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Title: Intimacies in Canadian Life and Letters
Date of first publication: 1927
Author: Thomas O'Hagan (1855-1939)
Contributor: Benjamin Sulte (1841-1923)
Date first posted: April 10, 2014
Date last updated: April 10, 2014
Faded Page eBook #20140426

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines




INTIMACIES IN

CANADIAN LIFE AND

LETTERS



BY

THOMAS O'HAGAN, M.A.

Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D.

Member of the Authors' Club of London, England, and of the Dante
Society, Florence, Italy




_With a Letter from the late Benjamin Sulte, LL.D.
  Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada_




THE GRAPHIC PUBLISHERS, LIMITED

OTTAWA, CANADA




BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

POETRY

  _A Gate of Flowers
  In Dreamland
  Songs of the Settlement
  In the Heart of the Meadow
  Songs of Heroic Days
  Collected Poems_


PROSE

  _Studies in Poetry
  Canadian Essays
  Essays--Literary, Critical and Historical
  Chats by the Fireside
  Essays on Catholic Life
  With Staff and Scrip
  The Genesis of Christian Art
  Father Morice_ (_In Ryerson History Readers_)


IN PREPARATION

  _Dean Harris_ (_In Makers of Canadian Literature_)




COPYRIGHT, 1927

BY THOMAS O'HAGAN




_To_

JOHN SQUAIR, M.A.

PROFESSOR EMERITUS IN FRENCH

_of_

THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

BROAD AND SYMPATHETIC SCHOLAR

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED




[Illustration: Thomas O'Hagan]




For permission to publish in the original and in translation the poems
_Le Canada, Mes Petits Amis, François Xavier Garneau, Reproches au Mois
de Mai_ and _Aux Arbres_ our thanks are due respectively to the
Librairie Beauchemin, Granger Frères, Gérard Malcheloss, Joseph Ferland
and Blanche Lamontagne Beauregard, all of Montreal.

As to the use of the other poems discussed in our volume, we regret
being unable to reach their respective publishers.




PREFACE

In presenting to our readers this volume, our chief motive is to
witness to the intellectual growth of our Canadian people but more
especially to the intellectual advancement of those who, settled upon
the banks of the St. Lawrence for three hundred years, have not only
preserved in its integrity, here in the New World, the idiom of their
forebears, but have developed a literature not unworthy of the land of
Molière, Lamartine, Sainte Beuve and Victor Hugo.

It will be remembered that Lord Dufferin, Governor-General of Canada,
on the eve of bidding adieu to the Canadian people in June, 1878, when
replying to an address presented to His Excellency by the Legislative
Assembly of Quebec, used these significant words: "My warmest
aspiration for this Province has always been to see its French
inhabitants executing for Canada the functions which France herself
performs for Europe."

Is it not then fortunate for us as Canadians that we have within our
Dominion a people who represent the idealism and culture of France?
For will not the very diversity of race-gifts which marks our Canadian
people aid us, not only in working out our institutions of Government,
but in lending a many-sided splendour to the intellectual achievement
of Canada within the domain of science, art and letters.

We would therefore desire that the English-speaking people of Canada
might learn something of the contribution of French Canada to Canadian
literature, as we would desire that all French Canadians might know and
appreciate what English Canadians have done, and are doing, for
Canadian letters.

The six papers in this volume have appeared during the past few years
in various publications---"French-Canadian Poets and Poetry," "Some
French-Canadian Prose Writers" and "A Canadian Dialect Poet" in the
_Catholic World_ of New York; "Is the French Spoken in Quebec a
Patois?" in the _American Catholic Quarterly Review_ of Philadelphia;
and "The Patriotic Note in Canadian Poetry" and "A Canadian Humourist
in Parliament" in _The Statesman_ of Toronto, and to these periodicals
we express our thanks for permission to publish them in book form.

[Illustration: Signature of Thomas O'Hagan]




LETTER FROM DR. BENJAMIN SULTE, F.R.S.C.

Mon cher Dr. O'Hagan:

Vous pouvez dire aux lecteurs de langue anglaise d'Ontario que la
littérature des Canadiens-Français n'est pas du tout une copie ou
imitation des livres de France, mais que c'est du pur Canadien; et,
quant à la langue c'est un français aussi pur que celui des écrivains
de la France.

Une dizaine d'ouvrages de la province de Québec ont été couronnés par
l'Académie Française, mais il y en a beaucoup plus également
recommandables, qui n'ont pas été soumis au jugement de cette académie.

Nous avons donc une littérature vraiment nationale et copieuse, qui
mérite l'attention des lecteurs de toutes les provinces du Canada.
C'est pour nous un titre de gloire.  Voilà la vérité!

BENJAMIN SULTE.




CONTENTS


PREFACE


LETTER FROM DR. SULTE


CHAPTER I.

FRENCH-CANADIAN POETS AND POETRY


CHAPTER II.

A CANADIAN HUMOURIST IN PARLIAMENT


CHAPTER III.

IS THE FRENCH SPOKEN IN QUEBEC A PATOIS?


CHAPTER IV.

THE PATRIOTIC NOTE IN CANADIAN POETRY


CHAPTER V.

SOME FRENCH-CANADIAN PROSE WRITERS


CHAPTER VI.

A CANADIAN DIALECT POET




FRENCH-CANADIAN POETS AND POETRY



CHAPTER I.

FRENCH-CANADIAN POETS AND POETRY

In the land through which flows the St. Lawrence, in which is enshrined
the memory of a Frontenac, a Champlain and a Bishop Laval, there has
taken root and blossomed a distinctive Canadian literature which,
during the interval of years since the Bourbon lilies were snatched
from the brow of New France, has developed in beauty and strength with
a flavour and form all its own.  This literature is, indeed, of the
household of France speaking to the soul with the accent and grace of
the Motherland, but enriched by the breath and spirit of an heroic
people whose gift of toil has turned forests into smiling gardens, and
filled temples with the splendour of strong and heroic faith.

French-Canadian literature and especially its poetry is a mirror of the
people.  It is replete with joy and beauty and the fine optimism of
consecrated hearts.  The French-Canadian poet since the days of Michael
Bibaud has woven into his verse the finest of idealism.  His muse, too,
is aflame with patriotism.  He owes no double allegiance.  For him is
the St. Lawrence with all its historic memories and not the Thames.
His heart follows the _voyageur_ and the _coureur de bois_.

The question arises here: When did French-Canadian poetry with its
individual note and form begin?  From the fall of Quebec in 1760 to the
year 1850--that is, for nearly a hundred years--the genius of French
Canada was groping towards the light in dimness and with unsteady step.

Imagine, if you will, seventy thousand people subjected to conquerors,
aliens in race and sympathy, and completely out of touch with the life,
yearnings and ideals of New France--conquerors who sought to build a
new horizon around every French Canadian that would limit alike his
vision and his thinking.

These hundred years were, indeed, for the French Canadians, truly years
of struggle, during which they fought for freedom and the conservation
and integrity of their race.

Then it was that the French Canadian found his soul, and finding it in
the lists of victory, turned his mind to the higher things of the
spirit.  French-Canadian poetry really dates from about the year 1850.
Benjamin Sulte, perhaps the best authority we have on the intellectual
development of French Canada, tells us that not until 1850 or 1860 do
we find much individuality in the poetic work of the French Canadian.
Till then the French Canadian had lived on the literary traditions of
the end of the reign of Louis XIV, and the first half of that of Louis
XV.

The first poet of note in French Canada was unquestionably Octave
Crémazie, who was born in the city of Quebec, April, 1827, and pursued
his studies in the Seminary of Quebec.  Crémazie had a rich and
cultivated mind, and the lofty and ardent note of Canadianism in his
work entitles him to a first place among the patriotic poets of Canada.
His knowledge of literature was very extensive, being thoroughly
familiar with the great poets of England, Germany, Spain and Italy.  He
is said to have quoted with equal facility Sophocles, the great
Sanscrit Epic, Ramayana, the Latin satirist, Juvenal and the Arab and
Scandinavian poets.

Strength, fire and energy mark Crémazie's lines.  His love for his
native land was a very passion, and when a financial catastrophe
removed him from its shores, he yearned and mourned for his beloved
Canada, homesick and sad unto death.  From 1852 to 1862--and these are
the years that verily mark the beginning of French-Canadian
poetry--Crémazie wrote and published _Le Drapeau de Carillon, Le
Canada, Un Soldat de l'Empire, Aux Canadiens-Français, Le Vieux Soldat
Canadien, L'Alouette_ and _Promenade des Trois Morts_.  From 1862 to
1878 he spent in Paris in enforced exile, and his diary, written during
the siege of Paris by the Germans, is full of interest and the wise
judgments and observations of a poet and scholar.  The "Morning Star"
of French-Canadian poetry lies buried in the cemetery of Le Havre in
the land of his ancestors, but far from the shores he loved to chant in
song.

We reproduce here in the original and in translation his patriotic poem
_Le Canada_, not that it presents Crémazie at his best, but because it
strikes the dominant note in his work--patriotism:


  LE CANADA

  Il est sous le soleil une terre bénie,
    Où le ciel a versé ses dons les plus brillants,
  Où répandant ses biens la nature agrandie,
    A ses vastes forêts mêle ses lacs géants.

  Sur ces bords enchantés notre mère la France
    A laissé de sa gloire un immortel sillon,
  Précipitant ses flots vers l'océan immense
    Le noble Saint-Laurent redit encore son nom.

  Heureux qui la connaît, plus heureux qui l'habite
    Et ne quittant jamais pour chercher d'autres cieux
  Les rives du grand fleuve où le bonheur l'invite,
    Sait vivre et sait mourir où dorment ses aïeux.


  CANADA

  There is a land of matchless worth,
    Where heaven its gifts has cast,
  And nature prodigal and rich,
    Sown lakes mid forests vast.

  Along these enchanted shores, where France
    Has left her heritage of fame,
  The broad St. Lawrence rolls its tide,
    Proclaiming loud her glorious name.

  Oh, happy he who seeks no skies
    Where strangers toil and weep,
  But finds felicity and joy
    Where his forefathers sleep.
                              --_T. O'H._


There are several French-Canadian writers whose work both in prose and
verse is full of distinction, but who are not known as poets.  The late
Abbé Casgrain has written several poems of merit and has made an
admirable translation into French verse of Byron's _Prisoner of
Chillon_; but it is rather as a prose writer, historian, critic and
chronicler, that Abbé Casgrain will be known.  He has been termed the
foster-father of French-Canadian literature, and sixty years ago
gathered around him in the very shadow of the Quebec Cathedral a number
of ardent literary souls such as Dr. La Rue, Joseph Charles Taché,
Antoine Gerin-Lajoie and the aged Philip Aubert de Gaspé.  Again the
late Sir Adolphe Routhier, one of the sanest and most cultured critics
in Canada, the author of our Canadian national song, _O Canada_, has
done some good work in verse, but his place among French-Canadian
writers must assuredly be that of the essayist, accomplished critic and
novelist.

Napoléon Legendre, who was born in Nicolet in 1841, is also both prose
writer and poet.  This gifted French Canadian, who received the
honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Laval University in 1890,
reveals much delicacy and sensibility in his poetic work.  In
translating Le Soir from his volume _Les Perce-Neige_, published in
1886, we have endeavoured to preserve the poetic mould of the original.


  LE SOIR

  La brise doucement caresse le feuillage,
    L'air est limpide et pur;
  La mer frappe sans bruit le sable du rivage
    De sa vague d'azur.

  Les rayons du soleil par de là les collines
    Ont incliné leur feux,
  Et leurs derniers reflets enteintes purpurines
    S'étendent dans les cieux.

  Le ruisseau près de nous promène son murmure
    Sur un lit de gazon;
  Le rossignol caché dans son nid de verdure
    Commence sa chanson.

  Chante, poète ailé; ta voix sonore
    Est un ècho du ciel;
  Pour publier le Dieu que tout mortel adore,
    La branche est ton autel.


  EVENING

  The breeze touches lightly the foliage,
    The air is pure as a tear;
  The sea beats noiselessly its pebbly shore
    With its blue wave so clear.

  The rays of the sun that lit up the hills
    Are now waning their fire;
  And the purple tint of each fading beam
    Creeps higher and higher.

  The brook hard by whispers its secret
    As it murmurs along;
  While the nightingale hid in its green-clad nest
    Trills a passionate song.

  Sing, winged poet, O sing!  Thy voice
    Is an echo on high
  To proclaim the God we adore
    In rapt notes of the sky.
                              --_T. O'H._


There are several minor poets whose work deserves our notice.  A little
volume, quite unpretentious, bearing the title _Au Foyer de Mon
Presbytère_, from the pen of M. l'Abbé Apollinarie Gingras, contains
some charming little lyrics full of simplicity and feeling.  The _Avant
Propos_, or Introduction, to the modest volume, is so full of quaint
humour and clever allusions as to justify a presentation of the
following tender memory-laden lines, _Souvenir du Foyer_, in the
original and in translation:


  SOUVENIR DU FOYER

  Au sein des plaisirs de la ville
    Mon âme est comme un grand tombeau,
  Je rêve un bonheur plus tranquille,
    Et je regrette le hameau.
  Du fond du cœur à ma paupière
    Je sens des pleurs souvent monter:
  Je me rappelle la chaumière--
    Et j'entends mes oiseaux chanter.

  Quand l'impitoyable tristesse
    Jette à mon front son voile noir;
  Quand l'amitié surtout me blesse!
    Quand dans mon âme il se fait soir;
  Du fond du cœur à ma paupiere
    Je sens encore des pleurs monter:
  Je me rappelle la chaumière--
    J'entends mes sœurs gaimant causer!

  Quand sur la ville étincelante
    La lune au ciel vogue sans bruit;
  Quand sur la neige éblouissante
    Rayonne doucement la nuit:
  Encore une larme importune
    Du fond du cœur monte toujours:--
  Reverrai-je tes clairs de lune
    O ma chaumiére, O mes amours?


  A FIRESIDE MEMORY

  Amid the pleasures of the town
    My soul is void of mirth,
  For I dream of the quiet happiness
    In the village of my birth:
  And tears oft stir my heart
    As memory beats its wing;
  And I see again a cottage bright
    And hear the young birds sing.

  When the gloom of pitiless sorrow
    Shades my brow with its dark veil;
  When friendship, too, lies wounded
    And my soul is tossed by gale;
  Then tears will stir my heart,
    As I dream where once I sat,
  In the old loved cottage by the lane,
    And heard my sisters chat.

