Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in CanadaBourinot, John George
History
Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in Canada
Bourinot, John George
Canada -- Intellectual life; Canadian literature -- History and criticism; French-Canadian literature -- History and criticism
[Footnote 23: Page 12.--"History of the Late War between Great Britain
and the United States of America, with a retrospective view of the
causes from which it originated, collected from the most authentic
sources; to which is added an appendix containing public documents,
etc., relating to the subject." By David Thompson, late of the Royal
Scots. Niagara, U. C. Printed by T. Sewell, printer, bookbinder and
stationer, Market Square, 1832, 12mo., pp. 300. This was for some
time believed to be the first book printed in Upper Canada, but Dr.
Kingsford, F.R.S.C., in "The Early Bibliography of the Province of
Ontario" (Toronto and Montreal, 1892), enumerates a list of some
thirty-three publications that antedated it, and Mr. Charles Lindsey,
a bibliophilist and _littérateur_ of Toronto, adds a number of others.
See Toronto 'Week,' Dec. 9, 1892, Dr. Kingsford's rejoinder, _ib._,
Dec. 30, and another article on same subject by Mr. Lindsey, _ib._,
Jan. 13, 1893. All these bibliographical notes are interesting, and
show how insignificant in point of intellectual and original ability
was the literature of Ontario for fifty years previous to 1841.]
BELKNAP'S HISTORY.
[Footnote 24: Page 13.--Mr. Jeremy Belknap's "History of New Hampshire"
was published in Philadelphia and Boston in 1784-92, three volumes. See
Bourinot's "Cape Breton," in 'Trans. Roy. Soc. Can.,' vol. ix., p. 315,
and p. 147 in the separate volume (Montreal, 1892).]
THE POET CRÉMAZIE.
[Footnote 25: Page 17.--Octave Crémazie was one of the _vrai sang_
of French Canada, and a bookseller without the least aptitude for
business. He left Quebec after his failure, and lived under an
assumed name in France, where he died in poverty. His life was most
unfortunate, and in the gloomy days of his later French career he
never realized the expectations which his literary efforts in Canada
raised among his ardent friends. His poems appeared at first in the
'Soirées Canadiennes' and French Canadian journals, but his works were
published in full at Montreal, in 1882, under the patronage of the
Institut Canadien of Quebec, of which he was one of the founders. The
Abbé Casgrain has given the introduction for this edition, and added
some of the letters written to him by Crémazie from Paris. Crémazie,
and indeed many of his friends, considered the "Trois Morts" as the
best effort of his poetic genius; but the Abbé truly says: "Crémazie
has never really been original except in his patriotic poems; in them
must be sought the secret of his popularity and his strongest claim
to fame." And he goes on to say: "The old mother-country has so far
given a warm welcome to only one of our poets. She has acknowledged
Fréchette as the most emphatically French of our poetic aspirants; but
the time is not far distant when she will recognize in Crémazie the
most thoroughly Canadian of them all. His verses have not the exquisite
workmanship that is so much admired in Fréchette, but it is full of
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