stick</span>, by Nina Moore Jamieson (1921), emphasises -<span class='pageno' title='306' id='Page_306'></span> -the place and importance of the rural school in rural life -and problems; the great school novels of English literature -find a modified echo in the boarding school stories of Ethel -Hume Bennett and Gordon Hill Grahame—<span class='it'>Judy of York -Hill</span> (1922), by the former, in which dialogue, action and -atmosphere contribute effectively in conveying a picture of -a girls’ school; <span class='it'>Larry, or the Avenging Terrors</span> (1923), -by the latter, a boys’ boarding school story of lively -incident.</p> - -<h4>3. <span class='it'>The Realistic Romance.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>The rapid expansion of the far West and such spectacular -events as the ‘Klondike rush,’ gave a sort of feverish -color to a life that previously had appeared one of toil, -hardship, and stony endurance. Viewed imaginatively, -that life now presented its hectic side, and the far West -and the high North were exploited as literary fields of thrill, -adventure, and excitement. Thus the second decade of -this century saw the rise in Canada of the Realistic Romance. -At its best this class of novel resembles the Community -type but is speeded up with a more exciting and -more complicated plot; at its worst it is lurid melodrama -with realism interpreted as the portrayal of the sordid and -seamy side of life. Very few of the realistic romances -exhibit any distinction of manner and style. They are not -concerned with the niceties of the art of telling a story but -with the ability to keep the reader constantly keyed up to a -high emotional tensity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Trail of ’98</span>, by Robert W. Service (1910), is a -story of the Yukon, with the spectacular elements of gold-rush -days fully emphasised. The qualities of Service’s -poetry are accentuated in his fiction. In the same year H. -A. Cody began his career as a novelist with another Yukon -tale, <span class='it'>The Frontiersman</span>. It is a story of love, adventure, -and missionary experience. <span class='it'>Rod of the Lone Patrol</span> followed -in 1912, adding a new fictional element which has -<span class='pageno' title='307' id='Page_307'></span> -been much exploited—the doings of the North West -Mounted Police. Cody produced a long series of adventure -novels with a variety of settings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Other writers of the Realistic Romance speedily developed -different aspects of Western life or staged their -romances in different regions of the Great West or the Far -North. We have room only for brief mention of some of -the best known writers in this class.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Robert Stead’s novels are chiefly of the prairie farm -and ranch—<span class='it'>The Bail Jumper</span> (1914), <span class='it'>The Homesteader</span>, -<span class='it'>The Cowpuncher</span>, <span class='it'>Dennison Grant</span>, <span class='it'>Neighbors</span>. He is effective -in reproducing the atmosphere of the prairie, the -details of farm and ranch life, and characteristic bits of -scenery; his stories are stronger in incident and action than -they are in characterization.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Robert Watson began fairly well with <span class='it'>My Brave and -Gallant Gentleman</span> (1918), a romance of England and -British Columbia, that had touches of Borrow and Stevenson, -but his later efforts have tended to cast themselves into -more stereotyped forms. Robert A. Hood produced two -adventure-romances of British Columbia, <span class='it'>The Chivalry of -Keith Leicester</span> and <span class='it'>The Quest of Alistair</span>. Douglas Durkin -exploited Manitoba in <span class='it'>The Lobstick Trail</span>. ‘Luke -Allan’ (Lacey Amy) wrote several stories of cowboy life of -which <span class='it'>Blue Pete: Half Breed</span> was significant because of the -originality and individuality of its leading character.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>John Murray Gibbon’s earlier fiction—in <span class='it'>Drums Afar</span> -and <span class='it'>Hearts and Faces</span>—was English in its setting and concerned -with psychological problems and studies of Oxford -life. In transferring to an American literary habitat, he -entered the ranks of the Realistic Romancers. His novel, -<span class='it'>The Conquering Hero</span>, was a lively, melodramatic story of -the Rocky Mountains and British Columbia ranches; while -in <span class='it'>Pagan Love</span> (1923), he combined a startling mystery -with an element of satire on the modern philosophy of -business success. -<span class='pageno' title='308' id='Page_308'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Theodore Goodridge Roberts, younger brother of -Charles G. D. Roberts, is essentially a story teller and much -of his fiction shows the influence of Weyman and the historical -romanticists of the latter years of the nineteenth -century. His <span class='it'>Brothers in Peril</span> (1905), <span class='it'>A Captain of -Raleigh’s</span> (1911), and <span class='it'>The Harbor Master</span> (1914) are -stories of romantic adventure of very early days in Newfoundland, -while <span class='it'>Jess of the River</span>, <span class='it'>Rayton</span> and <span class='it'>Forest -Fugitives</span> have a setting in rural New Brunswick.</p> - -<h4>4. <span class='it'>Historical Fiction.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>The influences that produced the Community Novel -gave to the Historical Fiction of this period a closer up -view. Instead of the far-off days of the French regime, -the historical field of vision became that of but a century -or so past and writers essayed to revivify the times and -personages of the War of 1812 or the Rebellion of 1837. -A noteworthy example is C. H. J. Snider’s stories of the -naval engagements on the Great Lakes, <span class='it'>In the Wake of the -Eighteen-Twelvers</span>. With fine recreative imagination he -enables us to live through incidents of daring, gallantry, -and romance of these stirring battles. ‘Anison North’ in -<span class='it'>The Forging of the Pikes</span> gives a realistic picture of Toronto -of ’37, of the battle of Montgomery’s Tavern, and a -pen-portrait of the rebel leader, Mackenzie. She lets us -see ‘both sides of the story’ of the conditions that were responsible -for the Rebellion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A minor species of the Historical Novel is found in -the novel of pioneer life which seeks to put into a permanent -record pioneer experiences and conditions of sometimes -considerably less than a century ago. Adeline M. -Teskey did this for the Niagara Peninsula and the building -of the first Welland Canal with <span class='it'>In Candlelight Days</span> -(1914). Archie McKishnie told of the conflict of the -<span class='pageno' title='309' id='Page_309'></span> -‘bushwhacker,’ who delighted in the freedom of the woods -and streams, with the incoming tide of settlement in <span class='it'>Love -of the Wild</span>, drawing upon the historic figure of Colonel -Talbot for some of his characterization. Anison North -blends a colorful picture of the enjoyment of outdoor life -with a pioneer line fence feud in her <span class='it'>Carmichael</span>. In <span class='it'>Kinsmen</span> -Percival J. Cooney relates a strange story of Scottish -feudalism—an example of the clan system with its autocratic -laird—which actually existed in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Few Canadian writers have found leisure to follow the -example of Gilbert Parker in writing Historical Fiction in -Old World settings, but this has quite recently been done -in a highly distinctive style in novels appearing over the -signature—‘E. Barrington.’ <span class='it'>The Ladies</span>, semi-historical -stories of the eighteenth century; <span class='it'>The Chaste Diana</span>, a story -of Polly Peacham of ‘Beggar’s Opera’ fame; <span class='it'>The Divine -Lady</span> (1924) tells the love-story of Lord Nelson and Emma -Hamilton.</p> - -<h4>5. <span class='it'>Imaginative Fiction.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>In one sense all fiction is imaginative. There is, however, -a species in which pure imagination plays a much -greater part than in the Community Novel, in Historical -Fiction, or in the other types discussed in this chapter. -Marjorie Pickthall’s work is the highest example of this. -She wrote, not with the reproductive imagination -nor with fancy, but with the faculty defined by -Matthew Arnold as imaginative reason. Into the texture -of her fiction she wove poetic imagination and poetic significance -derived from her clear, absolute, and sympathetic -understanding of the human heart and of the hidden -springs and the meaning of existence, from her superior -and inclusive sympathetic intelligence. Thus she was enabled -to write stories of the most varied settings and of the -most wildly differing characters with equal convincingness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Little Hearts</span> (1915), is an engaging tale of the days -<span class='pageno' title='310' id='Page_310'></span> -of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ with its conflict chiefly between -loyalty to the Crown, and fidelity to the spirit of humanity. -It pictures ‘little hearts,’ men of small fortunes, and small -(as the world sees it) ambitions, in their pathetic existence, -more pathetic because of finely brave in the midst of many -both petty and heroic vicissitudes of fortune, of mean victory -and noble defeat. The novel preaches no didactic -moral but it silently teaches Christ’s philosophy of struggle -and defeat—‘He that loseth his life shall find it.’ It impresses -unforgettably how little after all are the greatest -hearts, and how little we lose or gain in any defeat or -triumph which is merely earthly defeat or triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Bridge</span> (1922), has the same theme, with the pain -and cruelty of love, of unfulfilled seeking, and the final -triumph of a soul that saved itself by losing itself in inward -self-knowledge and self-sacrifice. It is set against -a background of the tremendous beauty of the Great Lakes, -scenes of storm on land and water. Technically, it is -farther from perfection than <span class='it'>Little Hearts</span>; it has less -structural unity, less smoothness of style. At times the -emotional situations seem overdrawn; nor are atmosphere -and setting definitively localized.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The collection of short stories—<span class='it'>Angel’s Shoes</span> (1922)—embodies -examples of Miss Pickthall’s perfect artistry -as a short story writer. These stories are clear, vivid, -colorful, and of almost the highest type of creative -imagination. They may lack, occasionally, a warmth of -humanity that is present in the work of other writers of -poorer craftsmanship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Less distinctive but belonging to the few Canadian -novels of this class is <span class='it'>The Window Gazer</span>, by Isabel Ecclestone -Mackay, a romance of a man who ‘fell in love with -his wife.’ Blended with the characteristics of the novel of -pure imagination there are here slight touches of the -Realistic Romance and the Community Novel. A somewhat -curious literary phenomena is found in <span class='it'>Mists of the -<span class='pageno' title='311' id='Page_311'></span> -Morning</span> by this same writer, which began in the style of -the Imaginative Novel and ended as a Realistic Romance.</p> - -<h4>6. <span class='it'>Some Miscellaneous Types.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>To the ranks of the Animal Romancers this period has -added at least one writer who approaches the subject in a -new way. The attitude was apparent in the nature passages -of <span class='it'>Gaff Linkum</span> (1907) and became more a quality -of Archie McKishnie’s work as he continued to write short -stories and novels of animal life. We find it crystallized -in <span class='it'>Openway</span> (1923). Roberts is the intellectual animal -psychologist; Thompson Seton, the literary scientist; W. -A. Fraser, the objective story teller; but Archie McKishnie -impresses us with the sense of his comradeship with the -creatures of the marsh, the wood, and the stream. He is their -interpreter but not as an outside observer. He lives with -them, loves them, protects them. Thus when he writes -animal stories he rises to his best literary style and achieves -a beauty and smoothness that is not always found in his -other writing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The detective story is represented by a series of ‘underground’ -stories by Arthur Stringer; a typical example is -<span class='it'>The Wire Tappers</span>. The setting is a large American city, -and rapidity of action is the desired and supplied element. -More Canadian in setting and atmosphere are Victor -Lauriston’s <span class='it'>The Twenty-First Burr</span> and Hopkins Moorhouse’s -<span class='it'>The Gauntlet of Alceste</span>, both well-constructed according -to the requirements of this type of fiction, concealing -the mystery motive skilfully up to a surprising climactic -finish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The religions and philosophies of the Orient find a -slight reflection in some Canadian poetry. In fiction, the -stories and novels of L. Adams Beck—<span class='it'>The Ninth Vibration</span>, -<span class='it'>The Key of Dreams</span>, <span class='it'>The Perfume of the Rainbow</span>, -<span class='it'>The Treasure of Ho</span>—are chiefly Oriental in themes and -<span class='pageno' title='312' id='Page_312'></span> -settings, and mark the author as an interpreter of the mysteries -of the East, with an unusual beauty and originality -of style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Arthur Stringer’s trilogy of the prairie—<span class='it'>The Prairie -Wife</span>, <span class='it'>The Prairie Mother</span>, <span class='it'>The Prairie Child</span>—is remarkable -as a study in feminine psychology and the reactions of -problems of prairie life upon a feminine mind in its domestic -and personal associations. The first volume in the trilogy -is the most impressive because of its spontaneity, its -subtle touches of color and atmosphere. The modern -double-triangle element dominates and rather detracts from -the originality and individuality of the latter volumes, but -the series is significant as an advance from the realistic -romance toward a newer realism.</p> - -<h4>7. <span class='it'>The New Realism.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>It was but natural that a reaction should set in against -the realistic romance with its insufficiency of motivation -and its lack of fidelity to real life. Rather remarkably -this arrives in another ten-year cycle and a group of novels -published in 1923 show a marked similarity of method and -treatment, with widely varied themes and settings. We -distinguish this fresh and original attitude as the ‘New -Realism’ in Canadian fiction. The strongest of these novels -undoubtedly is <span class='it'>The Viking Heart</span> by Laura Goodman Salverson. -It might be called the epic of the Icelander in -Canada, describing as it does the arrival of a party of immigrants -in 1870 and following their struggles, hardships, -and gradual rise of fortunes to the present day. There is -no plot but such as grows out of the record of the lives of -the characters. There is no melodrama, but there is the -tense drama of the realities of life. The style is chaste, -simple, but forceful. Back of it all lies a big theme—‘the -price of country’—the realization of citizenship through -toil, tears, blood, and sacrifice. -<span class='pageno' title='313' id='Page_313'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other novels in this group are: <span class='it'>Possession</span>, by Mazo -de la Roche, with its setting a Niagara fruit farm; <span class='it'>Lantern -Marsh</span>, by Beaumont Cornell, following a farm boy -through his struggles for an education; <span class='it'>Cattle</span>, by Onoto -Watanna, an almost brutally realistic presentation of a man -whose sole aim in life was the acquirement of cattle—as a -form of wealth—whose whole outlook on life was measured -in terms of cattle; <span class='it'>The Child’s House</span>, by Marjory MacMurchy, -which enters into the heart and mind of a growing -little girl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The importance of this movement is that it has cast -aside superficialities, that these writers have somehow been -able to ‘see things as they are,’ to glimpse the realities of -life from their real beginnings—four of the five novels -named are actually rooted in ‘the soil’ as their setting and -their underlying spiritual foundation. With this foundation -of actuality and truth, the writers have gained a clearer -and more finished expression. Some of these novels have -melodramatic spots; some have other weaknesses, but, on -the whole, the effect of this new movement has been to produce -novels that have a definite structural unity, that are -largely free from irrelevant and insignificant detail, that -are written with an economy and aptness of language, and -that have more definiteness and depth to their basic themes.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='314' id='Page_314'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXII</h1></div> - -<h3>The Poetic Dramatists</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE POETIC DRAMATISTS OF THE SECOND RENAISSANCE—ARTHUR -STRINGER—ROBERT NORWOOD—MARJORIE -PICKTHALL, AND OTHERS.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>A</span><span class='sc'>rthur stringer</span>, novelist and lyric poet, showed -versatility and considerable power in imaginative -construction when, in 1903, he published a volume of two -dramatic poems or soliloquies and one poetic drama, all on -classical themes in blank verse; namely, <span class='it'>Hephaestus</span>, <span class='it'>Persephone -at Enna</span>, and <span class='it'>Sappho in Leucadia</span>. In these works, -however, Stringer was indulging an ‘avocation;’ for his -genius is at its best in lyrical verse and prose fiction. -<span class='it'>Hephaestus</span> and <span class='it'>Persephone</span>, even though they are written -in blank verse, have all the color, music, and emotion which -we associate with lyrical poetry. <span class='it'>Sappho in Leucadia</span>, -though dramatic in form, is undramatic in movement, and -is lyrical in spirit. For at the beginning Sappho, the ‘bird-throated -child of Lesbos,’ has resolved to destroy herself -by leaping into the sea, and Phaon’s only role is the attempt -of a lover to dissuade her, but to no avail. The so-called -‘drama’ is but a series of colloquies between Sappho and -Phaon. The only ‘movement’ is a psychological development -in three stages—first, the original intention on -Sappho’s part to destroy herself; then the arrested intention; -and, finally, the intention fulfilled, in spite of Phaon’s -pleading, by Sappho leaping to her death.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What Stringer has really done in <span class='it'>Sappho in Leucadia</span> -is to take a Greek legend and to tell the simple episode of -Sappho’s death, in colorful, musical, and artistic blank -<span class='pageno' title='315' id='Page_315'></span> -verse. There is no emotional poignancy in it; nothing for -the heart and the moral imagination. It is all for the -aesthetic sensibility, for the lover of sensuous imagery and -melody. Oddly its single lyrical interlude or ‘song’ is not -in ‘Sapphics,’ but is an octave in trimeters. The sensuous -beauty of color and music in this quasi-poetic drama is -exemplified in the following speech by Sappho:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>For like a god you seemed in those glad days</p> -<p class='line0'>Of droning wings and languorous afternoons,</p> -<p class='line0'>When close beside the murmuring sea we walked.</p> -<p class='line0'>Then did the odorous summer ocean seem</p> -<p class='line0'>A meadow green where foam one moment flowered</p> -<p class='line0'>And then was gone, and ever came again,</p> -<p class='line0'>A thousand bloom-burdened Springs in one!</p> -<p class='line0'>—How like a god you seemed to me; and I</p> -<p class='line0'>Was then most happy, and at little things</p> -<p class='line0'>We lightly laughed, and oftentimes we plunged</p> -<p class='line0'>Waist-deep and careless in the cool green waves,</p> -<p class='line0'>As Tethys once and Oceanus played</p> -<p class='line0'>Upon the golden ramparts of the world.</p> -<p class='line0'>Then would we rest, and muse upon the sands, . . .</p> -<p class='line0'>And on the dunes the thin green ripples lisped</p> -<p class='line0'>Themselves to sleep and sails swung dreamily</p> -<p class='line0'>Where azure islands floated on the air.</p> -<p class='line0'>Then did your body seem a temple white. . . .</p> -<p class='line0'>The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek,</p> -<p class='line0'>The streams of life sang thro’ your violet veins,</p> -<p class='line0'>The midnight velvet of your tangled hair</p> -<p class='line0'>Lured, as a twilight rill . . . . . . . . . . .</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Stringer’s <span class='it'>Sappho in Leucadia</span> is an engaging and even -impressive dramatic colloquy, but it is not an authentic -poetic or closet drama. It has sensuous beauty but no -spiritual power. But it does increase Stringer’s reputation -as a verbal colorist and melodist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1915 appeared an original poet of distinct spiritual -power in lyrical and dramatic forms. He was Robert -Norwood. His first book was a sonnet-sequence. But in -1916 he published a poetic drama, <span class='it'>The Witch of Endor: A -Tragedy</span>; and in 1919, another poetic drama, <span class='it'>The Man of -<span class='pageno' title='316' id='Page_316'></span> -Kerioth</span>. In 1921 he published <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span>, which is a -‘dramatic tale.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Robert Norwood has two natural gifts. More than -any other Canadian poet he has an innate genius for the -philosophical or mystical interpretation of good and evil -in the universe. Also, he is gifted with acute insight into -the inner heart of man and woman, ancient and modern. -These two gifts fit him for the office of the kind of poet -who by imaginative sympathy perceives the ultimate harmony -of the universe, the spiritual meaning of the tragedy -and comedy of existence. As a poetic dramatist, then, -Norwood is a Seer; and his voice is the voice of a Prophet. -Power over the heart and imagination of the people, not -Beauty and Art for art’s sake, is his aim. If he is the Poet -of Beauty, as he is in all his verse, lyrical and dramatic, -he is more, or supremely, the Poet of Spiritual Vision and -Power in his poetic dramas.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In <span class='it'>The Witch of Endor</span> Norwood returns to the Biblical -theme which had engaged Heavysege—the love romance -and tragedy of King Saul. The characters are never -shadowy but always alive. The dramatic movement is -never held up by long or digressive moralizing speeches, -as in Heayysege’s <span class='it'>Saul</span>, but each character makes his -speeches according to the dramatic necessity, enough and -no more, thus permitting at ‘the psychological moment’ the -natural entrance of another character and his speech. The -structure is logically developed to the tragic or spiritual -climax. But in the development there is no uniform level -of emotion, rather the emotion varies from gentle or -pathetic to intense or tragic. It is indeed in its profounder -imaginative vision, its more varying and rising degrees of -emotional intensity, and its more logical structural development -to a climax that <span class='it'>The Witch of Endor</span> has more -incisive and compelling power as poetic drama than Campbell’s -Arthurian drama <span class='it'>Mordred</span>. In short, <span class='it'>The Witch of -<span class='pageno' title='317' id='Page_317'></span> -Endor</span> is a beautiful and spiritual poetic drama—purging -the emotions of pity and fear and transporting the spirit to -the Mount of Vision where it sees intuitively how the ways -of God to man are justified and how Love is greater than -Faith and Hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his next poetic drama <span class='it'>The Man of Kerioth</span> (that is, -Judas Iscariot) Norwood made an advance in imaginative -vision, construction, and power. He achieves this by reducing -the magniloquence of the speeches and by modernly -humanizing the characters of Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalen, -Blind Bartimaeus, Philip, and Jesus the Carpenter. -He even introduces little children into the drama. The -high and the vulgar and lowly, saints and sinners, the motley -of society in Jerusalem, commingle intimately and -humanly. There is a distinct advance in realistic truth -of characterization, and the whole drama is pervaded with -a winning naturalness and humanity which are not in any -preceding poetic drama by a Canadian, nor even in his -own succeeding ultra-realistic ‘dramatic tale of the sea,’ -<span class='it'>Bill Boram</span>. So that in respect of creation thoroughly -humanized, noble, and clearly limned character-portraiture—as, -for instance, Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalen, and -Jesus—Norwood must be ranked as the supreme creator -amongst Canadian poetic dramatists. This is a matter -of sheer artistry. But Norwood also shows an advance -in spiritual power. With profounder mystical vision and -greater truth he justifies the ways of God to man, and -exalts the spirit to the Temple pinnacle where we behold -Immortal Love in all its sweet beauty of humanity and in -all its white radiance of redeeming light. In <span class='it'>The Man of -Kerioth</span> he attains his acme in spiritual beauty and power -as a poetic dramatist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far Norwood had not created any poetic drama with -a definitively Canadian theme, setting, and characters. In -his <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span>, which is a ‘dramatic tale’ told in the third -<span class='pageno' title='318' id='Page_318'></span> -person, the characters and the action being ‘reported,’ Norwood -made a fresh, novel, and impressive contribution to -original Canadian Literature. In doing so Norwood -dropped somewhat in imaginative truth and dramatic invention; -but he rose to greater heights of mystical perception -and spiritual power. The theme of <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span> is the -redemption of the human spirit by the love of beauty in -Nature. Ingenious as his conception is, Norwood committed -the error of conceiving the accident of a love of -flowers, that is to say, of sensuous beauty, as a possible -redemptive force in human life. He would have us believe -that the love of sensuous beauty can transmute itself or -become transmuted into an altogether different kind of -love, namely, the love of spiritual beauty and thus regenerate -a coarse and brutal nature and remake it into a noble -and refined spirit. Such spiritual metabolism is impossible, -and <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span> so far forth lacks imaginative truth and -dramatic power.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Aside from that, <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span>, on the whole, is a novel -achievement in dramatic narrative. The characters are -vividly and veraciously drawn; they have realistic truth. -There is also an air of romance in the whole tale, such an -air of vital romance as obtains in the tales and novels of -the sea by Norman Duncan and Frederick William Wallace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Summarily; Norwood’s <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span> is an amazing dramatic -picture of rude characters in a setting of romance -colored by a strange and startling commingling of coarse -speech and brutalized deed and of beautiful diction and -exquisite imagery. It is at once a <span class='it'>tour de force</span> in dramatic -conception and construction and in impressionistic word-painting. -Yet it is a powerful presentation of the idea of -the mystical union of the human spirit with the divine -through the love of pure beauty in Nature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Second Renaissance is noted also for the work of -several other poetic dramatists. Amongst them are Dr. -<span class='pageno' title='319' id='Page_319'></span> -James B. Dollard, author of <span class='it'>Clontarf: An Irish National -Drama</span>; Rev. Dean Llwyd, author of <span class='it'>The Vestal Virgin</span>; -John L. Carleton, author of <span class='it'>The Medieval Hun; A -Historical Drama</span>, and <span class='it'>The Crimson Wing</span>, which has -the distinction of having been the winner of the first prize -for original dramatic composition in the Canadian Prize -Play Competition, 1918; Norah Holland, author of <span class='it'>When -Half Gods Go and Other Poems</span> (1924), the title-poem of -which has been repeated as a Christmas play for several -successive seasons. These are all respectable poetic dramas -and give distinction both to the quantity and the quality of -poetic drama in the Second Renaissance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But this work in poetic drama is, after all, not inspired -impressing one as a stint in creation, and is not at all -comparable to the work of Norwood in imaginative vision, -artistic construction, and dramatic power. Comparable, -however, with Norwood’s and superior to it in spiritual -poignancy is the single poetic drama left by Marjorie -Pickthall. Though Norwood’s poetic dramas contain -lyrical interludes, and though his dramatic tale <span class='it'>Bill Boram</span> -is for the most part rhymed, on the whole they are in blank -verse. But Miss Pickthall’s single poetic drama <span class='it'>The Wood -Carver’s Wife</span> is lyrical through and through, and is -properly to be denoted as ‘lyric drama.’ In form this lyric -drama stands midway between Stringer’s dramatic poems -and Norwood’s poetic dramas. In that respect Marjorie -Pickthall made a novel contribution to Canadian poetic -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Wood Carver’s Wife</span> was first published in <span class='it'>The -University Magazine</span> in 1920. It was reprinted, along -with other fugitive poems, in 1922, the drama supplying -the title poem of the volume. <span class='it'>The Wood Carver’s Wife</span> -has four characters, one of whom is Shagonas, an Indian -lad who represents Nemesis. It is set in the time of the -Intendant. The theme is ‘the eternal triangle’—a girl-wife, -<span class='pageno' title='320' id='Page_320'></span> -with a husband still alive and a secret lover. The mood -of the drama is the tragedy which follows the sin of disloyalty -to the sacrament of marriage, even if the disloyalty -is only in the heart and never openly expressed in clandestine -meeting between the wife and the lover. The mood -of the dramatist, however, is not one of simply illustrating -the law that the ‘soul that sinneth it shall die,’ but of wistfulness -about the ways of God to men and women when -spiritual unmating is permitted by Heaven. The dramatist -<span class='it'>seems</span> to put her own feeling about the matter into her -drama. She seems to feel that if the moral law is inexorable, -it ought not to be so in the case of a young girl -who innocently, or without knowing her own heart and -what she was doing, married a man, who, after all, did not -want her as an end in herself, or her spirit for its own -sake, but to have her as a model for the statue of the Blessed -Virgin he was creating in wood, as a chattel in his studio. -Humanly, Marjorie Pickthall felt that the girl-wife was -more sinned against than sinning when she allowed herself -to be conscious—merely conscious—of the lover. But -Marjorie Pickthall, with loyalty to the dramatic necessities, -though with a spiritual wistfulness all the while, constructed -the action and movement of <span class='it'>The Wood Carver’s Wife</span> so -that the tragic ending was inevitable. For the husband -knows that there is a secret lover, and Shagonas knows, -and at the tragic climax it is the arrow of the Indian, representing -the moral law, that sends the lover to his death. -The girl-wife knows what has happened, because she has -heard the twang of Shagonas’ bow-string. The tragedy -is complete when she receives from Shagonas, who is again -Nemesis, the sword of her lover, and dies with a mad speech -on her lips, while at the same time the husband, also mad, -as he was from the beginning, has Shagonas pose the beautiful -dead body of the girl-wife that he may put the acme -touches to his statue. -<span class='pageno' title='321' id='Page_321'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>How easily the dramatist might have made certain -shifts which would have resulted in reconciliation and a -happy ending! But with all her spiritual wistfulness, -Marjorie Pickthall loyally held to the dramatic and the -artistic ideals. The climax and tragic ending are tremendous -and wholly spiritualizing, purging the soul with pity -for humanity through the terror which the action and the -denouement awake in the spirit. There is in it all a spiritual -poignancy which does not obtain in Norwood’s love-tragedy -of Saul in <span class='it'>The Witch of Endor</span>. It is suffused -with a lovely and winning beauty of diction, imagery, and -verbal music; and it contains one lyric ‘cry of a soul’ which -for pathos is unsurpassed in Canadian literature, namely, -the Litany of Dorette, the hapless girl-wife, to the Blessed -Virgin Mother beginning,</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>If you have lain in the night</p> -<p class='line0'>And felt the old tears run</p> -<p class='line0'>In their channels worn in the heart,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Pity me, Mary.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>Considered critically, then, the poetic dramas of Robert -Norwood and the lyric drama of Marjorie Pickthall are, -from the universal point of view, authentic works of art, -originally conceived and beautifully constructed, and, from -the Canadian point of view, are the supreme achievements -in the poetic drama of Canada.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='322' id='Page_322'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXIII</h1></div> - -<h3>Humorists</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE HUMORISTS OF CANADA: PRE-CONFEDERATION—HALIBURTON—HOWE— -DE MILLE—DUVAR—POST-CONFEDERATION—LANIGAN—COTES—DRUMMOND—HAM: -NEW SCHOOL—LEACOCK—DONOVAN—DAVIS—MACTAVISH—McARTHUR—HODGINS.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>he</span> name and work of Thomas Chandler Haliburton -as a satirist or humorist so over-shadowed the names -and works of other Canadian humorists that it is a belief, -both in foreign countries and in Canada itself, that the -Canadian people have no genius for humor and that, outside -of Haliburton’s satiric writings, there is no significant -Canadian humorous literature. All this is superstition and -has been perpetuated in two ways. No Canadian literary -historian has remarked the existence of other Canadian -humorists, save Haliburton, though Mark Twain in his -Library of American Humor has included the work of -Haliburton, De Mille, Lanigan; and, secondly, no Canadian -anthologist, save Lawrence J. Burpee, has collected in a -single volume examples of the work of Canadian humorists.