  When o'er the radiant town
    The moon in peace sails low;
  And night has softly shrouded
    The white and dazzling snow;
  Again the unbidden tear
    Bears its message like a dove--
  Shall I see again thy moonlights
    O my cottage, O my love?
                              --_T. O'H._


Perhaps no French-Canadian poet was as much the poet as the late
Pamphile Lemay.  He not only was dowered with exceptional poetic gifts,
but he looked the poet as well.  Born at Lotbinière, Quebec, the
memorable year of 1837, his first studies were pursued at the Christian
Brothers' School.  After spending a brief period in the United States,
young Lemay returned and was for some time at the Seminary in Ottawa.
Later he took up the study of law, and when the Hon. Mr. Chauveau
became Prime Minister of Quebec, he received the appointment of
Provincial Librarian, which position he held till within a few years of
his death.

Lemay had a very high artistic sense and a great spiritual endowment as
a poet.  His poetry is marked by a fine wedding of thought and diction,
and his sonnets have a rare finish.  They are decidedly the best that
have come from a French-Canadian pen.  Laval University, which does not
lightly set its approval upon literary work, bestowed upon Lemay two
gold medals--one for his fine poem, _The Discovery of Canada_, written
in 1867, and the other for his _National Hymn_, written in 1869.  In
1870 he translated into French alexandrines Longfellow's beautiful
idyll, _Evangeline_.  So well did he accomplish his task that
Longfellow wrote him that his translation had added to the worth of the
poem.

Lemay is the author of a long list of works in both prose and poetry,
among the latter two volumes bearing the titles _Les Vengeances_ and
_Une Gerbe_.  In the last named may be found a poem, _Aux Expatriés_,
which we present here in the original and in translation:


  AUX EXPATRIES

  Venez, vous tous que la Patrie
      Pleure, hélas! depuis de longs jours!
  Vous trainez une âme flétrie
      Sur des bords froids et sans amours.
  Venez, amis, avant que l'âge
      Enchaîne vos pas à jamais.
      Ah!  Vous cherchez en vain la paix
  Loin du ciel de notre village.
      Venez! le soleil luit encore!
          Sur nos grandes prairies
              Tout fleuries,
      Dorment au loin ses reflets d'or.
      Venez! la gentille hirondelle,
      Quand renaît la saison nouvelle,
      Prend toujours vers son nid fidèle
              Son essor.

  Revenez aux rives natales,
      Au toit qui vous est toujours cher!
  Ah! si nos tables sont frugales,
      Le pain de l'exil est amer!
  Hélas! que de places sont vides
      A nos foyer toujours en deuil!
      On dirait que sur chaque seuil
  Ont passé des tombeaux livides.
      Venez! le soleil luit encore!
          Sur nos grandes prairies
              Tout fleuries,
      Dorment au loin ses reflets d'or.
      Venez! la gentille hirondelle,
      Quand renaît la saison nouvelle,
      Prend toujours vers son nid fidèle
              Son essor.

  Heureux ceux qui jamais ne laissent
      Pour d'autres bords leur doux hameau,
  Comme les feuillages qui naissent
      Et qui meurent sur le rameau!
  Venez! pour que votre poussière
      Avec les cendres des aîeux,
      Repose à l'ombre des saints lieux,
  Sous l'humble croix du cimetière.
      Venez! l'e soleil luit encore!
          Sur nos grandes prairies
              Tout fleuries,
      Dorment au loin ses reflets d'or,
      Venez! la gentille hirondelle,
      Quand renaît la saison nouvelle,
      Prend toujours vers son nid fidèle
              Son essor.


  TO THE EXPATRIATED

  Return all whom your native land
      Has mourned alas! with many a tear;
  On shores bereft of warmth and love
      You drag out lives from year to year:
  Far from the skies of your natal shore
      You seek in vain content.
  Return before your steps are stayed
      And the fires of life are spent.
  Return! the sun is shining bright
      O'er our broad meadows
              All in blossom,
      Reposing 'neath its golden light.
      Return! the graceful swallow,
      When spring its season doth renew,
      Takes ever towards its faithful nest
              Its flight.

  Return to your native shores,
      To that roof which is ever dear,
  For though our tables are always frugal,
      Our bread tastes not of a bitter tear,
  Alas! how many seats are empty
      In each home now stripped of a living leaf;
  One might say that across each doorstep
      Has passed cruel death with plumes of grief.
      Return! the sun is shining bright
          O'er our broad meadows
              All in blossom,
      Reposing 'neath its golden light.
      Return! the graceful swallow,
      When spring its season doth renew,
      Takes ever towards its faithful nest
              Its flight.

  Happy those who never leave
      For other shores their native vale,
  Like leaves that clothe the summer wold
      Yet fade on bough despite each gale.
  Return that your dust may mingle
      With the ashes of our dead,
  To rest in the shade of holy ground
      With the humble cross above each head.
      Return! the sun is shining bright
          O'er our broad meadows,
              All in blossom,
      Reposing 'neath its golden light.
      Return! the graceful swallow,
      When spring its season doth renew,
      Takes ever towards its faithful nest
              Its flight.
                              --_T. O'H._


It is worth noting that four French-Canadian poets--Lemay, Legendre,
Fréchette and Sulte--were born within a few years of each other--that
is, about the year 1840.  It is a common thing for genius to reveal
itself in cluster.  Note, for instance, the great men who were born in
both Europe and America about the year 1809.  The greatest group of
English-speaking Canadian poets were born almost the same
year---1860--namely, Roberts, Carman, Campbell, Lampman and Duncan
Campbell Scott.

When Louis Fréchette's volume, _Les Fleurs Boréales_, was crowned by
the French Academy in 1880, it was recognized that a French-Canadian
poet of more than ordinary promise was added to the choir of Canadian
singers.  Fréchette, who was born in Lévis, Quebec, and obtained his
early education at Nicolet College, studied law with Pamphile Lemay in
the office of Lemieux and Remillard, Quebec.  After a few years spent
in journalism in Chicago, Fréchette returned to Canada, and abandoning
Justinian and Blackstone, gave himself up entirely to letters.  His
most ambitious poetic work is his _La Légende d'un Peuple_, a kind of
oratorical epic, while his poem on _St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle_ is
generally regarded as his most perfect one.  _La Légende d'un Peuple_
the author dedicated to France.  Jules Claretie, of the French Academy,
wrote its Foreword.  Dr. Fréchette's other chief poetic works in order
of publication are: _Mes Loisirs_ (1863), _Pêle-Mêle_ (1877), _Les
Fleurs Boréales_ and _Les Oiseaux de Neige_ (1879), _La Légende d'un
Peuple_ (1887), _Les Feuilles Volantes_ (1890), _Les Epaves Poétiques_
(1908).

Dr. Louis Honoré Fréchette has been called the Lamartine of Canada.  We
find in his work something of both Lamartine and Hugo.  The poetry of
memory filled his soul.  Writing once to his friend, Alphonse Lusignan,
he said: "Memory is all--it is the soul of life."  Fréchette resembles
Hugo at times, too, in mistaking fine rhetoric for true poetry.  On the
occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897, he was made a Companion
of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.  Several of the Canadian
universities honoured him with degrees, and together with Sulte,
Casgrain and Lemay, he was elected one of the First Fellows of the
Royal Society of Canada.

_Mes Petits Amis_, taken from his volume bearing the title _Pêle-Mêle_,
is fairly representative of the poetic work of Fréchette.  We give it
here in the original and in translation.


  MES PETITS AMIS

  Blonds enfants aux voix argentines,
  Frais comme un bouquet d'églantines,
  Joyeux comme des chérubins
      Si beaux sous vos robes oranges,
      Que l'on dirait un groupe d'anges
  Nes sous le pinceau de Rubens!

  J'aime à vous voir, sur la pelouse,
  Aux yeux d'une mère jalouse,
  Jouer comme des papillons
      Dansant sur leurs ailes de soie,
      Peu soucieux, dans votre joie,
  Du monde et de ses tourbillons!

  Oh! quand on voit vos fronts sans rides,
  Vos teints rosés, vos yeux limpides,
  Que n'ont jamais ternis les pleurs,
      On pense à ses jeunes années,
      A tant de pauvres fleurs fanées
  Hélas! sous le vent des douleurs.

  Courez, sautez, troupe joyeuse!
  Sur l'herbette souple et soyeuse,
  Sans fin reprenez vos ébats;
      Mais quand votre joie étincelle,
      N'oubliez pas qu'on vous appelle
  Les petits anges d'ici-bas!

  Oh! gardez votre foi si vive,
  Et votre innocence naïve,
      Coupe d'ambroisie et de miel!
  Fuyez toute ombre dangereuse;
  Et si votre mère est heureuse,
      Vous aurez votre place au ciel!


  MY LITTLE FRIENDS

  Fair children dowered with silvery voice,
  Fresh as flowers of rarest choice,
      Cherubs in your joy so gay;
  In your pretty dresses bright
  Like to angels clad in light--
      Ruben's dream in pencill'd ray.

  I love to see you on the green
  By your mothers guarded--seen;
      Playing like bright butterflies
  Dancing on their silken wings,
  Heedless what the future brings,
      Or the great world with its sighs.

  Ah! when one sees your smooth white brows,
  Your rosy cheeks, your eyes like vows
      Ne'er stained as yet by life's sad tears,
  How return the days long shaded,
  And the flowers of youth long faded,
      Alas! 'neath griefs of many years!

  Run and leap, O joyous throng!
  Ceaseless with your games and song--
      O'er the greensward skipping go;
  But when your joy doth sparkle bright,
  You'll ne'er forget, one deems you right
      Little angels here below.

  Oh, keep your trust forever strong,
  Your childlike innocence of wrong;
      These twain to you are given.
  In danger's shadow find no rest;
  And, if your mother's heart is blest,
      You'll find your place in heaven.
                              --_T. O'H._


William Chapman, who, as his name indicates, is of English origin on
his father's side, was born at St. François de Beauce, Quebec, in 1850.
His first volume of poems, _Les Québecquoises_, appeared in 1876.  This
was followed by _Les Feuilles d'Erables_ in 1890.  In 1904 appeared
_Les Aspirations_ and in 1910 _Les Rayons du Nord_.  The two latter
gained for their author the highest prize of the French Academy.

The beautiful poem, _Les Peupliers_, full of rhythmic swing and
sentiment, taken from _Les Feuilles d'Erables_, is ample testimony to
the fine poetic gifts of Chapman.  We present it here in the original
and in translation:


  LES PEUPLIERS

  Salut grands peupliers qui penchez sur la route
      Votre feuillage lourd d'enivrantes senteurs,
  Qui bercez sur ma tête une ondoyante voûte
      Tout pleine d'oiseaux chanteurs!

  J'aime à vous contempler à l'époque charmante
      Où le soleil vient tout rajeunir et friser,
  Où la brise de mai mysterieuse amante
      Vous fait frémir sous son baiser.

  Car dans le doux babil de la feuille qui tremble,
      Dans la chanson du nid sur la branche bercée,
  En extase je crois ouïr chanter ensemble
      Tes voix suaves du passé.

  Un soir du mois de juin à la brise jalouse
      Dénouant les anneaux de ses cheveux de jais
  Elle m'avait suivi sur la molle pelouse
      Qu'ombrage votre immense dais.

  De vos cimes montaient des chants et des murmures:
      L'oiseau s'y querellait avec l'écho moqueur;
  Nous vînmes nous asseoir tous deux sous vos ramures,
      Avec le printemps dans le cœur.

  Nous causâmes longtemps dans votre ombre sonore;
      Elle avait des propos étranges que j'aimais,
  Dont le souvenir fait que j'en tressaille encore
      Et que je n'oublierai jamais.

  Oui, mes vieux peupliers sous votre vaste dôme,
      Quand le printemps sourit, j'aime à venir m'asseoir,
  Car je crois voir ici le gracieux fantôme
      De ce temps envolé qui fut mon plus beau soir.


  THE POPLARS

  Hail! tall poplars bending o'er my pathway
      With richly-laden foliage and perfume sweet and strong;
  You sway above my head like an undulating arbor
      With your nesting choir of song.

  I love to look upon you in that season of delight,
      When to all the sun brings life and youthful bliss;
  And zephyr-laden May, happy wooer for a day,
      Thrills in ecstasy the soul with its kiss.

  For in the lisp of the leaves that tremble,
      And the song from the nest swaying low,
  I seem in rapture to hear sweet voices
      Telling the story of long ago.

  One evening in June, when the breeze grew jealous,
      And had loosen'd her ringlets of jet black hair,
  We stroll'd together o'er the fresh green meadow
      'Neath the gathering shade of your trustful care.

  From your summits there rose sweet songs and murmurs,
      A bird was chiding the echoes that start;
  We came and sat there under your branches
    With a gift of love and spring in our heart.

  Long, long we chatted in your deep shadow.
      She spoke strange words that I loved to hear,
  Whose memory now stirs my heart with longing,
      In dreams that are linked, from year to year.

  Yes, dear old poplars, 'neath your friendly branches,
      When spring comes smiling I love to rest;
  For I seem to find here the spirit departed
    Of that happy eve with its joys so blest!
                              --_T. O'H._


Of that brilliant coterie of French-Canadian writers, born as we have
said about 1840, the last survivor, Benjamin Sulte, poet, historian,
chronicler and critic, passed away but recently.  Sulte was wonderfully
versatile.  He had a most tenacious memory for historical facts, and is
without a question the best authority we have in Canada on the history
of the French-Canadian people.  As a poet, his lyrics are marked by
great simplicity and naturalness, and a felicity of diction which gives
a certain charm to whatever he writes.  Sulte, too, is perhaps the most
national of all the French-Canadian poets.

Our author was born at Three Rivers in 1841, and gave to the public his
first volume of poems, _Les Laurentiennes_, in 1870.  In 1880 was
published his volume, _Les Chants Nouveaux_.  His monumental work,
_L'Histoire des Canadiens-Français_, a work in eight volumes, occupied
him from 1882 to 1885.  In 1897, Mr. Sulte read a very scholarly paper
before the British Association, which met that year in Toronto, on _The
Origin of the French Canadians_.  In 1916, Toronto University conferred
upon Mr. Sulte the degree of LL.D. _honoris causa_.

In his volume of poems, _Les Laurentiennes_, Mr. Sulte pays a beautiful
tribute to the memory of his countryman Francis Xavier Garneau, perhaps
the greatest of our Canadian historians.  We reproduce it here in the
original, using the translation by Miss Mary McIvor.


  FRANCOIS-XAVIER GARNEAU

  Un monument du granit pour sa tombe
      O Canada fier de ta liberté!
  L'historien de nos gloires succombe,
      Grave son nom pour la posterite!
  Ouvre en pleurant, Muse de la Patrie
      Le livre d'or où brillent tes héros;
  Il t'a donné les beaux jours de sa vie
      Et tu lui dois tes lauriers les plus beaux.

