As I glance over my library shelves I find indeed that historical literature has continued since the days of Garneau and Ferland, to enlist the earnest and industrious study of Canadians with more or less success. In English Canada, John Charles Dent produced a work on the political development of Canada from the union of 1841 until the confederation of 1867, which was written with fairness and ability, but he was an Englishman by birth and education, though resident for many years in the city of Toronto.[34] And here let me observe that though such men as Dent, Heavysege, Faillon, Daniel Wilson, Hunt, D'Arcy McGee and Goldwin Smith were not born or educated in Canada like Haliburton, Logan, J. W. Dawson, Joseph Howe, Wilmot, Cartier, Garneau, or Fréchette, but only came to this country in the maturity of their mental powers, yet to men of their class the Dominion owes a heavy debt of gratitude for the ability and earnestness with which they have elevated the intellectual standard of the community where they have laboured. Although all of us may not be prepared to accept the conclusions of the historian, or approve the judgment of the political critic; although we may regret that a man of such deep scholarship and wide culture as Goldwin Smith has never yet been able to appreciate the Canadian or growing national sentiment of this dependency, yet who can doubt, laying aside all political or personal prejudice, that he, like the others I have named, has stimulated intellectual development in his adopted home, and so far has given us compensation for some utterances which, so many Canadians honestly believe, mar an otherwise useful and brilliant career. Such literary men have undoubtedly their uses, since they seem specially intended by a wise dispensation of affairs to cure us of too much self-complacency, and to prevent us from falling into a condition of mental stagnation by giving us from time to time abundant material for reflection. So much, by way of parenthesis, is due to the able men who have adopted Canada as their home and have been labouring in various vocations to stimulate the intellectual growth of this Dominion. A most20 accurate historical record of the same period of our history as that reviewed by Dent was made in French about the same time by Louis Turcotte of Quebec.[35] Mr. Benjamin Sulte, a member of this society, has also given us the results of many years of conscientious research in his "Histoire des Canadiens," which is not so well known as it ought to be, probably on account of its cumbrous size and mode of publication.[36] The Abbé Casgrain, also a member of the society and a most industrious author, has recently devoted himself with true French Canadian fervour to the days of Montcalm and Lévis, and by the aid of a large mass of original documents has thrown much light on a very interesting and important epoch of the history of America.[37] Dr. Kingsford with patience and industry has continued his history of Canada, which is distinguished by accuracy and research.[38] It is not my intention to enumerate all those names which merit remark in this connection, for this is not a collection of bibliographical notes,[39] but simply a review of the more salient features of our intellectual development in the well-marked periods of our history. Indeed it is gratifying to us to know that the Royal Society comprises within its ranks nearly all the historical writers in Canada, and it would seem too much like pure egotism were I to dilate on their respective performances. Of poets since the days of Crémazie we have had our full proportion, and it is encouraging to know that the poems of Fréchette,—whose best work has been crowned by the French Academy,—LeMay, Reade, Mair, Roberts, Bliss Carman, Wilfred Campbell and Lampman have gained recognition from time to time in the world of letters outside of Canada.[40][B] We have yet to produce in English Canada a book of poems which can touch the sympathies and live on the lips of the world like those of Whittier and Longfellow, but we need not despair since even in the country which gave these birth they have not their compeers. Some even declare that the only bard of promise who appears in these days to touch that chord of nature which makes the whole world kin is James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, despite his tendency to exaggerate21 provincial dialect and make his true poetic genius too subordinate to what becomes at last an affectation and a mere mannerism which wearies by its very repetition. Even in England there is hesitation in choosing a poet laureate; there are Swinburne, Morris and other poets, but not another Tennyson, and it has been even suggested that the honour might pass to a master of poetic prose, John Ruskin, whose brilliant genius has been ever devoted to a lofty idealism which would make the world much happier and better. At the present time Canadian poets obtain a place with regularity in the best class of American magazines, and not infrequently their verse reaches a higher level than the majority of poetic aspirants who appear in the same field of poetry; but for one I am not an ardent admirer of American magazine poems which appear too often mere machine work and not the results of that true poetic inspiration which alone can achieve permanent fame. The poems of the well known American authors, Aldrich, Gilder and Stedman, have certainly an easy rhythmical flow and an artistic finish which the majority of Canadian poetic aspirants should study with far more closeness. At the same time it may be said that even these artists do not often surpass in poetic thought the best productions of the Canadians to whom I have referred as probably illustrating most perfectly the highest development so far among us of this department of belles-lettres. It is not often that one comes across more exquisitely conceived poems than some of those written by Mr. John Reade, whom the laborious occupation of journalism and probably the past indifference of a Canadian public to Canadian poetry have for a long while diverted from a literary field where it would seem he should have won a wider fame. Among the verses which one can read time and again are those of which the first lines are
"In my heart are many chambers through which I wander free,
Some are furnished, some are empty, some are sombre, some are light;
Some are open to all comers, and of some I keep the key,
And I enter in the stillness of the night."[41][C]
