36 JOHN LESPERANCE. 



ravelling- and iiuravolling of the amusing plot in both cases display an amount of technical 

 skill rarely to be met with in this very difhciilt kind of composition. 



The number of minor poets, whose works are more or less ephemeral and cast in vary- 

 ing degrees of excellence, is very large, and the bare enumeration woïild fill a lengthy 

 paragraph. M. Suite has counted no less than 175 names. These writings were originally 

 consigned to the cokimus of newspapers or the pages of magazines, and have never been 

 collected except on one or two occasions. Among the writers of this class, I may cite 

 Eustache Prudhomme, formerly a notary of Montreal, who piiblished many elegant pieces 

 some twenty years ago, but has since gone out of sight. Judge Routhier, one of the best 

 prose writers in this province, has also piiblished a niimber of jioems, the Ode on Canada in 

 the nineteenth century being specially worthy of note. J. Lenoir, of Montreal, was cut off 

 in his prime, just as his talent was maturing. His apostrophe to the Church of Notre Dame 

 of Montreal is set in broad lines. Then we have Fiset of Quebec, Poisson of Arthabaska, 

 Alfred Grarneau of Ottawa, son of the poet and historian, Achille Frechette of Ottawa, 

 and Evauturel of Quebec. 



The time and space at my command do not allow of any further extension of this 

 stirdy. My paper has been essentially revisional and not critical, and hence I haA^e been 

 spared the labovir of finding fault. But even if I had gone into analysis, I should still 

 hold that the names which I have cited are those of genuine poets, who have published 

 works of real merit, many of them destined to live as long as the French language 

 survives in America, and as long as the French Canadians preserve their patriotism and 

 their intellectual autonomy. All the elements have been touched upon in their poetry, — 

 their history, enlivened by romance and consecrated by affliction ; their nationality, main- 

 tained in spite of all the disintegrating influences of conquest ; their religion, homely and 

 primitive as in the Brittany and Normandy of the Middle Ages ; their social life, adorned 

 by courtesy, inspirited by cheerfulness and stamped with a simple, old-fashioned sense of 

 honoiTr. 



II. 



English Poets. 



In treating of the English poets of Canada, you will perhaps be surprised to learn that 

 the field is a very wide one, and that I must at once draw the line between the writers who 

 have published only casual verses, however excellent many of them may be, and those 

 who have produced works of a more ambitious and enduring description. I shall touch 

 upon the first without any strict regard to chronological order, and without further insist- 

 ance than the limits of my paper will allow. Place aux dames ! 



The most distinguished names of our female poets are those of Annie L. "Walker, 

 Pamela S. Vining, Augusta Baldwyn, and Mrs. P. L. Haney. The principal work of 

 Harriet A. "Wilkins, of Hamilton, is her Acadia, which has reached a second edition. 

 Jennie E. Haight, formerly a teacher at Montreal, rises considerably above the ordinary 

 standard, while the verses of Mrs. Moodie have sustained the reputation which this gifted 

 lady has achieved in the department of romance Helen M. Johnson pi^blished a volume 

 of poems in 1856, which has since become very rare. She was cut off prematurely in 



