Part 6

Of course there are many obstacles in the way of successful literary pursuits in Canada. Our population is still small, and separated into two distinct nationalities, who for the most part necessarily read books printed in their own tongue. A book published in Canada then has a relatively limited _clientèle_ in the country itself, and cannot meet much encouragement from publishers in England or in the United States who have advantages for placing their own publications which no Canadian can have under existing conditions. Consequently an author of ambition and merit should perforce look for publishers outside his own country if he is to expect anything like just appreciation, or to have a fair chance of reaching that literary world which alone gives fame in the true sense. It must be admitted too that so much inferior work has at times found its way from Canada to other countries that publishers are apt to look askance at a book when it is offered to them from the colonies. Still, while this may at times operate against making what is a fairly good bargain with the publisher--and many authors, of course, believe with reason that a publisher, as a rule, never makes a good bargain with an author, and certainly not with a new one--a good book will sooner or later assert itself whenever Canadians write such a book. Let Canadians then persevere conscientiously and confidently in their efforts to break through the indifference which at present tends to cramp their efforts and dampen their energy. It is a fashion with some colonial writers to believe that there is a settled determination on the part of English critics to ignore their best work, when, perhaps, in the majority of cases it is the lack of good work that is at fault. Such a conclusion sometimes finds an argument in the fact that, when so able a Canadian as Edward Blake enters the legislative halls of England, some ill-natured critic, who represents a spirit of insular English snobbery, has only a sneer for "this Canadian lawyer" who had better "stay at home," and not presume to think that he, a mere colonist, could have anything to say in matters affecting the good government of the British Empire. But the time has long since passed for sneers at colonial self-government or colonial intellect, and we are more likely hereafter to have a Canadian House of Commons held up as a model of decorum for so-called English gentlemen. Such able and impartial critical journals as _The Athenæum_ are more ready to welcome than ignore a good book in these days of second-rate literature in England itself. If we produce such a good book as Mrs. Campbell Praed's "Australian Life," or Tasma's "Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill," we may be sure the English papers will do us justice. Let me frankly insist that we have far too much hasty and slovenly literary work done in Canada. The literary canon which every ambitious writer should have ever in his mind has been stated by no less an authority than Sainte-Beuve: "Devoted to my profession as a critic, I have tried to be more and more a good and if possible an able workman." A good style means artistic workmanship. It is too soon for us in this country to look for a Matthew Arnold or a Sainte-Beuve--such great critics are generally the results, and not the forerunners, of a great literature; but at least if we could have in the present state of our intellectual development, a criticism in the press which would be truthful and just, the essential characteristics of the two authors I have named, the effect would be probably in the direction of encouraging promising writers, and weeding out some literary dabblers. "What I have wished," said the French critic, "is to say not a word more than I thought, to stop even a little short of what I believed in certain cases, in order that my words might acquire more weight as historical testimony." Truth tempered by consideration for literary genius is the essence of sound criticism.

We all know that the literary temperament is naturally sensitive to anything like indifference and is too apt, perhaps, to exaggerate the importance of its calling in the prosaic world in which it is exercised. The pecuniary rewards are so few, relatively, in this country, that the man of imaginative mind--the purely literary worker--naturally thinks that he can, at least, ask for generous appreciation. No doubt he thinks, to quote a passage from a clever Australian novel--"The Australian Girl"--"Genius has never been truly acclimatized by the world. The Philistines always long to put out the eyes of poets and make them grind corn in Gaza." But it is well always to remember that a great deal of rough work has to be done in a country like Canada before its Augustan age can come. No doubt literary stimulus must be more or less wanting in a colony where there is latent at times in some quarters a want of self-confidence in ourselves and in our institutions, arising from that sense of dependency and habit of imitation and borrowing from others that is a necessity of a colonial condition. The tendency of the absence of sufficient self-assertion is to cramp intellectual exertion, and make us believe that success in literature can only be achieved in the old countries of Europe. That spirit of all-surrounding materialism to which Lowell has referred must also always exercise a certain sinister influence in this way--an influence largely exerted in Ontario--but despite all this we see that even among our neighbours it has not prevented the growth of a literary class famous for its intellectual successes in varied fields of literature. It is for Canadian writers to have always before them a high ideal, and remember that literature does best its duty--to quote the eloquent words of Ruskin--"in raising our fancy to the height of what may be noble, honest and felicitous in actual life; in giving us, though we may be ourselves poor and unknown, the companionship of the wisest spirits of every age and country, and in aiding the communication of clear thoughts and faithful purposes among distant nations, which will at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless passion and change into such halcyon days the winter of the world, that the birds of the air may have their nests in peace and the Son of Man where to lay his head."