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pre-Confederation Canadian humor is represented by -the work of Haliburton, Howe, and De Mille. Of these the -work of Haliburton is the significant humor of the period. -In general it is satiric, a criticism of society, aiming to -bring about certain reforms. No other Canadian humorist -since Haliburton, not even Leacock, had or has any gifts -in comic characterization. Howe had no satiric purpose. -His humor, which was chiefly in verse, was written ‘for -the fun of the thing.’ -<span class='pageno' title='323' id='Page_323'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>A native-born Canadian man of letters who has not received -his due is James De Mille, poet, novelist, short story -fictionist and humorist. De Mille, at least in time, -anticipated the new type of American humor which is -associated with the name of Mark Twain. For some -months before Mark Twain’s <span class='it'>The Innocents Abroad</span> was -published (1869), De Mille’s <span class='it'>The Dodge Club</span>, or <span class='it'>Italy in -1859</span> had appeared. This volume is not to be confused -with De Mille’s <span class='it'>Dodge Club Series</span> published in 1871, 1872, -1877 which were humorous and healthful stories for the -young. If, therefore, the humor of Stephen Leacock is -essentially a recrudescence of the American humor which -we see in Franklin and in Mark Twain, and if Leacock -read De Mille and Twain, as presumably he did, then -the first of the Leacockians in Canada, to use an anachronism, -was De Mille, and he is ‘the father’ of the later or -the 20th century Canadian humorists beginning with Leacock. -For the genius of that <span class='it'>genre</span> of humor, as in De -Mille and Twain, is essentially exaggerated nonsense or -nonsense said with a face of seriousness. De Mille’s work -does not lend itself to quotation, but stylistically De Mille’s -humorous prose, aside from the humor itself, is distinctly -engaging or readable by virtue of its simple or popular -diction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Away from the traditional humor of the American -or Haliburton style, is the more delicate imaginative humor -of John Hunter-Duvar and the whimsical humor of Grant -Allen. Hunter-Duvar wrote considerable humor in light -ephemeral form and his stories and verse are colored with -many passages of <span class='it'>genre</span> humor and satire. The chief -basis of his reputation as a humorist of a distinct and anomalous -type is found in his extraordinarily conceived narrative -poem, <span class='it'>The Emigration of the Fairies</span>. It deserves -wide reading as an example of the pure humor of fancy. -Grant Allen was a novelist and scientist. He published -<span class='pageno' title='324' id='Page_324'></span> -a volume of light verse, <span class='it'>The Lower Slopes</span>, in which he -indulged his humorous gifts in a series of satiric and -entertaining verses on scientific themes. It is all essentially -the humor of persiflage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After Haliburton the extraordinary name in Post-Confederation -Canadian humor is George Thomas Lanigan. -He was born in the Province of Quebec and has the distinction -of having founded what is now the <span class='it'>Daily Star</span>, of -Montreal. He was a brilliant journalist and possessed unusual -versatility of invention and style in prose and verse. -He had all the mental gifts, and some of the faults, native -to the Keltic temperament. His ebullient spirits expressed -themselves in restless activity and with as ready brilliancy -in verse as in prose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His prose humor, which was published serially in <span class='it'>The -World</span>, New York, in the first decade after Confederation, -was fresh and novel and arresting. The series was published -in book form under the title <span class='it'>Fables Out of the World</span> -(1878) and were to their time what the <span class='it'>Fables in Slang</span> -by George Ade are to our time. So compellingly did Lanigan’s -<span class='it'>Fables</span> strike the imagination of Mark Twain that -he republished seven of them in his Library of Humor. -For the most part, Lanigan’s <span class='it'>Fables</span> are satires on the -half-truths which constitute popular moral maxims. They -are all mere absurdities, and mere nonsense; but they contain -a larger truth than the maxims they satirize. They -are sure to awake a chuckle. We quote two examples:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote-right90percent'> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'><span class='sc'>The Merchant of Venice</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A Venetian Merchant who was looking in the lap of luxury -was accosted upon the Rialto by a friend who had not seen him -for many months. ‘How is this?’ cried the latter. ‘When I -last saw you your gaberdine was out at elbows, and now you -sail in your own gondola.’ ‘True,’ replied the Merchant, ‘but -since then I have met with serious losses, and been obliged to -compound with my creditors for ten cents on the dollar.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Moral.—Composition is the life of trade.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='325' id='Page_325'></span></p> - -<div class='blockquote-right90percent'> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'><span class='sc'>The Honest Newsboy</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A Newsboy was passing along the street, when he chanced -to discover a purse of greenbacks. He was at first inclined to -conceal it, but repelling the unworthy suggestion, he asked a -Venerable Man if it was his’n. The Venerable Man looked at -it hurriedly, said it was, patted him on the head, gave him a -quarter, and said he would yet be president. The Venerable -Man then hastened away, but was arrested for having counterfeit -bills in his possession, while the honest Newsboy played -penny-ante with his humble quarter and ran it up to $2.62.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Moral.—Honesty is sometimes the best policy.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>Though Lanigan’s <span class='it'>Fables</span> in prose were at that time a -new and brilliant type of humor, it is in his humorous ballads -that he surpasses himself, and because of them he remains -unique among Canadian humorists. Some of his -humorous ballads have also been included in anthologies of -<span class='it'>American</span> (!) humor, as, for instance, in Roscoe Johnson’s -volume, <span class='it'>Playday Poetry</span>. The most famous of Lanigan’s -humorous ballads is his egregious piece of persiflage, <span class='it'>The -Ahkoond of Swat</span>. Really, however, much more humorous -are Lanigan’s <span class='it'>The Amateur Orlando</span> and <span class='it'>The Plumber’s -Revenge</span>. Their length prevents quotation here. On account -of its notoriety and the absolute egregiousness of its -comic irresponsibility we select for quotation Lanigan’s -<span class='it'>The Ahkoond of Swat</span>. To give it color and setting we -note briefly the origin of the verses. According to Mr. -Burpee the facts are that ‘one evening, after learning the -fact from the English mail just received, Lanigan announced -that the Akhoond of Swat was dead and that he -was writing a poem about him.’ The verses appeared in -the next morning paper. Following is the text of the -<span class='it'>Ahkoond of Swat</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>What, what, what,</p> -<p class='line0'>What’s the news from Swat?</p> -<p class='line0'>          Sad news,</p> -<p class='line0'>          Bad news,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='326' id='Page_326'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>Comes by the cable led</p> -<p class='line0'>Through the Indian Ocean’s bed,</p> -<p class='line0'>Through the Persian Gulf, the Red</p> -<p class='line0'>Sea and the Med—</p> -<p class='line0'>Iterranean—he’s dead;</p> -<p class='line0'>The Akhoond is dead!</p> -<p class='line0'>For the Akhoond I mourn,</p> -<p class='line0'>          Who wouldn’t?</p> -<p class='line0'>He strove to disregard the message stern,</p> -<p class='line0'>          But he Ahkoodn’t.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Dead, dead, dead;</p> -<p class='line0'>          Sorrow Swats!</p> -<p class='line0'>Swats wha’ hae wi’ Ahkoond bled,</p> -<p class='line0'>Swats whom he had often led</p> -<p class='line0'>Onward to a gory bed,</p> -<p class='line0'>         Or to victory,</p> -<p class='line0'>         As the case might be.</p> -<p class='line0'>         Sorrow Swats!</p> -<p class='line0'>Tears shed,</p> -<p class='line0'>         Shed tears like water,</p> -<p class='line0'>Your great Ahkoond is dead!</p> -<p class='line0'>         That Swat’s the matter!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Mourn, city of Swat!</p> -<p class='line0'>Your great Ahkoond is not,</p> -<p class='line0'>But lain ’mid worms to rot:</p> -<p class='line0'>His mortal part alone, his soul was caught</p> -<p class='line0'>(Because he was a good Ahkoond)</p> -<p class='line0'>Up to the bosom of Mahound.</p> -<p class='line0'>Though earthly walls his frame surround</p> -<p class='line0'>(For ever hallowed be the ground!)</p> -<p class='line0'>And sceptics mock the lowly mound</p> -<p class='line0'>And say, ‘He’s now of no Ahkound!’</p> -<p class='line0'>(His soul is in the skies!)</p> -<p class='line0'>The azure skies that bend above his loved</p> -<p class='line0'>         Metropolis of Swat</p> -<p class='line0'>He sees with larger, other eyes,</p> -<p class='line0'>Athwart all earthly mysteries—</p> -<p class='line0'>         He knows what’s Swat.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond</p> -<p class='line0'>  With a noise of mourning and of lamentation!</p> -<p class='line0'>Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond</p> -<p class='line0'>  With the noise of the mourning of the Swattish nation!</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='327' id='Page_327'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>          Fallen is at length</p> -<p class='line0'>          Its tower of strength,</p> -<p class='line0'>Its sun had dimmed ere it had nooned:</p> -<p class='line0'>Dead lies the great Ahkoond.</p> -<p class='line0'>          The great Ahkoond of Swat</p> -<p class='line0'>          Is not.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In passing we may note another Canadian humorous -poem of the same type which has become famous, namely, -<span class='it'>Hoch de Kaiser</span>, which was composed at a sitting by an -<span class='it'>émigré</span> Canadian journalist who went sometimes by the -name of Rose and sometimes by the name of Gordon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>We have elsewhere noted the fresh quality of the humor -of Mrs. Everard Cotes (Sarah Jeanette Duncan) and a -whole chapter has been devoted to the poetry of William -Henry Drummond as the creator of a new species of -Canadian humor. The great warm Irish heart of Drummond -was not fitted to create satire or mere fun. His -humor is based upon a tender sentiment or what is known -as ‘the homely pathetic’ and on a special sense of the -humor in <span class='it'>genre</span> characters, particularly the old and the -adolescent <span class='it'>habitant</span> of Quebec.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man quite by himself as a humorist is George Henry -Ham, who has not unfittingly been called ‘the laughing -philosopher’ of Canada. Ham’s humor is essentially the -humor of the ‘after-dinner’ or ‘the occasional’ speaker, and -is for the most part anecdotal. During a long life he -had acquired an inexhaustible fund of the most humorous -anecdotes about Canadian characters or celebrated men. -These were collected and published in his <span class='it'>Reminiscences -of a Raconteur</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Essentially Ham’s humor is not creative; it is the reproductive -humor of the raconteur; but Ham has added to -it by a color and settings of his own. It is the humor -itself and not the style that counts. But while it is humor -and for the most part sheer fun or entertainment, it comes -from a man who has seen many vicissitudes in Canadian -<span class='pageno' title='328' id='Page_328'></span> -life and history and institutions and who, in his great age, -as human life goes, invites us in his <span class='it'>Reminiscences of a -Raconteur</span> to look upon life and its vicissitudes of good -and ill fortune with courage, serenity, faith and hope—and -not to fear death. Ham’s humor is distinguished as -pleasant medicine for the soul in the hurly-burly of life -and in the contemplation of having some time to depart -from a world that is full of dear companions and pleasant -places.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next Canadian systematic humorist, though not -Canadian-born, is Stephen Leacock. Haliburton was a -creator; he really invented, his method of satiric humor, -or if he did not invent the method, he at least originally -created his comic characters. Leacock, who is ‘a graft -on the Canadian literary tree,’ models his humor considerably -after the American manner. It is satiric burlesque -deliberately constructing around serious character or -events extravagant nonsense which is a sort of criticism -of manners and morals of society, but which tends to engage -us more as burlesque than as criticism. Mr. Leacock’s -first book was entitled <span class='it'>Literary Lapses</span>, published -at Montreal in 1910. It was, as the author’s Preface states, -for the most part a collection of sketches which had before -that date appeared in print in various magazines. Two -of the sketches gained the distinction of being reprinted in -<span class='it'>Punch</span> and <span class='it'>The Lancet</span>, London. These were respectively -Leacock’s <span class='it'>Boarding House Geometry</span> and <span class='it'>The New Pathology</span>, -the latter of which had the further distinction of -being reprinted in translations in various German periodicals. -His <span class='it'>Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town</span> approaches -more closely to the unity of a regular novel than any -of his other books and is the highest example of his art. -His style here is personal and familiar almost to undue -flippancy; it is witty and sparkling even to brilliancy; it is -less literary than the material of the <span class='it'>Mariposa Newspacket</span>; -<span class='pageno' title='329' id='Page_329'></span> -it is surrounded with an exuberant atmosphere of -burlesque. Yet in <span class='it'>Sunshine Sketches</span> he has achieved an -unmistakably true characterization of the average ‘little -town’ of Canada—its life and its people—a life which -shows the universal touch that makes the whole world -akin, and at the same time has those narrow, provincial -idiosyncrasies that make it distinctively local and impossible -of portrayal except by one who has lived it. There -is here revealed much of the usually uncovered side of -human nature, lit up with a glow of amusement at the -foibles of our fellow-man, but tempered, more than is -usual with Leacock, with a good-natured sympathy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From 1910 onwards to 1922, when Leacock’s <span class='it'>My Discovery -of England</span> was published, the humorist produced -a dozen volumes of his special species of humor and attained -a vogue which places him first amongst Canadian -humorists of the 20th century. He works at it brilliantly, -sometimes in the extreme burlesque manner of Mark -Twain and sometimes in the quiet, humble and drier manner -of the characteristic English humor which appears in -<span class='it'>Punch</span> in its department of ‘Charivaria.’ Unlike Haliburton, -Leacock rather makes the reader behold the humorist -himself figuring away bravely and sometimes futilely, -to divert and amuse or entertain. That is to say, unlike -Haliburton’s humor, which had an easy method of attack -and drew attention to itself, Leacock’s humor gives the -reader an impression of its being <span class='it'>strained</span>, an effort on the -humorist’s part deliberately to make people smile or laugh, -whether they will or not. It is ‘smart,’ as the word is -used in Yankee slang, rather than human and profound. -It ‘tickles’ the fancy and sensibility rather than illuminates -the imagination and informs the moral reason. It is -clever; but like all things that are merely clever it is -ephemerally engaging or pleasing, and it is all a case of -the half being greater than the whole. In short, Leacock’s -<span class='pageno' title='330' id='Page_330'></span> -humor is for a day, whereas Haliburton’s humor -is for all time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Peter Donovan is a promising later humorist. His -first book was <span class='it'>Imperfectly Proper</span>. After a short residence -in England since the war, he published <span class='it'>Over ‘Ere -and Back Home</span> (1922). Mr. Donovan is a critic of -society. He is not, however, a critic of constructive social -thought but of conventional thinking and conventional -manners. The arrows of his humor, which are neither -sharp-pointed nor poisonous, are directed against what -Matthew Arnold used to call ‘Philistines’—the ‘nice’ people -who outwardly conform to all the conventionalities -of the law of the land and of the church but who inwardly—when -no one is looking—break these laws. Donovan -directs his humor against shams in society—not the great -shams but those shams which have become acquired habits, -or against all that is the ‘fashion’ or the ‘rage’ of the year -or day. What he really achieves, from the point of view -of vision, is to make us see ourselves as others see us, and -to cause us to ‘chuckle’ over his polite—for he is never -rude or coarse—revealments. Norris Hodgins works -much within the same range as Donovan—<span class='it'>Why Don’t You -Get Married?</span> (1923)—and is not often quite so hilariously -funny, but he comes closer to the daily experiences of -every man and every woman, and there is just a bit more -solidity to his underlying structure of everyday philosophy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In another vein is the humor of Peter McArthur, who -has been sometimes called ‘The Sage of Ekfrid.’ McArthur -writes as one who, living a pastoral and serious -life, actually looks around upon his neighbors in other -spheres of life and on their striving after wealth and -material goods, and who freshly reflects the thought, as -old as the ancient hills, that a serious and contented mind, -satisfied with the gifts of nature and of God, with pure -friendships and sufficient sustenance for body, possesses -<span class='pageno' title='331' id='Page_331'></span> -the only permanent satisfactions of life. He presents this -view, not with any originality in thought, but with a manner -or style that is pleasant reading and causes us to fall -in love with life and laughter and simple joys and to look -with charity upon our fellows, and to promote peace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A new type of Canadian humor, with a new quality of -style, is the humor of Newton MacTavish, Editor of <span class='it'>The -Canadian Magazine</span>, in which periodical Mr. MacTavish -first gave to the public his fresh and piquant humor, under -the title <span class='it'>Thrown In</span>. The sketches were collected in -a volume and published with the same title in 1923. The -aim of MacTavish’s humor is definitively social—to disclose -the hidden humanity of commonplace souls and their essential -unity with their more magnificent fellows. When -his humor is amusing or entertaining, it achieves this quality -not so much by depicting grotesque or ludicrous situations -as by revealing the natural attitudes of pioneer people -towards the common things of life, and the elementally -human idiosyncrasies of the so-called common people. -When it is wit rather than mere humor, MacTavish turns -the light of truth upon human psychology and character, -by way of situation and character-drawing, in terms of -commonplace humanity expressed and colored by homely -speech and anecdote. So that the effect of his humor is -two-fold. For while the reader is being entertained his -mind is also receiving new insight into our common heritage, -our genuine humanity, whatever be our culture or -social status. In short, MacTavish’s humor is philosophical.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In Roy Davis’ long satiric poem, <span class='it'>Flying Rumors</span>, published -in booklet form at Boston, 1922, we discover a recrudescence -of the satiric spirit of Haliburton. Davis was -born in Nova Scotia, and was educated at Dalhousie University, -Nova Scotia, and Harvard University. He is -Professor of English in the School of Business Administration, -Boston University, of which he is also Assistant Dean. -<span class='pageno' title='332' id='Page_332'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the same intent as Haliburton, namely, to correct -certain centrifugal tendencies in society, Davis employs -satire, not, as did Haliburton, in prose, but in verse, which -was the traditional medium of the satire of Haliburton’s -and Davis’ Loyalist ancestors in Pre-Revolutionary days -in the Old Colonies. The form of Davis’ ‘essay on man -and society’ in verse adds, on the side of novelty, a fresh -contribution to the satiric literature of Canada. The -poet has avoided going back to the traditional rhymed -couplet of the Loyalist satirists in Nova Scotia, but has -used an octavo stanzaic form in which the first six lines -are rhymed alternately, and the last two are rhymed as a -couplet. This effects a pleasant sense of finality and rest. -Besides, Davis has invented a considerable number of lines -which are musical, and arresting or startling in novelty of -imagery, as, for instance, this ingenious and daring couplet:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>A goose-step strutting Kaiser, kissing Mars,</p> -<p class='line0'>Has missed the humor of the midnight stars!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>When, therefore, we survey the history of Canadian -humor from Haliburton to Leacock, and from Leacock to -MacTavish and Davis, the humorists who have remained -salient and popular, and whose work seems to have the -inherent qualities which make for permanent appeal, are -Haliburton and Lanigan. And when we survey and note -the variety and distinction of Canadian humor—that it is, -in many ways, a humor quite by itself, and that it is of -considerable quantity—we may reply to certain literary -historians and critics that Canadians are not, as they are -superstitiously believed to be, a humorless people and -quite without a literature of humor. For Canada has produced -several notable humorists, an admirable literature -of humor; and the work of one of Canada’s humorists, -Haliburton, has long possessed international renown—a -place in permanent world literature.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='333' id='Page_333'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXIV</h1></div> - -<h3>National Stage Drama</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE RISE OF NATIVE AND NATIONAL REALISTIC STAGE DRAMA -IN CANADA: THE LITTLE THEATRE AND THE WORK OF -CARROLL AIKINS AND MERRILL DENISON.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>A</span><span class='sc'>lthough</span> Canada is relatively rich in Poetic Drama, -there is no evidence of a developed Stage Drama. Part -of the literary future of the country lies in the development -of native and national stage drama. A significant beginning -in native production of the acted drama was inaugurated -by Mr. Carroll Aikins who established in the Okanagan -Valley, at a centre named Naramata, a ‘Little Theatre,’ -which he named The Home Theatre. It was formally -opened in November 1920 by the Rt. Hon. Mr. Meighen, -then Prime Minister. Mr. Aikins’ aims were to produce -a national drama, staged according to artistic conceptions -of simplicity and beauty, and to teach the people to appreciate -good plays produced with simple and beautiful -properties, stage sets, and lighting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In order to realize these ideals it was necessary to choose -good plays that had already been standardized and to train -his actors directly in the Home Theatre. Mr. Aikins’ belief -was that by developing in the people a love of good -plays produced in a Canadian theatre under Canadian -direction, the people sooner or later would demand the production -of Canadian plays and that this demand would lead -to the creation of plays on Canadian subjects by Canadian -playwrights. That is to say, Mr. Aikins believed that the -movement he started in the Home Theatre would at length -result in the creating of Canadian Native and National -Stage Drama. -<span class='pageno' title='334' id='Page_334'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>In 1921 Mr. Aikins produced on the stage of the Home -Theatre an acted version of <span class='it'>The Trojan Women</span> by the -ancient Greek dramatist Euripides. In 1922 he produced -his own Passion Play, <span class='it'>Victory in Defeat</span>, a beautifully -staged pantomime of moving pictures against a sky of -changing light, interpreted with the aid of a reader and -expressive music—the first experiment of its kind attempted -in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The ‘Little Theatre’ movement has also achieved something -for the appreciation of good Canadian plays in the -cities of Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. -At Hart House in Toronto, there has been considerable -activity concerned with the production of Canadian -plays. In April, 1921, Merrill Denison’s <span class='it'>Brothers in -Arms</span> was produced at that theatre; and in April 1922 -another of his plays, <span class='it'>From Their Own Place</span>, was produced. -These, with two others, were published in book form in -1923 under the title <span class='it'>The Unheroic North</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Denison’s plays are Canadian by virtue of the author’s -parentage and family traditions (his mother being the late -Flora McD. Denison), and by the plays themselves being -on Canadian themes, with Canadian characters moving in -Canadian surroundings. They are realistic satiric dramas -of life and thought in Canadian ‘backwoods’ and rural settlements. -The dramatist presents the life and speech and -conduct of these characters with such broad realism that -the plays themselves are a mordant satire on existence and -society in isolated Canadian communities. But Denison’s -plays are also a satire <span class='it'>within</span> a satire. It is not life in certain -Canadian communities that he is really satirizing, but -an attitude of the Canadian people themselves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The people of Canada dearly love ‘high’ romance and -spurious sentimentality. They find this spurious sentimentality -in some Canadian fiction, and the romance in the -poetic dramas of Mair, Mrs. Curzon, Wilfred Campbell, -Dr. Dollard, Robert Norwood, and others. Boldly, therefore, -<span class='pageno' title='335' id='Page_335'></span> -and with evident sincerity, Merrill Denison conceived -the idea of satirizing the lovers of spurious sentimentality -by presenting them with plays which would be the antithesis -of ‘high’ romance and affected sentimentality—with -life so broadly or coarsely realistic that the people of Canada -would <span class='it'>not</span> like the life or the plays.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two of the plays—<span class='it'>Brothers in Arms</span> and the <span class='it'>Weather -Breeder</span>—portray life in the Canadian backwoods districts -as Mr. Denison has observed that life. Two of the plays—<span class='it'>From -Their Own Place</span> and <span class='it'>Marsh Hay</span>—portray, according -to Mr. Denison, life in the poorer or more sordid farming -districts of Canada. The dramatist has explained his -motive and aim. He says: ‘These plays have their origin -in the needs of a theatre—not <span class='it'>the</span> theatre. <span class='it'>Brothers in -Arms</span> was written because a Canadian comedy was needed -to fill a bill and none could be found. In writing it as an -innovation, I wrote of a part of Canada I knew, and introduced -as characters actual Canadians. The result was -new, but, as might have been expected, Canadian. It must -be remembered that these plays were written for a Canadian -theatre, not Broadway, and that any literature of the theatre -in Canada must follow the same course—be written -for Canadian production.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It may be regretted that Denison went to sordid and -vulgar society in Canada for his dramatic subjects or -material. But he had just cause to satire Canadian life by -means of realistic Canadian plays. For the intellectual dishonesty, -and the ‘immoral moral psychology,’ which creates -the spurious or hectic sentimentality in certain Canadian -fiction would compel a sane-minded man to show the other -side of the picture, and to show it with pervasive and vivid -realism. Denison perceived and felt the profound untruth -or falsity of certain forms of 20th century Canadian fiction. -In his view, it was all too ‘nice’ and saccharine as art; it -had neither truth nor strength. Denison felt that no such -men and women as appear in many of the novels of the -<span class='pageno' title='336' id='Page_336'></span> -Realistic Romances exist in Canada. In his opinion, the -substance of these novels is puerile and vain invention. -He, therefore, decided to present to the Canadian public -real men and women as they really live, move and have -their being in Canada—even if they are, as indeed they -are, sordid and vulgarized men and women. Denison’s -plays, then, are a Protest; they are also a Satire. What -the dramatist is protesting against is not the life that he -presents in his plays. What he is satirizing is not Canadian -life as such. He is protesting against intellectual dishonesty -and spurious sentimentality in Canadian fiction. He -is satirizing the life and characters which these Canadian -fictionists have presented in their romances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Denison presents his material in three one-act plays -with four to six characters, and in one four-act play with -fourteen characters. It is the business of the dramatic critic -to estimate Denison’s success in dramaturgy, to determine -whether they are well-constructed and actable plays. On -the strictly literary side, his plays in <span class='it'>The Unheroic North</span>, -despite their sordid or vulgarized characters, and despite -the sections of society and life presented in them, intrigue -the attention and make interesting and diverting reading. -As satires on the methods and ideals of certain Canadian -romantic fictionists, on the social life at least of certain -Canadian communities Denison’s realistic dramas are a significant -beginning of creative Stage Drama in Canada.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='337' id='Page_337'></span>Part III.</h2> -<hr class='tbk123'/> - -<h3>Special and Miscellaneous<br/> Literature<br/> (1760-1924)</h3> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='339' id='Page_339'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXV</h1></div> - -<h3><span class='it'>The</span> War Poetry <span class='it'>of</span> Canada</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>MRS. MOODIE—ANNIE ROTHWELL CHRISTIE—ISABELLA -VALANCY CRAWFORD—JOHN MCCRAE—CANADIAN POEMS -OF THE GREAT WAR.</p> -</div> - -<h4>I. THE POETRY OF THE CIVIL REBELLION<br/> AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR</h4> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>t</span> is a literary phenomenon by itself that the best or -most popular of the inspirational and the commemorative -war verse by permanently resident <span class='it'>émigrés</span> or native-born -Canadians was the work of the country’s women -poets. No samples of martial verse inspired by the War -of 1812-14 seem to be extant. The records of martial -verse produced in Canada begin with the Civil War of -1837-38 and the inspirational war lyrics of Mrs. Susanna -Moodie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fifteen years after the war opened, Mrs. Moodie’s -martial lyrics were published in her <span class='it'>Roughing It In The -Bush</span> (1852, two vols.). In ‘The Advertisement’ (which -is a sort of publisher’s Preface) to this work, the publisher -recounts the origin and effect of Mrs. Moodie’s inspirational -war verse. ‘During the rebellion,’ he says, ‘her loyal -lyrics, prompted by strong affection for her native country -[England], were circulated and sung throughout the colony -[Ontario], and produced a great effect in rousing an enthusiastic -feeling in favor of public order.’ But Mrs. -Moodie herself modestly remarks (<span class='it'>op. cit. sup.</span>, Vol. 2):—</p> - -<div class='blockquote100percent'> - -<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>I must own that my British spirit was fairly aroused, and as I -could not aid in subduing the enemies of my beloved country with -my arm, I did what little I could to serve the good cause with my pen. -<span class='pageno' title='340' id='Page_340'></span> -It may probably amuse my readers, to give them a few specimens of -these loyal staves, which were widely circulated through the colony -at the time.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>It will suffice to quote the first and last stanzas of her -<span class='it'>Address to the Freemen of Canada</span> (<span class='it'>op. cit. sup.</span>, p. 191) -in order to show that Mrs. Moodie wrote no mediocre -martial verse of the inspirational type:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Canadians, will you see the flag</p> -<p class='line0'>  Beneath whose folds your fathers bled,</p> -<p class='line0'>Supplanted by the vilest rag</p> -<p class='line0'>  That ever host to rapine led?</p> -<p class='line0'>Thou emblem of a tyrant’s sway,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Thy triple hues are dyed in gore;</p> -<p class='line0'>Like his, thy power has passed away,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Like his, thy short-lived triumph’s o’er.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In a footnote Mrs. Moodie explains that ‘the vilest -rag’ is the tri-colored flag assumed by the rebels. The -use of the phrase has, of course, both psychological and -aesthetic warrant. The thought of the tri-colored flag, -of its earlier bloody history in the French Revolution, revolted -her sense of nobility and righteousness, and, like -Homer’s, her diction and imagery sank in correspondence -with the fall in the spiritual dignity of her subject. Aesthetically -viewed, she was quite justified in sinking and -rising with the emotional dignity of her subject. She sinks -in the third stanza, but rises magniloquently in the fifth -(final) stanza. Thus:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>By all the blood for Britain shed</p> -<p class='line0'>  On many a glorious battlefield,</p> -<p class='line0'>To the free winds her standard spread,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Nor to these base insurgents yield.