appreciation of Canadian Literature on the part of the people, and to finer critical and creative writing by Canadian men and women of letters. _II. The Synoptic Method._ Literary criticism in Canada has had two faults. It was _vicarious_—an echo of foreign criticism which was patronizing and insincere, and, therefore, untrue and harmful. It was too _inclusive_ in conspectus and standards, for Canadian poetry and prose were critically compared with classical English Literature. This was to write criticism without perspective and without respect to a hierarchy of values. It was supererogatory and therefore futile. Even the Pragmatic School of Canadian literary critics did not wholly escape this second fault. It will result better for the advancement of Canadian Criticism if the literatures of the British Overseas Dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa—are compared amongst themselves; and if thus the status of each relatively in the literature of the Empire is critically determined. By this method of comparing child with child, and not the child with the parent, the literary historian shows how worthily Canadian poetry and prose compare with other Overseas poetry and prose, and what right Canadian and other Overseas literature have to be considered respectable branches of the literature of the Empire. A comparative appreciation of the Poetry of Canada and the other Overseas Dominions will suffice. If Canadians have not written ‘great’ poetry, they have written poetry in which, as Mr. E. B. Osborn, of the London _Morning Post_, says, ‘the most exacting critic can find something to admire.’ The problem of literary criticism in Canada to-day is not whether Canada has produced or is producing ‘great poetry,’ but whether it has produced or is producing good poetry, consistently with its grade of culture, civilization and national inspirations and aspirations—poetry that can genuinely be admired and that deserves to be preserved. To observe that Canada has produced good poetry, near-great poetry, is not, as many Canadians seem to feel it is, to damn it with faint praise, but sensibly to evaluate it. Those native critics who ignore Canadian poetry because, as they think, it is not ‘great’ poetry and is, therefore, not ‘real’ poetry or not poetry worthy of the name of literature, are maladroit logicians. Those other native critics who discover Coleridge reincarnated in Bliss Carman, Tennyson in Roberts, Keats in Lampman, Matthew Arnold in Duncan Campbell Scott, Kipling in Service are damning Canadian poetry with superobese praise. The truth is that Canada has produced systematic poets who have written much poetry that is good, some that is super-excellent, and some rare examples that are near the perfection which entitles them, in their kind, to be ranked as really great.