IX.

Largely, if not entirely, owing to the expansion of our common school system--admirable in Ontario and Nova Scotia, but defective in Quebec--and the influence of our universities and colleges, the average intelligence of the people of this country is much higher than it was a very few years ago; but no doubt it is with us as with our neighbours--to quote the words of an eminent public speaker whose brilliancy sometimes leads one to forget his higher criticism--I refer to Dr. Chauncey Depew--"Speed is the virtue and vice of our generation. We demand that morning-glories and century plants shall submit to the same conditions and flower with equal frequency." Even some of our universities from which we naturally expect so much seem disposed from time to time to lower their standard and yield too readily to the demand for purely practical education when, after all, the great reason of all education is to draw forth the best qualities of the young man, elevate his intelligence, and stimulate his highest intellectual forces. The animating principle with the majority of people is to make a young man a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or teach him some other vocation as soon as possible, and the tendency is to consider any education that does not immediately effect that result as superfluous. Whilst every institution of learning must necessarily yield something to this pervading spirit of immediate utility, it would be a mistake to sacrifice all the methods and traditions of the past when sound scholars at least were made, and the world had so many men famous in learning, in poetry, in romance, and in history. For one I range myself among those who, like James Russell Lowell and Matthew Arnold, still consider the conscientious and intelligent study of the ancient classics--the humanities as they are called--as best adapted to create cultured men and women, and as the noblest basis on which to build up even a practical education with which to earn bread and capture the world. Goldwin Smith very truly says, "A romantic age stands in need of science, a scientific and utilitarian age stands in need of the humanities."[62] The study of Greek, above all others of the humanities, is calculated to stimulate the higher qualities of our nature. As Matthew Arnold adds in the same discourse from which I have quoted, "The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is served by no other literature or art, we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture." With the same great critic and thinker, I hope that in Canada "Greek will be increasingly studied as men feel the need in them for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this need." We are as respects the higher education of this country in that very period which Arnold saw ahead for America--"a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency"--a tendency to crowd into education too many matters; and it is for this reason I venture to hope that letters will not be allowed to yield entirely to the necessity for practical science, the importance of which I fully admit, while deprecating it being made the dominant principle in our universities. If we are to come down to the lower grades of our educational system I might also doubt whether despite all its decided advantages for the masses--its admirable machinery and apparatus, its comfortable school-houses, its varied systematic studies from form to form and year to year, its well managed normal and model schools, its excellent teachers--there are not also signs of superficiality. The tendency of the age is to become rich fast, to get as much knowledge as possible within a short time, and the consequence of this is to spread far too much knowledge over a limited ground--to give a child too many subjects, and to teach him a little of everything. These are days of many cyclopædias, historical summaries, scientific digests, reviews of reviews, French in a few lessons, and interest tables. All is digested and made easy to the student. Consequently not a little of the production of our schools and of some of our colleges may be compared to a veneer of knowledge, which easily wears off in the activities of life, and leaves the roughness of the original and cheaper material very perceptible. One may well believe that the largely mechanical system and materialistic tendency of our education has some effect in checking the development of a really original and imaginative literature among us. Much of our daily literature--indeed the chief literary aliment of large classes of our busy population