  Assez longtemps son courage docile
      A su plier sous d'étranges mepris!
  L'intelligence a des droits qu'on exile
      Où qu'on mesure à l'esprit des partis!
  La Mort, en fin plus juste moins cruelle
      Va lui marquer sa place au premier rang.
  Hélas! faut-il qu'il ne tienne que d'elle
      L'honneur qu'il verse aux fils du St-Laurent.

  Un monument sur sa tombe muette!
      Qu'il dise au peuple où dorment ces vertus
  Et qu'a ses pieds l'artiste, le poète
      Aillent rêver aux jours qui ne sont plus!
  Car sa parole a révélé nos pères
      Trop inconnus de leurs propres enfants.
  Epris d'amour pour nos vieilles bannières
      La Gloire et lui sont un couple d'amants!


  FRANCIS XAVIER GARNEAU

  A tomb of monumental granite raise,
      O Canada proud of thy liberty,
  To him the chronicler of vanished days,
      That unborn eyes may the record see.
  Muse of our land! open again with tears
      The book of gold where shines each hero's name;
  To thee the off'ring of his hopeful years
      Was made and what has thou to give but fame?

  A weary while he strove with courage mild
      To bend his soul to strangers who despised;
  Yet held he sacred rights altho' exiled
      From those whose party strife he little prized.
  Till Death less cruel but more just than they
      Marked his high place 'mid the immortal throng
  And honors worthless thro' a long delay,
      Now to his mourning countrymen belong.

  A monument above that silent mound
      To show a people where his ashes lie;
  To poet and to artist holy ground,
      When musing on the days long since gone by;
  And now for that his words revealed so well
      Those early siers unknown to many a son--
  Who for the love of our old banners fell
      Glory and he are wedded--both are one!


Of the younger band of French-Canadian poets, ranging between the ages
of twenty and fifty, may be mentioned Emile Nelligan, Paul Morin,
Albert Ferland, Charles Gill, René Chopin, Robert Choquette and Albert
Lozeau.  These constitute what may be designated as the Montreal School
of Poets.  The poetic sceptre, with the advent of these singers, passed
from the city founded by Champlain to the city of Maisonneuve.  With a
kind of splendid audacity these young poets turned from a Lamartine and
a Victor Hugo--from history and patriotism, the inspiring themes of the
Quebec school, to a contemplation of nature, to the subtle probing of
life and the deeper mysteries of the soul.

During the closing years of the last century this younger band of
French-Canadian poets founded the _Ecole Littéraire_ at Montreal with
its quarters in the _Château de Ramezay_.  Its two leading poetic
spirits were Emile Nelligan and Albert Lozeau.  The latter is a poet of
virility and vision.  His muse seeks the trysting place of nature and
the soul; and in his inspired moments you know not which to admire the
more: the lyrical splendour of his imagination or the subtle
questionings of his philosophic thought.

Lozeau, who was born in 1878 and died in 1924, is the author of three
volumes of poems: _L'Ame Solitaire_ (1907), _Le Miroir des Jours_
(1912) and _Lauriers et Feuilles d'Erable_ (1916).  This little poem
bearing the title _Vieil Erable_, taken from his last published volume,
represents well the spirit of his work.  We present it here in the
original and in translation.


  VIEIL ERABLE

  La Maison est calme.  Je vois,
  Sous le ciel de Mai qui rayonne,
  Un érable gris qui bourgeonne
  Pour la cinquantième fois.

  Quand il fit ses feuilles premières
  D'autres yeux que les miens l'ont vu,
  Dont le grand sommeil imprévu
  A clos pour jamais les paupières.

  Il ne restera rien de lui,
  Rien de sa vigueur effacée;
  Je laisserai cette pensée,
  Quand au cours du temps j'aurai fui.

  Qui sait?  Peut-être de ses branches,
  Qui m'ont toujours fait doux accueil,
  Tirera-t-on quatre planches
  Nécessaires à mon cercueil.


  AN OLD MAPLE

  The house is quiet.  I behold,
  Beneath the radiant skies of May,
  An old grey maple budding forth
  On this its fiftieth natal day.

  Other eyes than mine beheld it
  When first in foliage clad so deep;
  Now those eyes are closed forever
  In the great eternal sleep.

  Nothing will remain of it,
  Nothing of its strength effaced;
  I shall leave behind this thought
  When my name is but a waste.

  Who knows but from its branches
  That always gave me kindly cheer,
  They will form four simple boards
  Needed for my darksome bier?
                              --_T. O'H._


Albert Ferland was twenty-three years of age when the _Ecole
Littéraire_ was inaugurated in 1895.  Already our young author had been
elected a corresponding member of the _Académie Littéraire et
Biographique_ of France.  Ferland is both artist and poet.  He was born
in Montreal in 1872 and is the author of three volumes of poems:
_Mélodies Poétiques_ (1893), _Femmes Rêvées_, to which the late Dr.
Louis Fréchette, C.M.G., contributed a Foreword, and _Le Canada
Chanté_.  He is a poet of sincerity and truth and a minute observer of
nature as is revealed in his poem _La Pluie de Septembre_.  We
reproduce here both in the original and in translation his poem
_Reproches au Mois de Mai_ as witness of his fine gift of observation:


  REPROCHES AU MOIS DE MAI

  Mai venteux!  Ce soleil avare, ce jour triste!
  Boudeur, ne veux-tu pas faire les champs fleuris?
  Vois-tu combien la nudité des bois persiste,
  Comme l'érable semble ennuyé d'être gris?

  Mais, sois bon, car les pins, dans leur sombre colère,
  T'accusent de laisser près d'eux le bouleau nu!
  Si tu n'apportes pas le printemps à la terre,
  Ah! pourquoi, Mai, moins doux qu'Avril, es-tu venu?

  Et nul parfum!  A naître encor la fleur de mai!
  Et ces neiges! ce bruit des eaux dans les ravines!
  Dis-moi, sont-ils prochains les jours, ou parfumé
  L'air des prés nous viendra dès l'aube en brises fines?


  MAY REPROACHED

  Gusty May!  This miser sun, this sombre day!
  Sulky one, wilt thou not clothe the fields in flowers' array?
  Seest thou not how long the nakedness of the woods persists,
  And how the maples seem wearied of being grey?

  But be kind; for the pine-trees in their dark wrath
  Charge thee with leaving near them the birch, all naked and dumb!
  If thou bringest not springtime to the earth
  Then why, O May, less mild than April, hast thou come?

  And still no perfume, and the May flower yet to bloom!
  And this snow!  This murmuring of waters among the chasm'd trees!
  Tell me, O May, are the days at hand when perfumed,
  The air from the meadows will greet us, at morn, in gentle breeze?
                              --_T. O'H._


Paul Morin, who was born in Montreal in 1889, is par excellence the
most cultured of the younger group of French-Canadian poets.  After a
brilliant course in arts, science and law, at Laval, he studied in
Paris where he received his doctorate.  He is the author of two volumes
of poems: _Le Paon d'Email_ (1912), and _Poèmes de Cendre d'Or_ (1923).
The latter won for the author the Quebec Poetry Prize ($2,000) in 1923.

Morin is a poetic artist with almost an Oriental imagination.  His
imagery is rich and his technique well-nigh faultless.  Some of his
best poems do not readily lend themselves to translation.  A poem for
instance such as _Flamme_ is so symbolic that it would lose its meaning
in translation.  Let this brief poem, _Sur un Exemplaire de Shelley_,
represent this young devotee of the most ethereal of English poets,
Percy Bysshe Shelley:


  SUR UN EXEMPLAIRE DE SHELLEY

  Ce que je dois au grand Shelley
  Ne peut être dit en paroles;
  Ses vers divins, ses vers ailés
  Comme un vol de colombes folles,
  Furent les premiers compagnons
  De mon inquiète jeunesse.

  Flammes tragiques, clairs rayons,
  Et sanglots d'humaine détresse,
  Il y a, dans ce livre étroit,
  Toute la Beauté, tout le Rêve,
  Et tout l'Amour--et c'est pourquoi
  Je vous le donne, Geneviève.


  WRITTEN ON A COPY OF SHELLEY

  What I owe to the great Shelley
  Cannot now be well expressed;
  His verse divine, his wingèd words,
  Like flight of maddened doves,
  Were in truth my first companions
  In the days of restless youth.

  Tragic flames, luminous rays,
  And sobs of human woe
  There are in this little book,
  All Beauty, Dream and Love;
  And that is why, Genevieve,
  I give this gift to thee.
                              --_T. O'H._


The youngest of the Montreal group of French-Canadian poets is Robert
Choquette, who was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1905.
Choquette has lived in Montreal since 1913, and graduated a Bachelor of
Arts from Loyola College in that city in June, 1926.  His volume of
verse _A Travers les Vents_ (1925) gained for him the David Annual
Prize of $500 in 1926 offered for the best volume of French-Canadian
poetry, and the second prize awarded by _La Revue des Poètes_ of Paris,
France.  This latter was open to all poets speaking French but not of
French nationality.  The work of this gifted young French Canadian is
also represented in the _Anthologie Internationale des Poètes de Langue
Française_ just published in Paris, France.  Our author is a member of
both the French and English sections of the Canadian Authors'
Association.

We regard young Choquette as a poet of great promise.  In his verse
beats a Canadian note of prophecy.  It is both original and authentic.
Well does he say in his Introduction to his volume _A Travers les
Vents:_ "Ne sentez-vous pas que l'âme du Canada c'est une âme de jeune
homme neuve et belle comme son corps?  Alors, qu'avons-nous à faire
avec les petits vers de salon?"

We present to our readers in both the original and translation his
poem, _A la Vierge du Pérugin_.  The translation is by Dr. Edward E.
Binns.


  A LA VIERGE DU PERUGIN

  Vierge du Pérugin, au sourire extatique,
  Qui penchez votre col avec ses cheveux roux,
  Oh! que vous êtes pure en votre âme mystique!
  Oh! que vous êtes belle en vos traits fins et doux!

  Vous êtes belle ainsi qu'une tendre colombe
  Qui s'abreuve à la source où les cailloux sont clairs,
  Comme un ciel de midi, quand la lumière tombe,
  Vous êtes blanche, ô Vierge, en votre âme et vos chairs.

  Blanche comme le pain qui fait vivre et l'hostie,
  Plus douce qu'une étoile et qu'un rayon de miel,
  Vous êtes belle ô Vierge, en votre modestie,
  Comme un lis entr'ouvert pour contenir le ciel.

  Vierge, votre jeunesse a la senteur des vignes!
  Inaccessible fleur des buissons épineux,
  Vos charmes sont pareils à des groupes de cygnes
  Qui sèchent leur duvet sur le bord sablonneux.

  Votre front est plus pur que les neiges intactes,
  Le murmure confus de nos cœurs moribonds
  Fait à nos pieds sacrés le bruit des cataractes
  Qui chantent dans la brume et dans les soirs profonds.

  Vierge du Pérugin, ô Vierge immaculée,
  Sur les obscurs, sur les tristes, sur les pécheurs,
  Répandez à jamais la lumière étoilée
  Qui filtre entre vos cils, ô reine des blancheurs!


  TO THE VIRGIN OF PERUGINO

  Virgin of Perugino, with thy smile of ecstasy,
  Who bend'st thy neck to show thy coils of ruddy gold,
  How pure thou art in thy soul's mystic fantasy,
  What beauty lives in thy clear features' gentle mold!

  Thou art as beautiful as is a tender dove
  That comes to drink at spring where clear water'd pebbles gleam;
  As noon-day sky, when light falls straight from heav'n above,
  So white, Virgin, all thy soul and body seem!

  White as that bread that giveth life, or Sacred Host,
  Softer than light of star, than honey-comb more sweet;
  Thy modesty, O Virgin, decks thy beauty most,
  Like lily cup half-op'd, that yearns towards God's high seat!

  Virgin, thy youth doth hold the fragrance of the vines!
  Thou unapproachable line flower of thorny brake,
  Thy charms are like great swans whose pearly whiteness shines,
  Flocking to dry their down on gravell'd rim of lake.

  Thy brow is yet more pure than unpolluted snow,
  The mazed murmur of our hope-reft hearts, half-dead,
  Makes at thine holy feet the cascades rumbling low
  That boom their song through fog by evening's deep shades fed.

  Virgin of Perugino, Maiden without a stain,
  Upon the lowly, on the sad, on sinfulness,
  Shed thou forever more such light as stars do rain
  And filters through thy lids, O queen of spotlessness!


Nor are sopranos wanting in the academic groves of French-Canadian
song.  French-Canadian women have contributed a note of rare delicacy
and charm to the poetry of their country.  The names of Madame
Huguenin, "Madeleine," Adele Bibaud and Pauline Fréchette, youngest
daughter of Dr. Louis Fréchette, are well-known in the literary circles
of Quebec.  The latter, who was born in Montreal in 1889, has to her
credit three volumes of verse and a drama.  Many of her poems have been
set to music in Montreal and Paris and her poetic work has been much
praised by so discriminating a critic as Henri d'Arles.

Then there is Blanche Lamontagne, who was born at Escomains in the
county of Saguenay in 1899, and educated at Villa Maria in Montreal.  A
good part of her early life was spent in Lower Quebec not far from
Gaspé.  Since her marriage to Hector Beauregard she has resided in
Montreal and is at present associate editor of _Le Journal d'
Agriculture_ and _La Revue Nationale_.  Her muse is inspired by the
customs and legends and memories of the early _habitant_ whose toils
and virtues she has glorified in sweet and simple song.

Madame Beauregard has four volumes of verse to her credit: _Visions
Gaspésiennes; Par Nos Champs et nos Rives; Les Trois Lyres_ and _La
Vieille Maison_.  The following little poem exemplifies well the spirit
and method of her work:


  AUX ARBRES

  Pour la fraîcheur si douce de votre ombre,
  Pour ces longs ans dont vous êtes doués
  Pour vos bienfaits, pour vos grâces sans nombre,
          Arbres, soyez loués!

  Soyez loués!  Quand le vent vous effleure
  Vous protégez les oiseaux et les nids;
  Vous qui du froid gardez notre demeure,
          Arbres, soyez bénis!

  Soyez bénis, arbres sûrs, paix profonde,
  Troncs reverdis, feuillages embaumés;
  Pour la beauté dont vous baignez le monde,
          Arbres, soyez aimés!


  TO THE TREES

  For the grateful coolness of your shade,
  For your gift of years and star-clad days,
  For your kindness and favours never paid
          Accept, O trees, my praise!

