Introduction

THE poets whose songs fill this book are voices cheerful with the consciousness of young might, public wealth, and heroism. Through them, taken all together, you may catch something of great Niagara falling, of brown rivers rushing with foam, of the crack of the rifle in the haunts of the moose and caribou, the lament of vanishing races singing their death-song as they are swept on to the cataract of oblivion, the rural sounds of Arcadias just rescued from surrounding wildernesses by the axe, shrill war-whoops of Iroquois battle, proud traditions of contests with the French and the Americans, stern and sorrowful cries of valour rising to curb rebellion. The tone of them is courage;—for to hunt, to fight, to hew out a farm, one must be a man! Through their new hopes, doubts, exultations, questionings, the virility of fighting races is the undertone. Canadians are, for the most part, the descendants of armies, officers and men, and every generation of them has stood up to battle.

The delight of a clear atmosphere runs through it too, and the rejoicings of that Winter Carnival which is only possible in the most athletic country in the world; with the glint of that heavenly Palace of illumined pearl, which is the February pilgrimage of North America.

Canada, Eldest Daughter of the Empire, is the Empire’s completest type! She is the full-grown of the family,—the one first come of age and gone out into life as a nation ; and she has in her young hands the solution of all those questions which must so interest every true Briton, proud and careful of the acquisitions of British discovery and conquest. She is Imperial in herself, we sons of her think, as the number, the extent, and the lavish natural wealth of her Provinces, each not less than some empire of Europe, rises in our minds ; as we picture her coasts and gulfs and kingdoms and islands, on the Atlantic on one side, and the Pacific on the other; her four-thousand-mile panorama of noble rivers, wild forests, oceanlike prairies ; her towering snow-capped Rockies waking to the tints of sunrise in the West ; in the East her hoary Laurentians, oldest of hills. She has by far the richest extent of fisheries, forests, wheat lands, and fur regions in the world; some of the greatest public- works ; some of the loftiest mountain-ranges, the vastest rivers, the healthiest and most beautifully varied seasons. She has the best ten-elevenths of Niagara Falls, and the best half of the Inland Seas. She stands fifth among the nations in the tonnage of her commercial marine. Her population is about five million souls. Her Valley of the Saskatchewan alone, it has been scientifically computed, will support eight hundred millions. In losing the United States, Britain lost the smaller half of her American possessions :—the Colony of the Maple Leaf is about as large as Europe.

But what would material resources be without a corresponding greatness in man ? Canada is also Imperial in her traditions. Her French race are still conscious that they are the remnants of a power which once ruled North America from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. Existing English Canada is the result of simply the noblest epic migration the world has ever seen.—more loftily epic than the retirement of Pius AEneas from Ilion,—the withdrawal, namely, out of the rebel Colonies, of the thirty-five thousand United Empire Loyalists after the War of the Revolution. “Why did you come here?” was asked of one of the first settlers of St John, New Brunswick, a man whose life was without a stain;—“Why did you come here, when you and your associates were almost certain to endure the sufferings and absolute want of shelter and food which you have narrated?” “Why did we come here?” replied he, with emotion which brought tears:—“For our loyalty?"

Canada has, of historic right, a voice also in the Empire of to-day, and busies herself not a little in studying its problems. For example, the question whether that Empire will last is being asked. Her history has a reply to that:—It will, if IT SETS CLEARLY BEFORE IT A DEFINITE IDEAL THAT MEN WILL SUFFER AND DIE FOR; and such an Ideal—worthy of long and patient endeavour—may be found in broad-minded advance towards the voluntary Federation of Mankind. She has a special history, too, which even under the overshadowing greatness of that of the Empire—in which she also owns her part—is one of interest. First explored in 1535, by Jacques-Cartier, of St Malo, by command of Francis I., and its settlement established in 1608 through the foundation of Quebec by the devoted and energetic Maker of French Canada, Samuel de Champlain, its story down to the Conquest in 1759-63 is full of romance,—Jesuit missionaries, explorers, chevaliers, painted Indian war-parties, the rich fur trade, and finally the great struggle under Montcalm, closing with his expiry and Wolfe’s at the hour of the fall of Quebec, passing like a panorama. Then came the entry of the Loyalists, and from that to the present there has been a steady unfolding to power and culture, broken only by the brave war of 1812, and a French, and two half-breed, rebellions. She is, to-day, next to the United States, the strongest factor in American affairs.