</p> -<p class='line0'>With loyal bosoms beating high,</p> -<p class='line0'>  In your good cause securely trust;</p> -<p class='line0'>‘God and Victoria’ be your cry,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And crush the traitors to the dust.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Compared with standard martial songs, such as Burns’ -<span class='it'>Scots Wha’ Hae wi’ Wallace Bled</span>, or <span class='it'>The March of the -<span class='pageno' title='341' id='Page_341'></span> -Men of Harlech</span>, the first three lines of the foregoing -stanza are really excellent. The vocables are mouth filling, -the rhythm moves rapidly and carries one with it, and -though the third line might be improved by the use of the -word ‘fling’ for the word ‘spread’ in the text, still ‘To the -free winds her standard spread’ increases respiration, and -stimulates ideated sensations of free movement and expanding -personality. Altogether, it is a vigorous—a -‘breezy’ line. No Canadian need feel ashamed of it. And -what magnificent energy is in the last two lines of the -stanza! The reader no sooner reaches ‘God and Victoria’ -than he shifts back the accent to the word ‘God,’ emphasizes -it with a full burst of breath and with a change in -pitch, and then impulsively spurts out the utterance of the -remaining syllables in the same changed pitch until he attacks -the word ‘cry,’ which is both oxytoned and emphasized. -Thus the line becomes a veritable battle-shout -and inspiriting slogan. After this ringing, rousing, energizing -oxytone line comes the barytone cadence, ‘And crush -the traitors to the dust.’ The reader braces himself for -action—takes in a full breath, fronts his eyes, sets his -jaws, and all his muscles, and lunges forward to the fray. -Both are brave lines; both are energizing, impelling; and -the whole stanza is a magnificent sample of inspiriting martial -verse. No Canadian need feel ashamed to recite it -before the admirers of Robert Burns or William Duthie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Moodie’s modest estimate of her martial lyrics -is not just to the poet. They are better than mere ‘loyal -staves,’ fitted solely to ‘amuse’ casual readers. That they -were widely circulated and sung throughout Canada at -the time when they were needed, is proof that they possessed -lyrical eloquence and the inspirational power to stir the -heart and impel the will to honorable action. They are -good singing verse, but they are not genuine poetry. All -that is required in an inspirational war lyric is that it come -<span class='pageno' title='342' id='Page_342'></span> -warm from the heart and hand; that it be human, manly, -direct in thought; that it be ringing in lilt and swinging in -rhythm; and that it be respectable technically as verse. To -write martial verse that fulfils all these requirements and -to write it immediately on demand is no easy task. Judged -by these standards Mrs. Moodie excelled in inspirational -war lyricism. It is true that Harriet A. Wilkins, Mrs. -Curzon, Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie, Valancy Crawford, -and Agnes Machar surpassed her in poetic war lyricism. -But this was due to the fact that their best martial verse -was commemorative, and was written <span class='it'>after</span> the deeds or -events celebrated by them, and at a time when they could -compose in peace and at leisure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of these later Canadian women poets of martial verse -the supreme artist was Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie. The -verse of the others, even Isabella Valancy Crawford’s novel -<span class='it'>The Rose of a Nation’s Thanks</span>, and Agnes Maule -Machar’s swinging <span class='it'>Our Lads to the Front</span>, though choicer -in diction and imagery than Mrs. Moodie’s, hardly rise -above the quality of good verse. Mrs. Annie Rothwell-Christie’s -commemorative martial verse on the other hand, -attains to the dignity and beauty of pure poetry. We do -not need the statement of the English poet Sir Edwin Arnold, -that ‘the best war songs of the Half-breed Rebellion -were written by Annie Rothwell-Christie.’ Dignity, -beauty, melody and compelling pathos are in every line she -wrote. These qualities can be observed in the lines we -quote from her <span class='it'>After the Battle</span> and <span class='it'>Welcome Home</span>, selecting, -first, two stanzas from <span class='it'>After the Battle</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Ay, lay them to rest on the prairie, on the spot where for honor they fell,</p> -<p class='line0'>The shout of the savage their requiem, the hiss of the rifle their knell.</p> -<p class='line0'> • • • •</p> -<p class='line0'>As the blood of the martyr enfruitens his creed, so the hero sows peace</p> -<p class='line0'>And the reaping of war’s deadly harvest is the earnest his havoc shall cease.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='pageno' title='343' id='Page_343'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The extraordinary imagery of the last line of the first -stanza (couplet)—‘the shout of the savage their requiem, -the hiss of the rifle their knell’ and the novel beauty of the -similitude in the first line of the second stanza are enough -to raise these verses to the dignity of pure poetry. Besides, -there is a spiritual militancy in the rhythm that soothes or -solaces, while its cadences solemnize the soul, begetting -resignation to the Will of the Universe. Or listen to the -triumphant, sonorous verbal music of these lines from -<span class='it'>Welcome Home</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>War-worn, sun-scorched, strained with the dust of toil,</p> -<p class='line0'>And battle-scarred they come—victorious.</p> -<p class='line0'>Exultantly we greet them—cleave the sky</p> -<p class='line0'>With cheers, and fling our banners to the winds;</p> -<p class='line0'>We raise triumphant songs, and strew their path</p> -<p class='line0'>To do them homage—bid them ‘Welcome Home!’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>We hear drum beats, bugle calls, and the tramp of -armed men on the march in those first two spondaic -phrases—‘war-worn, sun-scorched.’ A new emotional experience -comes to us with the quicker moving syllables in -the next two lines; the rhythm is fitted to exultation. Also -we are treated to a new but brilliant alliterative metaphor—‘cleave -the sky with cheers.’ We are in the realm of -poetry. But fine as are the preceding examples of Mrs. -Annie Rothwell-Christie’s commemorative martial verse, -the pathos of the following, from <span class='it'>The Woman’s Part</span>, is -overwhelmingly human and moving and ennobling. The -inspiration is derived from reflecting whether to those who, -fired by love of adventure or country, have gone to war, -and fallen, the mothers, sisters, and sweethearts shall give -regrets, prayers, or tears. The poet disparages all these, -and turns to solace the mother or wife, whose son or husband -had died on the battlefield:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O, woman-heart be strong,</p> -<p class='line0'>Too full for words—too humble for a prayer—</p> -<p class='line0'>Too faithful to be fearful—offer here</p> -<p class='line0'>Your sacrifice of patience. Not for long</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='344' id='Page_344'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>The darkness. When the dawn of peace breaks bright,</p> -<p class='line0'>Blessed she who welcomes whom her God shall save,</p> -<p class='line0'>But honored in her God’s and country’s sight</p> -<p class='line0'>She who lifts empty arms to cry, ‘<span class='it'>I Gave</span>!’</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>After reading that noble poem of love and pathos, and -being moved to emotion too deep for tears, one knows that -all distinctions for sex are man-made and ephemeral and -abortive—that only ‘soul,’ whatever be its form of earthly -tenement, is real. For Annie Rothwell-Christie who wrote -that poem was altogether soul—superman, superwoman—gifted -with the speech of angels. Her martial verse is -absolutely unique, and a distinct contribution to perduring -war poetry.</p> - -<h4>II. THE POETRY OF THE WORLD WAR</h4> - -<p class='pindent'>The Canadian Poetry of the World War is, as was -previous martial verse by Canadian poets, both inspirational -and commemorative. What is significant for literary -history, is, first, that there is a distinct advance in the excellence -both of the ideas and of the artistic form of the -Canadian poetry of the world war; and, secondly, that both -the activity in poetic composition occasioned by the late -war and the quality of the poetry became an inspiration to -other poets whose genius was dormant and unawakened, -and caused a genuine Renascence of the Poetic Spirit and -of Poetry in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In what respect may the Canadian Poetry of the world -war be said to be excellent, or even unexcelled by the martial -poetry of the United States, if excelled by that of England -and France? It is relatively great in noble ideas. In -it we see clearly and vividly what Canadian men and -women, at home and in the field of war, really thought -and felt about war and death, love and home and country, -self-sacrifice, and the good green earth, and peace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Truth, beauty and splendor of ideas</span>—these are the three -supreme excellences of the Canadian poetry written by the -<span class='pageno' title='345' id='Page_345'></span> -soldier-poets in active service on the fighting field, and by -the professional or amateur non-combatant poets at home, -during the war.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As to the artistic form of this poetry, considering all -the conditions of distraction and perturbance under which -it was written, the wonder is that it has any formal finish -at all. As a matter of fact, however, the Canadian poetry -inspired by the world war cannot be depreciated as ‘twinkling -trivialities’ either in substance or in form. All the -best of it is good poetry—originally conceived, winningly -suffused with beauty of sentiment, rich in noble ideas and -spiritual imagery, engaging in verbal music, and technically -well-wrought. If the formal finish of Canadian Poetry -of the world war is not always quite the equal of the -British and American poetry similarly occasioned, still the -altogether most famous and most popular poem of the war -and most likely to perdure in the popular memory, is neither -the sonnet of the English soldier-poet, Rupert Brooke, <span class='it'>The -Soldier</span>, nor the poem of the American soldier-poet, -Alan Seeger, <span class='it'>I Have a Rendezvous with Death</span>, but the -lyric of the Canadian soldier-poet, John McCrae, <span class='it'>In Flanders -Fields</span>. Further, special circumstances, special sentiments, -and special color and form went to making the -poem by McCrae the supreme lyric of the world war, and -the popularity of <span class='it'>In Flanders Fields</span> affected the appreciation -of other Canadian poetry of the late war to such a -degree as to cause the popular imagination, as well as the -critical sense of the cultured, to estimate all other Canadian -poetry of the world war as so far below McCrae’s exquisite -lyric as to be second-rate in substance and form. This is -not so. Save that they do not embody a special form and -are not as musically insinuating as McCrae’s, the best of -other Canadian poems of the world war are as nobly conceived, -as spiritually subduing or exalting, and as technically -finished as <span class='it'>In Flanders Fields</span>. -<span class='pageno' title='346' id='Page_346'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>During the world war, as in previous wars, the women -poets of Canada were to the fore in writing inspirational -and commemorative martial verse. In Garvin’s <span class='it'>Canadian -Poems of the Great War</span> about one third (26) of the total -number (73) of poets represented are women, and their -war verse, especially the verse of Katherine Hale (whose -poetry has been already dealt with), Helena Coleman, -Frances Harrison, Isabel Graham, Agnes Maule Machar, -Gertrude Bartlett, Grace Blackburn, Jean Blewett, Minnie -Hallowell Bowen, Louise Morey Bowman, Isabelle Ecclestone -Mackay, Lilian Leveridge, Lucy Montgomery, Beatrice -Redpath, Sheila Rand, Florence Randal Livesay, -Richard Scrace (Mrs. J. B. Williamson), Virna Sheard, -Eloise Street, Ruth Strong, is not a whit below the level -of the war verse by Canadian men and in some instances -surpasses the latter’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dr. O’Hagan’s <span class='it'>Songs of Heroic Days</span> (1916) is a popular -volume, in which, for the most part, the poet recrudesces, -in good newspaper verse, the traditional war spirit of -bloodshed, retaliation and revenge. The poems, however, -are made engaging by a ready humor and an Irish <span class='it'>jeu -d’esprit</span> in the thought of ‘squaring things’ with an enemy -guilty of ‘dhirty thricks’ in war. Several other volumes of -war verse appeared during and shortly after the close of -the war—<span class='it'>The Fighting Men of Canada</span> by Douglas Durkin; -<span class='it'>Over the Hills of Home and Other Poems</span> by Lilian -Leveridge; <span class='it'>Sea Dogs and Men at Arms</span> by Jesse Edgar -Middleton; <span class='it'>A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems</span> (posthumous) -by Lieutenant Bernard Freeman Trotter; -<span class='it'>Laurentian Lyrics and Other Poems</span> (1915) by Lieutenant -Arthur S. Bourinot; <span class='it'>Insulters of Death</span> and <span class='it'>The New -Apocalyse</span> by Sergeant J. D. Logan, and several other -volumes by returned men. The only comprehensive anthology -of verse of the Great War, written by Canadians, -is J. W. Garvin’s <span class='it'>Canadian Poems of the Great War</span> -<span class='pageno' title='347' id='Page_347'></span> -(1918). This volume furnishes adequate proof that, as -foreign critics have said, ‘the war poetry written by Canadian -civilians and Canadian poets on active service is as -excellent as that written by the poets of the older Allied -Nations.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the purpose of just appreciation we remark the -fine, spirited, and imaginatively impressive qualities, as -well as the artistic finish, of selected Canadian war poems -that are really worthy to stand beside the best verse of -English and American poets who were inspired by the late -war. Aside from McCrae’s <span class='it'>In Flanders Fields</span> the most -celebrated commemorative war poem by a Canadian is Dr. -J. B. Dollard’s sonnet to the memory of Rupert Brooke—a -sonnet in which, as English and American critics observed, -Dr. Dollard made beautiful use of the supposed -cause of Brooke’s death (sunstroke, ‘arrows of Apollo’) -and the place of burial in the Aegean. Brooke’s grave is -on the island of Scyros, not Lemnos. But the error in -fact only enhances the beauty of the poem:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Slain by the arrows of Apollo, lo!</p> -<p class='line0'>    The well-belovèd of the Muses lies</p> -<p class='line0'>    On Lemnos’ Isle ’neath blue and classic skies,</p> -<p class='line0'>And hears th’ Aegean waters ebb and flow!</p> -<p class='line0'>How strange his beauteous soul should choose to go</p> -<p class='line0'>    Out from his body in this hallowed place,</p> -<p class='line0'>    Where Poetry and Art’s undying grace</p> -<p class='line0'>Still breathe, and Pipes of Pan melodious blow!</p> -<p class='line0'>Here shall he rest untroubled, knowing well</p> -<p class='line0'>    That faithful hearts shall hold his memory dear,</p> -<p class='line0'>Moved to affection weak words cannot tell</p> -<p class='line0'>    By his short, splendid life that knew no fear;</p> -<p class='line0'>Beloved of the gods, the gods have ta’en</p> -<p class='line0'>Their Ganymede, by bright Apollo slain!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Almost as celebrated as Dr. Dollard’s sonnet to Brooke -is Lieutenant Arthur Bourinot’s sonnet to the dead poet-soldier. -For the sake of variety in forms we quote -<span class='it'>Immortality</span>—a most winsome, tender lyric; simple, sincere, -<span class='pageno' title='348' id='Page_348'></span> -and convincing—from Lieutenant Bourinot’s <span class='it'>Laurentian -Lyrics</span> (1915):—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Fallen for Freedom’s sake;</p> -<p class='line0'>They merely sleep with faces that are paler</p> -<p class='line0'>  Until they wake.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>They will not weep, the mothers, in the years</p> -<p class='line0'>  The future will decree;</p> -<p class='line0'>For they have died that the battles and the tears</p> -<p class='line0'>  Should cease to be.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>They will not die, the victorious and the slain,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Sleeping in foreign soil,</p> -<p class='line0'>They gave their lives, but to the world is the gain</p> -<p class='line0'>  Of their sad toil.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Fallen for Freedom’s sake;</p> -<p class='line0'>They merely sleep with faces that are paler</p> -<p class='line0'>  Until they wake.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The most lilting example of Canadian inspirational war -verse is Douglas Durkin’s <span class='it'>The Fighting Men of Canada</span>. -It is spirited and inspiriting. The colloquial diction of -the refrains charges it with veracity, vividness, and with -‘the punch’ which the London critic, Mr. E. B. Osborn, -desiderates in the content of what are, in his view, the only -‘true war poems,’ namely, ‘song-pictures of the campaigns -and of soldiers’ life’:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Call it lust, or call it honor. Call it glory in a name!</p> -<p class='line0'>  We’re a handful, more or less, of what we were,</p> -<p class='line0'>But we praise the grim Almighty that we stuck and played the game,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Till we chased them at the double to their lair.</p> -<p class='line0'>        For the word came, ‘Up and over!’</p> -<p class='line0'>          And our answer was a yell</p> -<p class='line0'>        As we scrambled out of cover—</p> -<p class='line0'>          And we dealt the dastards hell!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Durkin’s ballad is a human, veracious war-poem in -the traditional spirit of Campbell’s <span class='it'>Battle of the Baltic</span>, Tennyson’s -<span class='it'>Ballad of the Revenge</span>, Newbolt’s <span class='it'>Drake’s Drum</span>. -<span class='pageno' title='349' id='Page_349'></span> -It is designedly inspirational after the manner, and with -the substance, of the old heroic ‘fighting spirit.’ It is, -therefore, a recrudescence of a war spirit and an ideal of -poetic inspiration, aim, and content which were not the real -and authentic spirit, motive, and ideal of the best Canadian, -British, French, or American poetry of the world war. In -short, Mr. Durkin’s poem, <span class='it'>The Fighting Men of Canada</span>, -lilting, spirited, and inspiriting as it is, must critically be -estimated as an obsolete form of ‘recruiting’ ballad rather -than as a true inspirational poem conceived and written according -to the characteristic genius of the poetry of the -world war. As a reversion to the old type of martial -poem, it deserves mention. Possibly it may be instanced -as the nearest approach to a Canadian war-song, though -the extraordinary fact is that not a single war-song, of the -popular or of the marching species, was written by a Canadian -civilian or soldier-poet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the war verse of another poet we find the kind of -poetry that fired the imagination and moved the will of the -men of Canada who went to the world war. To Lloyd -Roberts, son of Charles G. D. Roberts, the war poetry of -the British Empire, as well as Canada, is indebted for two -of the most striking and impressive short poems in the new -spirit of inspirational verse inspired by the world war. His -<span class='it'>Come Quietly, England</span>, simple and direct in thought, free -in form, colloquial in diction, but positive, candid, sincere, -is one of the most arresting and convincing poems that have -for a theme ‘the call to arms’—not for King, or Country, -nor for fear or anything else undivine:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>But for the sake of simple goodness</p> -<p class='line0'>  And His laws,</p> -<p class='line0'>We shall sacrifice our all</p> -<p class='line0'>  For The Cause!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>The Literary Digest</span> remarked Lloyd Roberts’ <span class='it'>Come -Quietly, England</span> as ‘one of the most striking statements -<span class='pageno' title='350' id='Page_350'></span> -of what may be called the philosophy of the war from the -English [British] point of view because it puts so candidly -into words the thoughts that are in the minds of the -author’s fellow-countrymen.’ The other poem by Roberts, -also in his new simple, colloquial, direct style, is entitled -<span class='it'>If I Must</span>. It is the most remarkably original ‘anti-pacifist’ -poem written by an English-speaking poet. It takes the -form of a quasi-dramatic monologue, and concludes with a -stanza which has, in journalistic slang, ‘punch’ in it. We -quote the whole poem:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>God knows there’s plenty of earth for all of us;</p> -<p class='line0'>Then why must we sweat for it, deny for it,</p> -<p class='line0'>Pray for it, cry for it,</p> -<p class='line0'>Kill, maim and lie for it,</p> -<p class='line0'>Struggle and suffer and die for it—</p> -<p class='line0'>We who are gentle and sane?</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Let us respect one another, wherever we are,</p> -<p class='line0'>Fly your flag, O my brother;</p> -<p class='line0'>I like its bright color, whether red, green, or yellow;</p> -<p class='line0'>Your language is queer, but I’ll learn it in time;</p> -<p class='line0'>And you’re a dear fellow,</p> -<p class='line0'>If your laws are not quite so clean as our own;</p> -<p class='line0'>But then ours need pruning, and thistles have grown.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>So I won’t spill your blood, for that’s not the way</p> -<p class='line0'>To assist in law-making, whatever some say,</p> -<p class='line0'>I’ll try by example to lead you aright</p> -<p class='line0'>Out of the shadows and into the light—</p> -<p class='line0'>If you’ll do as much for me.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>What! You don’t understand?</p> -<p class='line0'>You refuse my right hand?</p> -<p class='line0'>You say might is right,</p> -<p class='line0'>And to live we must fight?</p> -<p class='line0'>Are we still in such plight?</p> -<p class='line0'>Poor, blind, stupid fool, so deep in the dust—</p> -<p class='line0'>Well, hand me the gun—</p> -<p class='line0'>If I must—if I must!</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>It is, perhaps, in the best Canadian commemorative, -elegiac, or reflective poems of the Great War that the three -supreme excellences, Truth, Beauty, and Splendor of Ideas, -<span class='pageno' title='351' id='Page_351'></span> -in the war poetry of Canada are most conspicuously present. -The distinctive presence of these qualities not only -marks a clear advance beyond the older Canadian martial -verse but also establishes a high place for Canadian commemorative, -elegiac and reflective war verse in the body -of war poetry written by poets of the Allied Nations. -Truth, Beauty, or Splendor of Ideas are in Gertrude Bartlett’s -<span class='it'>The Blessed Dead</span>, Grace Blackburn’s <span class='it'>Christ in Flanders</span>, -Lillie Brooks’ <span class='it'>Bereaved</span>, Helena Coleman’s <span class='it'>Oh, Not -When April Wakes the Daffodils</span>, Jean Blewett’s <span class='it'>The -Lover Lads of Devon</span>, Lilian Leveridge’s <span class='it'>Over the Hills of -Home</span>, Florence Randal Livesay’s <span class='it'>A Daffodil from Vimy -Ridge</span>, Agnes Maule Machar’s <span class='it'>De Profundis</span>, Louise -Morey Bowman’s <span class='it'>The White Garden</span>, Virna Sheard’s -<span class='it'>The Young Knight</span>, Frederick George Scott’s <span class='it'>The Silent -Toast</span>, Arthur Stringer’s <span class='it'>Christmas Bells in War Time</span>, -Archibald Sullivan’s <span class='it'>The Plaint of the Children</span>, Beatrice -Redpath’s <span class='it'>The Men of Canada</span>, Isabel Ecclestone Mackay’s -<span class='it'>The Mother Gives</span>, John Stuart Thomson’s <span class='it'>His Darkest -Hour</span>, A. E. S. Smythe’s noble sonnet <span class='it'>The Champions</span>, S. -Morgan-Powell’s magniloquent <span class='it'>Kitchener’s Work</span>, and W. -D. Lighthall’s magnificent and exalting poem <span class='it'>The Galahads</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of the finest commemorative poems of the world -war written by a Canadian is Duncan Campbell Scott’s -sonnet <span class='it'>To a Canadian Lad Killed in the War</span>. It is fine in -conception, novel in terminal endings and elevating in emotional -appeal. But fine as it is, it pales in aesthetic and -artistic dignity with the only Canadian war poem that has -achieved sublimity—the same poet’s unforgettably noble -elegiacs <span class='it'>To a Canadian Aviator (Who Died for His -Country in France)</span>:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Tossed like a falcon from the hunter’s wrist</p> -<p class='line0'>A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,</p> -<p class='line0'>And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='pageno' title='352' id='Page_352'></span></p> -<p class='line0'>The elastic stairway to the rising sun.</p> -<p class='line0'>Peril below thee and above, peril</p> -<p class='line0'>Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt</p> -<p class='line0'>Thy peerless heart; gathering wing and poise,</p> -<p class='line0'>Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant</p> -<p class='line0'>Subdued to a whisper—then a silence,—</p> -<p class='line0'>And thou art but a disembodied venture</p> -<p class='line0'>In the void.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>But Death, who has learned to fly,</p> -<p class='line0'>Still matchless when his work is to be done,</p> -<p class='line0'>Met thee between the armies and the sun;</p> -<p class='line0'>Thy speck of shadow faltered in the sky;</p> -<p class='line0'>Then thy dead engine and thy broken wings</p> -<p class='line0'>Drooped through the arc and passed in fire,</p> -<p class='line0'>A wreath of smoke—a breathless exhalation.</p> -<p class='line0'>But ere that came, a vision sealed thine eyes,</p> -<p class='line0'>Lulling thy senses with oblivion;</p> -<p class='line0'>And from its sliding station in the skies</p> -<p class='line0'>Thy dauntless soul upward in circles soared</p> -<p class='line0'>To the sublime and purest radiance whence it sprang.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>In all their eyries eagles shall mourn thy fate,</p> -<p class='line0'>And leaving on the lonely crags and scaurs</p> -<p class='line0'>Their unprotected young, shall congregate</p> -<p class='line0'>High in the tenuous heaven and anger the sun</p> -<p class='line0'>With screams, and with a wild audacity</p> -<p class='line0'>Dare all the battle danger of thy flight;</p> -<p class='line0'>Till weary with combat one shall desert the light,</p> -<p class='line0'>Fall like a bolt of thunder and check his fall</p> -<p class='line0'>On the high ledge, smoky with mist and cloud,</p> -<p class='line0'>Where his neglected eaglets shriek aloud,</p> -<p class='line0'>And drawing the film across his sovereign sight</p> -<p class='line0'>Shall dream of thy swift soul immortal</p> -<p class='line0'>Mounting in circles, faithful beyond death.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>In that poem we perceive, unmistakably, how even war -verse may rise to the spiritual dignity of absolute poetry, -and by its ideal substance and spiritual grandeur achieve -the highest moral and religious function—the function, -namely, of dignifying or glorifying the human spirit with -Christlikeness in self-slaying love for the perfection and -happiness of humanity. Only a too fastidious and perverted -criticism will deny to the best of the Canadian poetry -<span class='pageno' title='353' id='Page_353'></span> -of the World War a distinction in truth, beauty, and splendor -of ideas and in technical artistry that gives it the right -to an equal place beside the significant war verse of the -British and United States poets. Certainly in technique -it is quite as finished as the American war poetry, and in -ideas of ‘uncompelled and undiluted chivalry,’ it is as noble -and eloquent as the war poetry of the British singers.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='354' id='Page_354'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXVI</h1></div> - -<h3>Hymn Writers</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE HYMN WRITERS OF CANADA—ALLINE—CLEVELAND—SCRIVEN— -MURRAY—SCOTT—RAND—DEWART—WALKER—AND -OTHERS.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>A</span> <span class='sc'>hymn</span> is a form of sacred lyrical literature. It -must be popular literature, but not necessarily pure -poetry or permanent literature. A hymn is properly defined -not by what it <span class='it'>is</span> in literary qualities but by what it -<span class='it'>does</span> for the human spirit—for the heart and the religious -imagination. It aims lyrically to express dependence on -divine providence, to praise the divine perfections, to give -thanks for divine mercies and benefits, and to supplicate -divine aid in doubt and weakness and divine consolation -in tribulation and defeat. A hymn, in short, is the spontaneous -lyrical expression of a paternal and filial relationship -between Man and God.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The structural qualities which constitute a true hymn -are few and readily understood. Since a hymn must above -all things be potent over the hearts and imagination of <span class='it'>all</span> -the people, its diction must be vernacular—simple words -of one and two syllables. Since a hymn must be singable -by <span class='it'>all</span> the people in concert, its metrical flow must be short -and rhythmical. In aesthetic qualities a hymn should be -simple but beautiful in thought, sentiment and imagery. In -moral qualities a hymn should be suggestive of human but -holy relations between Man and Divine Providence. These -are the prime qualities that constitute the popularity of a -<span class='pageno' title='355' id='Page_355'></span> -hymn and give it a place either in permanent poetry or in -permanent hymnody.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Several Canadians, <span class='it'>émigrés</span> or native-born, have written -hymns which have a rightful and permanent place in -church hymnody. The history of Canadian hymnography -dates back to the year 1786. In that year Henry Alline, -leader of the ‘New Lights’ schism in Nova Scotia, published -his <span class='it'>Hymns and Spiritual Songs</span>. He was as prolific a -hymn writer as Charles Wesley, having five books of hymns -to his credit. His diction is not always true to the demands -of a hymn; sometimes it is stilted and too literary. But -his imagery is simple and the movement of his thought -is direct. The chief merit of his hymns is their genuine -lyrical quality; they have rhythmical flow. One or two -of them have held a permanent place in church hymnody, -as, for instance, the hymn beginning with this homely -image expressed in vernacular English:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Amazing sight! the Saviour stands</p> -<p class='line0'>And knocks at every door—</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Of the Cleveland family in the Old Colonies two members -emigrated to Nova Scotia—Aaron Cleveland, who -became minister of Mather’s (now St. Matthew’s) church, -Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Benjamin Cleveland who joined -in with the ‘New Lights,’ and emulated Alline as a hymn -writer. One of his hymns still finds a place in church -hymnody in Canada, the familiar hymn beginning</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Oh, could I find from day to day</p> -<p class='line0'>  A nearness to my God.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>None of the hymns of Alline or Cleveland, however, -attained a world-wide popularity. The first Canadian to -write a hymn that has become not only world-famous but -also has been translated into several ‘heathen tongues’ as -well as civilized languages was Joseph Scriven, author of -the simple spiritual song, <span class='it'>What a Friend We Have in Jesus</span>. -<span class='pageno' title='356' id='Page_356'></span> -The man and the hymn have a remarkable history, which -is recounted by Rev. James Clelland in his biographical -sketch in a tiny thirty-page booklet entitled: <span class='it'>What a Friend -We Have in Jesus, and Other Hymns by Joseph Scriven</span>. -It was published at Port Hope, Ontario, in 1895.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For many years the hymn had been attributed, without -authentication, to Dr. Horatius Bonar. But in 1893 a letter -appeared in the <span class='it'>New York Observer</span>, in which it was -stated that the hymn had been found amongst some papers -belonging to Joseph Scriven, who had ended his life by -suicide. Scriven was a local preacher but he was a graduate -of Trinity College, Dublin, and was, therefore, a man -of respectable culture. Like Cowper, Scriven suffered from -melancholia; and it is natural to suppose that he had written -the hymn after recovery from one of his fits of melancholia. -He was a shy man, and after writing the hymn -gave a copy of it to his mother, from whom he extracted -a promise that she would not reveal its existence or show -it to anyone else. But whether the mother’s pride in her -son’s accomplishment overcame her, or whether due to -some sort of accident, the hymn reached a certain Mr. -Converse, a musician, and he at once set it to music of -the more popular kind. Soon the hymn attained a popular -vogue in the United States and from there gained equally -popular vogue in Canada. Some are inclined to believe -that it was not the hymn itself but the musical setting -that created its popularity. No doubt the musical setting -to Lyte’s <span class='it'>Abide With Me</span>, or to Newman’s <span class='it'>Lead Kindly -Light</span>, has considerable to do with the appeal of those -hymns. Newman expressly attributes the popularity of -his hymn to the musical setting and not to the spiritual -beauty of the text. But the musical setting to Scriven’s -<span class='it'>What a Friend We Have In Jesus</span> is so poor in melodic -invention and so lacking in cantante quality and rhythmic -flow that as a tune or melody it is not singable or infectious -<span class='pageno' title='357' id='Page_357'></span> -and could not be a compelling ‘sacred folksong.’ We -must, therefore, charge its popularity to the appeal of the -text of the hymn to some elemental want or need of humble -human hearts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But whatever the cause of the popularity of this hymn, -whether the words or the musical setting or both, the -fact remains that it is the most widely known hymn in -Christian hymnology. It has been translated into many of -the civilized and the barbaric languages of the world, and -more than a hundred million impressions of the hymn -have been printed. Searching for a psychological explanation -of its appeal to the universal human heart, we -know that as a matter of fact it has solaced, as one writer -puts it, ‘millions and millions of souls, from the criminal -on his way to the scaffold to the ocean traveller in his last -moment aboard a sinking ship; from the negro in his -wretched plantation cabin to the highest dignitary of the -evangelical churches; from the unclad heathen denizen of -the cannibalistic South Sea Islands or in wildest Africa -to the most learned savant of the most civilized land.’ The -obvious explanation of its appeal is that Scriven’s hymn -expresses, both for the humble and for the highest, the -elemental and inevitable sense of <span class='it'>dependence</span> for life and -happiness on some spiritual power that is mighty to comfort, -solace, sustain, and save. When that sense of dependence -comes over any human being, and when such a human -being feels that there is an ever-ready invisible hand to -sustain or succor, in that moment the sense of dependence -and of ever-ready aid, and of joy or comfort or hope thus -awakened, are expressed in emotionalized rhythm, which -is religious song.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Scriven lacked lyrical or rhythmical sensibility, and -his famous hymn possesses no aesthetic or artistic appeal. -But in times of need, aesthetics are the poorest support -and solace. In spite, then, of the lyrical and aesthetic defects -<span class='pageno' title='358' id='Page_358'></span> -of Scriven’s simple hymn, it has remained, by virtue -of its elemental appeal to people of all estates and by its -solacing and sustaining power, one of the world’s perduring -sacred songs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From a strictly Canadian point of view and with reference -to aesthetic qualities which give a hymn a dignity of -poetry, the most notable and significant hymn composed by -a native-born Canadian is Robert Murray’s <span class='it'>From Ocean -Unto Ocean</span>. The author was born and educated in Nova -Scotia. From early childhood he disclosed a Keltic gift -of imagination and fondness for expressing his emotions -in verse. Dr. Murray was a religious journalist, and, as -editor of <span class='it'>The Presbyterian Witness</span>, did much to raise -ordinary journalism to the dignity of literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was his custom to write hymns and to publish them -anonymously in the religious press. Those who had an -eye for the revision of church hymnals were struck by the -aesthetic beauty and dignity as well as religious fervor of -Dr. Murray’s hymns. They are indeed extraordinary, and -the substance of them is so universalized that they fit the -hymnals or Books of Praise of any Christian communion, -Protestant or Catholic. His hymns are included in the -<span class='it'>Book of Praise</span> of the Presbyterian Church of Canada; in -the <span class='it'>Book of Common Praise</span> of the Church of England in -Canada; and in <span class='it'>The Hymnary</span> of the Scottish Churches. -Rev. A. W. Mahon observes in his readable brochure, -<span class='it'>Canadian Hymns and Hymn Writers</span> (1908): ‘Thirteen -Canadians contribute to the New Church of England Book -of Common Praise, including Canon Welsh of Toronto and -the late Dean Partridge of Fredericton, but Dr. Murray’s -contributions exceed all other in number and in intrinsic -merit.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To appreciate Murray’s <span class='it'>From Ocean Unto Ocean</span>—its -intrinsic merits, as well as its special qualities and fervor -which embody and express the Canadian national spirit—the -<span class='pageno' title='359' id='Page_359'></span> -whole poem must be read and felt both as a hymn for -devotional and for national occasions. Following is the -full text of Dr. Murray’s hymn:—</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>From ocean unto ocean</p> -<p class='line0'>  Our land shall own Thee Lord,</p> -<p class='line0'>And, filled with true devotion</p> -<p class='line0'>  Obey Thy sovereign word.</p> -<p class='line0'>Our prairies and our mountains,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Forest and fertile field,</p> -<p class='line0'>Our rivers, lakes, and fountains,</p> -<p class='line0'>  To Thee shall tribute yield.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>O Christ, for Thine own glory,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And for our country’s weal,</p> -<p class='line0'>We humbly plead before Thee,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Thyself in us reveal;</p> -<p class='line0'>And may we know, Lord Jesus,</p> -<p class='line0'>  The touch of Thy dear hand;</p> -<p class='line0'>And, healed of our diseases,</p> -<p class='line0'>  The tempter’s power withstand.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Where error smites with blindness,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Enslaves and leads astray,</p> -<p class='line0'>Do Thou in lovingkindness</p> -<p class='line0'>  Proclaim Thy gospel day;</p> -<p class='line0'>Till all the tribes and races</p> -<p class='line0'>  That dwell in this fair land,</p> -<p class='line0'>Adorned with Christian graces,</p> -<p class='line0'>  Within Thy courts shall stand.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Our Saviour King, defend us,</p> -<p class='line0'>  And guide where we should go;</p> -<p class='line0'>Forth with Thy message send us;</p> -<p class='line0'>  Thy love and light to show;</p> -<p class='line0'>Till, fired with true devotion</p> -<p class='line0'>  Enkindled by Thy word,</p> -<p class='line0'>From ocean unto ocean</p> -<p class='line0'>  Our land shall own Thee Lord.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The diction of this hymn is simple, vernacular; of 160 -words in the text only ten are of Latin origin, and even -these are as short and familiar as our Anglo-Saxon diction. -The rhythmic flow is thoroughly lyrical. But though simple -in diction and lyrical structure, there is a universality -<span class='pageno' title='360' id='Page_360'></span> -of reach or sweep in its imagery that, at least relatively -to most other hymns, raises Murray’s hymn to the dignity -of poetry. There is no provincialism in it. There is no -denominationalism in it. There is no narrow or bigoted -ethics in it. It is thoroughly human and humane. It possesses -universality and spiritual dignity. It is all that a -true hymn should be.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Murray’s hymn, moreover, in humanity and spiritual -dignity, contrasts winningly with the original form of -the British, which is also the Canadian, National Anthem. -This so-called anthem has been revised so as to remove -from it certain inane thoughts and sentiments and imagery -that were not consistent with Christian charity and the ideal -of human brotherhood. Canada has, too, its own indigenous -National Song or Hymn which is the text to a -sonorous organ-toned musical setting by Calixa Lavallée. -The original text of the Canadian National Hymn is -by Routhier. It is patriotic in the old exclusive sense, containing -that kind of patriotism which is solicitous about -the mere material success and aggrandizement of Canada. -But Murray’s <span class='it'>From Ocean Unto Ocean</span> is so human and so -humane, so unracial, so unprovincial, so unsectarian, and -by its imagery so informed with the free and all-embracing -spirit of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, bounding the -vast Canadian prairies and mountains and forests, that its -spiritual sweep takes in the whole of Canada without respect -to race or region or religion, or high degree or low -degree of person, and is fitted to be, if not the National -Anthem, at any rate the National Hymn, of Canada. It -is at once both Christian and Universal—a distinctive and -authentic hymn, and an original contribution to permanent -Canadian hymnody.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Murray was not a creative poet in the sense of being -a systematic poet. But Canon Frederick George Scott, -who is a member of the Systematic School of Canadian -<span class='pageno' title='361' id='Page_361'></span> -poets, has written hymns. They are strictly evangelical, -rather than universal in thought and scope, and are in the -traditional hymn form. They have a sweet simplicity and -a spiritual dignity but, beyond their lyrical or rhythmic expressiveness, -have no especial aesthetic and artistic qualities -that call for particular critical consideration. The -same appreciation suits a critical estimate of the hymns by -Silas T. Rand, Edward Hartley Dewart, Charles Innis -Cameron, Louisa Walker and other accepted Hymn Writers -of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rand’s Latin Hymns are interesting as translations and -are literary phenomena by themselves. Cameron was a -poet and his hymns have an excellence of structure, imagery, -and color that give them quite the quality of poetry, -though again, it must be observed, they are evangelical, -rather than universal, in scope and sweep. Anna Louisa -Walker is famous as the author of the hymn <span class='it'>Work, For -The Night Is Coming</span>. This is really a ‘sacred folk-song.’ -It has indeed a wide popularity, but by no means as wide -as Scriven’s world-famous hymn. Albert Durrant Watson -and Alexander Louis Fraser are hymn writers of distinction. -Summarily: Canadian Hymn Writers have contributed -substantially to the hymnody of the Evangelical -Church in Canada, and, at least in two instances, to permanent -hymnody. But no Canadian hymn has the structural -beauty and spiritual sublimation which belong to -such hymns as Newman’s <span class='it'>Lead, Kindly Light</span>, or Baring-Gould’s -<span class='it'>Onward, Christian Soldiers</span>, or Lyte’s <span class='it'>Abide With -Me</span>, and which lift these hymns into the realm of authentic -poetry.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='362' id='Page_362'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXVII</h1></div> - -<h3>Literary Criticism</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>LITERARY CRITICISM IN CANADA—SCHOOLS, AIMS, METHODS, -AND DEFECTS—NEW SYNOPTIC METHOD APPLIED TO POETRY -OF OVERSEAS DOMINIONS.</p> -</div> - -<h4><span class='it'>I. Schools of Literary Criticism.</span></h4> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>n</span> an old country, like England, which long has had established -standards of taste and refined artistry, literary -criticism is a fine art. The essays in criticism by Coleridge, -Hazlitt, Arnold, Pater, Arthur Symons, Gilbert Chesterton, -Mackail, Ker, and others are polite, disinterested, -humane, and delightful in themselves. They have an intrinsic -charm of thought and style. They are literature. -In a young country, like Canada, when, in pioneer days, -the people were necessarily preoccupied wholly with practical -living and material civilization, and few were cultured -and none had leisure for cultivating taste, literary criticism, -if it existed, was exotic and traditional. Later, when -the people are still primarily occupied with material civilization -but decent culture is distributed and there is leisure -for cultivating taste, literary criticism becomes imitative -but academic, and, sometimes, is in the manner of the -dilettante. Finally, when the people of a young country -become conscious that they have a native literature and indigenous -standards of taste but are in doubt about the -status of their literature and the aesthetic dignity of their -literary taste, literary criticism becomes pragmatic or pedagogical -or philosophical.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In its first stage literary criticism in a young country -<span class='pageno' title='363' id='Page_363'></span> -attempts to <span class='it'>appraise</span>, by exotic, traditional standards, foreign -literature. Such criticism has no communal value. -It is not disinterested but personal. It only exhibits, as it -was intended to do, the fine taste and style of the critics. -In its pragmatic stage literary criticism in a young country -attempts to <span class='it'>praise</span> native literature, so as to win for this -literature the appreciation of the people in the land in -which it was produced and, secondarily, the decent regard -of foreign men of letters. The matter of such pragmatic -criticism always counts most, or for more than the manner -or style. It aims to be constructive. But because it is -self-conscious, self-reliant, and ardent, its praise tends to -be too high and its condemnation too severe. In the final -stage literary criticism becomes less self-conscious, less -ardent, and more detached and philosophical towards native -literature. It takes a synoptic view of the whole civilization -and culture which the native literature of a young -country embodies and interprets. It looks first to this -literature as an entity by itself and next regards it from -the point of view of absolute or long established standards. -It judges the native poetry and prose of a young country -by their relative importance to the people of that country -itself, and by its dignity as a contribution to world-literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These are the stages in evolution of Literary Criticism -in Canada. Progressively there arose four Schools of -Criticism—the Traditional, the Academic or Dilettante, -the Pragmatic or Pedagogical, and the Synoptic or Philosophical. -But the fourth is not so much a new School -as it is the Pragmatic School with a broader and more -philosophical application of its aims and methods. All -these distinctions, however, are themselves pedagogical. -The members of the various Schools commingle aesthetic, -academic, and pragmatic methods in the same essay, for -the reason that in Canada criticism has been compelled, -<span class='pageno' title='364' id='Page_364'></span> -as it still is compelled, to be primarily a cultural agency, and -could never aim to be literature, wholly delectable in itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Traditional School has passed but it was represented -by such deceased critics as George Stewart, John -Reade, George Murray, and Martin Griffin. The Academic -or Dilettante School is represented by Professors -James Cappon, W. J. Alexander, Pelham Edgar, and Archibald -MacMechan, and by Sir Andrew Macphail, and Arnold -Haultain; and the Pragmatic School, by T. G. Marquis, -Miss Jean Graham, Miss Marjory MacMurchy, Katherine -Hale (Mrs. John Garvin), Donald G. French, Melvin O. -Hammond, R. H. Hathaway, J. D. Logan, and Bernard -Muddiman. The Synoptic School, which, too, is pragmatic -but also philosophical, is represented by Ray Palmer -Baker, author of <span class='it'>A History of English-Canadian Literature -to Confederation</span> and by the author of the present work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As to the aims and methods of the members of the -Traditional and the Academic Schools:—In general, Reade -and Griffin wrote critically, to illuminate universal literature -(poetry, fiction, drama, social life, and history). The -members of the Academic or Dilettante School have, on the -whole, the same aim, but sometimes they write critical essays -as a fine art in the department of <span class='it'>belles-lettres</span>. Reade -and Griffin wrote on literature and life in brief but scholarly -journalistic essays. Professors Cappon, Alexander, -Edgar, and MacMechan wrote or write monographs (as, -for instance, Cappon’s fine study of the poetry of C. G. -D. Roberts) or critical introductions and prefatory essays -to selected English men of letters (as, for instance, Alexander’s -admirable <span class='it'>Introduction to Browning</span> or MacMechan’s -scholarly Introductions to his <span class='it'>Selections from -Tennyson</span> and Carlyle’s <span class='it'>Sartor Resartus</span>). Dr. Macphail -and Mr. Haultain delight in the critical essay for its own -sake, and are more solicitous about beauty or dignity of -style than about substance or thought. Their essays belong -<span class='pageno' title='365' id='Page_365'></span> -to the department of <span class='it'>belles-lettres</span>—not always and -not essentially, but in tendency, form, and aesthetic dignity -or style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In particular, whenever the members of the first two -schools have written about any phase of the literary history -and the literature of Canada, or about any author who -has figured notably in that history and literature, they have -been rigorously aesthetic and critical. But the writers of -the Traditional School differ from those of the Academic -or Dilettante School in critical attitude to Canadian literature -and literary history. Reade and Griffin wrote sympathetically, -and with sincere admiration, about phases of -Canadian Literature; but they showed little or no understanding -of the historic process in the evolution of Canadian -culture, of the continuity of Canadian literary history. -How, then, could they have been more than merely aesthetic—how -could they have been genuinely critical—if -they had not the philosophic eye, did not look before and -after, and thus did not treat the phases of Canadian Literature -from the point of view of its implied relations to the -whole of Canadian life and of English literature, of which -Canadian verse and prose form a part? Sympathetically, -politely, and charmingly as Reade wrote about the phases -of Canadian Literature, his criticism, to employ a phrase -of M. Jules Lemaitre, was ‘not criticism, but entertaining -conversation.’ Virtually it denied that Canada possessed -a literature, a body of poetry and prose which should be -regarded as a real integer, having unity of inspiration and -a continuous growth from crude thought and form to respectable -aesthetic and artistic dignity. It implied only -that in the literature of Canada there are no ‘highways,’ -but only pleasant ‘by-ways’ which invite the essayist to -write of them with aesthetic appreciation. This is not -philosophical, not genuine, criticism; it is polite, entertaining -conversation. For the problem of Canadian literary -<span class='pageno' title='366' id='Page_366'></span> -criticism is not the question whether Canada has produced, -intermittently and here and there, some original authors who -have composed poetry and prose as aesthetically winning -and as artistically beautiful or dignified as that of British -and American writers, but whether the Dominion has produced -a continuous body of poetry and prose, which, at its -best, may justly be considered genuine literature, worthy -to be regarded, as American literature is regarded, as a -living branch of English Literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>While the members of the Academic School take the -strictly aesthetic attitude to Canadian Literature, and show -little or no appreciation of the historic process in the evolution -of Canadian culture, they differ even in aesthetic attitude -from their predecessors. They are rather dogmatic -and patronizing towards Canadian prose and poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As to the aims and methods of the Pragmatic School:—The -members of this school have for their central principle -or chief article of faith the proposition that Canada has -a worthy body of authentic literature, which is being perennially -enhanced in quantity and in quality. For their -second principle they hold to the proposition that Canadian -literary critics must more or less intimately know the history—the -social and spiritual origins, ideals, and evolution—of -Canadian Literature. For their third principle they -have the proposition that the independent, sincere, honest, -and really serviceable literary critic to-day must be constructive -and pedagogic in method. They do not write -literary criticism which is meant to be literature itself, intrinsically -aesthetic, or pleasantly engaging reading on its -own account. They call their essays, whether a journalistic -review or editorial, or a magazine article, constructive -criticism. Their critical writings are, in the Greek sense, -pragmatic. For the chief aims of the Canadian constructive -critics are these two: first, to make plain and indubitable -to their compatriots and the world that Canada has -<span class='pageno' title='367' id='Page_367'></span> -a really respectable body of literature; secondly, to appraise -new works of verse and prose by Canadians and to determine -the status of their worth in the permanent literature -of Canada. Canadian constructive critics have also -a third aim. It is pedagogical: to teach the people a decent -knowledge of the literary history of Canada and an aesthetic -appreciation of Canadian poetry and prose. The -members of the Pragmatic School all write with knowledge -of their subject, with literary dignity, thoughtfully, and, on -the whole, convincingly and effectively. Their systematic -and ardent championing of the cause of Canadian Literature -has had a three-fold result. It has led to establishment -of regular courses in the study of Canadian Literature in -the universities and colleges of the Dominion and in some -universities of the United States, to a wider study and appreciation -of Canadian Literature on the part of the people, -and to finer critical and creative writing by Canadian men -and women of letters.</p> - -<h4><span class='it'>II. The Synoptic Method.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>Literary criticism in Canada has had two faults. It -was <span class='it'>vicarious</span>—an echo of foreign criticism which was -patronizing and insincere, and, therefore, untrue and harmful. -It was too <span class='it'>inclusive</span> in conspectus and standards, for -Canadian poetry and prose were critically compared with -classical English Literature. This was to write criticism -without perspective and without respect to a hierarchy of -values. It was supererogatory and therefore futile. Even -the Pragmatic School of Canadian literary critics did not -wholly escape this second fault. It will result better for -the advancement of Canadian Criticism if the literatures -of the British Overseas Dominions—Canada, Australia, -New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa—are compared -amongst themselves; and if thus the status of each relatively -in the literature of the Empire is critically determined. -<span class='pageno' title='368' id='Page_368'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>By this method of comparing child with child, and not -the child with the parent, the literary historian shows how -worthily Canadian poetry and prose compare with other -Overseas poetry and prose, and what right Canadian and -other Overseas literature have to be considered respectable -branches of the literature of the Empire. A comparative -appreciation of the Poetry of Canada and the other Overseas -Dominions will suffice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Canadians have not written ‘great’ poetry, they have -written poetry in which, as Mr. E. B. Osborn, of the -London <span class='it'>Morning Post</span>, says, ‘the most exacting critic can -find something to admire.’ The problem of literary criticism -in Canada to-day is not whether Canada has produced -or is producing ‘great poetry,’ but whether it has produced -or is producing good poetry, consistently with its grade of -culture, civilization and national inspirations and aspirations—poetry -that can genuinely be admired and that deserves -to be preserved. To observe that Canada has produced -good poetry, near-great poetry, is not, as many -Canadians seem to feel it is, to damn it with faint praise, -but sensibly to evaluate it. Those native critics who ignore -Canadian poetry because, as they think, it is not ‘great’ -poetry and is, therefore, not ‘real’ poetry or not poetry -worthy of the name of literature, are maladroit logicians. -Those other native critics who discover Coleridge reincarnated -in Bliss Carman, Tennyson in Roberts, Keats in -Lampman, Matthew Arnold in Duncan Campbell Scott, -Kipling in Service are damning Canadian poetry with -superobese praise. The truth is that Canada has produced -systematic poets who have written much poetry that is -good, some that is super-excellent, and some rare examples -that are near the perfection which entitles them, in their -kind, to be ranked as really great.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Canadian poetry, in variety of theme or species, and -in technical finish, naturally might be presumed to be -<span class='pageno' title='369' id='Page_369'></span> -superior to that of Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. -In a literary way, Canada is not much, if at all, -older than Australia. Both countries depend on England -for their literary standards and poetic forms. But in -changes of seasons and their effects on the beauty and call -of objective Nature, Canada has greater variety, and -Nature makes a deeper impress on the soul, than is possible -by climatic changes and Nature’s varying face and garb -in Australia. Moreover, Canada has a unique background -of romantic history which affords Canadian poets special -opportunities to incorporate romantic and heroic material -in their poetry, or to suffuse it with the glamor of romance. -Australia has not this romantic history, and Australian -poets, therefore, have less opportunity to make their descriptive -and narrative poetry interesting or entrancing by -way of romantic glamor. Again: Canada has had several -internal or national crises which have had a distinct effect -on the conscience of the Canadian people—creating in -them a sense of solidarity, evoking a national consciousness, -and filling them with national aspirations and an intense -desire to work out their own destiny. Australia has not -had any such internal crises; and, it is, therefore, not to be -expected that Australian poetry will be noted for peculiar, -intense, or profound expressions of the sense of nationality -and of destiny.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But while in Canada the literature most in popular demand -is imaginative prose, and while the majority of -readers are virtually perusers of prose fiction, in Australia -the readers and writers of poetry are legion or, as one critic -has put it, ‘poetry out there is a national habit.’ Mr. Arthur -Adams, an Australian editor, has stated that while he -was always certain of getting good verse from contributors, -he was never certain of getting a good story. It has been -quite the other way in Canada—an editor is practically -certain of getting a good piece of prose or a good story, -<span class='pageno' title='370' id='Page_370'></span> -and never sure of getting a technically worthy poem, or -even verse which might by courtesy be called poetry. In -Canada, with the exception of the enormous sales of Service’s -volumes and W. H. Drummond’s <span class='it'>habitant</span> verse, -Canadian poets have had to be content with very small -editions, and even some of these had many left-over copies, -absolutely unsaleable. In Australia the sale of poetry—of -large successive editions of the poems of Adam Lindsay -Gordon, Henry Lawson, Will H. Ogilvie, A. B. Patterson, -C. J. Dennis, the latter’s running beyond 100,000 copies -in 1917—is a literary phenomenon by itself; and goes to -prove that in Australia the reading and the writing of -poetry are virtually national habits.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the sides, then, of romantic historical backgrounds, -practical or social crises, and variety, beauty, and sublimity -of Nature, Canada was naturally fitted to produce a larger -and more impressive body of poetry than was Australia. -But as a matter of fact, in at least two respects, Australian -poetry rather surpasses Canadian. Canadian poets never -had a waiting and avid body of readers. Australian poets -had precisely such a <span class='it'>clientèle</span>. This means that in Canada -poetry would not be written with the consciousness of a -critical public in mind—a public that would as readily reject -or condemn poetry which was not satisfactory as it -would accept and praise poetry which satisfied, whereas in -Australia poetry would be written consciously aiming at -pleasing and satisfying a critical public of readers. In -other words, while Canadian poets had only foreign or -English standards, and practically no domestic standards -or <span class='it'>clientèle</span>, Australian poets had both foreign and domestic -standards and a very large and responsive domestic public -of readers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The result was that while in Canada the general run -of poetry was technically indifferent, at least until the rise -of the Systematic School, in Australia the run of poetry, -<span class='pageno' title='371' id='Page_371'></span> -irrespective of the themes, was technically better finished -than the Canadian. The Canadians did not seem to write -with a consciousness of English standards and criticism. -Their poetry was only for home consumption—and the -substance counted more than the form or style. The Australians, -as poets, on the whole were more cultured than -the Canadians and wrote their verse as if distinctly conscious -that it would be seen and read in England, and -judged according to rigorous English standards, because -regarded as written by <span class='it'>absentee</span> Englishmen. Australian -verse was written more for English readers than for home -readers. But the home readers also read with English standards -in view—even though the themes were Australian, -horse-racing and other picaresque life or the more dignified -themes of Nature’s loveliness, Nature’s immensities, or -tragic death in the wilderness. Hence, on the whole, Australian -poetry actually shows a better <span class='it'>technical</span> finish than -does Canadian poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Canadian and Australian poets naturally produced verse -which is marked by fervid nature-painting and by realistic -pictures of pioneer and wild romantic social life. But in -fine nature-painting the Canadians surpass the Australians. -Both in color from Nature (Canadian poets have the larger, -more varied palette) and in technical artistry Australia has -not produced a poet of the quality of Lampman, Wilfred -Campbell, or Duncan Campbell Scott. Nor when it comes -to envisaging the <span class='it'>moods</span> of Nature and the open-road, has -Australia produced a poet of the lyrical quality of Bliss -Carman. Canada’s Nature-painters are superb <span class='it'>artists</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the Australian poets have their <span class='it'>forte</span>. In realistic -pictures of rough or pioneer social life, they surpass the -Canadian poets. The Canadian poet Drummond, of -course, stands in a class by himself, inasmuch as his poetry -of the <span class='it'>habitant</span> and <span class='it'>voyageur</span> was a field pre-empted by him -and inasmuch as his poetry in this field is devoted to picturesque -<span class='pageno' title='372' id='Page_372'></span> -revealment of the <span class='it'>humanity</span>—the pathos and -humor—of the thought, speech and simple life—of a peculiar -but morally worthy people. There is nothing melodramatic -in Drummond’s poetry. It is genuinely humanized -verse about a genuinely human people. Service’s Western -and Northern Canadian verse, on the contrary, is the poetry -of picaresque melodrama. The best ballads of the Australian -poets of rough or pioneer life, A. L. Gordon, A. B. -Patterson, Henry Lawson, C. J. Dennis, are authentic -poetry. In remarking the distinction between the Australian -and the Canadian poets of rude or picaresque life, -Mr. E. B. Osborn truthfully says: ‘Some of the poems in -his [Service’s] last volume are a <span class='it'>near approach</span> to the -Australian realism, which avoids the melodramatic and the -splashing of anapests as far as possible and makes use of -the quiet-curtain. So far the manly adventurous poets of -Canada [Service, Stead, McInnes, Fraser, <span class='it'>et al.</span>] have not -progressed far beyond the Adam Lindsay Gordon convention. -As yet none of the Western Canadian poets see that -<span class='it'>style</span> is the only antiseptic and, as artists, they are far behind -the Australians and compare unfavorably with the -minor masters of Quebec.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What has been said regarding the technical finish of -Australian verse applies also to the verse of New Zealand -and of South Africa, and to the latter with even more -truth. For all the South African poets happened to be men -and women of culture. Thomas Pringle was a man of -rare and refined culture. So are Arthur Cripps, R. C. -Russell, John Runcie, Mrs. Beatrice Bromley, W. C. Scully, -and a score of others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What, then, is the status of Canadian poetry in the -poetry of the Empire? Canadian nature-poetry, in -variety of theme, substance, color, imagery and artistry, at -its best, surpasses that of the other Dominions. Much of -Overseas poetry is concerned with social life. In the past -<span class='pageno' title='373' id='Page_373'></span> -Canadians displayed an insistent sense of a call to work -out their own destiny, and a profound pride in the resources -and institutions of their country. In the verse of Canadian -poets the ‘note’ in this regard is somewhat too insistent, -almost strident. But the stridency of the national ‘note’ -is nothing compared with another defect. The moral -earnestness of Canadian poets is so obtrusive that it either -causes a neglect of form in order to get the important thing -said, or it effervesces in insincere and melodramatic utterances. -Australian, New Zealand, and South African poets -do not exhibit the same intense consciousness nationality -and destiny. They still hold to the idea of the Motherland, -still feel their connection with the Old Country. For this -reason they write of social life in their respective countries -with more objectivity than do the Canadians, revealing the -joys and humor and pathos of life with a realism that is -veracious and sincere.