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It would be interesting as well as instructive if some competent critic, with the analytical faculty and the poetic instinct of Matthew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve, were to study the English and French Canadian poets and show whether they are mere imitators of the best models of French and English literature, or whether their work contains within itself those germs which give promise of original fruition in the future. It will be remembered that the French critic, though a poet of merit himself, has spoken of what he calls "the radical inadequacy of French poetry." In his opinion, whatever talent the French poets have for strophe and line, their work, as a rule is "too slight, too soon read, too poor in ideas, to influence a serious mind for any length of time." No doubt many others think that, in comparison with the best conceptions of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Browning and Tennyson, French poetry is, generally speaking, inadequate for the expression of the most sublime thoughts, of the strongest passion, or of the most powerful imagination, and though it must always please us by its easy rhythm and lucidity of style, it fails to make that vivid impression on the mind and senses which is the best test of that true poetic genius which influences generations and ever lives in the hearts of the people. It represents in some respects the lightness and vivacity of the French intellectual temperament under ordinary conditions, and not the strength of the national character, whose depths are only revealed at some crisis which evokes a deep sentiment of patriotism. "Partant pour la Syrie," so often heard in the days of the last Bonaparte regime, probably illustrated this lighter tendency of the French mind just as the "Marseillaise," the noblest and most impressive of popular poetic outbursts, illustrated national passion evoked by abnormal conditions. French Canadian poetry has been often purely imitative of French models, like Musset and Gauthier, both in style and sentiment, and consequently lacked strength and originality. It might be thought that in this new country poets would be inspired by original conceptions—that the intellectual fruition would be fresh and vigorous like some natural products that grow so luxuriantly on the virginal soil of the new Dominion, and not like those which grow on land which is renewed and enriched by artificial means after centuries23 of growth. Perhaps the literature of a colonial dependency, or a relatively new country, must necessarily in its first stages be imitative, and it is only now and then an original mind bursts the fetters of intellectual subordination. In the United States Emerson and Hawthorne probably best represent the original thought and imagination of that comparatively new country, just as Aldrich and Howells represent in the first case English culture in poetry, and in the other the sublimated essence of reportorial realism. The two former are original thinkers, the two others pure imitators. Walt Whitman's poems certainly show at times much power and originality of conception, but after all they are simply the creations of an eccentric genius and illustrate a phase of that Realism towards which fiction even in America has been tending of late, and which has been already degraded in France to a Naturalism which is positively offensive. He has not influenced to any perceptible extent the intellect of his generation or elevated the thoughts of his countrymen like the two great minds I have just named. Yet even Whitman's success, relatively small as it was in his own country, arose chiefly from the fact that he attempted to be an American poet, representing the pristine vigour and natural freedom of a new land. It is when French Canadian poets become thoroughly Canadian by the very force of the inspiration of some Canadian subject they have chosen, that we can see them at their best. Fréchette has all the finish of the French poets, and while it cannot be said that he has yet originated great thoughts which are likely to live among even the people whom he has so often instructed and delighted, yet he has given us poems like that on the discovery of the Mississippi,[D] which proves that he is capable of even better things if he would always seek inspiration from the sources of the deeply interesting history of his own country, or enter into the inner mysteries and social relations of his own people, rather than dwell on the lighter shades and incidents of their lives. Perhaps in some respects Crémazie had greater capabilities for the poems of deep passion or vivid imagination than any of his successors in literature; the few national24 poems he left behind are a promise of what he could have produced had the circumstances of his later life been happier.[E] After all, the poetry that lives is the poetry of human life and human sympathy, of joy and sorrow, rather than verses on mountains, rivers and lakes, or sweetly worded sonnets to Madame B. or Mademoiselle C. When we compare the English with the French Canadian poets we can see what an influence the more picturesque and interesting history of French Canada exercises on the imagination of its writers. The poets that claim Ontario for their home give us rhythmical and pleasing descriptions of the lake and river scenery of which the varied aspects and moods might well captivate the eye of the poet as well as of the painter. It is very much painting in both cases; the poet should be an artist by temperament equally with the painter who puts his thoughts on canvas and not in words. Descriptions of our meadows, prairies and forests, with their wealth of herbage and foliage, or artistic sketches of pretty bits of lake scenery have their limitations as respects their influence on a people. Great thoughts or deeds are not bred by scenery. The American poem that has captured the world is not any one of Bryant's delightful sketches of the varied landscape of his native land, but Longfellow's Evangeline, which is a story of the "affection that hopes, and endures and is patient." Dollard, and the Lady of Fort La Tour are themes which we do not find in prosaic Ontario, whose history is only a century old—a history of stern materialism as a rule, rarely picturesque or romantic, and hardly ever heroic except in some episodes of the war of 1812–15, in which Canadians, women as well as men, did their duty faithfully to king and country, though their deeds have never yet been adequately told in poem or prose. The story of Laura Secord's toilsome journey on a June day eighty years ago[41a] seems as susceptible of strong poetic treatment as Paul Revere's Ride, told in matchless verse by Longfellow.