The Literature of this daughter-nation in the West, as distilled by its poets, ought to be interesting to Englishmen. That other Colonial poetic literature, presented in the Australian volume of this series, has shown that there can be a signal attractiveness in such a picture of a fresh world. On the part of Canada the semi-tropical Australian surroundings are matched in beauty by a Northern atmosphere of objects which make vivid contrasts with them; her native races were the noblest of savage tribes; while the Imperial and National feelings, developing in two such different hemispheres, are instructive in their divergences and similarities. The romantic life of each Colony also has a special flavour,—Australian rhyme is a poetry of the horse; Canadian, of the canoe.

Now, who are those who are drinking these inspirations and breathing them into song? In communing with them, we shall try to transport you to the Canadian clime itself. You shall come out with us as a guest of its skies and air, paddling over bright lakes and down savage rivers; singing French chansons to the swing of our paddles, till we come into the settlements; and shall be swept along on great rafts of timber by the majestic St Lawrence, to moor at historic cities whose streets and harbours are thronged with the commerce of all Europe and the world. You shall hear there the chants of a new nationality, weaving in with songs of the Empire, of its heroes, of its Queen.

A word first about the personnel of our conductors. The foremost name in Canadian song at the present day is that of Charles George Douglas Roberts, poet, canoeist, and Professor of Literature, who has struck the supreme note of Canadian nationality in his “Canada” and “Ode for the Canadian Confederacy.” His claim to supremacy lies, for the rest, chiefly in the quality of the two volumes, “Orion and other Poems,” which he published in 1880 at the age of twenty-one, and “In Divers Tones,” which appeared in 1887. The style and taste of Roberts at its best—and he is frequently very good—are characterised by two different elements—a striking predilection for the pictorial ideals and nature-poetry of classical Greece; and a noble passion, whose fire and music resemble and approach Tennyson’s. “Orion,” “Actseon,” “Off Pelorus,” and “The Pipes of Pan ” are purely Greek, drawn direct from “ancient founts of inspiration.” On the other hand, his “O Child of Nations, giant-limbed!” which stirs every true Canadian like a trumpet, is, though of different subject and metre, of the stamp and calibre of “Locksley Hall.” His pure Hellenic poems must be dismissed from consideration here, but an account of the man himself makes it proper to say of them that they have obtained for him a growing recognition in the ranks of general English literature; and that his feeling for beauty of colour and form is so really artistically correct as well as rich, that he deserves a permanent place in the Gallery of Word-painters.

Roberts loves his country fervently, as is apparent in all his Canadian themes. His heart dwells with fondness on the scenes of his Maritime Provinces, “the long dikes of Tan-tramar,” and the ebb-tide sighing out, “reluctant for the reedbeds”; and he was one of the first to sing Confederation. His sympathy is also Britain’s:

"Let a great wrong cry to heaven,
Let a giant necessity come;
And now as of old she can strike,
She will strike, and strike home!”

The personal quality in his poetry is distinguished, next, to richness of colour and artistic freedom of emotional expression, by manliness. Roberts is a high-thinking, generous man. He speaks with a voice of power and leadership, and never with a mean note or one of heedless recklessness. This manliness and dignity render him particularly fitted for the great work which Canada at present offers her sons, and as he is only twenty-nine we hope to see his future a great one.

In point of time, however, the first important national poet was not Roberts, but nature-loving Charles Sangster, a born son of the Muses, and who was long the people’s favourite. Sangster is a kind of Wordsworth, with rather more fire, and of course a great deal less metaphysical and technical skill. He has the unevenness and frequent flatness of Wordsworth, but is as close a personal friend of the mountains, lakes, and woods.

"I have laid my cheek to Nature’s, put my puny hands in hers.” Glowingly he takes us, in “St Lawrence and the Saguenay,” down the grandeurs of that unrivalled tour—the great River, its rapids, cities, mountains, and “Isles of the Blest.” Defective education in youth deprived him of the resources of modern art, which Roberts uses so freely, making a good deal of his poetry the curious spectacle of inborn strivings after perfect ideals driven to expression in abstractions rather than in concrete clothing of colours and forms; for instance:

"All my mind has sat in state
Pondering on the deathless soul:
What must be the Perfect Whole 
When the atom is so great!