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far no Overseas poetry, Canadian or other, has -contributed anything novel or original to the forms and -aesthetic values of English poetry. In this respect no -Overseas poetry is ‘great’ poetry, although much of it is -genuinely ‘real’ and excellent poetry. But in aesthetic -content, as in its Nature-painting or Nature-psychology, -and in moral substance, all Overseas poetry—all the best of -it—is admirable. Canadian poetry, however, ranks highest, -particularly in self-reliance, in faith in the land and the -people, in serenity and a profound trust in the providential -government of nations that love righteousness and pursue it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Summarily: Canadian poetry, excepting the realism of -Service, is the sincerest poetry written in the Overseas -Dominions of the British Empire. It is not always the -most joyous, the most winning, the most moving, or the -most transporting. But it is the most sincere and serene, -and, therefore, the most satisfying, verse in the poetry of -the British Overseas Dominions.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='374' id='Page_374'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXVIII</h1></div> - -<h3>Essayists <span class='it'>and</span> Color Writers</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>THE ESSAYISTS AND COLOR WRITERS OF CANADA—CARMAN—MACMECHAN—BLAKE—KATHERINE -HALE—KING—DEACON—LEACOCK.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>C</span><span class='sc'>anadian</span> essays, familiar studies of life and manners, -or essays in <span class='it'>belles lettres</span>, are too meagre in -quantity and too ephemeral or slight in aesthetic substance -as yet to be significant. Pure criticism of fine arts, including -literature, is also slight in quantity and insignificant in -form and substance. Both literary criticism and essays in -<span class='it'>belles-lettres</span> are possible only under certain social and mental -conditions. There must be a considerable degree of -economic independence and leisure so as to permit writers -to view Nature and existence with detachment. The -writers themselves must be specially gifted with a light -literary touch, a delicate sensibility to impressions from -Nature and character, and a refined sense of the relative -values of good and evil, tragedy and comedy, in the world, -a whimsical or gracious humor and a faculty for gentle -revery. In short, detachment, an eye for beauty in Nature -and the human spirit and a genuine humor are necessary -in writers who would achieve distinction in the field of the -Familiar Essay and in Belletristic Literature. In Canada, -however, where life is strenuous and where men and women -must take pragmatic or moralistic attitudes to existence, -detachment, humor, and a light touch are rarely possible. -The result is that the belletristic literature of Canada is -slight and as yet insignificant. -<span class='pageno' title='375' id='Page_375'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>The most notable work of the kind appears to be the -essays of Bliss Carman. He has published four volumes, -considerable in quantity, on the philosophy of Nature and -the Spirit, distinguished by a clear, well-knit, and readable -prose style, and rich in poetic suggestiveness and spiritual -power. These volumes are <span class='it'>The Kinship of Nature</span>, <span class='it'>The -Friendship of Art</span>, <span class='it'>The Poetry of Life</span>, and <span class='it'>The Making -of Personality</span>. Plato, the Greek Gnostics and Mystics, -and the Transcendentalism of Emerson informed Carman’s -heart and sublimated his imagination pantheistically and -mystically. Carman applied his poetic imagination to a -special philosophical interpretation and appreciation of -Man’s kinship with Nature, and of the metaphysical meaning -of the human personality or spirit in its relation to -Nature and the universe. In truth, Carman’s prose and -poetry are related as the converse and obverse sides of his -inner being. Indeed the secret of the inner springs of his -lyricism is to be discovered beautifully, lyrically, expressed -in his prose essays.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Carman’s essays are not prose poetry. He did not -attempt, as Roberts attempted in his prose, to write impressionistic -prose. Carman does not aim at mere color-writing -for its own sake. What he attempts and achieves -is a subtle analysis of the history of the spirit in its relations -to man and to God and the whole universe. Because this -was his aim, Carman was solicitous about his style—especially -about clarity of diction and pure beauty of imagery, -and about the simplicity and readableness of the structure -of his sentences. In short, Carman’s prose style has -the same simplicity and directness and chaste beauty of -imagery and spiritual exaltation which we find in his lyrics. -For this reason we may signalize Carman’s prose as ‘lyrical’ -prose. But we are by no means to allow this epithet to -connote anything like sensuous impressionism or vague -imagination. It is all solid, if sublimated, thought about -<span class='pageno' title='376' id='Page_376'></span> -profound matters, addressed to the imaginative reason or -the religious imagination, and addressed in a style so clear -and direct and so emotionally pure that it affects the heart -and the imagination lyrically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An essayist in another style is Archibald MacMechan. -Dr. MacMechan has published two volumes, <span class='it'>The Porter -of Bagdad</span> (1901) and <span class='it'>The Life of a Little College</span> (1914); -and he has published several booklets of essays in a series -of ‘chap books.’ Dr. MacMechan is unsurpassed in Canada -as a writer of the Light Essay. He differs of course from -Carman in bent of genius as an essayist. Carman employs -the religious or metaphysical imagination and appeals to -our sensibilities. Dr. MacMechan employs the fancy. His -essays are essentially, as he indicates in the title of <span class='it'>The -Porter of Bagdad</span>, ‘fantasies’ or reveries. His style has a -lightness of touch which is inviting and ingratiating, and -he has a delicate and pleasant gift of humor. He is hardly -Addisonian, but the substance of his essays, their diction, -and the movement of his sentences engage the attention -and delight the sense of form with the readiness and pleasant -intrigue of the essays of Addison.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not in so light a style and not with such playful fancy -as Dr. MacMechan’s are the essays of W. H. Blake, widely -known as the translator of Louis Hémon’s romantic idyll -of French Canada, <span class='it'>Maria Chapdelaine</span>. Mr. Blake’s -<span class='it'>Brown Waters and Other Sketches</span>, <span class='it'>In a Fishing Country</span>, -and <span class='it'>A Fisherman’s Luck</span> indicate the scope and method of -his essays. They are ‘sketches’ of objective experiences. -They are not fantasies or reveries. The intellect, rather -than the fancy, is the creative faculty most employed in -them. Mr. Blake’s essays, therefore, have not the lightness -and the limpidity of MacMechan’s but they contain happy -revealments of Nature in Canada and of the human spirit -against a background of Nature. At times, they contain -patches of engaging ‘color-writing.’ -<span class='pageno' title='377' id='Page_377'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the field of systematic ‘color-writing’ Katherine Hale -is an artist by herself. In aesthetic criticism Katherine -Hale’s <span class='it'>forte</span> had always been a gift of causing the imagination -and sensibilities to appreciate one art, say, music, in -terms of another art, say, painting. Her musical criticism -is not musical, but <span class='it'>literary impressionism</span>. Its effect all -depends upon suggestion, particularly suggestion of color. -When, therefore, Katherine Hale turned to employ her pictorial -imagination in a field where the sense of color in -Nature and of the ‘color of life’ would be absolutely free -and directly at home, she produced work which is unique -in its kind, as in her <span class='it'>Canadian Cities of Romance</span> (1922). -The romance in this case is not the romance of sentiment -and of wonder and of curiosity. It is the romance that -exists for the eyes which perceive beauty in ancient by-ways, -strange and eerie places, and in the dress, manners and -habits of peculiar peoples in towns and cities which still retain -a residue of an old and lost civilization and culture. -Her <span class='it'>Canadian Cities of Romance</span> is a book by which to -transport the pictorial imagination and to win the imaginative -eye with aesthetic delights of ‘color’ in character, -incident, and the dramatic movement of life. Her literary -style is piquant, swift-moving, realistically faithful and yet -suffused with tints from Nature’s palette and with imaginative -light. Its analogue is found in the travel essays of -E. V. Lucas.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In another form of the Essay, namely, the Practical, -Reflective Essay, very little has been achieved, because -rarely attempted, in Canada. Canadians do not seem to -have the same desire as their cousins in the United States -for homilies or practical preachments on the secret of -‘getting along’ in the world. An excellent, if singular, example -of the Practical, Reflective Essay is <span class='it'>The Secret of -Heroism</span> by the Rt. Hon. MacKenzie King, Premier of -Canada. <span class='it'>The Secret of Heroism</span> is a biography of a human -<span class='pageno' title='378' id='Page_378'></span> -spirit, which, having served nobly on earth, passed, and in -passing left the effluence of his life, which is still potent, to -win men to the love of ‘otherworldliness.’ Aside from the -matter, it is notable as an example of what is rare in Canadian -prose, namely, ‘infused’ style, which requires that the -matter and the form, the thought and the expression, be -indivisible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A pragmatic people, as are the Canadians, have little or -no taste for the Whimsical Essay. The matter of the -whimsical essay counts for nothing. Its appeal is altogether -by way of piquancy in what is said. Piquancy—not -mordancy! For mordancy would only make what is -said satiric, and cause pain. The whimsical essay must -cause mere smiles and chuckles. It must be <span class='it'>clever</span>—and -nothing more. Canadians are beginning to turn more and -more to this form of Essay. Its character and manner -are well exemplified in William A. Deacon’s <span class='it'>Pens and -Pirates</span> (1923). The essays in this volume have novelty -of theme, over which plays precisely the light of a ‘whimsical’ -fancy and humor. They are informed, however, -with the strictly literary color of allusion and quotation -from the poets and prosemen of all ages to the present, -but in such an incidental and light way that there is no -show of pedantry. The allusion and quotation are natural -to Mr. Deacon’s professional office as a reviewer of contemporary -literature. His style is journalistic in the -French sense—‘style <span class='it'>coupe</span>’—as regards sentence length. -But he adds a piquancy to it which makes it somewhat -‘winged’ and which thus pleasantly engages the sensibility.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No Canadian as yet has appeared as a systematic writer -of the Critical Essay. Such essays of this genre as were -published have been ‘fugitive,’ and their aim and method -have been pragmatic and pedagogical rather than literary. -There is, however, much room and great need in Canada -for systematic Essays in Criticism which shall have dignity -<span class='pageno' title='379' id='Page_379'></span> -of thought, imaginative light, and grace or power of style, -and which in themselves shall be literature. Thomas -O’Hagan’s Essays in <span class='it'>Canadian Literature</span> are too fragmentary -and didactic to be literature, though they are -literary. L. J. Burpee’s <span class='it'>A Little Book of Canadian Essays</span> -contains brief but illuminating critical studies of seven -Canadian writers. Stephen Leacock’s <span class='it'>Essays and Literary -Studies</span> are too heterogeneous in theme and too variable -(perhaps variegated) in style to be credited with the dignity -of systematic Essays in Criticism. They are interesting -but not weighty literary ‘Studies.’ The master critic has -yet to appear in Canada.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='380' id='Page_380'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXIX</h1></div> - -<h3>Anthologies</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>CANADIAN BIRTHDAY BOOK (SERANUS)—DEWART’s SELECTIONS -FROM CANADIAN POETS—LIGHTHALL’S ‘SONGS OF THE -GREAT DOMINION’—OXFORD BOOK OF CANADIAN VERSE—GARVIN’S -CANADIAN POETS, ETC.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>E</span><span class='sc'>very</span> anthology of national literature must be -critically appreciated from the point of view of the -aim of the author. Properly, according to the roots of the -word anthology, care, and even fastidiousness, are implied -on the part of the compiler. The world-famous collection of -Greek verse known as <span class='it'>The Greek Anthology</span> is properly, that -is both etymologically and aesthetically, an ‘anthology.’ -For the poems in it were most carefully chosen before being -collected together; and they were selected strictly according -to ideals of beauty in thought and expression. So -that the term anthology hardly if ever applies strictly to -the so called anthologies of Canadian verse. As a matter -of fact such collections of Canadian verse as have been compiled, -actually do not bear the title anthology; they bear -some such title as ‘A Treasury,’ or ‘A Wreath,’ or ‘Flowers,’ -of Canadian Verse. Sometimes the collections have the -plainest of practical titles, such as <span class='it'>Canadian Poets</span> or <span class='it'>Canadian -Singers and Their Songs</span>, or <span class='it'>The Oxford Book of -Canadian Verse</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is quite irrelevant and an elaboration of the obvious -to dispraise, as some Canadian critics have done, the contents -of certain anthologies of Canadian poetry, as of ‘unequal -merit.’ They might as well say that the culture and -the cultural institutions of Canada are of ‘unequal -<span class='pageno' title='381' id='Page_381'></span> -merit.’ Relatively to the poetry of old civilizations the -poetry of Canada is poor or mediocre or indifferent or fine -in aesthetic substance and artistic structure and form according -to the culture and genius of the country’s poets. -Secondly, all Canadian anthologies, whether the aim was to -select the very best of the very best poetry or to select -representative poems from each period or all periods, contain -poetry which is not all on the same level of excellence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first anthology to engage public attention and to -win critical appreciation was a book which now belongs to -the <span class='it'>rarissimae</span> of collectors of ‘Canadiana,’ namely, <span class='it'>The -Canadian Birthday Book</span>, by ‘Seranus’ (pseudonym of -Mrs. S. Frances Harrison), published at Toronto in 1887. -It was compiled, with exquisite taste, in both English and -French; and it is notable for the fact that its selections date -as far back as the year 1732, with a poem by Jean Taché -who, as the compiler has said in her notes, is ‘probably the -first French-Canadian poet to publish.’ It is notable also -for the fact that it contains some verses by the Indian Chief -Tecumseh, and is, likewise, one of the earliest volumes to -contain the work of such poets as Bliss Carman, Wilfred -Campbell, Pauline Johnson, and Archibald Lampman. In -a real sense, that is, in the Greek sense of the term, the -<span class='it'>Canadian Birthday Book</span> is the first Canadian anthology. -The poems in it, are dainty in themselves and the artistry -of the poems also is dainty—‘little flowers’ of pretty or -beautiful Canadian verse, pioneer, <span class='it'>émigré</span>, nativistic, and -native and national.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Twenty years before the appearance of Seranus’ miniature -anthology Rev. Edward Hartley Dewart published, under -the plain title of <span class='it'>Selections From Canadian Poetry</span>, -what may be called the first treasury of Canadian verse -(1864). Dewart’s <span class='it'>Selections</span> was simply a ‘collection’ -of poems for ‘good reading,’ or for pedagogical purposes -in the Provinces of Canada. It was not intended to be -<span class='pageno' title='382' id='Page_382'></span> -received as literary anthology, but only as a volume of -representative poems from the earlier periods of Canadian -history up to the year of publication. Its audience was -limited to Canada and it had only local or provincial appreciation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next anthology was W. D. Lighthall’s <span class='it'>Songs of -the Great Dominion</span> (1889). It was informed with the -Canadian outlook on life and national achievement within -the twenty years after the formation of the Confederacy, -and with the Canadian prevision of a national destiny which -seemed implied in the genius of the Canadian people for -autonomous government, in the vast resources of the -Dominion, and in the relations which would inevitably develop -between Canada and the United States and the other -nations of the world. The aim of Dr. Lighthall was both -literary and pragmatic. He desired to present to the -English-speaking world the ideals and genius of Canada -as these ideals and genius were embodied and expressed -in the best poetry by <span class='it'>émigré</span> and by native-born Canadian -poets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dr. Lighthall’s inclusive and pragmatic aim determines -both the scope and the method of his aptly named <span class='it'>Songs -of the Great Dominion</span>. In his Introduction he carefully -explains the scope and method of his anthology. The -order of this collection is in sections, treating of the -Imperial Spirit, the New Nationality, the Indian, the <span class='it'>Voyageur</span> -and <span class='it'>Habitant</span>, Settlement Life, Sports and Free Life, -Historical Incidents, Places and Seasons. He says: They -give merely, it should be understood, a sketch of the range -of the subjects. Canadian history, for example, as any one -acquainted with Parkman will know, perfectly teems with -noble deeds and great events, of which only a small share -have been sung, whereof there is only space here for a -much smaller share. The Northwest and British -Columbia, that Pacific clime of charm—the gold-diggings -<span class='pageno' title='383' id='Page_383'></span> -Province, land of salmon rivers, and of the Douglas firs -which hide daylight at noonday—have been scarcely sung -at all, owing to their newness. The poetry of the Winter -Carnival, splendid scenic spectacle of gay Northern arts -and delights, is only rudimentary also. Those who have -been present at the thrilling spectacle of the nocturnal -storming of the Ice Palace in Montreal, when the whole -city, dressing itself in the picturesque snow-shoe costume -and arraying its streets in lights and colors, rises as one -man in a tumultuous enthusiasm, must feel that something -of a future lies before the poetry of these strange -and wonderful elements.’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What Lighthall in his <span class='it'>Songs of the Great Dominion</span> -attempts to do is not to present us with a mere quantity -of Canadian poetry which we may receive with delight or -reject, but to invite us to the home of the Canadian National -Spirit and to show us what the Canadian spirit, as it is -envisaged and expressed in the poetry of the Dominion -since Confederation, has achieved and means to achieve. -One who reads Lighthall’s anthology cannot escape catching -in it glimpses of the essential Canadian spirit. In the -poems in Lighthall’s volume the Canadian spirit sings -clearly its full gamut. We hear the ‘notes’ always of -courage; of self-reliance; of hope; of exultation; and of -good cheer and serenity; and these notes of courage and -faith and exultation and indomitable will and heroism and -good cheer and peace in the heart of man in Canada <span class='it'>are -but the antiphons to the voices of the land and the sea and -the forest, the great waters and the sky and the maples, and -elms in their strength and also in their gentler and peaceful -humors</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Canadian spirit, as evisaged and expressed in the -<span class='it'>Songs of the Great Dominion</span>, is manly; and the supreme -quality of the poetry in Lighthall’s anthology is the quality -of <span class='it'>manliness</span>. But this is a moral quality. What of the -<span class='pageno' title='384' id='Page_384'></span> -aesthetic quality of the <span class='it'>Songs of the Great Dominion</span>? -Agreeing that poets should rise and drop with their subjects, -we note a high level of excellence in thought and in craftsmanship -in the poems in Lighthall’s volume. Considering -its scope and the variety of the subjects and styles of -form in the volume, and considering also its expression of -the full gamut of the notes of the Canadian spirit, Lighthall’s -<span class='it'>Songs of the Great Dominion</span> not only implies a kind -of creative vision and imagination on the part of the compiler, -but distinctly and unmistakably appeals to the same -faculties in the reader. In other words, Lighthall’s volume -delights the heart and the imagination by way of the intrinsic -beauty and the moral substance of the poetry in it; -but it delights more the constructive imagination of the -reader by way of the illumination it sheds on the essential -nature, will, and ideals of the Canadian spirit, of the Canadian -people. It differs in this constructive way from all -anthologies of Canadian verse that have preceded it and all -that have followed it. In short, Lighthall’s <span class='it'>Songs of the -Great Dominion</span>, on the side of embodying and expressing -spiritual essences, is unique amongst Canadian anthologies -of native and national poetry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Later Canadian Poems</span> (1893), edited by J. E. -Wetherell, is a much slighter volume than Lighthall’s but is -significant as an expression of the new spirit in Canadian -Literature, containing, as it does, the first publication of -some of the work of Bliss Carman, Charles G. D. Roberts, -Duncan Campbell Scott, and Pauline Johnson.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It might have been expected that <span class='it'>The Oxford Book of -Canadian Verse</span> (1913), inasmuch as it was seemingly -compiled by Wilfred Campbell, one of the more important -poets of Canada, would be on the level of the ideal required -by the Oxford Press and superior to other anthologies of -Canadian verse. As a matter of fact <span class='it'>The Oxford Book of -Canadian Verse</span>, as originally compiled by Wilfred Campbell, -<span class='pageno' title='385' id='Page_385'></span> -was not according to the standard of the Oxford -Press. The necessary re-compilation was made by two -hands, Mr. S. B. Gundy, Canadian Representative of the -Oxford Press at Toronto, and J. D. Logan who selected -and added fifty poems (Nos. 211 to the end, inclusive) -from the work of the younger Canadian poets. Campbell’s -Oxford Press anthology has been frequently appreciated -as the best of the treasuries of Canadian poetry. -But how a volume of such fortuitous origin and construction -can be the best of the Canadian anthologies, passes -understanding. As an anthology <span class='it'>The Oxford Book</span> is -more than any of the other anthologies of Canadian verse -a volume of poetry ‘of unequal merit.’ But the defect -most conspicuous in the book is psychological rather than -artistic, spiritual rather than aesthetic. It contains 251 -poems by 100 poets. It is the slightest of the three great -anthologies, and the most classical. Its contents have dignity, -taste, correctness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of the other two chief anthologies—Theodore Harding -Rand’s <span class='it'>A Treasury of Canadian Verse</span> (1900) and John -W. Garvin’s <span class='it'>Canadian Poets</span> (1916)—the Rand anthology -was compiled from the point of view of the history, rather -than the aesthetics, of Canadian poetry, whereas the Garvin -anthology was compiled from the point of view of -modernity in the aesthetic substance and artistic construction -of Canadian poetry. Garvin’s volume contains the -work of only fifty-two poets, whereas Rand’s and Lighthall’s -contain the work of more than twice that number of -poets. Garvin’s volume is better suited to its century than -is any of the others. It is not only a repository of modern -Canadian poetry but also a critical <span class='it'>vade mecum</span> to 20th Century -Canadian poetry. For in addition to the poems in the -volume, each poet’s work is prefaced by a biographical -sketch and by critical appreciation or comment by others -than the compiler. The latter fact relieves the critical apparatus -<span class='pageno' title='386' id='Page_386'></span> -itself of the charge of personal bias on the part of the -compiler. The Garvin anthology, again, is distinguished -by a peculiarity of singular spiritual import. It contains -nothing that is not <span class='it'>typical</span> of the Canadian national spirit -and Canadian civilization and culture. Lighthall’s volume, -despite its good sense and genuinely aesthetic quality, had -such variety and diversity of ‘notes’ of the spirit in it that -it is hard to distinguish which is the essential note, the typical -voice, and which the ‘overtones’ of the Canadian spirit. -<span class='it'>The Oxford Book</span>, again, is untypical of the Canadian -spirit by way of too many poems that are ‘poet’s poems’—too -much of art for art’s sake. But Garvin’s <span class='it'>Canadian -Poets</span> contains the work of such poets, both of the older -and the younger generation, as expresses the typical work -of each of the singers and the typical spirit of the Canadian -people. It is a companionable volume; and it has the distinct -advantage of biographical and critical comment, which -fit it, according to its scope, for private reading and enjoyment -and for critical study of the history of Canadian -poetry. In those regards Garvin’s <span class='it'>Canadian Poets</span> is an -anthology which is at once aesthetically satisfying and -pragmatically the most serviceable in the field that it covers. -Mr. Garvin is also the compiler of the only anthology of -the Canadian poetry of the Great War.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Several other anthologies of Canadian poetry require -no more notice here than to mention their names and scope. -L. J. Burpee’s <span class='it'>Flowers From a Canadian Garden</span> is a genuine -anthology in the Greek meaning of the term. It is a -bijou anthology containing seventy-five fastidiously selected -short lyrics, lovely ‘little flowers’ of Canadian poetry. The -selections in Mr. Burpee’s <span class='it'>A Century of Canadian Sonnets</span> -are also most carefully chosen. E. S. Caswell’s -<span class='it'>Canadian Singers and Their Songs</span> is a unique -volume of selected poems in fac-similes of the authors’ -holograph manuscripts; and is illustrated with portraits of -<span class='pageno' title='387' id='Page_387'></span> -the authors of the poems. It is essentially a literary curiosity, -and meets the express design of the compiler, namely, -to produce a book of ‘personalia’ which would be appreciated -as a gift book. Mrs. C. M. Whyte Edgar’s <span class='it'>A -Wreath of Canadian Song</span> (1910) is too fragmentary in -the poetry which chiefly forms its substance to be considered -a genuine anthology. Moreover, it is limited to -the verse of Canadian poets who have died. Aesthetically -viewed it is a work of no significance; but it contains historical -and bibliographical data that is curious and useful -for critical purposes. <span class='it'>Our Canadian Literature</span> (1923) -is a collection of Canadian poetry and prose by Dr. Lorne -Pierce and Dr. A. D. Watson. It is much more valuable -as a reading course or class room textbook than as a -treasury of aesthetic poetry and prose. <span class='it'>A Book of Canadian -Verse and Prose</span> (1923) is the compilation of Professor -E. K. Broadus and Mrs. Broadus. It is a collection -of Canadian poetry and prose in English and French.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A number of compilations of Canadian poetry and prose -have been made from time to time for school use. Among -these are <span class='it'>Patriotic Recitations and Arbor Day Exercises</span>, -by G. W. Ross; <span class='it'>Selections from Canadian Poets</span> and <span class='it'>Selections -from Canadian Prose</span>, both by E. A. Hardy; <span class='it'>The -Standard Canadian Reciter</span>, by Donald G. French; <span class='it'>The -Canadian Poetry Book</span>, by D. J. Dickie.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='388' id='Page_388'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXX</h1></div> - -<h3>Canadian Journalism</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>CANADIAN JOURNALISM IN RELATION TO PERMANENT -CANADIAN LITERATURE; A SUMMARY CRITICAL HISTORY OF -THE CHIEF CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES.</p> -</div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>he</span> question: Are Newspapers and Magazines literature? -has various answers, negative and affirmative. -There cannot be any doubt that Newspapers and Magazines -can be literature, because they have been literature; or that -Newspapers and Magazines promote literature, because -they have done this. The fact is that the first journalism -in English was at the very outset literature. <span class='it'>The Tatter</span> -and <span class='it'>The Spectator</span> were founded in the years 1709 -and 1711, respectively. <span class='it'>The Rambler</span> was founded later. -These periodicals, whose pages were the popular reading -of the times, and whose pages were made ‘living epistles’ -by the pens of Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Samuel -Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith—four of the greatest prose -writers of the 18th century—were the predecessors of the -modern Newspaper. Their pages, especially those of <span class='it'>The -Spectator</span>, combined the functions of a newspaper, a literary -miscellany and a review of society, life, and world -happenings. In particular, Joseph Addison was ‘the -father’ of the modern newspaper ‘leader’ and ‘editorial’ and -of the special article in theatrical and art criticism. Samuel -Johnson was the inventor of the modern ‘society page’ and -‘woman’s page’ as we know them in our day. In short, -Steele, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, Defoe and others of -considerable literary reputation in the 18th century were -<span class='pageno' title='389' id='Page_389'></span> -the creators of England’s first ‘people’s literature’—a journalistic -literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Journalism and Magazine writing in Canada began -with the same ideals of scope and literary dignity as obtained -in the days of Addison and Johnson in England. -The first newspaper to be established in any of the Provinces -which later became confederated in the Canadian -Union was <span class='it'>The Halifax Gazette</span> which was established at -Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1752; that is, 43 years after the -founding of <span class='it'>The Tatler</span>. The first magazine to be established -in Canada was published at Halifax in 1789 and was -named <span class='it'>The Nova Scotia Magazine</span>. As a newspaper, however, -<span class='it'>The Halifax Gazette</span> was devoted chiefly to the publication -of military and governmental intelligence. It was -not till Joseph Howe purchased <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span>, at Halifax, -in 1828, that journalism in Canada harked back to -the ideals of <span class='it'>The Tatler</span> and <span class='it'>The Spectator</span>. Joseph Howe -must be regarded as the first and foremost literary, as -well as practical, journalist in the history of Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is sufficient here to remark Howe’s strict literary -ideals, even as a journalist, and to observe not only that in -his own journalistic writing he strove after literary form -and color, but also that in the writings of his contributors -he saw to it that there was a very considerable literary -flavor. His ideals were emulated by other Canadian -journalists, as for instance Etienne Parent, in Quebec, and -George Brown of the Toronto <span class='it'>Globe</span> and Charles Lindsey, -in Ontario, and by later journalists in Canada. Yet we -must here emphasize, for our own times, the inclusiveness -of the ideals which inspired Howe and which resulted in -his producing newspapers whose influence abides to this -day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By some sort of intuition, Howe knew, as Addison and -Steele before him knew, that the secrets of successful journalism -are two: <span class='it'>Variety</span> of interests in reading matter, and -<span class='pageno' title='390' id='Page_390'></span> -<span class='it'>Readableness</span> or the power to hold the attention by the manner -or style of what is written. Howe also had aesthetic -and moral ideals. He aimed to produce journalism that -would entertain and at the same time improve literary taste -and educate the sensibilities and moral imagination. Howe -saw that the unpardonable sins of all newspapers are the lack -of humanized matter, and dullness in style; and that, therefore, -no matter how high and worthy the moral aims of -journalism may be, unless a newspaper possesses variety -and readableness, it is doomed to fail both as a newspaper -that otherwise might have endured and as a newspaper that -might have been perennially the voice and the educator of -the spirit. In other words, Joseph Howe saw that the -supreme virtues of first rate journalism, the virtues which -raise journalism to the dignity of literature, are two: -<span class='it'>Humanity</span> and <span class='it'>Urbanity</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Five years after the fall of Quebec, that is, in 1764, -when Quebec city had acquired a considerable English-speaking -population, the second of the pioneer Canadian -newspapers was established. This was the <span class='it'>Quebec Gazette</span>. -For seventy-eight years this newspaper was printed in two -languages—English and French. From 1848 till 1880 it -was printed wholly in English. With the coming of the -Loyalists, while New Brunswick was still part of Nova -Scotia, there appeared at St. John, in 1783, the <span class='it'>Royal St. -John Gazette and Nova Scotia Intelligencer</span>. In the following -year, when New Brunswick had become a separate -Province, this newspaper changed its name to the <span class='it'>Royal -Gazette & New Brunswick Advertiser</span>. In 1785 the <span class='it'>Gazette</span> -was established at Montreal. In 1791 and in 1793 newspapers -were established at Charlottetown, Prince Edward -Island, and Niagara, Ontario. In 1806 and in 1810 newspapers -were established at Fredericton, N.B. and Kingston, -Ont. Up to 1810 the newspapers of Canada, with the -notable exception of the <span class='it'>Quebec Gazette</span>, were not at all -<span class='pageno' title='391' id='Page_391'></span> -in the spirit of constructive journalism, but with the founding -of <span class='it'>The Herald</span> at Montreal in 1811, <span class='it'>The Acadian Recorder</span> -at Halifax in 1813, the <span class='it'>Colonial Advocate</span> at -Queenston in 1824, and <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span> at Halifax in -1824 (purchased by Joseph Howe in 1828), journalism in -Canada took on the scope and complexion of literary and -constructive journalism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Pioneer Newspapers, as contrasted with the Pioneer -and later Canadian Magazines, served very considerably -as ‘the people’s’ reading and as the popular educator. They -were instrumental in creating a desire for intelligence about -Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The -demand was chiefly for commercial and social, and political -news. And so with the desire for news came into existence -an ardent desire for an education in the so-called -‘three R’s.’ As to the style of the reading matter in the -Pioneer Newspapers, it conformed, with notable exceptions, -to the conditions, social and political, of the times. -As a matter of fact, politics were paramount in pioneer -days and up to the triumph of Responsible Government, or -to the middle of the 19th Century. Naturally, therefore, -the newspapers contained considerable satiric writing and -letters on practical matters, including reforms in Government. -Accordingly the general style of the newspapers was -straightforward, often overpointed in vigorous vernacular, -with no care for purity of diction and coherency of sentential -structure. The thing to be said, the matter, must -be said at all hazards—plainly, bluntly, vigorously, and -unmistakably. In all these regards, which were not according -to the English style of journalism under Addison and -Steele, the better newspapers, such as <span class='it'>The Montreal Gazette</span>, -and <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span>, were notable exceptions to the general -run of the Pioneer Newspapers. Howe, for example, -did see to it, with considerable solicitude, that his newspapers, -especially <span class='it'>The Novascotian</span>, should contain genuine -<span class='pageno' title='392' id='Page_392'></span> -literary matter and that the style of the general reading -matter which appeared in his newspapers should be in -decent readable English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the whole, therefore, the Pioneer Newspapers of -Canada and those which appeared up to Responsible Government -and Confederation, and later, conformed to the -two ideals of purveyors of intelligence and disseminators -of popular culture. Except in rare instances, however, -they did not foster the creative literary spirit. That function -was left to the Canadian Magazines.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As, in the case of daily journalism, Nova Scotia had -priority in establishing newspapers, so, in the case of Canadian -magazines, Nova Scotia also was first in enterprise. -The first magazine to be published in any of the Provinces -of Canada was the <span class='it'>Nova Scotia Magazine</span>, which appeared -at Halifax in 1789, and ceased publication in 1792. The -second Canadian magazine to be published was the <span class='it'>Quebec -Magazine</span>, which appeared at Quebec in 1791 (2). It also -went out of existence in two or three years. The difficulty -then was the same as in the present day. The Canadian -editor and publisher of native magazines could not compete -with the British and the United States magazines, because -the foreign periodicals were more readable and cheaper. -The matter, however, of the earlier Canadian magazines -was, for the most part, genuinely literary and fostered -culture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first magazine in Canada to spread culture and at -the same time to foster amongst native-born or resident -<span class='it'>émigré</span> writers the creative literary spirit, and to publish -contributions in the form of essays, Nature sketches, -and poems by native-born and permanently resident -writers, was the <span class='it'>Literary Garland</span>. It flourished from -1838 to 1851, and numbered amongst its contributors -such men and women of parts as William Dunlop, who -may be regarded as the first <span class='it'>émigré</span> Canadian humorist -<span class='pageno' title='393' id='Page_393'></span> -in distinction from Haliburton, the first native-born -humorist, Charles Sangster, who was the first native-born -Canadian poet of significant power in original creation, -Susanna Moodie who was a versatile writer of colorful -prose, and the first singer of Canadian Martial Verse, and -her sister Catharine Parr Traill, whose Nature studies and -sketches are still eminently worth reading.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the year which saw the consummation of the Confederacy -George Stewart, a man of fine critical taste, established -<span class='it'>Stewart’s Quarterly</span> at St. John, N.B. His ideal -was that of the English Quarterlies; and the articles which -appeared in his magazine were notably solid in substance -and distinguished in literary style. <span class='it'>Stewart’s Quarterly</span> -did much to promote culture and to encourage creative -writing on the part of native-born Canadian writers. -Several other magazines which conformed more to the -matter and style of the <span class='it'>Literary Garland</span> were established -in the first 25 years following Confederation. They all -eventually went out of existence. The first magazine to -endure as a cultural agency and genuine fosterer of the literary -spirit was the <span class='it'>Canadian Magazine</span>, founded in 1893 by -J. Gordon Mowat. Under his editorship it grew and further -progressed under the editorship of John A. Cooper. -In 1907 the <span class='it'>Canadian Magazine</span> came under the editorship -of Mr. Newton MacTavish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From 1907, when Mr. MacTavish became editor, there -was a distinct and continually progressive change in the -editorial policy of the <span class='it'>Canadian Magazine</span>. Patriotically -he set out to foster the appreciation and production of fine -arts and literature by native-born Canadians. To do this -he reproduced in the magazine paintings and drawings by -Canadian artists, along with special articles, critically appraising -Canadian artists and their art. He also published -essays, criticism, fiction, and poetry, by native-born Canadian -writers. In fact, it was considerably due to the sympathetic -<span class='pageno' title='394' id='Page_394'></span> -and respectful encouragement which Mr. MacTavish -gave to native-writers, that Canadian poets and -prose writers achieved as splendidly as they have done in -the first quarter of the 20th century, and that constructive -literary criticism and literary history significantly developed -in Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the <span class='it'>Canadian Magazine</span> should be mentioned two -others, the <span class='it'>Queen’s Quarterly</span> and the <span class='it'>University Magazine</span>. -The latter was edited by Sir Andrew Macphail, and -did much to foster letters and criticism in Canada. Amongst -other distinctions, the <span class='it'>University Magazine</span> published not -only the best verse but also the first book of poems by Marjorie -Pickthall, <span class='it'>Drift of Pinions</span> (1913). It ceased publication -in 1921. The <span class='it'>Queen’s Quarterly</span>, always well edited, -is still potent in fostering letters and criticism in Canada. -<span class='it'>The Dalhousie Review</span>, founded in 1921, essayed some of -the ideals of the <span class='it'>University Magazine</span>. But it is given -too much to critical writing by foreign <span class='it'>literati</span> to be potent -in fostering letters and criticism in Canada.</p> - -<div><span class='pageno' title='395' id='Page_395'></span><h1>CHAPTER XXXI</h1></div> - -<h3>Narrative Literature</h3> - -<div class='summary'> -<p class='pindent'>NARRATIVE LITERATURE—HISTORY—BIOGRAPHY—EXPLORATION—TRAVELS—SPORT -OR OPEN-AIR LIFE.</p> -</div> - -<h4><span class='it'>I. History.</span></h4> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>wo</span> general conditions have made the writing of ‘true -history’ in Canada an impossibility. On the personal -side, there were the lack of adequate culture, of a -sense of the historic process and of history as the narrative -of spiritual development, and of any genius, save curiosity, -on the part of those who essayed the writing of history. -Men with the historic imagination did not exist in Canada, -and only ‘minor’ historians were active, up to the beginning -of the 20th century. On the material or instrumental -side, there were the heterogeneity of Canadian civilization, -the want of political unity, the lack of access to documents -and of facilities for historical research, and other untoward -circumstances. Unimaginative minds and the heterogeneity -of life and thought in Canada, before and after Confederation, -limited history for the most part to annals, chronicles, -period and sectional narratives.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The number of these uninspired, unimaginative ‘minor’ -Canadian historians is legion. The more important were -George Heriot, William Smith, Robert Christie, Alexander -Begg, Beamish Murdock, Duncan Campbell, William -Kingsford, James Hannay, and Egerton Ryerson. Oddly, -the two first native-born historians to write with a show of -imagination and a sense of true history were Thomas -Chandler Haliburton, the humorist, and Major John Richardson, -the romancer. -<span class='pageno' title='396' id='Page_396'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Haliburton’s <span class='it'>Historical and Statistical Account of -Nova Scotia</span> was published by Joseph Howe in 1829. -Though the two volumes are, in a degree, a compendium of -facts, Haliburton was not interested in the facts so much -as in the romantic or dramatic story of civilization and -life in Nova Scotia. The way Haliburton imaginatively -handled his material, the way he romantically told the story -and made the whole a colorful and generally absorbing -narrative, constitutes his work as ‘true history.’ It is -Haliburton’s conception of history and his method of -writing it that make him important—though he was not -potent—in this department of Canadian Literature. His -work is an outstanding native example of the romantic -method of writing history as literature; and Haliburton -himself appears as the first Canadian Historian to write -history as if he were writing imaginative literature. But -if he was not potent in his own country, that is, in British -North America, he had, there is good ground to believe, -considerable influence on Francis Parkman. For Parkman -read Haliburton’s <span class='it'>Historical and Statistical Account -of Nova Scotia</span>, and not only had his imagination fired by -such a romantic story as Haliburton tells of the Expulsion -of the Acadians, but also adopted the romantic method of -Haliburton in writing his own historical works.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The best account of the War of 1812 came from the -pen of Major John Richardson, who had served in the -conflict. It is the account of an eye-witness. It was written -hurriedly for publication serially in his newspaper the -<span class='it'>New Era</span>, and was reprinted in book form in 1842. As -might be expected, Richardson presents vividly the drama -or dramatic movement of his story, and makes it a colorful, -gripping narrative. But though, like Haliburton, -Richardson wrote graphically, romantically, he is superior -to Haliburton in an important respect. The Nova Scotia -historian and humorist did not have any gift for sharp -<span class='pageno' title='397' id='Page_397'></span> -character-drawing; his characters, like Dickens’ or -Twain’s, stand out and hold us by what they say. But -Richardson’s characters in his account of the War of 1812, -especially Brock and Tecumseh, are vividly drawn by their -<span class='it'>action</span>, and stand out sharply individualized. In Haliburton’s -<span class='it'>Historical Account of Nova Scotia</span> we get only colorful -romance. In Richardson’s <span class='it'>War of 1812</span> we get colorful -romance, dramatic movement, and memorable character -portraiture. It, too, is ‘true history,’ and his work, like -Haliburton’s, is an outstanding native example of the romantic -method of writing history as literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After Haliburton and Richardson, all history of Canada, -or the Provinces, by native-born or <span class='it'>émigré</span> writers was -fragmentary in conception and dry-as-dust in matter and -method. They all show inquisitiveness, diligence, though -not careful research, and no imagination, and certainly no -sense of history as the outward expression and movement -of a people’s social and spiritual evolution. Yet the work -of one man must be specially remarked. He was Alpheus -Todd, who, in the department of Constitutional History, -wrote a work which was long regarded as the greatest study -of the English constitution written by any British subject. -This really ‘monumental’ historical work was entitled -<span class='it'>Parliamentary Government in England; its Origin, Development, -and Practical Operation</span>. The first volume was -published in 1867, the year of Canadian Confederation. -But while Todd’s work is a ‘monument’ to his scholarship -and industry, and while it has historic perspective, it is, -like the work of preceding historians, without imagination -and was written by one who had no conception of constitutional -history as the expression of the social conscience -gradually realizing, under changing conditions, the ideal of -the rights of the spirit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the beginning of the 20th century, Canadian historians -based their work on documentary research and -<span class='pageno' title='398' id='Page_398'></span> -wrote history with a lively sense of imaginative or romantic -values which corresponded to the method and manner -of Haliburton and Richardson. This change in the method -of writing ‘true history’ is notably exemplified in <span class='it'>Quebec -Under Two Flags</span> and in <span class='it'>The Cradle of New France</span> by A. -G. Doughty; in <span class='it'>The Fight for Canada</span>, by William Wood; -and, later, in <span class='it'>The Conquest of the Great North-West</span>, -<span class='it'>Pathfinders of the West</span>, and <span class='it'>Vikings of the Pacific</span>, by -Agnes Laut. Doughty was a poet before he became an -historian, and in writing history let his imagination play -over the facts, thus transmuting the documentary material -into literature. William Wood also applied the romanticist’s -imagination to the facts, and, besides, wrote history with -a fine feeling for style and characterization somewhat in -the manner of Parkman. Miss Laut, basing her matter -on thorough research, humanized it with a sympathetic appreciation -of the struggles of the pioneers of the Canadian -West and with a picturesque literary style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sectional and local histories of Canada abound. There -are also race histories and several so-called School Histories. -But these are all of popular quality and have no -distinction in literary style, although the narratives of W. -J. Rattray, George Stewart, H. Scadding, J. Ross Robertson, -John Murray Gibbon, Sir John Bourinot and Charles -G. D. Roberts show a considerable solicitude for style and -actually achieve good literary style.</p> - -<h4><span class='it'>II. Biography.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>As with general history, so with personal or spiritual -history. Biographical writing in Canada is sparse in quantity -and, on the whole, insignificant in literary quality. -Often the subject of a biographical narrative was great -enough to compel imaginative and artistic creation on the -part of the writer. Seldom, however, does any biographer -of a Canadian man of distinction rise to his subject either in -<span class='pageno' title='399' id='Page_399'></span> -conception or in style. But of those who did rise to their -subject, one was Charles Lindsey, who wrote <span class='it'>The Life and -Times of William Lyon MacKenzie</span>. Lindsey handled his -material so as to present the proper values in the political -and social problems in the time of the famous leader of the -Rebellion of 1837. Another of those who rose to his -subject and who wrote with a sense of the really significant -events in the life of his subject, presenting the salients with -decent respect for truth, with adequate detail, and yet with -readable style, was Sir Joseph Pope, who gave the literary -world a compelling and vigorously moving biographical -volume, <span class='it'>Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander -Macdonald</span>. It is a vigorous narrative, but rather -inflexible in style. Sir John Stephen Willison’s <span class='it'>Sir Wilfrid -Laurier and The Liberal Party</span> is an outstanding -biography. Like Lindsey, Sir John Willison was a thoroughly -trained journalist before he attempted biographical -writing. Along with the journalist’s vigor and vivacity of -style, Sir John Willison wrote with feeling for dignified -and elegant diction. His <span class='it'>Wilfrid Laurier</span> is notable chiefly -for its refinement in prose style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>George Monro Grant’s <span class='it'>Joseph Howe</span> is a <span class='it'>tour de force</span> -in brilliant word painting and hero worship. It misses the -significance of Howe as an original and constructive mind. -Longley’s <span class='it'>Joseph Howe</span> is a popular narrative, careless of -logic and literary style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Several other individual biographies of Canadians by -Canadians have been published. The best of them are -Duncan Campbell Scott’s <span class='it'>John Graves Simcoe</span>, Adam -Shortt’s <span class='it'>Lord Sydenham</span>, George M. Wrong’s <span class='it'>Life of Lord -Elgin</span>, Arnold Haultain’s <span class='it'>Goldwin Smith: His Life and -Opinions</span>, Grant and Hamilton’s <span class='it'>George Monro Grant</span>, -and Edith J. Archibald’s <span class='it'>Life and Letters of Sir Edward -Mortimer Archibald</span>. But a genuinely great biography of -a great man remains to be written in Canada. -<span class='pageno' title='400' id='Page_400'></span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Deserving of mention are three short popular biographies—Owen -McGillicuddy’s sketch of the life and -achievements of Rt. Hon. MacKenzie King, Premier of -Canada, which appears under the title <span class='it'>The Making of a -Premier</span> (1922); John W. Dafoe’s <span class='it'>Laurier</span> (1922) and -Peter McArthur’s <span class='it'>Laurier</span> (1922). These biographies are -by practical journalists, and are journalistic in style. -Dafoe’s Laurier is the most acute and weighty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A genuine literary achievement in biographical writing -is M. O. Hammond’s <span class='it'>Confederation and Its Leaders</span> -(1917). It is based on thorough research, and, as a series -of intimate political biographies in the form of narrative -sketches, is packed with human interest, and is marked by -a straightforward, commonsense style. It has a high -seriousness, and in this respect contrasts with the lighter, -more piquant but less persuasive style of Augustus Bridle’s -<span class='it'>Sons of Canada</span>—a work which is essentially a series of -familiar portraits, done as <span class='it'>jeux d’esprit</span>.</p> - -<h4><span class='it'>III. Travels, Exploration, Sport.</span></h4> - -<p class='pindent'>Canada has a considerable quantity of the literature of -travels, explorations and sport but the literary interest of -the most of it is far from obvious. A really remarkable -book in this genre is the elder Alexander Henry’s <span class='it'>Travels -and Adventures in Canada and The Indian Territories</span>, -published in New York in 1809. Henry was a man of -acute observation, and also possessed a graphic pen for -character limning. His <span class='it'>Travels and Adventures</span> engages -both the intellect and the imagination, the scientist and the -literary artist. For it contains the most interesting observations -on the flora and fauna of the countries he visited, -and really graphic and colorful pictures of the peoples and -the characters he met and observed. Henry had also a -gift like that of Thucydides—the gift and skill of dramatically -reporting a speech as, for instance, the speech of the -<span class='pageno' title='401' id='Page_401'></span> -Ojibwa Chief Minavavana. The book really forms an entrancing -and instructive volume of Travel and Adventure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The same may be said of Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s -<span class='it'>Voyages From Montreal Through the Continent of North -America, 1789-1793</span>. This work was published at London -in 1801. Mackenzie came from a people—the Gaels of the -Island of Lewis—who have a racial gift of colorful -imagination and of felicity of language in nature description. -Mackenzie, moreover, was, like Henry, a keen observer. -His <span class='it'>Voyages</span>, therefore, as might be expected, are -marked by colorful style and the imaginative presentation -of the scenes he visited and of the inspiring or sublime -phenomena he observed. John Howison’s <span class='it'>Sketches of -Upper Canada</span> conforms only to the ideal of fact. It is, as -the title suggests, merely a series of ‘sketches,’ written in a -vigorous style with only a touch here and there of finer -literary style.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the work of Anna Brownell Jameson we meet -with the first ‘color-writing’ in and about Canada. Her -<span class='it'>Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada</span>, published -in London in 1838, has not yet been excelled by a native -Canadian ‘color writer.’ At the time, Canada was a -wilderness for the most part, with a few settlements, but -Mrs. Jameson, with the eye of an artist, saw everywhere -in Nature in Canada and in Canadian life and character -much to delight the eye and the sensibilities and much to -satisfy the pictorial and dramatic imagination. Her <span class='it'>Winter -Studies and Summer Rambles</span>, in three volumes, are a -library of winsome Nature sketches and critical appreciations -of human personality—a work of art, and a permanent -contribution to the Incidental Pioneer Literature of -Canada.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The aesthetic sense and the artistic conscience were -uppermost in Paul Kane’s <span class='it'>Wanderings of An Artist -Among The Indian Tribes of North America</span>. Kane was -<span class='pageno' title='402' id='Page_402'></span> -a celebrated Canadian painter; and, having the gift of -style, he wrote, with the eye of the pictorial artist, about -his ‘wanderings’ among the western tribes. It is an informing -volume and makes genuinely interesting and -satisfying reading.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>George M. Grant was a man of splendid force of character -and strength of will tempered with a singular gift of -humor and pathos. He travelled across Canada in the last -five years of the first decade following Confederation, he -met all peoples, dwelt in camps, visited trading posts, and -stopped at the hotels of the larger centres. On his journey -he was impressed by the <span class='it'>life</span>, <span class='it'>energy</span>, and the <span class='it'>striving</span> of -the Canadian people for a self-reliant and worthy history -and destiny. And so Grant’s volume of travel, <span class='it'>Ocean to -Ocean</span>, is noted for its acute observation, for its colorful -and vitalizing descriptions of Nature in Canada, and for -its seriousness, at all times relieved by an unusual quality -of humor and of pathos. In ‘color-writing’ too, the volume -is, at times, incomparable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>J. W. Tyrrell’s <span class='it'>Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada</span> and -his <span class='it'>The St. Lawrence Basin and Its Border-Lands</span>, Lawrence -J. Burpee’s <span class='it'>The Search for The Western Sea</span>, -Vilhjalmur Stefannson’s <span class='it'>The Friendly Arctic</span> and his -<span class='it'>Hunters of the Great North</span>, Arthur Heming’s <span class='it'>Drama of -the Forests</span>, are all noted for their literary style and for the -dramatic pictures they make of Nature scenes and of -human characters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two really notable books under the head of Sport, as -a form of travel and adventure, are Arthur Silver’s <span class='it'>Farm, -Cottage, Camp and Canoe In Maritime Canada</span> (1884) and -Phil. H. Moore’s <span class='it'>With Gun and Rod in Canada</span> (1922). -Silver’s volume makes pleasant reading, but the style is -much more pedestrian than Moore’s work, which is heightened -and colored by picturesque diction and images and -by considerable characteristic humor. Midway between -<span class='pageno' title='403' id='Page_403'></span> -the greater books of Travel and Adventure and these books -of Sport come Wilfred Grenfell’s volumes descriptive of -Labrador and the late C. Gordon Hewitt’s <span class='it'>Conservation of -the Wild Life of Canada</span>. The latter, though scientific -in aim and method, is full of aesthetic and literary charm -and is written in an interesting literary style.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h3><span class='pageno' title='405' id='Page_405'></span>Index</h3> - -<p class='pindent'>This index covers the names of Canadian writers, Canadian -books, journals, individual poems, or stories referred -to in the text. Names of authors are in roman type; all -titles of books, journals, poems, stories, etc., are in <span class='it'>italic</span>.</p> - -<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Above St. Irénée</span>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Acadia</span>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Address to the Freemen of Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Admiral’s Daughter, The</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Adventurer of the North, An</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Afoot</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>After a Night of Storm</span>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>After the Battle</span>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Agar, Paul, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ahkoond of Swat, The</span>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>-<a href='#Page_326'>326</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Aikins, Carroll, C., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>-<a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Alexander, W. J., <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Allen, Adam, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Alline, Henry, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>-<a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Amateur Orlando</span>, The, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Americans at Home, The</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anastasis</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anatomy of Melancholy, The</span>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Anderson, Robert, T., <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Angel’s Shoes</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anne of Avonlea</span>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anne of Green Gables</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anne’s House of Dreams</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anne of the Island</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Annunciation</span>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Answer, The</span>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Anti-Traditionist, The</span>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Antoinette de Mirecourt</span>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>April Airs</span>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Archibald, Edith J., <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>At Husking Time</span>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>At Noon</span>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Attaché, The</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Attic Guest, The</span>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Autumn’s Orchestra</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ave!</span> <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Aylesford</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Backwoodsman, The</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Backwood’s Philosopher, The</span>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bailey, Jacob, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bail Jumper, The</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Baker, Ray Palmer, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ballads and Lyrics</span>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ballads of Lost Haven</span>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>-<a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Barrington, E., <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bartlett, Gertrude, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bates, Walter, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Battle of the Strong, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Battles Royal Down North</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Beautiful Joe</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Beautiful Rebel, A</span>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Beauty and Life</span>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Beck, L. Adams, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Begg, Alexander, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Behind the Arras</span>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Behind the Veil</span>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_240'>240</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bells of St. Stephens, The</span>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bennett, Ethel Hume, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bereavement of the Fields</span>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Between the Battles</span>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Between the Lights</span>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bill Boram</span>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>-<a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Billy Topsail & Company</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Biography of a Grizzly</span>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Birch and Paddle</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bird’s Lullaby, The</span>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Blackburn, Grace, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Black Creek Stopping House, The</span>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Black Rock</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Black Stole, The</span>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Blake, W. H., <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Blessed Dead, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Blewett, Jean, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bliss Carman</span>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Blue Nose, The</span>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Blue Pete; Half Breed</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Blue Water</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Boarding House Geometry</span>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bobcaygeon, Chapbook, A.</span>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bonnie Prince Fetlar</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Book of Canadian Verse and Prose</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Book of the Myths, The</span>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Book of the Native, The</span>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Boss of the World, The</span>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bourinot, Arthur S., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bourinot, Sir John, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bowen, Minnie Hallowell, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bowman, Louise Morey, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Branscombe, Gena, (Mrs. J. F. Tenney), <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brave Hearts</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Breakenridge, John, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bride, The</span>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Bridge, The</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bridle, Augustus, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brier</span>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Broadus, E. K., <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Broadus, Mrs., <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brock</span>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brockenfiend, The</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Brooke, Mrs. Francis, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brookfield</span>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>-<a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Brooks, Lillie A., <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brothers in Arms</span>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Brothers in Peril</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Brown, George, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Bruce, Charles T., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Buffalo Meat</span>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Burial of Brock, The</span>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Burpee, Lawrence J., <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Byles, Mather, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>By the Aurelian Wall</span>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>By the Marshes of Minas</span>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Cameron, Charles Innis, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Campbell, Duncan, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Campbell, Wilfred, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>-<a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>-<a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Camper, The</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Birthday Book, A</span>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Birthday Book, The</span>, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Born</span>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Brothers, The</span>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>-<a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Folk Song, A</span>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Magazine, The</span>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>-<a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Poems of the Great War</span>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadians on the Nile</span>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Cities of Romance</span>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Hymns and Hymn Writers</span>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Poetry Book, The</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Poets</span>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>-<a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Singers and Their Songs</span>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Canadian Twilight</span>, A, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cappon, James, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Captain of Raleigh’s, A</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Carleton, John L., <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Carman, Bliss, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a> <span class='it'>et seq.