Quotations in this chapter, with the exception of a few lines, are from _Later Poems_, and from _Ballads and Lyrics_, by Bliss Carman, (McClelland & Stewart: Toronto). CHAPTER X Duncan Campbell Scott INFLUENCES ON HIS WORK—OLD WORLD CULTURE—AUSTERE INTELLECTUALISM —MUSIC AND PAINTING—ASSOCIATION WITH LAMPMAN—SCOTT, CARMAN, AND LAMPMAN COMPARED—INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH POETS—TECHNICAL EXCELLENCIES—REVELATION OF THE INDIAN HEART—MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM. In the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott there is more and finer expression of the pageantry of Nature in Canada and of the essential Canadian spirit than in the verse of any other Canadian poet. But, paradoxically, the genius and poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott are also more informed with an Old World culture and art than are the genius and verse of any other Canadian poet. Unless the reader and the critic of D. C. Scott’s poetry first realize that the mind and art of the poet are a product of Canada and of the Old World, a rare commingling of Canadian and European cultures, they will fail to understand how he is at once the least prolific and, to give him his outstanding distinction, the most exquisite artist of Canadian poets, not excepting Lampman and Bliss Carman. In his poem _Frost Magic_, Scott has written the formula of his own exquisite artistry:— Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art. That line, however, rather distinguishes the characteristic excellence of his poetry on the technical side. It does not disengage the quality which makes him unique amongst Canadian poets. His _differentia_—the quality or power which distinguishes his poetic genius and craftsmanship from the mind and the art of all other Canadian poets—is Style. Duncan Campbell Scott is the one Canadian poet of whose verse it may be said that, after the manner of the English tradition, it possesses _Style_. Lampman’s and Carman’s, Pauline Johnson’s and Marjorie Pickthall’s, poetry each possess a style. But in their cases the style is imitable; it is a _manner_, original or ingenious no doubt, but not an essential and inevitable expression, of their poets’ minds or personalities. Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry has style, quite as individualistic as the others’, but it is an essential expression of his personality and character, and is therefore inimitable, or like the man himself, is in ‘the grand manner’—which is not at all a manner but just that subtle spiritual quality which distinguishes individuals in species. The genius and poetry or art of Duncan Campbell Scott, then, impose on us a special and somewhat recondite study in literary psychology.