  Be praised!  When the wind sways your branches
  You protect both bird and nest;
  You who guard our home from cold,
          O trees be blest!

  Be blest steadfast trees in peace profound,
  Trunks grown green again and fragrant foliage;
  For the beauty with which you bathe the world,
          O trees be loved!
                              --_T. O'H._


What the future has in store for French-Canadian poetry we know not.
The singers of the dawn, the builders of light and hope have indeed
wrought and planned well.  May their successors prove worthy of their
mantles and their lyre!




A CANADIAN HUMOURIST IN PARLIAMENT



CHAPTER II.

A CANADIAN HUMOURIST IN PARLIAMENT

Legislatures, at times, overflow with wit and humour.  Even
Westminster, the staid and grave "Mother of Parliaments," bends, at
times, and is convulsed with the sparkling witticism and repartee of
some Celt--a Richard Brinsley Sheridan, or an O'Connell, or a Tim
Healy.  A few years ago, the latter, when a member of the English House
of Commons, delivered a side-splitting, mock heroic speech
scintillating with the keenest of wit and humour, when the question of
Uganda in Africa was up for discussion.

Perhaps the most humorous speech ever delivered in the Congress, at
Washington, was that of Proctor Knott, on Duluth.  It is said, however,
that this famous Duluth speech of Knott's had been prepared for him by
a clever and witty wag in Washington; and that it was the only witty
speech that Proctor Knott, who afterwards became governor of Kentucky,
ever made.  So that the clever Kentuckian might well be designated a
single-barrelled humorous orator.

The Canadian House of Commons, since Confederation, has had many
humourous and witty speakers.  Amongst these have been Alonzo Wright,
known as "The King of the Gatineau;" Nicholas Flood Davin, known as
"The Bald Eagle of the Plains," representing as he did for many years
the constituency of Assiniboia; and Joe Rymal, of Wentworth, Ontario,
known by the sobriquet of "Joking Joe Rymal."  But preceding all these
were two others, whose cares of state as Cabinet Ministers did not
prevent them, at times, from indulging in _bon mots_ and repartee.  In
a keen thrust or play on words, Sir John Macdonald could hit the bull's
eye every time.

It will be remembered that, during the Mackenzie Administration, the
Hon. Timothy Anglin, who was Speaker of the House and Editor of the
_Freeman_, of St. John, New Brunswick, had taken a contract from the
Government for printing, and this being a violation of the privileges
of Parliament, the matter became one for public discussion.

In the session of Parliament for 1890, some reference was made to this
by a member of the Conservative party, when some one interpolated,
"Where was Timothy Anglin at this time?" Sir John Macdonald wittily
replied, "Why, Timothy was down with the hay fever."  Hon. Thomas
D'Arcy McGee was not only a poet and orator, but a wit of a high order.
Many a time in the Chamber of debate he turned the tables adroitly on
an opponent in a sally of wit.  In his last speech in the Canadian
House of Commons, on the fateful evening of his assassination, McGee
humorously referred to a political candidate in Huron County, Ontario,
who sought to gain the suffrages of the electorate by distributing
freely and gratuitously among them copies of the Bible, adding
facetiously that "the people accepted the gospel, but rejected the
missionary."

Nicholas Flood Davin was a good deal of a Richard Brinsley Sheridan in
that he anticipated interruptions and questions and had the witty
replies all ready.  At least, a Hansard reporter of the Canadian House
of Commons has assured us of the truth of this.  In fact, it is said
that Davin often asked questions that would lead up to his retort.  We
once heard Davin fire a shaft in the House of Commons at the late Hon.
Edward Blake which must have penetrated into the very marrow of this
great Canadian jurist and tribune.  Blake was too grave and
intellectually massive and serious a man to play at wit and humour;
indeed, he was known at times to be a little tart and biting in his
rejoinders.

Davin had been descanting on the superior character of his constituents
in Assiniboia, adding that it was the cream of Ontario farmers that had
settled there; whereupon the late Dalton McCarthy interjected: "We
should think so, judging by the character of the representative they
send down;" and Blake, following this up, added "We may, therefore, I
suppose, consider the representative for Assiniboia as the _crème de la
crème_," when Davin retorted like a flash: "I thank the honourable
member from Durham for his compliment and will say that, at times, the
honourable member is a cream of tartar."

There are some very good stories told of the Canadian House of Commons.
Away back in the seventies of the last century, in the days when the
Hon. Alexander Mackenzie was Premier of Canada and the Hon. Edward
Blake was his chief lieutenant, it is said that once, during a night
session, when Sir John Macdonald and a well-marshalled opposition were
questioning the Government on its projected Canadian Pacific Railway
policy, a funny and highly humorous coincidence marked the debate.

Bret Harte, the poet of the "Heathen Chinee," had been visiting Ottawa
at the time, and being the guest of the Press Club of the House, was in
the gallery listening to the debate.  But everything was very dull, as
it very often happens when ordinary routine work is the order of the
day.  In fact, so dull was it while Mackenzie and Blake were replying
to the criticism of the Opposition benches, that the reporters in the
galleries concluded that they would enliven things with a game of
cards.  Mackenzie was speaking, and to the charge made by the
opposition, the Premier, raising his voice fraught with indignation,
demanded: "Under the circumstances, what would you do?"  To which a
voice from a card-player in the press gallery was heard to say, "Turn
it down."  Mackenzie proceeded, and after taking up another point,
added: "But I pass from this," whereupon a voice from the press gallery
was heard to say, "I pass, too."  Bret Harte is said to have declared
that the whole thing had beaten anything that he had ever seen in his
wide range of experience.  Statesmanship and cards were playing into
each other's hands.

But decidedly the humorist, rather than the wit, of the Canadian House
of Commons was the late Alonzo Wright, who represented for many years
the County of Ottawa in Quebec in the Federal Parliament.  Wright was
of American extraction, his grandfather being Philemon Wright, who came
to Canada from Woburn, Mass., in 1797, and founded the village of Hull.
Alonzo Wright was educated at the Potsdam Academy, in New York.  He
identified himself early in life with agriculture and became a
lieutenant-colonel of the Ottawa County reserve militia.  He was
extremely popular with his constituents and with the members of the
House, irrespective of political affiliation.  Wright did not speak
often in the House, but when he did, it was, as a writer says, "to
charm the House with the warmth of his eloquence, the extent of his
learning and the grace and culture of his style."  Whenever it became
known that he was to share in a debate, every member was in his place
and the galleries crowded.

Few Commoners treated any public question in a larger, more generous
and intelligent light.  His humour was marked by the very finest brand
of bantering.  All his speeches had about them the flavour of the
library.  This genial, generous, judicial and very popular
parliamentarian is represented in the pages of Hansard by three unique
speeches replete with the very finest touches of humour, and marked by
a literary grace scarce ever surpassed in the Federal Parliament of
Canada.  The first was delivered on March 10, 1884, during a debate in
connection with the vote of censure on Major-General Luard,
Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Forces.

It would seem that Major-General Luard had fallen foul, at a military
camp at Cobourg, of some of the commanding officers of the Militia and
had indulged in some dynamite language.  The matter was brought up in
Parliament, and Alonzo Wright, referring to this phase of the trouble,
struck it off in this light and humorous vein:

"But the brave old soldier (General Luard) could not understand the
difference between an irregular force and a regular force, or between
the volunteers and the regular troops, and so he clothed himself with
curses as with a garment.  He swore at everything in the heavens above,
in the earth beneath, and in the water under the earth.  He made an
insulting assault upon an officer.  He swore at all sorts and
conditions of men.  We have been told on good authority that our army
swore terribly in Flanders, but we thought that the sweetness and
light, the culture and civilization of the nineteenth century had
produced their legitimate results.  We thought that a service which had
given us such men as Havelock and Headley Vicars, men who combined the
most earnest and fervent piety with the most dauntless daring,
eliminated all such coarse and vulgar elements.  When Bret Harte, the
American humorist, visited this city, he told us a tale of the early
settlement and gold fever in California.  Amongst the adventurers who
visited this country was a western teamster.  From the first he was
considered a first-class swearer; but by dint of practice he attained
the position of boss blasphemer of the Pacific Coast.  One day his team
became entangled in a ravine, and he entered upon a protracted course
of swearing.  Like the Major-General, he swore at everything in the
heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth.  An
excellent clergyman, who was passing, ventured to remonstrate with him
on this horrid blasphemy.  The teamster turned on him, with surprise
and indignation.  'So you call that swearing, do you?  I never thought
you devil-dodgers had any practical ability.  If you want to enjoy
first-class swearing, you should hear me exhort an impenitent mule'."

Perhaps the finest speech delivered in the Canadian House of Commons by
Wright was in connection with the debate on the Canadian Pacific
Railway, July 2, 1885.  The member for Ottawa drew on his extensive
reading and adorned his speech with the finest flowers of rhetoric and
all the grace and charm which the most brilliant flashes of humour and
the breath and aroma of poetic quotation could lend.  With the House
rocking with laughter, Mr. Wright referred to the incident of the Widow
Murphy, down in the constituency of the Hon. Peter Mitchell, in New
Brunswick, who had been bereft of a cow on the Intercolonial Railway,
and the part which the honourable member for Northumberland, N.B., had
played in securing compensation for the widow.

"Who does not remember," said the member for Ottawa, "the fascinating
female, who melted the iron heart of the honourable member for
Northumberland, the Widow Murphy?  Who does not remember the important
part played by that estimable lady in the history of the county?  Who
does not remember the pleasant picture painted with such artistic skill
and power by the honourable gentleman?  The pleasant cottage in the
very heart of the great forest of New Brunswick.  'One knew by the
smoke that so gracefully curled that if there is peace to be found in
this world the heart that is humble will look for it here.'  The
Sabbath stillness of the scene, the lovely widow surrounded by her
orphans, drawing the lacteal fluid from the patient Brindle, and the
warning wail of the banshee, the baying of the bloodhounds, the neigh
of the iron horse ravening for his prey.  In the evening everything was
peaceful and prosperous; in the morning all was desolation and despair.
In the darkness of night the widow's cow had drifted to her doom; but
there was balm in Gilead.  The knightly member comes to the rescue of
his fair constituent.  The widow obtained compensation and the
honourable member immortality.  By this kindly and generous act he won
his brevet rank in the nobility of his country.  But by the generosity
of his acts he was declared noble by an earlier creation, by the
imposition of a mightier hand.  It is no wonder that all opposition
melted away, like a snow-ball before the noon-day sun."

But it was in his speech on "The Abolition of French in the North-West
Territories," a bill introduced by Dalton McCarthy, the member for
Simcoe, in the session of 1890, that Alonzo Wright revealed his broad
sympathies, kindly heart and tolerant mind.  It was a crucial moment in
the Canadian House of Commons, for McCarthy was endeavouring to set
race against race and creed against creed to achieve his political end.
Fortunately, Sir John Macdonald had the brain, heart and vision of a
true statesman.  McCarthy, when the vote was taken, was left with his
"Devil's Thirteen," as Sir John designated McCarthy's followers.

In his speech, a highly humourous and patriotic one, Wright related how
he had the summer preceding attended a picnic in Western Ontario, and
he recounted his experience there with some of the doubting political
Thomases.  "You come from the land of Loyola, you come from the land of
these Jesuits, you come from the priest-ridden Province of Quebec,"
said one of the picnickers to the member for Ottawa.  "Well," they
said, "what is going to become of those poor, miserable, oppressed
Protestants?"  "I said: 'Yes, we may be oppressed, but as you can see,'
(Alonzo Wright must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds), 'they
do not starve me at any rate.'  'With regard to the English inhabitants
of that Province, those poor slaves who are hunted by Mercier and his
congeners, what about them?'  I said: 'I think they bear their
punishment very patiently: at any rate, they get on very well with
their neighbours.'  Then they said: 'What of the priesthood?'  I said:
'So far as the priests of the Province of Quebec are concerned, not
alone the Catholic priests, but the Presbyterian clergy, and the
Methodist clergy, and the clergymen of all the denominations, live in
peace and harmony together and like each other.'  'What, then,' they
said, 'of the superb old sorcerer, who sits securely throned on a
thousand wiles in his city of Ottawa?  Has he not gone over to the
Scarlet Woman who sits on the Seven Hills?'  I ventured to say that I
was not aware of the state of the honourable gentleman's spiritual
harem at the present time.

"I thought I knew that at an early period he was captured by Madame
Calvin; then that he had certain coquetries with Madame Wesley; then he
had a liaison with a beautiful Baptist lady; but I said, perhaps,
inasmuch as he has had an infinite versatility, the Italian beauty, the
Scarlet Woman has at last won his heart.  But, I said, it is well known
that he has had the best of everything in this world, and, if I am not
mistaken, he will get the best in the next."

Alonzo Wright possessed that fine element of humour which made
everybody laugh with him, not at his victim.  He was what might be
termed optimism in full flower.  His eloquence was an eloquence of the
heart; his humour proceeded from the very noblest impulses of the soul.
The member for Ottawa deserves truly a large place in the history of
our Canadian Parliament.




IS THE FRENCH SPOKEN IN QUEBEC A PATOIS?



CHAPTER III.

IS THE FRENCH SPOKEN IN QUEBEC A PATOIS?

It is astonishing how persistingly the idea has held, in the
English-speaking mind of Canada, that the French spoken in Quebec is a
_patois_.  Like many false and absurd ideas that obtain, this erroneous
one has had its origin in ignorance of fact.  It has trickled through
all classes of the English community in Canada, and we have found it
existent even in great centres of learning in the United States.
Indeed, it will take years, we fear, to disabuse the public mind of
this false and absurd idea and give truth of fact its rightful place.

The question, we hold, should be discussed free from all race or
language prejudice and supported, not by mere subtle philological
distinctions, but by the common sense facts of the laws of language,
and the historical truths that underlie all language development.  We
must, at the outset, confess that we have never been able to understand
why the civilization and development of the French colonist, on the
banks of the St. Lawrence, in Canada, should bear fruit in a _patois_
of speech, while the English colonists, who first settled in
Massachusetts and Virginia, succeeded in preserving the English of
Shakespeare or Pope or Addison.

If we make a study of the character of the first French colonists who
came to Canada, then called New France, from the beginning of the
seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century, there is
nothing to warrant us in assuming that the language they spoke was
nothing but a synthesis of the dialects that prevailed in their mother
country.  On the contrary, the intellectual beginnings of New France
are coeval with an Old France that during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries surpassed, in brilliant literary achievement, in
science and in art, all the other countries of Europe.