</span>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>-<a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>-<a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>-<a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Carmichael</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Caswell, E. S., <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cattle</span>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cattle Thief, The</span>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Champions, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Chaste Diana, The</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Child’s House, The</span>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Christie, Robert, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Christmas Bells in War Time</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Chronicles of Avonlea</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>City and the Sea, The</span>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Clelland, Rev. James, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cleveland, Aaron, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cleveland, Benjamin, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Clockmaker, The</span>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <span class='it'>et seq.</span>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Clontarf</span>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cockings, George, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cody, H. A., <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Collected Poems</span>, (Campbell), <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Collected Poems</span>, (Carman), <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Collected Poems</span>, (F. G. Scott), <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Coleman, Helena, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Colonial Advocate</span>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Come Quietly, England</span>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Coming of the Winter, The</span>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Confederation and Its Leaders</span>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Confession of Tama the Wise, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Connor, Ralph, (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>-<a href='#Page_256'>256</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Conquest of Canada, The</span>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Conquest of Quebec, The</span>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Conquest of the Great Northwest, The</span>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Conservation of Wild Life in Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cooney, Percival J., <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cooper, John A., <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Corduroy Road, The</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cornell, Beaumont, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cornflower, The</span>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Corn-Planting, The</span>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Corporal Cameron</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Cotes, Mrs. (Sara Jeanette Duncan), <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cowpuncher, The</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cradle of New France, The</span>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Crawford, Isabella Valancy</span>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>-<a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Creelman, Wm. A., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Crimson Wing, The</span>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cripple, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Crowning, The</span>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cry from an Indian Wife, A</span>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cumner’s Son</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Cun-ne-wa-bum</span>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Curé of Calumette, The</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Curzon, Sarah A., <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Daffodil from Vimy Ridge, A</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Dafoe, John W., <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Daily Star</span> (<span class='it'>Montreal</span>), <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Daisies</span>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dalhousie Review, The</span>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Daulac</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Davis, Roy, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dawn</span>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dawn at Shanty Bay, The</span>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Day Dawn</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Deacon, William A., <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>de la Roche, Mazo, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>De Mille, James, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Denison, Merrill, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_336'>336</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dennison Grant</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>De Profundis</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Deserted Nest, The</span>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Deserted Pasture, The</span>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Desjardins, The</span>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Dewart, Edward Hartley, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Dickie, D. J., <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Divine Lady, The</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Doctor Luke of the Labrador</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Doctor, The</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dodge Club Series</span>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dodge Club, The</span>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Dollard, James B., <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dominique</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Donovan Pasha</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Donovan, Peter, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Dougall, Lily, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Doughty, A. G., <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Duncan, Norman, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>-<a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Duncan, Polite</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Duncan, Sara Jeanette, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Dunlop, William, <a href='#Page_392'>392</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Durkin, Douglas, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Drama of the Forests</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Dreamland and Other Poems</span>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Drift of Pinions</span>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Drummond, William Henry, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>-<a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Drums Afar</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Earth’s Enigmas</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Eavesdropper, The</span>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Edgar, Pelham, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Edgar, Mrs. C. M. Whyte, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Embers</span>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Emigrant, The</span>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Emigration of the Fairies, The</span>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Emily of New Moon</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Enchantment</span>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>End of the Day, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>End of the Rainbow, The</span>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>England Over Seas</span>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>English-Canadian Literature</span>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Erie Waters</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fables from the World</span>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Falls of Chaudière, The</span>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>False Chevalier, The</span>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Farm, Cottage, Camp and Canoe in the Maritime Provinces</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fasting</span>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Feet of the Furtive</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Field, George B., <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fight for Canada, The</span>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fighting Men of Canada, The</span>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>-<a href='#Page_349'>349</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fire-Flies, The</span>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fire in the Woods, The</span>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fires of Driftwood</span>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Flag of Old England</span>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Fleming, John, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Flint and Feather</span>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a> <span class='it'>et seq.</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Flood, The</span>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Flowers from a Canadian Garden</span>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Foreigner, The</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Forest Fugitives</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Forest of Bourg Marie, The</span>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Forge in the Forest, A</span>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Forging of the Pikes, The</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>For He was Scotch and so Was She</span>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Forsaken, The</span>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Fragment of a Letter, The</span>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Fraser, Alexander Louis, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Fraser, D. A., <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Fraser, W. A., <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>-<a href='#Page_254'>254</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Fréchette, Louis, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>French, Donald G., <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Friendly Arctic, The</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Frogs, The</span>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>From Ocean Unto Ocean</span>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>-<a href='#Page_360'>360</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>From the Book of Myths</span>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>From the Book of the Green Bards</span>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>From the Book of Valentines</span>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>From Their Own Place</span>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Frontiersman, The</span>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Frost Magic</span>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gaff Linkum</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Galahads, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Garden of the Sun, The</span>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Garvin, John, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Garvin, Mrs. John, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gaspards of Pine Croft, The</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gauntlet of Alceste, The</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gazette (Halifax), The</span>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gazette (Montreal), The</span>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>George Monro Grant</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Geraniums</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Gibbon, John Murray, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Giffen, Clare, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Give us Barabbas</span>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Glengarry School Days</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Globe, (Toronto), The</span>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Going North</span>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Golden Dicky</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Golden Dog, The</span>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-<a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Golden Road, The</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Goldsmith, Oliver, (2nd), <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Goldwin Smith</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Gordon, Charles W., <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>-<a href='#Page_256'>256</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Gordon, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gouging School, The</span>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Grahame, Gordon Hill, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Graham, Isabel, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Graham, Jean, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Grant and Hamilton, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Grant, George Monro, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Gravedigger, The</span>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Grave Tree, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Green Book of the Bards, The</span> <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Grenfell, Wilfred, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Grey Knitting</span>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Grey Rocks and Greyer Sea</span>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Griffin, Martin, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_365'>365</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Gundy, S. B., <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Gyles, John, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Habitant, The</span>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hale, Katherine, (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Half-Breed Girl, The</span>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>-<a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>-<a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Halifax Gazette, The</span>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Ham, George Henry, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>-<a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hammond, M. O., <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hannay, James, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Harbor Master</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Harbor Tales Down North</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hardy, E. A., <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Harrison, S. Frances (‘Seranus’), <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hathaway, R. H., <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Haultain, Arnold, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Haunters of the Silence, The</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Haverson, James P., <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hayfield, The</span>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hearts and Faces</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Heart Songs</span>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Heat</span>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Heaveysege, Charles, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>-<a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Height of Land, The</span>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Heming, Arthur, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hémon, Louis, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Henry, Alexander, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hephaestus</span>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Heralds of Empire</span>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-<a href='#Page_250'>250</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Herald, The (Montreal)</span>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Here’s to the Land</span>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Heriot, George, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hesperus</span>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hewitt, C. Gordon, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hickory Stick, The</span>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Higher Kinship</span>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hildebrand</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hills and the Sea, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>His Darkest Hour</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>His Lady of the Sonnets</span>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia</span>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>History of Emily Montague, The</span>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>History of English-Canadian Literature to Confederation, A</span>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>History of Manitoba</span> (Gunn’s), <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hoch de Kaiser</span>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hodgins, Norris, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Holland, Norah, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Homesteader, The</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Honest Newsboy, The</span>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hood, Robert, A., <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hoof and Claw</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Homing Bee, The</span>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>House of Trees, The</span>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>How Bateese Came Home</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Howe, John, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Howe, Joseph, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>-<a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Huestis, Annie Campbell, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Hunter-Duvar, John, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hunters of the Great North</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hurrah for the New Dominion</span>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Huron Chief and Other Poems, The</span>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hymn of Empire</span>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Hymns and Spiritual Songs</span>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ian of the Orcades</span>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ida Beresford</span>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Idlers</span>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>If I Must</span>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ilicet</span>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Immortality</span>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Imperfectly Proper</span>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In a Country Churchyard</span>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Candlelight Days</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Divers Tones</span>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>-<a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>-<a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Flanders Fields</span>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Grey Days</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Memorabilia Mortis</span>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Inner Door, The</span>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Noonday</span>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In Orchard Glen</span>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Insulters of Death, The</span>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the Afternoon</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the Battle Silences</span>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the House of Dreams</span>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the Shadows</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the Study</span>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the Village of Viger</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>In the Wake of the Eighteen-Twelvers</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Introduction to Browning</span>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Irish Folk Song, An</span>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Irish Poems</span>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Italy in 1859</span>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>I Used to Wear a Gown of Green</span>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Jameson, Anna Brownell, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Jamieson, Nina Moore, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Jess of the River</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Jimmy Goldcoast</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Joe</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>John Graves Simcoe</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Johnnie Corteau</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Johnson, Pauline, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>-<a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>-<a href='#Page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Joseph Howe</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Judgment House, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Judy of York Hill</span>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kaleedon Road</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Kane, Paul, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Keith, Marian, (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Key of Dreams, The</span>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Key of Life, The</span>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Kidd, Adam, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kilmeny of the Orchard</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kindred of the Wild, The</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>King, Rt. Hon. Mackenzie, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>King’s Consort, The</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Kingsford, William, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kinship</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kinsmen</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Kirby, William, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>-<a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kitchener and Other Poems</span>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Kitchener’s Work</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Knowles, Robert E., <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Labor and the Angel</span>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>-<a href='#Page_183'>183</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lacey, Amy (Luke Allan, <span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ladies, The</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lady Icicle</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lady Lorgnette</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lake Huron</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lamp of Poor Souls, The</span>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lampman, Archibald, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>-<a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>-<a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>-<a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lanigan, George T., <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>-<a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lantern Marsh</span>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Larry, or the Avenging Terrors</span>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Last Robin, The</span>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Last Songs from Vagabondia</span>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Later Canadian Poems</span>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Later Poems</span>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>La Tristesse</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Laurentian Lyrics</span>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Laurier</span>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lauriston, Victor, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Laut, Agnes C., <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-<a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lazarus</span>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Leacock, Stephen, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>-<a href='#Page_330'>330</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lee, H. D. C., <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Legislative Reviews</span>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Leprohon, Mrs., <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Le Rossignol, James, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Letterbag of the Great Western, The</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Leveridge, Lilian, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Life and Journal (Alline)</span>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Life and Letters of Sir Edward Mortimer Archibald</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Life of Lord Elgin</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lifting of the Mist, The</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lighthall, William Douw, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lindsey, Charles, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris</span>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>-<a href='#Page_238'>238</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lily-Song</span>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Literary Garland, The</span>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>-<a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_392'>392</a>-<a href='#Page_393'>393</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Literary Lapses</span>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Little Bateese</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Little Book of Canadian Essays, A</span>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Little Fauns to Proserpine, The</span>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Little Hearts</span>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>-<a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Little Milliner, The</span>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Little Stories of Quebec</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Livesay, Florence Randal, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lives of the Hunted</span>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lizbeth of the Dale</span>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Lloyd, Rev. Dean, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lobstick Trail, The</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Logan, J. D., <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lone Wharf, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Long Lane’s Turning, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Longley, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lords of the North</span>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-<a href='#Page_250'>250</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lord Sydenham</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Love in a Wilderness</span>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Love of the Wild</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lover Lads of Devon, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lover’s Diary, A</span>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lover to His Lass, A</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lower Slopes, The</span>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Low Tide on Grand Pré</span>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lullaby of the Iroquois</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lundy’s Lane</span>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Lyrics From the Hills</span>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>MacCrossan, Charles W., <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacDonald, Elizabeth Robert, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacDonald, Peter McLaren, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Macdonald, Rev. J. A., <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Macdonald, Wilson, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacGregor, James, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Machar, Agnes Maule, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mackay, Isabel Ecclestone, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>-<a href='#Page_311'>311</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mackinnon, Lilian Vaux, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacLean, H. J., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacLennan, William, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacMechan, Archibald, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacMurchy, Marjory, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacPhail, Sir Andrew, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>MacTavish, Newton, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>-<a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Magic House, The</span>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mahon, A. W., <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mair, Charles, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>-<a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Major, The</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Making of a Premier, The</span>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Malcolm’s Katie</span>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>-<a href='#Page_53'>53</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Man from Glengarry</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Manor House of de Villerai, The</span>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Marguerite de Roberval</span>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Maria Chapdelaine</span>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Marquis, T. G., <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-<a href='#Page_249'>249</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Marshall, William E., <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>-<a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Marsh Hay</span>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Marshlands</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mary Callaghan and Me</span>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mary Shepherdess</span>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>-<a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Master of Life, The</span>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Matins</span>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McArthur, Peter, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>-<a href='#Page_331'>331</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McCarroll, James, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McClung, Nellie L., <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McCollum, Alma Frances, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McCrae, John, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McCully, Laura E., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McGee, Thomas D’Arcy, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McGillicuddy, Owen, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>McGrath’s Bad Night</span>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McIlwraith, Jean N., <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McKishnie, Archie, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>-<a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>McLachlan, Alexander, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>-<a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mediaeval Hun, The</span>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Memoirs of Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Men of Canada, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Merchant of Venice, The, (Lanigan)</span>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Merkel, Andrew D., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Merrill, Helen M., <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Middleton, Jesse Edgar, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Miracle Songs of Jesus, The</span>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mirage of the Plain, The</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Miriam of Queens</span>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mission