God! I fall in spirit down,
Low as Persian to the sun;
All my senses, one by one,
In the stream of Thought must drown.”

Sangster’s nervous system was broken down by the grind of newspaper toil and civil service tread-milling, and he has not written or published for twenty years; yet, though poetry has till lately been given a particularly small share of attention in Canada, his “Brock,” “Song for Canada,” his lines on Quebec, and many striking passages from his poems, are treasured in the popular memory.

But the most striking volume next to those of Roberts— indeed more boldly new than his—is that of the late brilliant Isabella Valancey Crawford. This wonderful girl, living in the “Empire” Province of Ontario, early saw the possibilities of the new field around her, and had she lived longer might have made areally matchless name. It was only in 1884 that her modest blue card-covered volume of two hundred and twenty-four pages came out. The sad story of unrecognised genius and death was re-enacted. “Old Spooks’s Pass; Malcolm’s Katie, and other Poems,” as it was doubly entitled (the names at least were against it!), almost dropped from the press. Scarcely anybody noticed it in Canada. It made no stir, and in little more than two years the authoress died. She was a high-spirited, passionate girl, and there is very little doubt that the neglect her book received was the cause of her death. Afterwards, as usual, a good many people began to find they had overlooked work of merit. Miss Crawford’s verse was, in fact, seen to be phenomenal. Setting aside her dialect poems, like “Old Spooks’s Pass” (which, though the dialect is a trifle artificial, resulted in hitting off some good pictures of imaginary rustic characters), the style peculiarly her own has seldom been equalled for strength, colour, and originality:—

“Low the sun beat on the land,
Purple slope and olive wood;
With the wine cup in his hand,
Vast the Helot herdsman stood.”

-* * * * *

"Day was at her high unrest;
Fevered with the wine of light,
Loosing all her golden vest,
Reeled she towards the coming Night.”

Miss Crawford’s poetry is packed with able stuff. It is worth a share of attention from the whole Anglo-Saxon world. The splendour of Canadian colour, the wonderful blue skies of that clear climate, the Heaven’s-forests of its autumn, the matchless American sunsets and sunrises, imbued her like Roberts. A poetess of such original nature could not but strike boldly into Canadian subjects. “Malcolm’s Katie; a Love Story,” is an idyl of a true man who goes forth and cuts him a home with his axe, and of a maiden who remains true to him, until he returns for their union. Few finer bits were ever written by any one or anywhere than the passage which we give, from “Shanties grew,” down to its glorious climax in the song, “O Love will build his lily walls.” It seems to us that this is the most effective known use of a lyric introduced into a long poem. Her works, including a good deal never yet published, were to be brought before the English public in a new volume. A letter of hers, concerning the unpublished material, stated that it contained some of her best work.

The poets best known and most favourite next to Roberts and Sangster, are—besides Isabella Crawford—M‘Lachlan, Kirby, and tender-hearted John Reade. Reade is one the charms of whose style are sweetness and culture. He is best known by his “Merlin, and Other Poems” (1870), composed of short lyrics, led off by “The Prophecy of Merlin,” which is a Tenny-sonian Idyll of the King, foreshadowing the greatness of the British Empire. His style turns everything it touches into grace, but it appeals to the inner circle rather than the folk, and seems to shrink away from touching organ-keys. For examples of this grace of his, I should like to quote his “The Inexpressible.” or “Good Night,” but cannot do so here.

The claim of first place is awarded by the feelings of no small number to Alexander M‘Lachlan, the human-hearted vigorous Scottish Radical, whose stanzas have such a singing rhythm and direct sympathy. They were a few years ago made a special feature of the great comic paper Grip, the Punch of Canada, and his popularity is shown by the presentation by his admirers a short time since of a homestead farm, upon which he now lives. His “Idylls of the Dominion,” from which the poems quoted in this book are principally drawn, are so characteristic both of himself and of pioneerdom, that he is called “The Burns of Canada.” He has lived the whole life of them, as a settler and a lover of the soil,—chopped his first tree, penetrated the mysterious “Hall of Shadows,” listened to the cheerful bobolink’s little aria, communed with “October” in her splendour and her sadness, and experienced the appalling sensations created by fire in the forest as he describes it.