It is true that many of the French colonists belonged, not to the
intellectual _elite_, but to the toiling masses who necessarily
emphasized labour and the skill of the hand rather than the skill of
the brain.  But this can be said as well of the early settlers in
Massachusetts and Virginia.  You may here ask: Do we know the character
of the early French colonists in Canada?  Decidedly we do; and what is
more, we know the parts of France from which they hailed, and the
character or peculiarities of the language or dialects which they
spoke; for there is no doubt that some of them came to our Canadian
shores with a dialect upon their tongues.  However, the French
colonizers were not alone in this.  Pray make a study of the early New
England and Virginia colonizers, and witness to the fact that it was
not the approved accent of a Samuel Johnson or some Chesterfieldian
Beau Brummel that prevailed on Massachusetts Bay or at Jamestown,
Virginia, but a kind of hybrid accent that partook of the mentality of
various localized quarters of England, with here and there a bright
spangle and dash of the more cultured and elegant Cavalier.

But to return to the French colonizers of Quebec.  The first contingent
of these, we learn, came chiefly from Perche, Normandy, Picardy and
Beauce.  We are quite certain of this fact.  We are further certain
that between 1662 and 1672, Poitou, La Rochelle and Gascony contributed
a contingent.  Between 1632 and 1672 Touraine and Paris, with its
surrounding country, also contributed a certain part to the peopling of
the new colony.  In the eighteenth century a few colonists came from
Dauphiney, Franche-Comté and Burgundy.

Now the fact to remember, in connection with the colonizing forces that
came from France at different epochs from 1668 to 1760 and settled in
Quebec is, that Normandy took the lead, contributing in all 958
colonists; and the Ile-de-France, where the very best French spoken in
France in the seventeenth century obtained, ranked second with 621
colonists.  But, you may ask: How do you know these things?  We answer:
From Msgr. Tanguay's _Genealogical Dictionary of French-Canadian
Families_, based upon the baptismal and marriage registers of Quebec,
and from Benjamin Sulte's _The French Language in Canada_.

It is interesting to note how a particular dialect in a country
prevails over all the other dialects; becoming eventually the accepted
language of literature and scholars.  This is due sometimes to the
political prestige of the people who speak the dialect.  Notice that
the West Saxon dialect of Wessex in England became the literary
language of England in the ninth century; the Tuscan dialect the
literary language of Italy in the thirteenth century; and a few
centuries later the dialect of Castile in Spain prevailed over all the
other Spanish dialects and became the literary language of all Spain.
Pray note, too, that the dialect of the Ile-de-France took precedence
of all the other French dialects as early as the twelfth century--first
in official acts and then in literature; and by the fifteenth century
the sway of this dialect was so complete that henceforth it became the
language of the court, of the palace and of literature.  We thus see
that the French literary language had been establishing itself for at
least nearly three centuries in France before the colonists of New
France had fixed their homes upon the banks of the St. Lawrence.  It
is, however, true that French prose writers such as Rabelais and
Montaigne show in their works decided traces of the _patois_ of their
own provinces.

Let us examine, furthermore for a moment, what was the intellectual
character of France at the time when its bold and hardy adventurers
were founding a New France in the New World.  We are now in the age of
Louis XIV, the most brilliant century of French genius.  Richelieu had
founded the French Academy in 1635.  It is the age of such scholars as
Ducange, Petau, Mabillon; of the painters, Poussin and Le Brun; of such
ministers of State as Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert; of the pulpit
orators Bossuet, Bourdaloue and Massillon; of the philosophers Pascal
and Descartes; of the dramatists Corneille, Racine and Molière.

Think you, then, that in an age such as this, France sent forth from
her bosom a body of colonists, paupers in intellect with naught but
dialect--conflicting dialect--upon their lips?  Or, is it not more
natural to believe that a goodly number of those who sought the shores
of Canada were men and women superior in intellect, and possessing the
scholarship and culture or at least a goodly share of that scholarship
and culture which gave France of the seventeenth century a first place
in intellectual rank among the nations of Europe?

Of course, nobody can or would deny but that many of these colonists
from France brought with them a dialect; but the further fact is quite
likely that they all could understand and converse in French.  And what
is more likely, too, than that under the leadership of an educated
clergy, professors in the colleges, officers in the army, and members
of the medical and legal professions, the first colonists soon learned
to discard all _patois_, or provincial dialect, and converse in the
French language alone.

In fact, we have proof of this in the testimony of La Potherie and
Charlevoix, who declared--the first in 1700 and the second in 1720,
when writing of the French Canadians--that no provincial accent or
dialect was observed among them.  Why, we ask, should the French
language spoken on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in the seventeenth
century, be not as good as the English spoken at the same time in
Jamestown, Virginia, or on Massachusetts Bay?  Should you answer that
the colonists who first settled Virginia and Massachusetts were
superior intellectually to those who founded New France, we answer that
a large number of the first settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, were
convicts; and we do not generally go to convicts for superior
intellects or purity of language.

Just look at the early English settlements in America, and see what an
_omnium gatherum_ you have from the four winds of heaven.  Is it
probable that the Highland Scotch who settled in the two Carolinas, a
part of Georgia and in the Mohawk Valley of New York; the Ulster Irish
who settled in Virginia and Pennsylvania; the men and women hailing
from Yorkshire and Devonshire and the environs of London, who set up
their homes in the New England States; is it probable that they spoke
English in accordance with the laws laid down by old Dr. Samuel
Johnson, the first of lexicographers?  Did these colonists bring to our
shores, whether American or Canadian, any perversity of accent, any
dialect, any strange obsolete words?  If they did, then is the English
of Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Canada as much a _patois_ as
is the French of Quebec.  One of the most amusing charges, if it were
not absurd, made against the French spoken in Quebec is that it is "a
Breton jargon."  Now, of nearly five thousand emigrants, or if you
will, colonists, who came from France to Canada between the years 1608
and 1700, only 175 came from Brittany, and surely these could not have
imposed their language on the rest.

As a matter of fact, but few Bretons came to Canada, and the greater
number of those who did come settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,
then called Acadia.  The Bretons were a sea-faring people, and some of
their nautical terms exist to-day in the language spoken by the
Acadians.  Again, the people of Brittany do not speak a jargon; they
speak the Breton tongue, which is Celtic and closely resembles the
Cymric tongue of Wales.

But the strongest and most conclusive proof that the French of Quebec
to-day do not speak a _patois_ is found in the fact that every book
used in the schools, academies and colleges of that province--that is
in the French classes--is written in standard French, and could be used
in the schools of France.  How then, we ask, can French-Canadian boys
and girls acquire their education through the medium of the standard
French books and still continue to talk a _patois_?  Is not this
reducing the charge to an absurdity?

A few years ago the writer was travelling by train from Montreal to
Quebec, and engaged in French conversation a French-Canadian commercial
traveller, or as he is known in Quebec, a _commis voyageur_.  After
conversing for an hour, we asked him if he had any difficulty in
understanding us.  "Not at all," he replied.  "Well," we rejoined, "we
studied French some years ago in France, Belgium and Switzerland, while
you have studied it here in the schools of Quebec.  Of course you are
aware," we added, "that the English say you speak a _patois_.  Is not
our conversation good proof that you speak, not a _patois_, but the
standard French--the literary language of France?"  The French-Canadian
commercial traveller only smiled at the charge made in ignorance by
English-speaking people against his countrymen.

A glaring example of this ignorance of fact, on the part of
English-speaking people, was revealed some few years ago, when there
was a great reunion at Plattsburg, N.Y., to celebrate the second
centenary of the discovery of Lake Champlain by the discoverer whose
name it bears.  Among the distinguished personages who attended the
celebration and spoke was Mr. J. J. Jusserand, the French Ambassador to
the United States.  After the Ambassador had spoken for some time in
English, he added that he would address the French Canadians assembled
there in their own tongue, which was interpreted by the Associated
Press to mean, in the "Canadian jargon," as something distinct from the
French language.

On the point as to what His Excellency the French Ambassador meant, a
dispute arose, that was finally only settled by a letter from the
Ambassador, which we here reproduce in translation: "As to the
misunderstanding which you point out, permit me to dispose of it in a
word.  The language of the French Canadians and that of the French is
the same language, being French.  I could never have believed that
anybody could have been mistaken in the sense of my words, since, when
I said to the French Canadians that I was going to speak their
language, I immediately spoke my own, which is theirs.  No; no doubt is
possible; and I have had too many opportunities to hear their speeches
and to talk with them not to be convinced of this: the cradles of
Quebec and Montreal and the cradles of Paris, Lyons or Orleans hear
fall from maternal lips the same accents, the same language, French, of
which those who speak it have a right to be proud for a thousand years."

Now a word here as to the character of the French spoken by the
_habitant_ in Quebec.  Let us say that it is quite as good as the
English spoken in the country places in Ontario, Vermont or Indiana,
for example.  It is much better than the French spoken by the country
people, or, if you will, _les paysans_, in many parts of France.

No doubt, among the country people in Quebec there are many words and
phrases still used that belong to seventeenth century French, or that
have grown out of new conditions in Canada.  But is this not equally
true of the English that is spoken in Canada and the United States?  We
will wager that a little study would reveal the fact that many English
words and phrases, now no longer in use in educated centres, but
current in the American colonies two hundred years ago, are still
current verbal coin in local corners of Virginia, Vermont, Nova Scotia
and Maine.

Take, for instance, the French-Canadian expression heard among the
habitants, _il fait fret_ for _il fait froid_--"it is cold."  This
expression was commended and defended by the French grammarians of the
seventeenth century.  It is simply then a survival in Canada of
seventeenth century French.


It reminds one of the attacks made upon the English pronunciation that
obtains in Ireland, which is incorrectly designated a _brogue_.  As a
matter of fact, the Irish pronounce English as it was pronounced in the
days of Shakespeare; and this pronunciation in England continued even
to the time of Alexander Pope, as any one may discover if he will but
make a study of Pope's rhymes.  Need we here supplement our defense of
the French spoken in Quebec by citing the list of French-Canadian
writers in both prose and poetry, whose works have been crowned by the
French Academy?  Assuredly, the "Forty Immortals" would not lightly
give their _imprimatur_ to any work not written in the best and purest
French.  Furthermore, we do not know of any body of scholars, academic
or literary, who are doing more to purify their language than _La
Société du Parler Français_ of Quebec.  Not alone through their
official organ, but in the columns of the French-Canadian daily press,
they are casting out all intruding Anglicized words, or words of
doubtful French signification.  Again, it will be noticed that the
French spoken in Quebec is a very copious language, possessing many
words that have had origin in the life and conditions of the country
and people and of which the French Academy can necessarily know nothing.


But, in fine, what adds to the absurdity of the criticism leveled in
ignorance, by English-speaking people in Canada and the United States,
against the French spoken in Quebec, is the fact that, generally
speaking, those who glibly pass judgment on the French of Quebec have
often not even an elementary knowledge of the language.




THE PATRIOTIC NOTE IN CANADIAN POETRY



CHAPTER IV.

THE PATRIOTIC NOTE IN CANADIAN POETRY

Love of country is one of the most inspiring themes of song.  "For
Faith and Fatherland!" has been the battle cry in every century.  It
has nerved the warrior to deeds of heroism and high emprise.  Even the
legionary soldiers of Caesar bore before them into battle their
household gods.

When Christianity breathed upon the face of civilization, giving
thereby a new meaning to the virtues of home, ennobling and sanctifying
it with the beatitudes of faith, the altar and the fireside became
united as a symbol of devotion in every Christian heart--reflecting the
highest character of true patriotism--love of God and country.

It is of this true patriotism that the poet has sung during the
Christian eras of the past.  Indeed, the poet has been a virtual
law-giver in every age.  Stronger than breastplate or armour; stronger
than the serried ranks of a veteran soldiery; stronger than walled
battlement or parapet--nay, stronger, than the brazen lip of gun, is
the note of patriotism stirred in the heart and burning upon the lips
of the singer.

Canadian poetry is not without its patriotic note, albeit that it does
not bulk very large.  There has been too much divided allegiance--too
much worshipping at strange altars, here in Canada, for the creation of
a great Canadian patriotic poetry.  Now and again, however, the soul
has higher visions than those of Empire--it kneels in homage at the
altar of home--it inhales the incense of native hills and vales--it
enters the temple builded by Canadian hearts and hands--it hearkens to
voices that hold kinship with the destiny of a great people.

It is said that the guns, at Fort Sumter, that heralded the deadly
strife of Federal and Confederate, in 1861, proclaimed the literary
independence of the American nation.  But the literary proclamation of
Canada was one of peace.  It came with the charter of our Dominion
Confederation.  Canadian poetry had veritable birth with our Dominion,
on July 1, 1867.  Before this date, it is true, Canada, both French and
English, had singers, but they lacked not only the native note, but
that originality and independence, without which all art is but a
copy--a mere imitation.  Nor was this less true of English Canada than
it was of French Canada.  Though Lord Durham, as early as 1840, had
written, "The French Canadians are not a people for they have no
literature," he could as easily and as justly have said the same of the
English Canadians.  If, at the time of Canadian Confederation, English
Canada had its Sangster, its MacLachlan, its Heavysege, and its McGee,
three of whom were not Canadians by birth, French Canada had its Bibaud
and its Crémazie.  Considering her struggles to maintain her racial and
religious integrity for the hundred years following the cession of New
France to Great Britain, the wonder is that French Canada stood, among
her sister provinces, in 1867, intellectually equipped as she was.

Mr. H. D. C. Lee, in his thesis for the Doctorate, in the University of
Rennes, France, published in 1912, in dealing with the poetic work of
Bliss Carman, is entirely astray in his criticism of the beginnings of
literary life in Quebec, and magnifies in contrast the work of the
early Puritan in the New England States.  Does Mr. Lee not know that
the beginnings of Laval University antedate the foundation of Harvard?
And the work of the Ursulines in Quebec that of any Puritan academy for
the education of women in the New England States?  The Anglo-Saxon of
the New England States, whom Mr. Lee so generously eulogizes, for his
intellectual devotion, has little to offer in letters to the reading
public, as the sum of his literary activities, during the first two
centuries of colonial New England, save it be the mystic Calvinism of a
Jonathan Edwards or the poetic doggerel of an Anna Bradstreet and a
Michael Wigglesworth.  As to the alleged fetters of ecclesiasticism
that prevented the French-Canadian mind in Quebec from developing in
the early colonial days, it never in any event degenerated into the
narrow gloom of witch-baiting and witch-burning that marked the early
life of New England.  The Church in Quebec was a kind mother caring
both spiritually and intellectually for the souls committed to her
keeping.

It was, then, the proclamation of the Canadian Dominion some sixty
years ago that stirred the heart of the Canadian poet and gave him
vision.  But even before this patriotic note had been struck by
Canadian writers, reflecting the beauty of our fields and forests and
the magic splendour of hill and stream, there were Canadians mindful of
the land of their birth who tuned their harps at the firesides of the
early settlers and glorified the heroic deeds of their fathers.

