The diction of this hymn is simple, vernacular; of 160 words in the text only ten are of Latin origin, and even these are as short and familiar as our Anglo-Saxon diction. The rhythmic flow is thoroughly lyrical. But though simple in diction and lyrical structure, there is a universality of reach or sweep in its imagery that, at least relatively to most other hymns, raises Murray’s hymn to the dignity of poetry. There is no provincialism in it. There is no denominationalism in it. There is no narrow or bigoted ethics in it. It is thoroughly human and humane. It possesses universality and spiritual dignity. It is all that a true hymn should be.
Murray’s hymn, moreover, in humanity and spiritual dignity, contrasts winningly with the original form of the British, which is also the Canadian, National Anthem. This so-called anthem has been revised so as to remove from it certain inane thoughts and sentiments and imagery that were not consistent with Christian charity and the ideal of human brotherhood. Canada has, too, its own indigenous National Song or Hymn which is the text to a sonorous organ-toned musical setting by Calixa Lavallée. The original text of the Canadian National Hymn is by Routhier. It is patriotic in the old exclusive sense, containing that kind of patriotism which is solicitous about the mere material success and aggrandizement of Canada. But Murray’s From Ocean Unto Ocean is so human and so humane, so unracial, so unprovincial, so unsectarian, and by its imagery so informed with the free and all-embracing spirit of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, bounding the vast Canadian prairies and mountains and forests, that its spiritual sweep takes in the whole of Canada without respect to race or region or religion, or high degree or low degree of person, and is fitted to be, if not the National Anthem, at any rate the National Hymn, of Canada. It is at once both Christian and Universal—a distinctive and authentic hymn, and an original contribution to permanent Canadian hymnody.
Murray was not a creative poet in the sense of being a systematic poet. But Canon Frederick George Scott, who is a member of the Systematic School of Canadian poets, has written hymns. They are strictly evangelical, rather than universal in thought and scope, and are in the traditional hymn form. They have a sweet simplicity and a spiritual dignity but, beyond their lyrical or rhythmic expressiveness, have no especial aesthetic and artistic qualities that call for particular critical consideration. The same appreciation suits a critical estimate of the hymns by Silas T. Rand, Edward Hartley Dewart, Charles Innis Cameron, Louisa Walker and other accepted Hymn Writers of Canada.
Rand’s Latin Hymns are interesting as translations and are literary phenomena by themselves. Cameron was a poet and his hymns have an excellence of structure, imagery, and color that give them quite the quality of poetry, though again, it must be observed, they are evangelical, rather than universal, in scope and sweep. Anna Louisa Walker is famous as the author of the hymn Work, For The Night Is Coming. This is really a ‘sacred folk-song.’ It has indeed a wide popularity, but by no means as wide as Scriven’s world-famous hymn. Albert Durrant Watson and Alexander Louis Fraser are hymn writers of distinction. Summarily: Canadian Hymn Writers have contributed substantially to the hymnody of the Evangelical Church in Canada, and, at least in two instances, to permanent hymnody. But no Canadian hymn has the structural beauty and spiritual sublimation which belong to such hymns as Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light, or Baring-Gould’s Onward, Christian Soldiers, or Lyte’s Abide With Me, and which lift these hymns into the realm of authentic poetry.
CHAPTER XXVII
Literary Criticism
LITERARY CRITICISM IN CANADA—SCHOOLS, AIMS, METHODS, AND DEFECTS—NEW SYNOPTIC METHOD APPLIED TO POETRY OF OVERSEAS DOMINIONS.
I. Schools of Literary Criticism.
In an old country, like England, which long has had established standards of taste and refined artistry, literary criticism is a fine art. The essays in criticism by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Arnold, Pater, Arthur Symons, Gilbert Chesterton, Mackail, Ker, and others are polite, disinterested, humane, and delightful in themselves. They have an intrinsic charm of thought and style. They are literature. In a young country, like Canada, when, in pioneer days, the people were necessarily preoccupied wholly with practical living and material civilization, and few were cultured and none had leisure for cultivating taste, literary criticism, if it existed, was exotic and traditional. Later, when the people are still primarily occupied with material civilization but decent culture is distributed and there is leisure for cultivating taste, literary criticism becomes imitative but academic, and, sometimes, is in the manner of the dilettante. Finally, when the people of a young country become conscious that they have a native literature and indigenous standards of taste but are in doubt about the status of their literature and the aesthetic dignity of their literary taste, literary criticism becomes pragmatic or pedagogical or philosophical.
In its first stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to appraise, by exotic, traditional standards, foreign literature. Such criticism has no communal value. It is not disinterested but personal. It only exhibits, as it was intended to do, the fine taste and style of the critics. In its pragmatic stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to praise native literature, so as to win for this literature the appreciation of the people in the land in which it was produced and, secondarily, the decent regard of foreign men of letters. The matter of such pragmatic criticism always counts most, or for more than the manner or style. It aims to be constructive. But because it is self-conscious, self-reliant, and ardent, its praise tends to be too high and its condemnation too severe. In the final stage literary criticism becomes less self-conscious, less ardent, and more detached and philosophical towards native literature. It takes a synoptic view of the whole civilization and culture which the native literature of a young country embodies and interprets. It looks first to this literature as an entity by itself and next regards it from the point of view of absolute or long established standards. It judges the native poetry and prose of a young country by their relative importance to the people of that country itself, and by its dignity as a contribution to world-literature.