[BURPEE] CHARLES HEAVYSEGE 59 
When I go to New York for the winter, I shall send you the new pocket 
edition of my poems, in return for yours. 
Pardon the haste with which I write (being just on the eve of a journey), 
And believe me, 
Always very sincerely yours, 
BAYARD TAYLOR. 
(Sir John A. Macdonald to Charles Heavysege.) 
Quebec, 30th January, 1865. 
Dear Sir,—On my return to the seat of Government the other day, I found 
waiting my arrival the copy of ‘‘ Jephthah’s Daughter,’ which you were so 
kind as to send me. Pray accept my best thanks for the gift. I read “Saul” 
when it first appeared with equal pride and pleasure. 
The intrinsic merits of the poem conferred the pleasure, and as a Cana- 
dian I felt proud of our first drama. 
I have no doubt that ‘“ Jephthah’s Daughter’’ will maintain the credit 
of the author of ‘Saul,’ but I am obliged to reserve the careful perusal of 
it until after the termination of the session. With reiterated thanks. 
Believe me to be, Dear Sir, 
Yours faithfully, 
JoHN A. MACDONALD. 
Charles Heavysege, Esq., Montreal. 
APPENDIX D. 
(“ The Modern British Drama,” North British Review, August, 1858.) 
“Saul” is in three parts, each of five acts, and altogether about ten 
thousand lines long. It is the greatest subject, in the whole range of history, 
for a drama, and has been treated with a poetical power and depth of psycho- 
logical knowledge which are often quite startling, though, we may say, 
inevitably, below the mark of the subject-matter, which is too great to be 
done full justice to, in any but the words in which the original history is 
related. 
* * * ok * * * * * * * 
‘ The author proves that he knows the Bible and human nature. Shakes- 
peare he also knows far better than most men know him; for he has dis- 
cerned and adopted his method as no other dramatist has done. He takes 
not virtue and morality, and their opposites generally, as other dramatists 
do, but these under the single aspect of their dependence upon spiritual 
influences, of Whatever kind: the direct influence of the Divine Spirit; and 
the influence of good spirits ; and of the principalities and powers of dark- 
ness ; and even the mysterious influences’ of music, the weather, etc., upon 
the moral state of the soul. Like most of Shakespeare’s plays, this drama 
has the appearance of being strangely chaotic. There are hundreds of pas- 
sages for the existence of which we cannot account until the moral clue is 
found, and it would never be found by a careless or unreflecting reader ; 
yet the work is exceedingly artistic, and there are few things in recent 
poetry so praiseworthy as the quiet and unobstrusive way in which the 
