[puRPEE] | CHARLES HEAVYSEGE 28 
Canada; and within those borders the audience was confined to a very 
narrow cirele of intellectual friends. Canadians were, most of them, 
too fully occupied in carving homes for themselves out of the wilder- 
ness, or earning a precarious livelihood in our comparatively small 
towns, to give any serious heed to literature, especially the native pro- 
duction.1 Magazines were started, one after another, in such centres as 
Montreal or Toronto, by optimistic men or women. They lived, gener- 
ally, for about six months; rarely for a year; and then succumbed to 
the rigcur of our intellectual climate. Only one managed to live for any 
length of time, The Literary Garland, and that was exceptionally for- 
tunate in having the active support of such well-known writers as Mrs. 
Moodie and Mrs. Traill (two of the famous Strickland sisters), Mrs. 
Leprohon, and Dr. Dunlop—* Tiger ” Dunlop, of the Canada Company. 
It is right, therefore, that we bear in mind, in our consideration of 
the dramatic and other poems of Charles Heavysege, the exceptionally 
adverse conditions under which they were written. Not that this should 
be allowed to bias our critical judgment touching their merits, but it 
might reasonably lend them a special value, apart from purely literary 
standards, as the achievement of a man who refused to be daunted 
or turned from his path by the most formidable difficulties, and was not 
discouraged even by the stolid indifference of those to whom he addressed 
his message. 
Three years after the appearance of his first book, Heavysege brought 
out a book of Sonnets, fifty in all? This book, like the first one, was 
published anonymously. 
Then followed his most ambitious piece of work, the drama Saul.’ 
This drama, which is divided into three parts, each of five acts, and 
altogether about ten thousand lines in length, made little or no im- 
pression upon the public, either at home or abroad, until the appear- 
ance in 1858 of a long and sympathetic review of the book in the 
North British Review,* the writer thereof having received a copy from 

1 (From a letter signed ‘‘Admirer,’” in the Montreal Witness.) 
‘ At the time that (Charles Heavysege wrote, Canada was just emerging 
from a great political era, and perhaps was not quite prepared to take an 
unknown poet to her heart, without some wooing, especially as he did not 
sing her praises, or ring out with clarion note that which would appeal to 
a patriotic people.” 
7“ Sonnets: by the Author of ‘The Revolt of Tartarus, ” Montreal, 
H. & G. M. Rose. Great St. James St. MDCCCLV. [The only copy I know 
of is in the possession of Dr. S. E. Dawson, of Ottawa.] 
3*©Saul: A Drama in three parts.” First edition, Montreal, John Lovell, 
1857, pp. 315. Second edition, Montreal, John Lovell, 1859, pp. 328. Third 
edition, Boston, Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869, pp. 436. 
*North British Review (‘The Modern British Drama”), August, 1858. The 
article is printed as Appendix D to this paper. 