is the newspaper press, which illustrates in many ways the haste and pressure of this life of ours in a country of practical needs like Canada. When we consider the despatch with which a large newspaper has to be made up, how reports are caught on the wing and published without sufficient verification, how editorials have to be written _currente calamo_, and often after midnight when important despatches come in, we may well wonder that the daily issue of a newspaper is so well done. With the development of confederation the leading Canadian papers have taken, through the influence of the new condition of things, a larger range of thought and expression, and the gross personalities which so frequently discredited the press before 1867 have now become the exception. If I might refer to an old and enterprising paper as an example of the new order of things, I should point to the Toronto _Globe_ under its present editorial management and compare it with two or three decades ago. It will be seen there is a deeper deference to an intelligent public opinion by an acknowledgment of the right of a community to hear argument and reason even on matters of party politics, and to have fair reports of speeches on both sides of a question. In point of appearance, make-up, and varied literary matter--especially in its literary department, its criticisms of new books in all branches of literature--the Australasian press is decidedly superior to that of Canada as a rule. The Melbourne _Argus_ and the Sydney _Herald_ compare with the best London journals, and the reason is mainly because there is no country press in Australia to limit the enterprise and energy of a newspaper publisher. Perhaps it is as well for the general instruction of a community like ours that there should be a large and active country press, and the people not too much under the guidance of a few great journals in important centres of political thought and action. For one I have more faith in the good sense and reason of the community as a whole than in the motives and disinterestedness of a few leaders in one or more cities or towns. But I must also add that when we consider the influence a widely disseminated press like that of Canada must exercise on the opinions and sentiments of the large body of persons of whom it is the principal or only literature, one must wish that there was more independence of thought and honesty of criticism as well as a greater willingness, or capacity rather, to study a high ideal on the part of the press generally. However improved the tone of the Canadian press may have become of late years, however useful it may be as a daily record of passing events--of course, outside of party politics--however ably it may discuss in its editorial columns the topics of the day, it is not yet an influence always calculated to strengthen the mind and bring out the best intellectual faculties of a reader like a book which is the result of calm reflection, sound philosophic thought, originality of idea, or the elevated sentiment of the great poet or the historian. As a matter of fact a newspaper is too often in Canada a reflex of the average rather than of the higher intelligence of the country, and on no other ground can we explain the space devoted to a football match, or a prize fight, or a murder trial, or degrading incidents in the criminal life of men and women. For one, I am an admirer of athletic and other sports calculated to develop health and muscle, as long as they are not pursued to extremes, do not become the end and aim of youth, or allowed to degenerate into brutality. All of us do not forget the great influence of the Olympian, the Pythian and other public games on the Greek character when the land was "living Greece" indeed; but we must also remember that art and song had a part in those contests of athletes, that they even inspired the lyric odes of Pindar, that the poet there recited his drama or epic, the painter exhibited his picture, and the intellectual was made a part of the physical struggle in those palmy days of Greek culture. I have not yet heard that any Canadian poet or painter or historian has ever been so honoured, or asked to take part in those athletic games and sports to which our public journals devote a number of pages which have not yet been set apart for Canadian or any literature. The newspaper reporter is nowadays the only representative of literature in our Pythia or Olympia, and he assuredly cannot be said to be a Pindaric singer when he exalts the triumphs of lacrosse or the achievements of the baseball champion.

