Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

A pragmatic people, as are the Canadians, have little or no taste for the Whimsical Essay. The matter of the whimsical essay counts for nothing. Its appeal is altogether by way of piquancy in what is said. Piquancy—not mordancy! For mordancy would only make what is said satiric, and cause pain. The whimsical essay must cause mere smiles and chuckles. It must be clever—and nothing more. Canadians are beginning to turn more and more to this form of Essay. Its character and manner are well exemplified in William A. Deacon’s Pens and Pirates (1923). The essays in this volume have novelty of theme, over which plays precisely the light of a ‘whimsical’ fancy and humor. They are informed, however, with the strictly literary color of allusion and quotation from the poets and prosemen of all ages to the present, but in such an incidental and light way that there is no show of pedantry. The allusion and quotation are natural to Mr. Deacon’s professional office as a reviewer of contemporary literature. His style is journalistic in the French sense—‘style coupe’—as regards sentence length. But he adds a piquancy to it which makes it somewhat ‘winged’ and which thus pleasantly engages the sensibility.

No Canadian as yet has appeared as a systematic writer of the Critical Essay. Such essays of this genre as were published have been ‘fugitive,’ and their aim and method have been pragmatic and pedagogical rather than literary. There is, however, much room and great need in Canada for systematic Essays in Criticism which shall have dignity of thought, imaginative light, and grace or power of style, and which in themselves shall be literature. Thomas O’Hagan’s Essays in Canadian Literature are too fragmentary and didactic to be literature, though they are literary. L. J. Burpee’s A Little Book of Canadian Essays contains brief but illuminating critical studies of seven Canadian writers. Stephen Leacock’s Essays and Literary Studies are too heterogeneous in theme and too variable (perhaps variegated) in style to be credited with the dignity of systematic Essays in Criticism. They are interesting but not weighty literary ‘Studies.’ The master critic has yet to appear in Canada.

CHAPTER XXIX

Anthologies

CANADIAN BIRTHDAY BOOK (SERANUS)—DEWART’s SELECTIONS FROM CANADIAN POETS—LIGHTHALL’S ‘SONGS OF THE GREAT DOMINION’—OXFORD BOOK OF CANADIAN VERSE—GARVIN’S CANADIAN POETS, ETC.

Every anthology of national literature must be critically appreciated from the point of view of the aim of the author. Properly, according to the roots of the word anthology, care, and even fastidiousness, are implied on the part of the compiler. The world-famous collection of Greek verse known as The Greek Anthology is properly, that is both etymologically and aesthetically, an ‘anthology.’ For the poems in it were most carefully chosen before being collected together; and they were selected strictly according to ideals of beauty in thought and expression. So that the term anthology hardly if ever applies strictly to the so called anthologies of Canadian verse. As a matter of fact such collections of Canadian verse as have been compiled, actually do not bear the title anthology; they bear some such title as ‘A Treasury,’ or ‘A Wreath,’ or ‘Flowers,’ of Canadian Verse. Sometimes the collections have the plainest of practical titles, such as Canadian Poets or Canadian Singers and Their Songs, or The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse.

It is quite irrelevant and an elaboration of the obvious to dispraise, as some Canadian critics have done, the contents of certain anthologies of Canadian poetry, as of ‘unequal merit.’ They might as well say that the culture and the cultural institutions of Canada are of ‘unequal merit.’ Relatively to the poetry of old civilizations the poetry of Canada is poor or mediocre or indifferent or fine in aesthetic substance and artistic structure and form according to the culture and genius of the country’s poets. Secondly, all Canadian anthologies, whether the aim was to select the very best of the very best poetry or to select representative poems from each period or all periods, contain poetry which is not all on the same level of excellence.

The first anthology to engage public attention and to win critical appreciation was a book which now belongs to the rarissimae of collectors of ‘Canadiana,’ namely, The Canadian Birthday Book, by ‘Seranus’ (pseudonym of Mrs. S. Frances Harrison), published at Toronto in 1887. It was compiled, with exquisite taste, in both English and French; and it is notable for the fact that its selections date as far back as the year 1732, with a poem by Jean Taché who, as the compiler has said in her notes, is ‘probably the first French-Canadian poet to publish.’ It is notable also for the fact that it contains some verses by the Indian Chief Tecumseh, and is, likewise, one of the earliest volumes to contain the work of such poets as Bliss Carman, Wilfred Campbell, Pauline Johnson, and Archibald Lampman. In a real sense, that is, in the Greek sense of the term, the Canadian Birthday Book is the first Canadian anthology. The poems in it, are dainty in themselves and the artistry of the poems also is dainty—‘little flowers’ of pretty or beautiful Canadian verse, pioneer, émigré, nativistic, and native and national.

Twenty years before the appearance of Seranus’ miniature anthology Rev. Edward Hartley Dewart published, under the plain title of Selections From Canadian Poetry, what may be called the first treasury of Canadian verse (1864). Dewart’s Selections was simply a ‘collection’ of poems for ‘good reading,’ or for pedagogical purposes in the Provinces of Canada. It was not intended to be received as literary anthology, but only as a volume of representative poems from the earlier periods of Canadian history up to the year of publication. Its audience was limited to Canada and it had only local or provincial appreciation.

The next anthology was W. D. Lighthall’s Songs of the Great Dominion (1889). It was informed with the Canadian outlook on life and national achievement within the twenty years after the formation of the Confederacy, and with the Canadian prevision of a national destiny which seemed implied in the genius of the Canadian people for autonomous government, in the vast resources of the Dominion, and in the relations which would inevitably develop between Canada and the United States and the other nations of the world. The aim of Dr. Lighthall was both literary and pragmatic. He desired to present to the English-speaking world the ideals and genius of Canada as these ideals and genius were embodied and expressed in the best poetry by émigré and by native-born Canadian poets.