William Kirby deserves a high position for his beautiful “Canadian Idylls” (based on history, while M‘Lachlan’s are upon life), from which the “Spina Christi,” quoted here, is drawn. There are also some able descriptions in his long-known “U. E.” (Loyalist) poem, from which is taken his passage on Niagara. Steeped in the romance of Canadian history, he wrote many years ago a magnificent novel founded upon the Quebec legend of the Chien d’Or, which has remained the most popular of Canadian stories. . Kirby’s strong point is his graphic descriptions.

One name I have not yet pronounced, though every Canadian no doubt has looked for it. A sombre shadow towers in the background of the group,—a man apart from the rest,—Charles Heavysege, author of the drama “Saul.” When “Saul” came out in 1857, and a copy fell into the hands of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Heavysege became famous. He was pronounced the greatest dramatist since Shakespeare. The North British Review for August 1858 spoke of the book as follows:—

“Of ^'Saul, a Drama, in three parts,’ published anonymously at Montreal, we have before us perhaps the only copy which has crossed the Atlantic. At all events we have heard of no other, as it is probable we should have done, through some public or private notice, seeing that the work is indubitably one of the most remarkable English poems ever written out of Great Britain.”

The North British reviewer was later, by no means alone, in its praise, and it became the fashion among tourists to Montreal to buy a copy of “Saul.”

Heavysege had a very strange and original cast of mind. The following brief poem may be read as being characteristic of him :—

"Open, my heart, thy ruddy valves;
It is thy master calls;
Let me go down, and, curious trace
Thy labyrinthine halls.

Open, O heart, and let me view
The secrets of thy den;
Myself unto myself now show
With introspective ken.

Expose thyself, thou covered nest
Of passions, and be seen;
Stir up thy brood, that in unrest
Are ever piping keen.

Ah! what a motley multitude,
Magnanimous and mean!”

He was originally a drama-composing carpenter, then a journalist in Montreal, and wore out his soul at the drudgery of the latter occupation and in poverty. To get out the third edition of “Saul” he was forced to borrow the money, which he was never able to repay. In person he was a small, very reticent man, who walked along the streets altogether locked up in himself, so that a literary acquaintance of his says Heavysege’s appearance always reminded him exactly of “The Yellow Dwarf,”—

“He walked our streets, and no one knew
That something of celestial hue
Had passed along; a toil-worn man
Was seen,—no more; the fire that ran
Electric through his veins, and wrought
Sublimity of soul and thought,
And kindled into song, no eye Beheld.”

He died in 1869. A man apart he has remained. His work is in no sense distinctively Canadian. Canadians do not read him; but they claim him as perhaps their greatest, most original writer, if they could weigh him aright and appreciate him ; and he will probably always command their awe, and refuse to be forgotten.

Sympathy with the prairie and the Indian has produced the best verse of Charles Mair, who has dramatised the story of the immortal British ally Tecumseh, and lately from his North-West home gives us “The Last Bison;” and who has lived a life (some details of which you will find in the Biographical Notes) almost as Indian and North-West as his poems. “The Last Bison,” he says, was suggested to him by what happened before his own eyes near the elbow of the North Saskatchewan some eight years ago. “Not a buffalo,” so far as he knows, “has been seen on that river since. There are some animals in private collections; a small band perhaps exists in the fastnesses of Montana, and a few wood buffaloes still roam the Mackenzie River region; but the wild bison of the plains may now be looked upon as extinct.” We may add, that it was lately reported by an Indian that he had tracked a herd of seven in the northerly region of the Peace River. He shot four bulls and a calf out of the seven! The North-West has also given happy inspirations to “Barry Dane” as a bird of passage.

John Hunter-Duvar, the author of “De Roberval” and Squire of “Hernewood,” in Prince Edward Island, described in “The Emigration of the Fairies,” derives his verse largely from the life and legends of the surrounding regions, shaped by his library.

George Martin, of Montreal, has digged in the gold mine of old French legend, with the result of “Marguerite; or, The Isle of Demons,” a weird and sad story of De Roberval’s desertion of his niece, in one of the early expeditions.

