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.