Soon there passed into the heart of Canada something of the patriotic
fire and fervour which inspired Gray to write _The Bard_; Burns _My
Heart's in the Highlands_; Campbell _The Exile of Erin_; Tennyson
_Hands All Around_; Scott _Breathes There a Man with Soul so Dead_;
Longfellow _The Building of the Ship_; Moore _The Harp that Once Thro'
Tara's Halls_; Byron _The Isles of Greece_; and Rouget de Lisle _The
Marseillaise_.

One of the first to strike the patriotic note in Canadian poetry was a
Nova Scotian--the Canadian orator, statesman and publicist, Joseph
Howe.  While Howe's poetry has more of oratory than poetic inspiration
in it, his poem, _Our Fathers_, which was read at the Centenary
Celebration of Halifax in 1849, possesses some very noble lines.  Like
Tennyson's _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, there is, at
least, fine and lofty rhetoric in the following two stanzas:

  "Room for the Dead!  Your living hands may pile
  Treasures of Art the stately tents within;
  Beauty may grace them with her richest smile
  And Genius there spontaneous plaudits win.
  But yet amidst the tumult and the din
  Of gathering thousands let me audience crave:--
  Place claim I for the dead--'twere mortal sin
  When banners o'er our Country's treasures wave
  Unmarked to leave the wealth safe-garner'd in the grave.

  Not here!  O yes our hearts their presence feel;
  Viewless, not voiceless, from the distant shells
  On Memory's shore harmonious echoes steal,
  And names which in the days gone by were spells,
  Are blent with that soft music;
  If there dwells the spirit here our Country's fame to spread
  While every breast with joy and triumph swells,
  And earth reverberates to our measured tread,
  Banner and wreath should own our reverence for the Dead!"


But the supreme note in Canadian patriotic poetry was struck, more than
forty years ago, by Charles G. D. Roberts, in his fine poem, _Canada_.
Roberts, in the flush of his poetic youth, stirred by the fire and
ardour of Canadian patriotism, has given us, in this noble poem, lines
surpassing in exalted fervour those of Longfellow, in his apostrophe to
the Union, in his poem, _The Building of the Ship_.  There is no double
allegiance--no "my liege lord and the Duke my father" in the following
opening stanzas of Roberts' splendid poem:

  O Child of Nations, giant-limbed,
      Who stand'st among the nations now
  Unheeded, unadorned, unhymned,
      With unanointed brow.

  How long the ignoble sloth, how long
      The trust in greatness not thine own?
  Surely the lion's brood is strong
      To front the world alone!

  How long the indolence, ere thou dare
      Achieve thy destiny, seize thy fame--
  Ere our proud eyes behold thee bear
      A nation's franchise, nation's name?


Nor should we forget to refer here to the work of another Canadian
poet, who preceded Roberts, the dominant note in whose poetry is
distinctly patriotic.  We refer to Charles Sangster, who is regarded by
some as the national poet of Canada.  But while Sangster found
inspiration and theme in the beauteous form and face of his native
land, his Canadian patriotic note is less vital and concrete than that
of Roberts.  The following lines, from his _Song for Canada_, reveals
well both Sangster's spirit and method as a Canadian patriotic poet:

  Sons of the race whose sires
  Aroused the martial flame
      That filled with smiles
      The triune Isles
  Through all their heights of flame!
  With hearts as brave as theirs,
  With hopes as strong and high,
      We'll ne'er disgrace
      The honoured race,
  Whose deeds can never die.
  Let but the rash intruder dare
  To touch our darling strand,
      The martial fires
      That thrilled our sires
  Would flame throughout the land.


John Reade, literary editor, for many years, of the Montreal _Gazette_,
who recently passed away, is the author of a patriotic poem, bearing
the title _Dominion Day_.  It was written on the occasion of our first
Dominion Day Celebration, in 1867, and contains many exalted and truly
poetic lines.  Like McGee, Reade had been nurtured in Erin, and his
sonnets and lyrics possess all the sweetness and melody of the Celtic
lyre.  We reproduce these lines from _Dominion Day_ to illustrate
Reade's Canadian patriotic verse:

  Canada, Canada, land of the maple,
  Queen of the forest and lake;
  Open thy soul to the voice of thy people,
  Close not thy heart to the music they make.
      Bells chime out merrily,
      Trumpets call cheerily,
  Silence is vocal and sleep is awake!

  Canada, Canada, land of the fairest,
  Daughters of snow that is kissed by the sun,
  Binding the charms of all lands that are rarest,
  Like the bright Cestus of Venus in one!
      Bells, chime out merrily,
      Trumpets call cheerily
  A new reign of beauty on earth is begun!


A very high note, in Canadian patriotic poetry, was struck, some years
ago, by the late Robert K. Kernighan (The Khan), a writer of plain and
homely themes.  In the wedding of truth and simplicity, Kernighan at
times, in his poetic work, achieves a distinct success.  We must
confess that we find more true poetry--"human and red-ripe at the
heart"--in much of the poetic work of "The Khan" than we do in some of
the more pretentious and strained efforts of Canadian versifiers who
fill our magazines and journals with their dark and incoherent
abstractions.  We, at least, know what the "Khan" means, when he
writes, and this cannot always be said of many of our other poetizers.
It is true, great poetry is often expressed under the form of a symbol;
but the symbolized meaning is clear, while the dark enigmatic
abstraction is not.

Kernighan's poem, _Men of the Northern Zone_, which, by the way, the
late Sir John Macdonald was said to have been fond of quoting, has a
fine ring and swing to it.  Here is one of its representative stanzas:

  Oh we are the men of the Northern Zone;
      Shall a bit be placed in our mouth?
  If ever a Northman lost his throne
      Did the conqueror come from the South?
          Nay, nay--and the answer blent
          In chorus is Southland sent:
  Since when has a Southerner's conquering steel
      Hewed out in the North a throne?
  Since when has a Southerner placed his heel
      On the men of the Northern Zone?


Another Canadian, whose poetic gift, like that of Kernighan, is
associated with simple and homely themes, is the late Rev. William Wye
Smith.  His _Second Concession of Deer_ is quite unique, and in simple
ballad form pays tribute to the early pioneer in our land who blazed
the trees and turned a wilderness into smiling gardens.

Mr. Smith has struck a fine note of Canadian patriotism in his poem,
_Here's to the Land_, of which the following lines embody well the
spirit of the whole poem:

  Here's to the Land of the rock and the pine:
      Here's to the Land of the raft and the river;
  Here's to the Land where the sunbeams shine
      And the night that is bright with the North-light's quiver!

  Here's to the Land of the axe and the hoe!
      Here's to the hearties that give them their glory;
  With stroke upon stroke and with blow upon blow,
      The might of the forest has passed into story!


The French Canadian has sung sweetly, too, of his native land.  He has
glorified the days of Champlain and Laval, and set to heroic measure
the stirring deeds of his fathers.  Crémazie's brief little poem,
_Canada_, pulses with patriotism of the finest quality.  With the
French Canadian there is no divided allegiance.  Canada is truly his
native land to which is due his deepest devotion; and in this devotion
he has but a single purpose--the development and upbuilding of a
Canadian nation.

Out of an epic life of toil and struggle sustained by a heroism of
faith, the French Canadian has emerged with an idealism that has marked
the expression of his life in letters.  Because of this, his patriotism
is devoid of all egoism and the grossness of selfish materialism.  His
will be the task in Canadian letters to strike the patriotic note of
national consciousness, and give to Canada the true ideals and vision
of a nation.

The development and creation of a great Canadian poetry does not depend
upon words of flattery or words of depreciation.  Like all art, it must
spring from the life of the people.  At its best, it will be truly
Canadian--a flower nurtured on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or where
the great Arctic streams mingle their accents with the whispering
breezes of the West.  Neither clique nor fashion will mould its form
nor give it rules nor laws of life and beauty.  It will be part of the
universal truth of all art, speaking to the world through Canadian
lips.  Nor will it heed the judgments of other men and other lands that
neither know nor recognize the genius of the Canadian people.

Not yet has come, it is true, our Canadian Browning, our Canadian
Tennyson, or our Canadian Longfellow.  When he does come, he shall come
dowered with the fullest gift of song, and shall catch up in that song
something of the sublimity of our mountains, the light and glow of our
northern star; something of the sweep and dash of our mighty rivers;
the music and murmurings of our blossoming prairies; the honest manhood
of our marts and farms; the strong virtues of our homes and firesides;
the tenderness of our mothers' prayers; the sweetness and purity of our
maidens' hearts!




SOME FRENCH CANADIAN PROSE WRITERS



CHAPTER V.

SOME FRENCH-CANADIAN PROSE WRITERS

The most distinctive characteristic of French letters is the wealth and
wisdom of its criticism.  Whatever opinions may be held as to the place
of French poets in the world's Valhalla of poetry, the very first place
is readily conceded to French criticism for its breadth and sanity, its
universal judgments, its fine canons of taste, its clearness and
beauty, and its always just proportion of analysis and synthesis.

Nothing, indeed, can be finer than the French schools of criticism,
from Montaigne to Sainte Beuve, and from Boileau to Brunetière.
To-day, in France, we have representatives of the two schools of
criticism--the objective and subjective.  The late Ferdinand Brunetière
occupied for years the leadership of the objective or scientific method
of criticism; while at the head of the subjective we have Anatole
France and Jules Lemaitre.

This gift and instinct for criticism, a very tradition and inheritance
of France, was borne across the sea by its sons and daughters, when
they settled, early in the seventeenth century, upon the banks of the
St. Lawrence.  It has developed and ripened with the centuries; nor has
this breadth of intellectual vision that marks the scholar in France
been wanting to his kinsman in Quebec, whose literary horizon is
necessarily more limited.

There is but one department of letters, in which English genius has
surpassed French genius in Canada, and that is fiction.  We think it
will be conceded by any one who has made an adequate and sympathetic
study of the whole field of Canadian poetry, that the poetic work of
Crémazie, Lemay, Fréchette and Chapman is quite the equal of that of
any four English-speaking poets in Canada; though a fairer comparison
would be with any four English-speaking poets in any province of Canada.

In the department of history, Quebec will never be obliged to take a
second place while it has on its roll of historical writers the worthy
and brilliant names of Francis Xavier Garneau and Abbé Ferland.  Until
Kingsford appeared, there was really no historian in Canada to match
with Garneau; and considering the conditions under which the latter
wrote his history of Canada, it must be conceded that Garneau's is the
greater performance.  "As an historian," says a well-known Canadian
writer, "Garneau stands pre-eminent in our republic of letters; he is
at once our Macaulay, Hume, Guizot and Thiers, and we may
conscientiously say that he has written the best history of Canada ever
printed."

Referring to Garneau's style, the late Abbé Casgrain, in his essay _Un
Contemporain_, writes: "His style is commensurate with the loftiness of
his thought and reveals him as a choice writer.  He has amplitude,
precision and brightness.  His style is especially remarkable for its
strength and energy."  Garneau was occupied in writing his great
history from 1840 to 1848--years of stress and strain in Canadian
political life, when racial animosity was being accentuated by the
growing predominance of an English majority in the Canadian Parliament.

In 1861 appeared the first part of the _Cours d'Histoire du Canada_ by
Abbé Ferland, who was professor of Canadian History at Laval
University, and in 1865 part second.  His work is carefully documented,
the result of research in Paris and London.  Benjamin Sulte has laid
all Canada under obligation for the monumental work he has done as an
historian and chronicler.  Many a dark corner in Canadian history has
been made clear by his industry and erudition.

In fiction, Quebec has yielded us nothing of the first order, though it
has supplied Sir Gilbert Parker and Mrs. Catherwood with subjects that
have lent themselves readily to two meritorious and popular historical
romances--_The Seats of the Mighty_ and _The Dollards_.
French-Canadian fiction is not, however, without value; and we will
indicate here a few of its representative works.  When the late Abbé
Casgrain, in 1860, gathered around him, in the very shadow of the
Basilica of Quebec, a group of writers who created _Les Soirees
Canadiennes_ and _Le Foyer Canadien_ and who were known as "The
Pleiades of Quebec," the aged Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, who formed one
of the group, gave to French-Canadian letters its first work of
fiction, under the title of _Les Anciens Canadiens_ (The Canadians of
Old).  As Abbé Camille Roy says: "This novel is in truth a first series
of memories which constitute the first confidences of the author with
the public, one of the chief heroes of the story being none other than
Mr. d'Haberville, the grandfather of Mr. de Gaspé, who did his duty as
a soldier in the war of the conquest of Quebec, and whose manoir was
burned by the English."

Then we have the novel, _Jacques et Marie_, based on the story of the
deportation of the Acadians which gave Longfellow his theme for the
beautiful idyll of _Evangeline_, and, as its sub-title states, is a
souvenir of a dispersed people.  The author of this touching story is
Napoleon Bourassa, architect and painter, who was born in 1827 and
educated at the _Petit Séminaire de St. Sulpice_.

Born almost contemporaneously with the author of _Jacques et Marie_ and
one of "The Pleiades of Quebec," Mr. Gerin-Lajoie will be remembered
for his unique novel, _Jean Rivard_, which deals in an interesting
manner with the story of the colonists in Quebec.  Abbé Roy calls _Jean
Rivard_ a rustic book, all impregnated with the aroma of the forest.
We have nothing just like it in the English fiction of Canada, save it
be Mrs. Moodie's _Roughing It in the Bush_, which, however, lacks unity
and plot.

It remained for a French-Canadian writer to seek the subject for a
novel outside of Canada, in order to reveal the gifts and qualities
that go to the making and creating of genuine fiction.  The late Sir
Adolphe Routhier of Quebec, author of the stirring Canadian National
Song, _O Canada!_ in his novel, _The Centurion_, a tale of the time of
Christ, gives us a real novel of worth, "the most substantial," as Abbé
Roy holds, "that has yet appeared in French-Canadian literature."
Continuing, Abbé Camille Roy writes: "This novel of Judge Routhier's
contains more history, more geography, more ideas, I will not say more
love, than all the others that have, up to the present, appeared in our
French Province.  And this advancement should be noted, seeing that the
novel is a species of writing that develops slowly and with difficulty
amongst us; and seeing especially that this kind of writing supposes or
implies that the author possesses a very rich and supple mind; and
seeing, in fine, that this complexity of the novel could be one of the
reasons why but few have undertaken to write fiction here."  Quebec has
produced many writers whose contributions have not been so much
creative as valuable compilations of historical data and annals
precious to _literati_ who seek setting and background of fact wherein
to cradle the offspring of their imagination.  Amongst these a first
place must be given to the late Sir James Lemoine, whose _Legends and
Chronicles of the St. Lawrence_ has been a very mine for Canadian
writers.