Arthur Wentworth Eaton and George Murray have explored the same mine with signal success,—the latter, who is very well known as a litterateur, producing the fine ballad “How Canada was Saved.” (The same story has been well put in Martin’s “Heroes of Ville-Marie.”)

Bliss Carman has earned special honour for the originality and finish of his lyrics. Arthur John Lockhart, in his “Masque of Minstrels,”—particularly in “Gaspereau,”—sings as a bird of exile warbling towards home, for he lives just over the frontier. William Wilfred Campbell is the poet of the Great Lakes, which he has studied with a perfect love, resulting in those beautiful “Lake Lyrics” of his, which the reader will stop to admire. A bit of work of particular attractiveness has been done by William M^cLennan in his well-known translations of the old French chansons. Archibald Lampman has written perfectly exquisite pre-Raphaelite descriptions, with the finish and sparkle of jewellers’ work.

I should have liked to quote more fully than has been possible from the “Lyrics on Freedom, Love, and Death” of the late George Frederick Cameron; but his fire and generosity of spirit belong rather to the world than to Canadian inspiration, and we are therefore confined here to a few lesser pieces of his. He died early, like so many other sons of genius.

Among names of special grace or promise are to be added those of “Laclede,” John Talon-Lesperance, the well-known litterateur, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; Barry Straton, Duncan Campbell Scott, Frederick George Scott, John Henry Brown, Dr AEneas M^cDonald Dawson, F.R.S.C.; Arthur Weir (the author of “Fleurs de Lys”); Dr Charles Edwin Jakeway; the late Honourables d’Arcy M^cGee and Joseph Howe; Ernest I. Chapman, E. W. Thomson, Carroll Ryan, William Wye Smith, Phillips Stewart, J. J. Proctor, J. A. Richey; the aged but bright G. W. Wicksteed, Q.C.; H. L. Spencer; Evan M^cColl, the Gaelic-English “Bard of Loch-fyne”; Messrs Dunn, Shanly, Haliburton, McDonell, James McCarroll, J. H. Bowes, K. L. Jones, S. I. Watson, T. G. Marquis, M‘Alpine Taylor, the late Francis Rye, the late John Lowry Stuart, the late Charles Pelham Mulvaney, H. R. A. Pocock (author of spirited North-West pieces), Alexander Rae Garvie, and M^cPherson, the early Nova Scotia singer, whose “I Long for Spring, enchanting Spring,” has a bell-like silveriness. Some of these I have been unable to get at. A bright and erratic name, which I am sorry I cannot represent, is that of the journalist George T. Lanigan (“Allid”),—“the most brilliant journalist who ever lived,” says Mr George Murray. Lanigan wrote with equal felicity in French and English, and his humour was inexhaustible. I regret that space forbids me to add in the body of the book two good things by D. B. Kerr and Emily M^cManus. The latter’s subject is the crescent province of the West :—

“MANITOBA.

"Softly the shadows of prairie-land wheat
Ripple and riot adown to her feet;
Murmurs all Nature with joyous acclaim,
Fragrance of summer and shimmer of flame:
Heedless she hears while the centuries slip:—
Chalice of poppy is laid on her lip.

“Hark! From the East comes a ravishing note,—
Sweeter was never in nightingale’s throat,—
Silence of centuries thrills to the song,
Singing their silence awaited so long;
Low, yet it swells to the heaven’s blue dome,
Child-lips have called the wild meadow-land ‘Home!’

“Deep, as she listens, a dewy surprise
Dawns in the languor that darkens her eyes;
Swift the red blood through her veins, in its flow,
Kindles to rapture her bosom aglow;
Voices are calling, where silence had been,—
‘Look to thy future, thou Mother of Men!”

"Onward and onward! Her fertile expanse
Shakes as the tide of her children advance;
Onward and onward! Her blossoming floor
Yields her an opium potion no more;
Onward! and soon on her welcoming soil
Cities shall palpitate, myriads toil.”

