i 9 8 FRENCH-CANADIAN LITERATURE 



devotes itself to the publication of important works bearing upon Canadian history, 

 and the reprinting of old works in the same field. Wood's Logs of the Conquest of Canada 

 (1909), Ganong's new edition of Denys' Gaspesia (1908), Munro's Documents relating 

 to the Seigneurial Tenure in Canada (1908), and Tyrrell's edition of Hearne's Journey 

 from Prince of Wales's Fort to the Northern Ocean (1911), are admirable examples of 

 Canadian scholarship. The establishment of the University Magazine, under the con- 

 trol of three of the principal Canadian universities, has offorded a medium, hitherto 

 lacking, for the discussion of Canadian problems by Canadian writers in a Canadian 

 review. Not the least important element in the success of the magazine has been the 

 personality of its brilliant editor, Dr. Andrew Macphail. 



As regards purely imaginative literature, the output in Canada within the last few 

 years contains little worthy of record. The older Canadian poets and novelists have 

 been comparatively silent; and it remains only to mention the work of two new writers, 

 both women, Miss L. M. Montgomery, whose novels of life in the little " garden prov- 

 ince " of Prince Edward Island are deservedly popular, and Miss Marjory Pickthall, 

 who has published, though not yet in book form, a number of charmingly musical 

 verses. (L. J. BURPEE.) 



French-Canadian. 1 French-Canadian literature received a decided stimulus from 

 the Ecole Litteraire de Montreal, a self-constituted academy of young authors which 

 exercised most influence during its formative period, between 1895 and 1900. Poetry 

 became less local in theme, expression and the point of view. Good homespun verse is 

 written still; but with a difference. Albert Ferland (b. 1872) is faithful to the older gods 

 and the country of the habitant in Le Canada Chante (1908 et seq.). Louis Joseph Dou- 

 cet (b. 1874) follows the changing seasons with more wistful questionings in La Chanson 

 du Passant (1908) and La Jonchee Noiwelle (1910). His pronounced love of animals 

 marks him off from most of his compatriots, who are like the rest of the Latin world in 

 this respect. In Les Blessures (1912) Jean Charbonneau (b. 1876) sings one long dirge 

 over the minor poets who have to live in contact with the grosser side of commercial 

 Canada. Emile Nelligan et son ceuvre (1903) commemorates a boy whose astonishing 

 poetic genius suffered the total eclipse of insanity at the age of nineteen. Half Irish, 

 half French-Canadian, Nelligan (b. 1882) expressed the yearnings of an Old-World 

 symbolist in Parnassian French. He had a wonderful intuition for the musical sug- 

 gest! veness of words; and his carefully wrought poems, no less than his abrupt, weird 

 snatches, are full of that haunting sense which only comes with haunting sound. U A me 

 Solitaire (1907) is the aeolian harp that Albert Lozeau (b. 1878) set in his sick-room 

 window for so many years. It is a little vague ; but contains the promise of better things 

 to come, when the poet can interpret a wider world with more developed powers. In 

 Le Paond' Email (1911) Paul Morin (b. 1886) leaves the New World for the Old, like 

 his model, Heredia. He heaps up a superabundance of sumptuous material, wanders 

 into frequent preciosities, and lacks Heredia's master art of concentration. But both 

 he and his poetry are young enough to grow into what may yet be truly great. 



The whole drama of French-Canadian history was summed up in the Quebec Ter- 

 centenary Pageant of 1908. The excellently apt libretto Pageants du Tricentenaire de 

 Quebec was by Ernest Myrand (b. 1854), author of several qualifying works Une 

 Fete de Noel sous Jacques C artier (1888), No'els Anciens de la Nouvelle France (1898), 

 Phips devant Quebec (1893), and Frontenac et ses A mis (1902). The history of the whole 

 Tercentenary was admirably written by a brilliant scholar, the Abbe Camille Roy (b. 

 1870), in Lcs Fetes du Troisieme Centenaire de Quebec (1911). 



Sir A. B. Routhier (b. 1839), author ot several books of travel and a noted conferencier 

 has written the principal novel of recent years, Le Centurion: roman des temps messia- 

 niques (1909). The action moves through the very difficult medium of letters from con- 

 temporary witnesses. But it moves well; and the great trial scene is full of legal insight 

 and dramatic feeling. Hector Bernier (b. 1886) writes an equally ardent Christian 

 apologia in Au Large de I'Ecueil (1912); though he and his work are vastly different from 



1 See E. B. v, 167-8. 