To Lemoine Sir Gilbert Parker is indebted for the data which made
possible the creation of perhaps his most popular novel, _The Seats of
the Mighty_.  At his quaint manorial home, Spencer Grange, hard by
Quebec, Sir James often entertained many of the most distinguished
writers of the day.  That must, indeed, have been a delightful fête at
Spencer Grange in September, 1864, when George Augustus Sala of the
London _Telegraph_ met Francis X. Garneau, the historian of Canada, old
Abbé Ferland, historiographer, Professor La Rue of Laval University,
Dr. J. C. Taché, the well-known essayist on Confederation, and the
Honourable Joseph Cauchon, the editor of _Le Journal de Quebec_.  It
may be here added that Sir James Lemoine was an intimate friend of the
American historian, Parkman, and frequently entertained him at his home.

On the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, when
Sir James Lemoine was the recipient of knighthood, his gifted confrère
in Canadian letters, Dr. Louis Fréchette, addressed to him a beautiful
sonnet of which the following is a translation of the opening lines:
"You have saved from oblivion many a legend, Venerable Toiler, laden
with glorious booty; you have entwined for our literary knights many a
garland and snatched from forgetfulness more than one remote secret."

Dr. Charles Joseph Taché, brother of the late Archbishop Taché of
Winnipeg, was born at Kamouraska, Quebec, in 1820.  Taché was related
to the first three settlers in Quebec, Hébert, Couillard and Martin,
who lived in Quebec in the time of Champlain; and on his father's side
he was a descendant of Louis Joliet, the explorer of the Mississippi.
In many respects Taché is one of the most remarkable men that French
Canada has produced.  He was a brilliant polemist and a man of
prodigious erudition.  His work on the Confederation of the Canadian
Provinces is a masterpiece.  His _Forestiers et Voyageurs_ makes also
delightful reading.  In this work there is a most interesting chapter,
entitled "La Rentrée au Camp," from which we would like to quote if
space permitted.  For his distinguished services to French-Canadian
literature, the French Government created Dr. Taché a Knight of the
Legion of Honour.

Contemporary with Napoléon Bourassa, Gerin-Lajoie and Dr. Taché, lived
Dr. Chauveau, novelist, poet and politician.  Dr. Chauveau was placed
at the head of the department of Public Instruction for Quebec in 1876.
His two chief works are _L'Ancien Chapitre de Québec_ and
_François-Xavier Garneau: sa vie et ses œuvres_.  We have reserved
for consideration and appraisement three other French-Canadian writers
of notable gifts--Abbé Casgrain, Sir Adolphe Routhier and Abbé Camille
Roy, only one of whom survives, Abbé Casgrain having died some twelve
years ago and Sir Adolphe but recently.

Rev. Henri Raymond Casgrain, who was born in 1831, at Rivière Ouelle,
P.Q., equally distinguished as an historian and critic, was educated at
the College of Ste. Anne and the Quebec Seminary, and made three
extended visits to Europe in 1858, 1867, and 1873 in quest of
historical material, obtaining the journal and papers of Marechal de
Lévis, as well as the personal papers of General Montcalm.  He received
the degree of Doctor of Letters from Laval University in 1877, and was
elected President of the Royal Society of Canada in 1889.

The Abbé is justly regarded as the chief of French-Canadian
biographers.  In 1861 appeared his first work, _Les Légendes
Canadiennes_; in 1864 _L'Histoire de la Mère Marie de L'Incarnation_;
in 1885 _Biographies Canadiennes_; in 1888 _Un Pélerinage au pays
d'Evangeline_, which was crowned by the French Academy; and in 1891 his
work on Montcalm and Lévis, which historically speaking is probably his
_magnum opus_.  It should be added that to the complete edition of
Crémazie's poems Abbé Casgrain contributed also a most scholarly and
appreciative introduction.

Foremost of French-Canadian prose writers may be regarded the late Sir
Adolphe Routhier, who recently passed away at the ripe age of
eighty-one.  Judge Routhier was born at St. Placide, P.Q., in 1839, and
received his education at the College of Ste. Therese and Laval
University.  It is worth noting that in his boarding quarters at Laval,
Sir Adolphe had, as neighbouring room-mate, the poet, Dr. Fréchette.
Judge Routhier was essentially a critic and _conférencier_.  In all his
works he reveals a breadth of scholarship, a supreme literary taste and
a poise of judgment surpassing, we think, that of any other Canadian
writer, either English or French.  No other Canadian writer is so
little swayed in the predilections of his judgments by mere personal or
racial prepossessions as Judge Routhier.  He had the unerring instinct
of the French mind to discern in the literature of the world what is
truly a masterpiece; and he struck off with chaste pen in epigram and
antithesis the literary values and virtues, the salient qualities of
every writer he appraised.

Take, for instance, the following contrast which he institutes between
the great romanticist, Chateaubriand, and the eminent French apologist
and critic, De Maistre: "Chateaubriand reacts against literary
paganism, De Maistre against impious mockery.  One could say that
Chateaubriand made a tour of the Catholic temple to admire its form,
but he did not enter it; while De Maistre passed through the interior
of the edifice and even sounded it to its foundation to show the world
the unshakable stone upon which it is seated."

Again, speaking of Victor Hugo and contrasting him with Lamartine,
Judge Routhier writes: "Hugo's imagination was equally a marvel.  We
know but two men who can be compared to him in this respect:
Shakespeare and Lopez de Vega....  As a lyric poet, Hugo rises higher
than all his contemporaries, but he descends also lower.  Several
critics prefer Lamartine to him, and in a certain respect they are
right.  Lamartine is more equal, and if he astonishes less, he charms
more.  Both are, indeed, poets of the soul, but in Lamartine it is the
sentimental which dominates, while in Hugo it is the intellectual."

The author's massive work, _Les Grands Drames_, is an able and
searching study of the work of Sophocles, Æschylus, Shakespeare,
Goethe, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo.  Referring to the great
Elizabethan dramatist, Routhier writes: "The theatre of Shakespeare is
far superior, considered on the moral side, to the French contemporary
theatre.  It does not destroy the respect for authority, the traditions
of the father of the family, the marital bond.  It preaches neither
free love nor illicit love."  Judge Routhier's chief works are:
_Causeries du Dimanche; Portraits et Pastels Littéraires; A Travers
L'Europe; En Canot; Les Echos; A Travers L'Espagne; Les Grands Drames;
Le Centurion_ (a Romance); and _Conferences et Discours_.  It was the
last which established his reputation as a literary critic.

Rev. Joseph Camille Roy was born at Berthier, P.Q., in 1870.  There are
several brothers of the Roys, of whom one was the late Archbishop of
Quebec, and all of them seem to have been born to the literary purple.
Abbé Camille Roy was educated at the Quebec Seminary, Laval University,
L'Institut Catholique, and the Sorbonne, Paris.  He is the founder of
_La Société du Parler Français du Canada_, and was elected a member of
the Royal Society of Canada in 1904.  His chief works are: _Nos
Origines Littéraires_ and _Nouveaux Essais sur la Littérature
Canadienne_.  The latter is a very scholarly and discriminating study
of the work of some of the most prominent French-Canadian writers, such
as De Gaspé, Gerin-Lajoie, Louis Fréchette, Judge Routhier and Thomas
Chapais.

Two other names of notable merit should be here added to the list of
French-Canadian critics: that of Victor Morin and Rev. Father Beaudé
(Henri d'Arles).  Victor Morin, LL.D., who is a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada and has contributed many valuable papers to its
yearly Transactions, is the associate editor in the French section of
_Makers of Canadian Literature_ of which Dr. Lorne Pierce is the
editor-in-chief.  He has prepared the volume: _Literary Backgrounds:
French-Canadian_ for this series.

Father Beaudé is one of the most brilliant and versatile of the younger
writers of Quebec.  He studied in the colleges of Quebec and later in
New York, Paris and Jerusalem.  His first book _Propos d'Art_ appeared
in New York in 1903.  His researches in the history of Acadia,
published in three volumes, was crowned by the French Academy, and won
for the author the Richelieu Gold Medal.

Then we should add here also the name of perhaps our greatest living
French-Canadian historian, Hon. Thomas Chapais, who occupies a place in
our Canadian Senate.  The late Senator David is also the author of
several historical epochal works, as is the late Mr. A. D. DeCelles,
for many years the scholarly librarian of the Federal Parliament.  Let
us not forget to mention here, too, the name of a gifted
French-Canadian woman, Miss Félicité Angers (Laure Conan), whose work
in fiction was crowned by the French Academy.

There still remain two French-Canadian publicists and journalists whose
work has been a force in moulding public opinion in every quarter of
French Canada: Jules Paul Tardivel, founder and director, for many
years, of _La Verité of Quebec_, and Henri Bourassa, founder and
director of _Le Devoir_, unquestionably the most ably edited French
journal in Canada.  Mr. Tardivel, who was known as "the Louis Veuillot
of Canada," filled a unique place in French-Canadian journalism.  He
was, without a doubt, a _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_, and
made of his little weekly journal, _La Vérité_, a tremendous force in
the Catholic life of Quebec.  Though dead since 1905, the traditions of
this fearless journalistic crusader still survive, and give strength
and inspiration to those who battle for knightly honour and truth.  Mr.
Tardivel's published works are: _Vie du Pape Pie IX: Ses Œuvres et
ses Douleurs; Notes de Voyage, 1890;_ and _La Situation Religieuse aux
Etats-Unis_.

Henri Bourassa, the director of _Le Devoir_, is much more than a
Canadian figure; he is a continental figure.  He is, too, probably one
of the best informed journalists in America, and writes and speaks with
equal facility both French and English.  He maintains a thesis with a
force of logic, at once both cumulative and convincing.  His style is
like to a mountain stream gathering force as it frets the narrow
channel of a valley.  Mr. Bourassa has published in all some twenty
books, many of them being in brochure form.  His most widely read
volumes are: _Hier, Aujourd'hui, Demain; Que Devons-nous à
L'Angleterre; Le Canada Apostolique;_ and _Le Pape Arbitre de la Paix_.

It would be impossible here to touch upon all the French-Canadian prose
writers.  There are, indeed, many others worthy of notice, such as
Oscar Dunn, Arthur Buies, Faucher de St. Maurice, Adolphe Gagnon, the
two Abbés Gosselin and Abbé Groulx, whose works, _La Vie de Monseigneur
Laval, L'Instruction au Canada sous le Régime français_ and _Lendemains
de Conquête_ and _La Naissance d'une Race_, are valuable contributions
to Canadian literature.  Nor should we omit here to speak of the group
of French-Canadian writers who created and contributed to _Les Soirées
du Château Ramezay_ in Montreal.  French-Canadian prose writers inherit
the taste and traditions of their _mère patrie_; and with singular
devotion have cultivated, upon the banks of the St. Lawrence, a prose
literature worthy of the genius of their gifted forebears in the land
of Montaigne, Boileau, Sainte Beuve and Brunetière.




A CANADIAN DIALECT POET



CHAPTER VI.

A CANADIAN DIALECT POET

Canada has produced its nest of songsters--bassos, tenors, sopranos and
contraltos.  But Canadian poetry is chiefly objective.  The note of
subjectivity or introspection in it is not large.  A few Canadian poets
have entered the inner temple of song and laid the flower and fruitage
of their inspiration upon its altar.

In the domain of humorous and dialect poetry, Canadian genius, too, has
not been very fruitful.  Perhaps good reasons could be adduced for
this.  The world of contrast and sharp differentiation does not meet in
Canada as it does in the Republic to the South of us.  Canada is not
subject to the seismic changes--commercial, political and social--that
characterize the life of the American people.  It is extreme contrasts
and extravagances that form the basis of humour, and no dialect can
grow save in a soil where life, thought, customs, manners and language
are marked off by a clear and well-defined individuality.

Dialect poetry has indeed blossomed on American soil.  Perhaps it has
been overdone under the starry skies of the Republic.  We think that as
a vogue in poetry it has sometimes been carried to an extreme, and true
poets like the late James Whitcomb Riley have, we think, at times
clipped their wings in an endeavour to sing in notes not born of the
heart and life of the people.  No person, however, can study the
beginnings of American life, with its variety and contrasts, its
sharply defined characteristics, racial and geographical, without
realizing that from such soil and such conditions dialect poetry must
as naturally blossom as the purple grape from the vine trained by the
hand of the husbandman.

So we have had, as a logical outcome of these conditions in America,
Irwin Russell, the darkey-dialect poet of the South, whose _Christmas
Night in Quarters_ is a most admirable piece of work; Bret Harte on the
Pacific Coast; John Hay of _Pike County Ballads_, Ohio; Whitcomb Riley
of Indiana; Eugene Field of the _Kingdom of Childhood_; Will Carleton
of Michigan; James Russell Lowell of the _Biglow Papers_; Charles
Follen Adams, "Yawcob Strauss"; Charles Leland, "Hans Breitman", whose
characterizations in German dialect verse are excellent; and Tom Daly
of Philadelphia, whose Italian dialect verse has given him a unique
place among American dialect poets.

There is one quarter, one corner of Canada, that has yielded rich and
promising soil for the Canadian dialect poet--Quebec, the home of
"Bateese", the French-Canadian _habitant_.  Nova Scotia is
differentiated but little from British Columbia; while the people of
Manitoba are largely a facsimile of the people of Ontario, plus the
wider vision and stronger ozone of the Western prairie.  But Quebec
stands alone--unique, the heir in its traditions, life, character and
customs of France, under the _Old Monarchy_, untouched by the torch,
tremor or trumpet of the French Revolution, and maintaining its
supremacy of faith and virtue amid every vicissitude of political life
and fortune.

Naturally, French-Canadian life, fashioned for nearly three centuries
under such conditions, and with such environment, has produced
character, individual, indigenous, picturesque.  Nay more; the
descendants of the Norman, Touraine and Perche colonists, who settled
early in the seventeenth century in the land discovered and explored by
their fellow-countrymen, Cartier and Champlain; living for nearly two
centuries in seigniorial relationship with their manorial masters;
holding to the teachings of the Church, to the word of the _Curé_, with
the fidelity of primitive Christians, could not but evolve a type of
character not only unique, but highly and truly ideal.