One peculiar feature of this literature, indeed, is its strength in lady singers. The number who have produced true poetry seems to indicate something special in the conditions of a -new country. Verily one has not to read far in that noble, patriotic book, “Laura Secord,” to acknowledge that Mrs Sarah Anne Curzon writes with the power and spirit of masculinity. How these women sympathise with the pluck of the heroes! The best war-songs of the late half-breed rebellion were written by Annie Rothwell, of Kingston, who had only a name for prose novels until the spirit of militarism was thus lit in her. “Fidelis” (Agnes Maude Machar), who is frequently given the credit of being the first of our poetesses, shows some of it, but excels in a graceful subjectivity which unfortunately is unfitted for representative quotation here; a remark which applies with still more hapless effect to the philosophic thought of Mary Morgan (“Gowan Lea”). Kate Seymour Maclean, authoress of “The Coming of the Princess,” is mistress of a style of singular richness; and some of the brightest writing, both prose and verse, is done by “Seranus,” of Toronto (Mrs S. Frances Harrison), who is working good service to our literature in a number of ways. Her “Old Regime,” and “Rose Latulippe,” express what has been called her “half French heart,” and breathe the air of the fertile, scarcely-wrought field of French Canadian life. Then there are “Fleurange,” who wrote the best Carnival Poem, “The Italian Boy’s Dream;” E. Pauline Johnson, daughter of Head-Chief Johnson, of the Mohawks of Brantford, who gives us poetry of a high stamp, and of great interest on account of her descent; “Esperance” (Alice Maud Ardagh); Mrs Leprohon; Mary Barry Smith; Helen Fairbairn; M. I. Katzmann Lawson; the late Miss E. M. Nash; Pamelia Vining Yule, “Clare Everest”; Janet Carnochan; Mrs Edgar Jarvis, “Jeanie Gray”; Isabel Macpherson; Louisa Murray, a well-known authoress, who, besides much fine prose, has written “Merlin’s Cave,” one of the best of Canadian undistinctive poems, and Ethelwyn Wetherald, authoress of many exquisite sonnets. Even from the beginning — fifty years ago, for there was no native poetry to speak of before that—we had Susanna Moodie, one of the famous Strickland sisters, authoress of “Roughing it in the Bush” (which book, by the way, did the country’s progress a good deal of harm), who gave us the best verses we had during many years, and some of the most patriotic.

Some of those lines of “Fidelis” to which I referred, express so well the spirit of this preface, that I return to her name to quote them :—

CANADA TO THE LAUREATE.

“And that true north, whereof we lately heard
A strain to shame us I keep you to yourselves,
So loyal is too costly! Friends, your love
Is but a burden: loose the bond and go,
Is this the tone of Empire?"

— Tennyson! a Ode to the Queen.
“We thank thee, Laureate, for thy kindly words
Spoken for us to her to whom we look
With loyal love, across the misty sea;

Thy noble words, whose generous tone may shame
The cold and heartless strain that said ‘Begone,
We want your love no longer; all our aim Is riches
—that your love can not increase!’

Fain would we tell them that we do not seek
To hang dependent, like a helpless brood
That, selfish, drag a weary mother down;

For we have British hearts and British blood
That leaps up, eager, when the danger calls
Once and again, our sons have sprung to arms
To fight in Britain’s quarrel,—not our own,— 

And drive the covetous invader back,
Who would have let us, peaceful, keep our own.
So we had cast the British name away.
Canadian blood has dyed Canadian soil,
For Britain’s honour, that we deemed our own,

Nor do we ask but for the right to keep
Unbroken, still, the cherished filial tie
That binds us to the distant sea-girt isle
Our fathers loved, and taught their sons to love,
As the dear home of freemen, brave and true,
And loving honour more than ease or gold!”

Many more writers than those above named, in all to a number which might be roughly placed at three hundred, have at various times produced really good verse.

A curious Indian song, representing a small but unique song literature which has sprung up among the tribe at Caughnawaga Reservation, near Montreal, since barbaric times, “from the sheer necessity of singing when together,” was translated specially for me by Mr John Waniente Jocks, the son of a Six-nation chief of that Reservation. Mr Jocks, who is a law student, is of pure Mohawk origin.