X.

In drawing to a conclusion I come now to refer to a subject which is naturally embraced in an address intended to review the progress of culture in this country, and that is what should have, perhaps, been spoken of before, the condition of Art in the Dominion. As our public libraries[63] are small compared with those in the neighbouring union, and confined to three or four cities--Montreal being in some respects behind Toronto--so our public and private art galleries are very few in number and insignificant as respects the value and the greatness of the paintings. Even in the House of Commons, not long since, regret was expressed at the smallness of the Dominion contribution, one thousand dollars only, for the support of a so-called National Art Gallery at Ottawa, and the greater part of this paltry sum, it appeared, went to pay, not the addition of good paintings, but actually the current expenses of keeping it up. Hopes were thrown out by more than one member of the government, in the course of the discussion on the subject, that ere long a much larger amount would be annually voted to make the gallery more representative of the best Canadian art, and it was very properly suggested that it should be the rule to purchase a number of Canadian pictures regularly every year, and in this way stimulate the talent of our artists. Montreal at present has one fairly good museum of art, thanks to the liberality of two or three of her rich men, but so public spirited a city as Toronto, which numbers among its citizens a number of artists of undoubted merit, is conspicuous for its dearth of good pictures even in private collections, and for the entire absence of any public gallery. In Montreal there are also some very valuable and representative paintings of foreign artists in the residences of her wealthy men of business; but whilst it is necessary that we should have brought to this country from time to time such examples of artistic genius to educate our own people for better things, it is still desirable that Canadian millionaires and men of means and taste should encourage the best efforts of our own artists. It is said sometimes--and there is some truth in the remark--that Canadian art hitherto has been imitative rather than creative; but while we have pictures like those of L. R. O'Brien, W. Brymner, F. A. Verner, O. R. Jacobi, George Reid, F. M. Bell-Smith, Homer Watson, W. Raphael, Robert Harris, C. M. Manly, J. W. L. Forster, A. D. Patterson, Miss Bell, Miss Muntz, J. Pinhey, J. C. Forbes, Paul Peel--a young man of great promise too soon cut off--and of other excellent painters,[64][G] native born or adopted Canadians, illustrating in many cases, as do those of Mr. O'Brien notably, the charm and picturesqueness of Canadian scenery, it would seem that only sufficient encouragement is needed to develop a higher order of artistic performance among us. The Marquess of Lorne and the Princess Louise, during their too short residence in the Dominion, did something to stimulate a larger and better taste for art by the establishment of a Canadian Academy and the holding of several exhibitions; but such things can be of little practical utility if Canadians do not encourage the artists who are to contribute. It is to be hoped that the same spirit of generosity which is yearly building commodious science halls, and otherwise giving our universities additional opportunities for usefulness, will also ere long establish at least one fine art gallery in each of the older provinces, to illustrate not simply English and Foreign art, but the most original and highly executed work of Canadians themselves. Such galleries are so many object lessons--like that wondrous "White City" which has arisen by a western lake as suddenly as the palaces of eastern story--to educate the eye, form the taste and develop the higher faculties of our nature amid the material surroundings of our daily life. No doubt the creative and imaginative faculties of our people have not yet been developed to any noteworthy extent; the poems and paintings of native Canadians too frequently lack, and the little fiction so far written is entirely destitute of the essential elements of successful and permanent work in art and literature. But the deficiency in this respect has arisen not from the poverty of Canadian intellect, but rather from the absence of that general distribution of wealth on which art can alone thrive, the consequent want of galleries to cultivate a taste among the people for the best artistic productions, and above all from the existence of that spirit of intellectual self-depreciation which is essentially colonial, and leads not a few to believe that no good work of this kind can be done in mere dependencies.

The exhibition of American art at the world's fair is remarkable on the whole for individual expression, excellent colour and effective composition. It proves to a demonstration that the tendency is progressive, and that it is not too much to expect that a few decades hence this continent will produce a Corot, a Daubigny, a Bonnat, a Bouguereau or a Millais. Not the least gratifying feature of the exhibition has been the revelation to the foreign world--and probably to many Canadians as well--that there is already some artistic performance of a much higher order than was believed to exist in Canada, and that it has been adjudged worthy of special mention among the masterpieces that surround the paintings of our artists. This success, very moderate as it is, must stimulate Canadian painters to still greater efforts in the future, and should help to create a wider interest in their work among our own people, heretofore too indifferent to the labours of men and women, whose rewards have been small in comparison with the conscientiousness and earnestness they have given to the prosecution of their art.

The opportunities which Canadian artists have had of comparing their own work with that of the most artistic examples at the exhibition should be beneficial if they have made of them the best possible use. American and French art was particularly well represented at the exhibition, and was probably most interesting from a Canadian point of view, since our artists would naturally make comparisons with their fellow-workers on this continent, and at the same time closely study the illustrations of those French schools which now attract the greater number of students from this country, and have largely influenced--perhaps too much so at times--the later efforts of some well-known painters among us. A writer in the New York _Nation_ has made some comparisons between the best works of the artists of France and the United States, which are supported by the testimony of critics who are able to speak with authority on the subject. The French notably excel "in seriousness of purpose and general excellence of work from a technical point of view, especially in the thorough knowledge of construction in both the figure and landscape pictures." On the other hand, the artists of the United States "show more diversity of aim and individuality of expression, as well as colour feeling." Some two or three Canadian artists give examples of those very qualities--especially in their landscapes--which, according to the New York critic, distinguish the illustrations of the art of the United States. As a rule, however, there is a want of individuality of expression, and of perfection of finish, in the work of Canadian artists, as even their relatively imperfect representation at Chicago has shown. The tendency to be imitative rather than creative is too obvious. Canadian painters show even a readiness to leave their own beautiful and varied scenery that they may portray that of other countries, and in doing so they have ceased in many cases to be original. But despite these defects, there is much hope in the general performance of Canadians even without that encouragement and sympathy which the artists of the United States have in a larger measure been able to receive in a country of greater wealth, population and intellectual culture.