[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. Phelps), 295.
_Poems Grave and Gay_, 224.
Pope, Sir Joseph, 398.
_Portrait of Mrs. Clarence Gagnon_, 161.
_Possession_, 313.
_Potato Harvest, The_, 120, 135.
_Prairie Child, The_, 312.
_Prairie Greyhound_, 201, 202, 207-208, 277.
_Prairie Mother, The_, 312.
_Prairie Wife, The_, 312.
_Presbyterian Witness, The_, 358.
_Prisoner of Mademoiselle, The_, 248.
_Privilege of the Limits, The_, 259.
_Prodigal, The_, 201, 227.
_Prophecy of Merlin_, 25, 48.
_Prospector, The_, 254.
_Pulvis et Umbra_, 157, 158.
_Purple Springs_, 303.

_Quebec_, 221.
_Quebec Gazette_, 390.
_Quebec Magazine, The_, 392.
_Quebec Under Two Flags_, 398.
_Queen’s Quarterly_, 394.
_Quest of Alistair, The_, 307.

_Radiant Road, The_, 220.
_Raid from Beauséjour, The_, 248.
Rand, Sheila, (pseud.), 346.
Rand, Silas T., 361.
Rand, Theodore Harding, 385.
_Rapids, The_, 305.
_Rapid, The_, 99.
Rattray, W. 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. B., 346.
Willison, Sir John, 399.
_Window Gazer, The_, 310.
_Winter_, 120.
_Winter Night, A_, 188.
_Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada_, 45, 401.
_Wire Tappers, The_, 310.
_Wise Saws_, 79, 82, 83, 84, 86.
_Witching of Elspie, The_, 17, 262.
_Witch of Endor, The_, 315-317.
_With Rod and Gun in Canada_, 402.
Wood, William, 398.
_Wolverine_, 207.
_Woman in the Rain, The_, 226.
_Woman’s Part, The_, 343.
_Wood Carver’s Wife, The_, 283, 319-321.
_Wood Myth and Fable_, 252.
_Wooing of Monsieur Cuerrier, The_, 261.
_Work for the Night is Coming_, 361.
_Works of Gilbert Parker, The_, 211.
_World-Mother, The_, 191.
_World in the Crucible, The_, 246.
_Wreath of Canadian Poetry_, 386.
_Wreck of the Julie Plante, The_, 270.
Wrong, George M., 399.

Yeigh, Kate Westlake, 299.
Yorke, Milton W., (Derby Bill), 271.
_Young Baptist, The_, 287.
_You’ll Travel Far and Wide_, 214.
_You Never Know Your Luck_, 244.
_Young Knight, The_, 351.
_Young Seigneur, The_, 242.

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