I think if we compare the best Canadian poems with the same class of literature in Australia the former do not at all lose25 by the comparison. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of a friend in South Australia I have had many opportunities of late of studying the best work of Australian writers, chiefly poets and novelists,[42] and have come to the conclusion that at least the poets of both hemispheres—for to fiction we cannot make even a pretense—reflect credit on each country. In one respect indeed Canadians can claim a superiority over their fellow-citizens of the British Empire in that far off Australian land, and that is, in the fact that we have poets, and historians, and essayists, who write the languages of France and England with purity and even elegance; that the grace and precision of the French tongue have their place in this country alongside the vigorous and copious expression of the English language. More than that, the Canadians have behind them a history which is well calculated to stimulate writers to give utterance to national sentiment. I mean national in the sense of being thoroughly imbued with a love for the country, its scenery, its history and its aspirations. The people of that great island continent possess great natural beauties and riches—flowers and fruits of every kind flourish there in rare profusion, and gold and gems are among the treasures of the soil, but its scenery is far less varied and picturesque than ours and its history is but of yesterday compared with that of Canada. Australians cannot point to such historic ground as is found from Louisbourg to Quebec, or from Montreal to Champlain, the battle ground of nations whose descendants now live under one flag, animated by feelings of a common interest and a common aspiration for the future!
Perhaps if I were at any time inclined to be depressed as to the future of Canada, I should find some relief in those poems by Canadian authors which take frequently an elevated and patriotic range of thought and vision, and give expression to aspirations worthy of men born and living in this country. When some men doubt the future and would see us march into the ranks of other states, with heads bowed down in confession of our failure to hold our own on this continent and build up a new nation always in the closest connection with England, I ask them to turn to the poems of Joseph Howe and read that inspiring26 poetic tribute to the mother country, "All hail to the day when the Britons came over"—
"Every flash of her genius our pathway enlightens,
Every field she explores we are beckoned to tread,
Each laurel she gathers, our future day brightens—
We joy with her living and mourn with her dead."[43]
Or read that tribute which the French Canadian laureate, Fréchette, has been fain to pay to the English flag under whose folds his country has enjoyed so much freedom and protection for its institutions:
"Regarde me disait mon père
Ce drapeau vaillamment porté;
Il a fait ton pays prospère
Et respecte ta liberté.
"C'est le drapeau de l'Angleterre;
Sans tache, sur le firmament,
Presque à tous les points de la terre
Il flotte glorieusement."
Or take up a volume by Roberts and read that frequently quoted poem of which these are the closing lines:
"Shall not our love this rough sweet land make sure?
Her bounds preserve inviolate, though we die.
O strong hearts of the North,
Let flame your loyalty forth,
And put the craven and base to an open shame,
Till earth shall know the Child of Nations by her name."
Even Mr. Edgar has forgotten the astute lawyer and the politician in his national song, "This Canada of Ours," and has given expression to the deep sentiment that lies as I have said in the heart of every true Canadian and forces him at times to words like these:
"Strong arms shall guard our cherished homes
When darkest danger lowers,
And with our life-blood we'll defend
This Canada of ours,
Fair Canada,
Dear Canada,
This Canada of ours."
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Such poems are worth a good many political speeches even in parliament so far as their effect upon the hearts and sympathies is concerned. We all remember a famous man once said, "Let me make all the ballads, and I care not who makes the laws of a people."