A few general remarks are now in order. The present is an imperfect presentation of Canadian poetry from a purely literary point of view, on account of the limitation of treatment; for it is obvious that if only what illustrates the country and its life in a distinctive way be chosen, the subjective and unlocal literature must be necessarily passed over, entraining the omission of most of the poems whose merit lies in perfection of finish. It is therefore greatly to be desired that a purely literary anthology may soon be brought together by someone. Such a collection was made in 1867, in the Rev. Edward Hartley Dewart’s “Selections,” which have ever since remained the standard book of reference for that period; but it has become antiquated, no longer represents what is being done, and most of the best authors, such as Roberts, Miss Crawford, Hunter-Duvar, Talon-Lesperance, and “Fidelis” have come into the field since its publication. Two or three other partial collections have been made, the best being Seranus’s “Canadian Birthday Book,” which affords a miniature survey of the chief verse-writers, both French and English. The most remarkable point of difference between the selections of Dewart and the poetry which has followed, is the tone of exultation and confidence which the singers have assumed since Confederation, for up to that epoch the verse was apologetic and depressed. Everything now points hopefully. Not only is the poetry more confident, but far better. A good deal of the best verse in American magazines is written in Canada.

The arrangement of the present collection has been devised in order to give a sketch of Canadian things in something like related order. I have introduced such broad principles of order as the contributions permitted, grouping them into sections, which respectively treat of the Imperial Spirit, the New Nationality, the Indian, the Voyageur and Habitant, Settlement Life, Historical Incidents, Places, and Seasons. They give merely, it should be understood, a sketch of the range of the subjects. Canadian history, for example, as anyone acquainted with Parkman will know, perfectly teems with noble deeds and great events, of which only a small share have been sung, whereof there is only space here for a much smaller share. The North-West and British Columbia, that Pacific clime of charm, —the gold-diggings Province, land of salmon rivers, and of the Douglas firs which hide daylight at noonday,—have been scarcely sung at all, owing to their newness. Pieces which take origin from them ought to be remarked as rare. The poetry of the Winter Carnival, splendid scenic spectacle of gay Northern arts and delights, is only rudimentary also. Those who have been present at the thrilling spectacle of the nocturnal storming of the Ice Palace in Montreal, when the whole city, dressing itself in the picturesque snow-shoe costume and arraying its streets in lights and colours, rises as one man in a tumultuous enthusiasm, must feel that something of a future lies before the poetry of these strange and wonderful elements. Here a word suggests itself concerning the climate of Canada. Winter is not perpetual, but merely, in most parts, somewhat long. It does not strike the inhabitants as intolerably severe. It is the season of most of their enjoyments; gives them their best roads; is indispensable to some industries, such as lumbering; and the clear nights and diamond days are sparklingly beautiful. Furthermore, the climate is not one but several. In British Columbia, it is so equable the whole year that roses sometimes bloom out of doors in January, and cactus is a native plant. In the Niagara peninsula, grapes and peaches are crops raised yearly in immense quantities, and the sycamore and acacia are so frequent as to have called out more than one poem. On the plains, temperature grows milder in proportion as you approach to the Rocky Mountains.

Too omt a bow to the French would be ungracious. Forming about a fourth of the population, they have a literature which was within the last generation much more fecund than the English, and contains remarkable writing. We have devoted a special appendix to ip sis verbis specimens of Chauveau, Suite, Frechette, and Le May, leaders who have been very highly honoured in France. The charming old Chanson literature, in which numbers of medieval ballads brought over in past days from the mere-patrie are embalmed, is treated in another appendix, while in our text, the renderings of William M'Lennan are given for some of the best of them. “Entre Paris and St Denis,” it is to be noted, preserves a remarkable machinery of sorcery; the quaintness and beauty of the others will speak for themselves.

In concluding, I desire to express my sense of shortcoming in the work, but believe it will be generally admitted that I have spared no necessary trouble.

The editor regrets to say that through an accidental cause unnecessary to explain, more MSS. were sent to the publishers than the volume required. As no time could be lost the general editor had no recourse except to undertake the difficult task of cutting down the matter, which he did in accordance with his best judgment, but guided by the sole criterion of the symmetry of the work. Some good poetry originally included has not found a place owing to the necessary reduction, and apology is tendered where unintentional injustice has resulted.

Acknowledgments are due to many kind persons, of whom the principal are duly mentioned in a note of thanks at the close of the volume.

And now, the canoes are packed, our voyageurs are waiting for us, the paddles are ready, let us start!

W. D. L.

Montreal, September 1888.

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Canadian Songs and Poems
Voices from the Forests and Waters, the Settlements and Cities of Canada, Selected and Edited by William Douw Lighthall, M.A., of Montreal. (1892) (pdf)