It is with this type of character of the French-Canadian _habitant_
that the late Dr. William Henry Drummond, of Montreal, has dealt in his
four admirable volumes of dialect poetry: _The Habitant, Johnnie
Courteau, The Voyageur_ and _The Great Fight_; and it is not too much
to say that our author has written himself immortally into these
French-Canadian poems.  It requires but little talent to set the
foibles of a people to metre, but it calls for genius in touch with the
lowly and divine to gather up the spiritual facts in a people's lives
and give these facts such artistic setting that both people and poems
will live forever.  This certainly Dr. Drummond has done.

But let us not here be misunderstood, in our appreciation and praise of
Dr. Drummond's dialect work.  The reader, who would consider the
dialect spoken by the French-Canadian characters delineated in the work
of Dr. Drummond as typical or representative of the English spoken in
Quebec, even by the great mass of the _habitants_, would be gravely
mistaken.  Dr. Drummond himself never, we are quite certain, intended
that his dialect should be taken as such.  Like the dialect used in
much of our characterization, it is based upon exaggeration; and art
permits this exaggeration provided it has something of truth as its
basis.  So the literary creator of types and dialects will always find
his ground disputed.  The Creoles of Louisiana would never accept
George Cable's creations, nor the dialect which he placed upon their
lips.  In this connection, readers will remember how severely Cable was
criticized by the late Prof. Fortier of Tulane University, New
Orleans--a Creole himself by birth, and, perhaps, one of the finest
French scholars of his time in America.

Again take the Irish dialect as used in the delineation of Irish
character.  Does any one imagine for a moment that the people of Cork,
or Limerick, or Galway, express themselves in the dialect found in most
of the works of fiction dealing with Irish character?  In our day W. B.
Yeats and Dr. Douglas Hyde, and notably the late John Millington Synge,
have given us in their works an Irish dialect of splendid flavour and
truly moulded in the Irish soul, and fashioned by Irish lips.

But, while we offer this explanation and caution to our readers, we
hold that there is no caricature in the work of Dr. Drummond.  Drummond
went among the peasantry of Quebec with an honest, open and sympathetic
mind, ready to find the fragrance of virtue wherever the flower grew.
He saw, too, all things with a spiritual rather than an intellectual
eye, and so his judgments have about them something of the accuracy of
heaven.

It is not likely that the late Dr. Fréchette, the French-Canadian poet,
ever proud of his race, would have contributed a _Foreword_ to Dr.
Drummond's first volume, _The Habitant_, had there been in it any
caricature of his people.  In the course of his graceful _Introduction_
Dr. Fréchette writes:

"Dans son étude des Canadiens-français, M. Drummond a trouvé le moyen
d'éviter un écueil qui aurait semblé inévitable pour tout autre que
pour lui.  Il est resté vrai, sans tomber dans la vulgarité, et piquant
sans verser dans le grotesque.

"Qu'il mette en scène le gros fermier fier de son bien ou de ses filles
à marier, le vieux médecin de campagne ne comptant plus ses états de
service, le jeune amoureux qui rêve au clair de la lune, le vieillard
qui repasse en sa mémoire la longue suite des jours révolus, le conteur
de légendes, l'aventurier des 'pays d'en haut' et même le Canadien
exilé--le _Canadien errant_, comme dit la chanson populaire--qui croit
toujours entendre résonner à son oreille le vague tintement des cloches
de son village; que le récit soit plaisant ou pathétique, jamais la
note ne sonne faux, jamais la bizarrerie ne dégénère en puérilité
burlesque."

So, whether the reader be an English Canadian or a French Canadian, we
think he can acquit the "Poet of the Habitant" of any motive or purpose
of caricaturing the French Canadians.  In truth, in our first visit to
Dr. Drummond, in the summer of 1897, while discussing with him his
portrayal of the French Canadian character, the Doctor said to us, with
great earnestness: "I would rather cut off my right arm than speak
disparagingly of the French-Canadian people."

The two dominant qualities in the work of Dr. Drummond are
human-heartedness and sincerity; and these two in a supreme degree
marked also the character of the author.  Born near Mohill, County
Leitrim, Ireland, on April 13, 1854, Drummond came, when a little boy,
with his parents, to Canada.  To his infinite credit--and this revealed
the sincerity of the man--Dr. Drummond remained forever true to his
race and to his early life setting.  As Neil Munro, the Scottish writer
says, in his introductory sketch of the "Poet of the Habitant," which
appears in the complete edition of Dr. Drummond's poems, "Drummond was
a Celt in every artery of his being."  Indeed, not a few of his poems
could not have been written but by a Celt.  Nor were Drummond's gifts
confined alone to French-Canadian characterization, as any one may
learn who reads his "Dublin Fusilier."

The precious friendship of many years, which existed between Dr.
Drummond and the writer, was a most intimate one, and we can,
therefore, emphasize with surety, not alone his loyalty to his race,
but also his fine Canadianism.  As regards the land of his birth, he
had no place for those who would set North against South, or creed
against creed.  If we are not mistaken, the last poem that Dr. Drummond
wrote was read by him at the banquet of the St. Patrick's Society, in
Montreal, on the 17th of March, 1907, and bore the title, _We're Irish
Yet_.  Drummond's Canadianism was known to all men.  There was nothing
narrow or provincial in his mental make-up.  He spent no time in either
shouting for or knocking the Empire, or, indeed, knocking any race
within the Empire.  He was simply first, last and always a Canadian;
and with a breadth of mind and fine sympathy, he held every Canadian,
no matter of what race origin, to be his brother.

In any appreciation or estimate of Dr. Drummond and his work, we should
never forget that Dr. Drummond the Man was greater than his work.  It
will be remembered that in the realm of art sometimes the man is
greater than his work, personality counting for more than mere gift of
achievement.  This is certainly true of Dante and Michaelangelo; for
while the magnificent vision of the great Florentine exile has never
been surpassed in the domain of the epic; nor has ever dream in marble
bodied forth anything more sublime than the masterpieces of
Michaelangelo which adorn the Churches of Rome and Florence; yet the
man, Dante, in exile, eating at Verona and Ravenna the bread of a
stranger, and the man, Michaelangelo, with vision in his soul of a St.
Peter's Dome or a Last Judgment, stand far above the very noblest
creations of their genius.

We will not spend time here discussing how much of a poet Dr. Drummond
was, or what he lacked.  A critic has recently written that "Dr.
Drummond was neither a Canadian nor a poet."  Was Heavysege a Canadian?
Was D'Arcy McGee a Canadian?  Was McLachlan a Canadian?--by birth.  And
yet we justly honour them among Canadian writers.  As to whether
Drummond was a true poet or not, we would say that within his special
field and range he certainly was.  Dr. Drummond was not, indeed, of the
company of him who wrote _The Cloud_, nor of him who wrote _The Passing
of Arthur_, nor of him who wrote _The Hound of Heaven_; but he
possessed, nevertheless, many of the qualities of a true poet, such as
creative force, imagination, sensibility and spiritual vision.  The two
latter he owed largely to his Celtic origin.  It is perhaps worth
noting here that the three best dialect poets in America have been of
Celtic origin: James Whitcomb Riley, Tom Daly and Dr. William Henry
Drummond.  When you analyze Dr. Drummond's work, you find it difficult
to say whether he has greater command of humour or pathos, both of
which, to the Celt, are ever ready; so that, like twins in a cradle,
you cannot wake the one without disturbing the other.

Neither is Dr. Drummond's humour mere coarse, vulgar buffoonery; nor is
his pathos maudlin.  He always touches the minor chord of life with
great surety and deftness, and passes from humour to pathos and from
pathos to humour with that ease of transition so characteristic of true
genius.

We have spoken of the human-heartedness and sincerity of Drummond's
work.  Yet it possesses something of even greater value than these.  It
is the spiritual touch which gives his work immortal value.  In vain
will you build even in poetry, if the Infinite, the source of all
Beauty and Truth, does not lay the foundation.

Dr. Drummond was linked to the spiritual world, and though he did not
kneel at a Catholic Altar, being an Anglican in his faith, he has not
in his work struck a single false note in his poetic treatment and
characterization of the French-Canadian people.  A man of no faith, a
materialist, a scoffing doubter, could never have found, as Drummond
did, themes of poetic inspiration in the beautiful and idyllic lives of
these French-Canadian people; or, if he did find a theme, he would in
his treatment have stripped it of that which makes all art
valuable--the great touch of the spiritual.

As to his themes and method, we will not dwell upon them at great
length here.  Dr. Drummond has created both a type and a dialect in
literature.  Of course the veritable French-Canadian _habitant_ does
not conform to Dr. Drummond's creation; nor yet is the dialect created
by the "Poet of the Habitant" the language found upon the lips of the
many French Canadians who speak the English language.  In all the large
cities and towns of Quebec there are thousands of French Canadians who
speak the English language with a correctness and beauty of accent
unsurpassed by the best educated of English Canadians.  We have for
proof of this only to recall to our readers a memory of the speeches in
English of the late Sir Wilfrid Laurier, or the fine addresses of the
Hon. Rodolphe Lemieux and Henri Bourassa, still with us.  If there is
any resemblance--and there certainly is a resemblance--between the
language spoken by the _habitant_ of Quebec, when essaying to speak
English, and the dialect created by Dr. Drummond for literary purposes,
it will be found to reside largely in the language used by the
French-Canadian lumberman in the days of the river "drives" on the St.
Lawrence and the St. Maurice, with whom Drummond became well acquainted
in his early years.

Drummond's themes came to him from observation and experience.  In
truth, our author could make literature out of anything.  With an eye
to observe and a heart to feel, incidents and idiosyncrasies, little
situations of humour, touching scenes of pathos, heroic love, every-day
dramas of life, and, above all, the innumerable concrete examples of
the beauty of spiritual life among the French-Canadian _habitants_--all
these inspired his pen and kindled in his soul the fashioning flame
that makes true art possible.

The first French-Canadian dialect poem from the pen of Dr. Drummond to
give promise of and shadow forth the genius of its author, was _The
Wreck of the Julie Plante: A Legend of Lake St. Peter_.  The tourist or
traveller will remember the expansion of the St. Lawrence below
Montreal known as Lake St. Peter.  Here is the scene of this
ballad-legend so cleverly told in French-Canadian dialect verse by Dr.
Drummond--a poem which, while by no means among the author's best, has
gained favour everywhere as a recital--in the lumber shanties of
Wisconsin and Michigan, in the drawing-rooms of New Orleans, among the
cowboys out on the Western plains, and among the most exclusive club
men of our great metropolitan cities.

It will be observed that much of the humour in the poem is derived from
pitching the story in such a high dramatic key.  Never, indeed, did
ocean liner go down to her grave amid such footlights of tragedy as
sank the wood scow, _Julie Plante_, in the historic waters of Lac St.
Pierre.

A curious thing in connection with this poem is the fact that its
authorship was claimed for some time by a well-known Canadian actor,
who was wont to recite it in a play which he for many years presented,
entitled "The Canuck."  Like King George III, who used to fancy he had
fought at the Battle of Waterloo, and, as a proof of it, was accustomed
to show the armour that he wore, so the Canadian actor was finally led
from reciting the poem to believe that he had written it.  In fact, Dr.
Drummond was obliged to make good his claim to the paternity of his
literary offspring through the public press.

Of all Drummond's poems, perhaps the one which represents him at his
best is _Le Vieux Temps_.  This embodies in a marked degree his gift of
happy narration, his keen insight into French-Canadian character, his
sense of acute observation, his wonderful command of humour and pathos,
and the ease and facility which marks his transition from one to the
other.

_Pelang_, so dramatic in its treatment, is most artistically worked
out.  It is perhaps the highest poetic conception to be found in his
four volumes, and is full of tenderness and the most delicate imagery.
For a piece of individual characterization, there is not in our opinion
anything better in all his works than _The Curé of Calumette_.  This
poem is a marvellous tribute to the self-sacrificing life of the
French-Canadian _curé_ in his divine mission among his people as an
ambassador of the Master.

Then who would not admire that unique poem so popular with readers,
_Little Bateese_?  This reveals Drummond the lover and observer of
children.  Nay, it reveals something more than this.  We get in this
simple poem something of the secret of Drummond's power and gifts--his
kinship with the heart of childhood.  But the poem which Drummond has
transfigured with the very light and love of his soul bears the title,
_The Last Portage_.  This is a personal poem.  A short time before his
death Dr. Drummond lost a beautiful little boy.  It was a sorrow from
which his great heart never fully recovered.  This little boy had a
beauty which reminded you of Murillo's painting of St. John and the
Lamb.  His lost child appears to Drummond in a dream beckoning him to
the Camp beyond "The Last Portage":

  Lak de young Jesu w'en he's here below,
  De face of ma leetle son look jus' so--
  Den off beyon' on de bush I see
  De wite dress fadin' among de tree.


Dr. William Henry Drummond has bequeathed to his family, his friends
and his country the heritage of a noble life, the heritage of a noble
name.  He has done much more than enrich with his genius the wealth of
Canadian letters.  Dr. Drummond has made goodly contribution to the
life, spirit and upbuilding of a Canadian Nation.




A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET

_The type face which has been used, in the composition of this book is
Monotype No. 21, commonly called "Binney".  It bears the workmanlike
quality and freedom from "frills" so characteristic of English old
styles in the period prior to the "modern" letter.  It gives an evenly
textured page that may be read with a minimum of eye strain.  Although
one of the earliest type faces they produced, it is still one of the
most popular in the matrix library of the Monotype Company._


SET UP AND PRINTED BY THE GRAPHIC PUBLISHERS, LIMITED

OTTAWA, ONT.  -  PAPER IS "ROLLAND DE LUXE"

MANUFACTURED BY THE ROLLAND PAPER CO.

LIMITED AT MONT ROLLAND, P.Q.  -  COVER

DESIGN BY ALAN B. BEDDOE.




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PLAIN FOLKS

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_A Cross-Section of Life from a Real Canadian Prairie Town._


SHACKLES

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_A Psychological study of a married woman._


THE FIGHTING BISHOP

THOS. B. ROBERTON

_Essays on Bishop Strachan.  Sir Francis Bond Head and the Days of '37._


OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

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_Poems by Canada's Greatest Poet_


NEW FURROWS

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_A Story of a Belgian Immigrant Girl in the Alberta Foothills._


THE LONG DAY

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_Reminiscences of the Yukon in the "Rush Days" that will give a laugh_


TOY SHIPS

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Scissor-cut Silhouettes by Lisl Hummel

_Whimsical rhymes and delightful pictures for children._


MY GARDEN DREAMS

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Marginal illustrations in a separate color by E. W. Harrold

_A fantasy of flowers for all lovers of a garden._


POTEEN

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A SEARCH FOR AMERICA

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THE PAINTED CLIFF

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_Love and adventure in a Rocky Mountain valley._



[The end of _Intimacies in Canadian Life and Letters_ by Thomas O'Hagan]