of the Trees, The</span>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mists of the Morning, The</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Money Master, The</span>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Montgomery, Lucy M., (Mrs. Ewan Macdonald), <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>-<a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Montreal Star, The</span>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Moodie, Susanna, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>-<a href='#Page_341'>341</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Moody, James, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Moonset</span>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Moore, Phil H., <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Moorhouse, Hopkins</span>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mooswa</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mordred</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>More Animal Stories</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Morgan-Powell, S., <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Morning</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Morning in the West</span>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mortimer, John T., <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mother Gives, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mother, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Mountain and the Lake, The</span>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mowatt, J. Gordon, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Muddiman, Bernard, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Mullins (Leprohon), Rosanna, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>-<a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Murdock, Beamish, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Murphy, Henry, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Murray, George, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Murray, Robert, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>-<a href='#Page_360'>360</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>My Brave and Gallant Gentleman</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>My Discovery of England</span>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>My Madonna</span>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>My Spanish Sailor</span>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nancy’s Pride</span>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nature and Human Nature</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>-<a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Neighbors</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Neville, Valentine, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>New Apocalypse, The</span>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>New Era</span>, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>New Joan, The</span>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>New Pathology, The</span>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>New World Lyrics and Ballads</span>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ninth Vibration, The</span>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nocturne</span>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nocturne of Consecration, A</span>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>North, Anison, (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Northern Lights</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Norwood, Robert, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>-<a href='#Page_212'>212</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>-<a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>-<a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nova Scotia Magazine, The</span>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_392'>392</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nova Scotian Afloat, The</span>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Nova Scotian in England, The</span>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Novascotian, The</span>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>-<a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ocean to Ocean</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Odd Adventures</span>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ode for Keats Centenary</span>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ode for the Centenary of Shelley’s Birth, An</span>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ode on the Birthday of King George III., An</span>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ode to the Canadian Confederacy</span>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>O’Dell, Jonathan, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Off Pelorus</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>O Flower of all the World</span>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>O’Hagan, Thomas, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Oh, Not When April Wakes the Daffodils</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ojistoh</span>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Old Hoss, The</span>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Old Judge, The</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Old Lady, An</span>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Old Man Savarin</span>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Old Spookses’ Pass</span>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>-<a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Onoto Watanna (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>On the Creek</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>On the Death of Claude Debussy</span>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>On the Iron at Big Cloud</span>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Openway</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>O Red Rose of Life</span>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Orion and Other Poems</span>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>-<a href='#Page_117'>117</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Osborne, Marion, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Our Canadian Literature</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Our Lads to the Front</span>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Our Little Life</span>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Outcasts, The</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Over ’Ere and Back Home</span>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Overlooked</span>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Over the Hills of Home</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, The</span>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a>-<a href='#Page_385'>385</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Packard, Frank L.</span>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Pagan Love</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Parent, Etienne, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Parker, Gilbert, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>-<a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Parkman, Francis, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Parliamentary Government in England</span>, <a href='#Page_397'>397</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Partridge, Dean, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Passing of Autumn, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Passing of Oul-I-But, The</span>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Pathfinders of the West</span>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Patriotic Recitations and Arbor Day Exercises</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Patrol of the Cypress Hills, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail, The</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Paul Farlotte</span>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Pennington, Amy, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Pens and Pirates</span>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Penseroso</span>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Perfume of the Rainbow, The</span>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Persephone at Enna</span>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Petherick’s Peril</span>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Phelps, Arthur, L., <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Pickthall, Marjorie L. C., <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>-<a href='#Page_288'>288</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Pierce, Dr. Lorne, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Pierre and His People</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis</span>, (S. F. Harrison), <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Piper of Arll, The</span>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Plaint of the Children, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Plumber’s Revenge, The</span>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Poems</span> (A. L. Phelps), <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Poems Grave and Gay</span>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Pope, Sir Joseph, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Portrait of Mrs. Clarence Gagnon</span>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Possession</span>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Potato Harvest, The</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prairie Child, The</span>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prairie Greyhound</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>-<a href='#Page_208'>208</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prairie Mother, The</span>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prairie Wife, The</span>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Presbyterian Witness, The</span>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prisoner of Mademoiselle, The</span>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Privilege of the Limits, The</span>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prodigal, The</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prophecy of Merlin</span>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Prospector, The</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Pulvis et Umbra</span>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Purple Springs</span>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Quebec</span>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Quebec Gazette</span>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Quebec Magazine, The</span>, <a href='#Page_392'>392</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Quebec Under Two Flags</span>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Queen’s Quarterly</span>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Quest of Alistair, The</span>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Radiant Road, The</span>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Raid from Beauséjour, The</span>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Rand, Sheila, (pseud.), <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Rand, Silas T., <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Rand, Theodore Harding, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rapids, The</span>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rapid, The</span>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Rattray, W. J., <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rayton</span>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Reade, John, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_365'>365</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Recessional</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Recorder, Acadian, The</span>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Red Fox</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Red Headed Windego</span>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Redpath, Beatrice, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Reduction of Louisbourg, The</span>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Reminiscences of a Raconteur</span>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>-<a href='#Page_328'>328</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Reverie, A</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rhymes of a Rolling Stone</span>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Richardson, Major John</span>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>-<a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>-<a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Riders of the Plains, The</span>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ridgeway</span>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Right of Way, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rilla of Ingleside</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rising Village, The</span>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rivers of Canada, The</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Roberts, Charles, G. D., <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>-<a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>-<a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Roberts, Lloyd, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-<a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Roberts, Theodore, Goodridge, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Robertson, John Ross, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Robespierre</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rododactulos</span>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rod of the Lone Patrol</span>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Romany of the Snows, A</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Rose, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rose à Charlitte</span>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rose of Acadie</span>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Rose of a Nation’s Thanks, The</span>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Ross, G. W., <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Rothwell-Christie, Anna, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Roughing it in the Bush</span>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Royal Gazette and New Brunswick Advertiser</span>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Royal St. John Gazette and Nova Scotia Intelligencer</span>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Ryerson, Egerton, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Salt</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Salverson, Laura Goodman, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sam Slick</span>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sam Slick’s Wise Saws and Modern Instances</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Samson</span>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sangster, Charles, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-<a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sanio</span>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sapphics</span>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sappho</span>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sappho in Leucadia</span>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sartor Resartus</span>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Saul</span>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>-<a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Saunders, Marshall, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sa’-Zada Tales</span>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Scadding, H., <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Scott, Duncan Campbell, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>-<a href='#Page_183'>183</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>-<a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Scott, Frederick, G., <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>-<a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>-<a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Scrace, Richard, (<span class='it'>pseud.</span>), <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Scriven, Joseph, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>-<a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sea Dogs and Men at Arms</span>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Seamark, A</span>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Search for the Western Sea</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Seasons of the Gods, The</span>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>-<a href='#Page_225'>225</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Season, Ticket, The</span>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Seats of the Mighty, The</span>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Second Chance, The</span>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Second Concession of Deer, The</span> <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Secret of Heroism, The</span>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sedan</span>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Selections from Canadian Poets</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Selections from Canadian Prose</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Selections from Tennyson</span>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Selections of Canadian Poetry</span>, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Selfridge, Erica, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>September</span>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sergeant Blue</span>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Service, Robert, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a>, <a href='#Page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Seton, Ernest Thompson, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>-<a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sewell, Jonathan, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shacklocker, The</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shadow River</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shamballah</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Shanly, Charles D., <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sheard, Virna, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sheep-washing, The</span>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Shepard, Odell, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shepherd’s Purse</span>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sherman, Francis, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>-<a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shining Cross of Rigaud, The</span>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shining Ship, The</span>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_228'>228</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ships of St. John, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Shooting of Dan McGrew, The</span>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>-<a href='#Page_274'>274</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Shortt, Adam, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Siege of Quebec, The</span>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Silent Toast, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Silver, Arthur, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Silver Maple, The</span>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sime, J. G., <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party</span>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sister to Evangeline, A</span>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sky Pilot, The</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sleeping Giant</span>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Smith, Goldwin, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Smith, William, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Smith, William Wye, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Smythe, Albert Ernest Stafford, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>-<a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Snider, C. H. J., <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Snow</span>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Snowflakes and Sunbeams</span>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Solitary Woodsman, The</span>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Song My Paddle Sings, The</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of a Sourdough</span>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of Heroic Days</span>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of the Common Day</span>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of the Great Dominion</span>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>-<a href='#Page_384'>384</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of the Prairie Land</span>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of the Sea Children</span>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of Ukraina</span>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songs of Vagabondia</span>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Songster, The</span>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Son of the Sea, A</span>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sons of Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sower, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sowing Seeds in Danny</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Soul’s Quest, The</span>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Span o’ Life, The</span>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Specimen Spinster, The</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Spring on Mattagami</span>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Spring Song</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Standard Canadian Reciter, The</span>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Stansbury, Joseph, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>St. Cuthbert’s</span>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Stead, Robert J. C., <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Stewart, George, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Stewart’s Quarterly</span>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, The</span>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>St. Lawrence Basin and its Borderlands, The</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Story Girl, The</span>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Study of Shadows, A</span>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, A</span>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Street, Eloise, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Stringer, Arthur, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>-<a href='#Page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Strong, Ruth, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sullivan, Alan, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Sullivan, Archibald, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town</span>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>-<a href='#Page_329'>329</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Swartz Diamond, The</span>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Tales of the Selkirks</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Tall Master, The</span>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Tangled in the Stars</span>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Tantramar Revisited</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Tecumseh</span>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Te Deum</span>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Teskey, Adeline M., <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Thomson, Edward W., <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>-<a href='#Page_260'>260</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Thomson, John Stuart, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Thor</span>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Thoroughbreds</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Three-Flower Petals</span>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson, A</span>, (<span class='it'>A Seamark</span>), <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Thrown In</span>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Time</span>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To a Canadian Aviator</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>-<a href='#Page_353'>353</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To a Canadian Lad Killed in the War</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To a Lady</span>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To Ann</span>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Toast, A</span>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Todd, Alpheus, <a href='#Page_397'>397</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To England</span>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To Him That Hath</span>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To Mary</span>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To the Birds</span>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To the Linnet</span>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To the Mayflower</span>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To the Memory of Rupert Brooke</span>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>To the United States</span>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Trail of Ninety-Eight, The</span>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Trail of the Sandhill Stag, The</span>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Trail to Lillooet, The</span>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Train Among the Hills, The</span>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Traits of American Humor</span>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Translation of a Savage, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories</span>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Treasure of Ho, The</span>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Treasure Valley</span>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Treasury of Canadian Verse, A</span>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Trotter, Bernard Freeman, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Truce of the Manitou, The</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Twenty-First Burr, The</span>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Two Little Savages</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Tyrrell, J. W., <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Ultimate Hour, The</span>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Unabsolved</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Under Canvas</span>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Undertow, The</span>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Unheroic North, The</span>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>University Magazine, The</span>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Vagabond Song, A</span>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Van Elsen</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Vapor and Blue</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Vancouver</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Variations on a Seventeenth Century Theme</span>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>-<a href='#Page_174'>174</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Vestal Virgin, The</span>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Vestigia</span>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Via Borealis</span>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Victory in Defeat</span>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Viking Blood, The</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Viking Heart, The</span>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Vikings of the Pacific, The</span>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Voice and the Dusk, The</span>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Voyage from Montreal Through the Continent of North America</span>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wacousta</span>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>-<a href='#Page_92'>92</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Walker, Louisa, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Wallace, Frederick William, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>-<a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wanderlied</span>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Watchers in the Swamp, The</span>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Watchers of the Trails, The</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wanderings of An Artist Among the Indian Tribes of North America</span>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Watson, Albert D., <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Watson, Robert, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wave-Won</span>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wa-Wa</span>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Way of the Sea, The</span>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Weather Breeder, The</span>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Weaver, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Weavers, The</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Web of Time, The</span>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Week, The</span>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>We, too, Shall Sleep</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Welcome Home</span>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Welsh, Canon, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Western Rambles</span>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Westminster, The</span>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Wetherald, Ethelwyn, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>What a Friend We Have in Jesus</span>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>-<a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>What Time the Morning Stars Arise</span>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>When Albani Sang</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>When Half Gods Go</span>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>When Valmond Came to Pontiac</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Where the Sugar Maple Grows</span>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>White Comrade</span>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>White Garden, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>White Gull, The</span>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>White Wampum, The</span>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Why Don’t You Get Married?</span> <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Wigle, Hamilton, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wild Animals I Have Known</span>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Wilkins, Harriet A., <a href='#Page_342'>342</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Williamson, Mrs. J. B., <a href='#Page_346'>346</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Willison, Sir John, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Window Gazer, The</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Winter</span>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Winter Night, A</span>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wire Tappers, The</span>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wise Saws</span>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Witching of Elspie, The</span>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Witch of Endor, The</span>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>-<a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>With Rod and Gun in Canada</span>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Wood, William, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wolverine</span>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Woman in the Rain, The</span>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Woman’s Part, The</span>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wood Carver’s Wife, The</span>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wood Myth and Fable</span>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wooing of Monsieur Cuerrier, The</span>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Work for the Night is Coming</span>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Works of Gilbert Parker, The</span>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>World-Mother, The</span>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>World in the Crucible, The</span>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wreath of Canadian Poetry</span>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Wreck of the Julie Plante, The</span>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Wrong, George M., <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Yeigh, Kate Westlake, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</p> -<p class='line'>Yorke, Milton W., (Derby Bill), <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Young Baptist, The</span>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>You’ll Travel Far and Wide</span>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>You Never Know Your Luck</span>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Young Knight, The</span>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>.</p> -<p class='line'><span class='it'>Young Seigneur, The</span>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<div class='lgc' style='margin-top:6em;'> <!-- rend=';fs:.8em;' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.8em;'>Warwick Bros. & Rutter, Limited</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.8em;'>Printers and Bookbinders</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.8em;'>Toronto</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:4em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:1.2em;'>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. -Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been -employed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious -printer errors occur.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A cover was created for this eBook and is placed in the -public domain.</p> - -<p class='line'> </p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIGHWAYS OF CANADIAN LITERATURE ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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