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THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—JOSEPH HOWE AS FOUNDER OF THE INDEPENDENT PROSE, CREATIVE JOURNALISM, POLITICAL LITERATURE, LITERARY AND FORENSIC ORATORY—AS PATRIOTIC, DESCRIPTIVE, AND HUMOROUS POET—AND AS THE DISCOVERER AND SPONSOR OF THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON.

The epithet nativistic as applied to Canadian Literature marks a two-fold contrast. On one side, it distinguishes the literature written by natives of any of the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas (Ontario and Quebec) from the earlier Incidental or Émigré Literature. On the other side, it distinguishes the literature written by native-born men and women before Confederation from the Native and National Literature written by native-born poets and prosemen after Confederation. Nativistic Literature is ‘native’ only in the sense of being the indigenous product of the Unconfederated Provinces; but it is neither ‘native’ nor ‘national’ in the sense of being the product of the Confederated Provinces which form the Dominion of Canada. But since this Nativistic Literature was written by native-born sons and daughters of the Provinces in a period when these Provinces were, so to put it, ‘on the way’ to political union, and since it has permanent significance, it is classified retroactively as part of the genuine literature of Canada. Thus Richardson’s romances (written and set in Ontario), Haliburton’s satiric comedy (written and set in Nova Scotia), Sangster’s and Mair’s poetry (written and set in Ontario) belong to the Nativistic Literature of Canada. But the poetry of Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Campbell, D. C. Scott, Sir Gilbert Parker, and Pauline Johnson, and the prose fiction of Miss Marshall Saunders, Roberts, Parker, and Scott, as well as the verse and prose of later native-born writers, belong to the Native and National Literature of Canada. Yet both the Nativistic and the Native and National Literature are equally Canadian, inasmuch as each expresses with beauty or truth the spirit and life of the people and the physiognomy and moods of Nature in her seasons in Canada.

The most significant writer, at least by versatility of genius and variety of achievement, in the history of the Nativistic Literature of Canada, was Joseph Howe, born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1804. Solely as a man of letters, Howe must be regarded as having been, from the point of view of Nova Scotia and of Canada, a man of superior creative genius. He, along with Haliburton, inaugurated the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature of Canada. He laid the foundations of Canadian Creative Journalism and Canadian Political Literature. He was the ‘father’ of Canadian Literary and Forensic Oratory. He gave fresh life and novel humorous quality to the Familiar Sketch or Light Essay, after the manner but not in imitation of Addison and Goldsmith. He was the first writer in British North America to attempt the Short Story of Mystery, and with engaging success. He was a Poet of greater authentic genius than many other Canadian poets who have a wider reputation. For he wrote poetry of Nature and the Commonplace with the beauty and distinction of Goldsmith and Burns. He infused into the Patriotic Song a new music and what may be regarded as the first expression of the National spirit in verse of that species. He gave to the Convivial Song a fresh Western ‘tang’ of breeziness and genial humanity. He revitalized, with novel originality and piquancy, the Poetry of Humor, so originally indeed as to make his humorous poetry almost a species by itself. Finally, he discovered the genius of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, trained him, sponsored him, and introduced him to the world as the first systematic humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

In 1704, or just one hundred years before the birth of Joseph Howe, the Boston News-Letter, the first New England newspaper, was established. On March 17th, 1776, or seventy-two years after the founding of the News-Letter, the press of that journal departed from Boston for Halifax, via Newport, R.I., in the care of John Howe, father of Joseph Howe; and was set up in the office of the Halifax Gazette, founded in 1752, the first newspaper published in any of the Provinces which later became the Dominion of Canada. The News-Letter was amalgamated with The Gazette. The latter, however, was not a genuine newspaper; it was a governmental organ which published chiefly military and official intelligence. The News-Letter was, in our sense of the word, a genuine newspaper. On the face of the fact, the amalgamation of the New England and the Nova Scotia newspapers appears as a simple, unmeaningful business matter. Really, however, it was an important factor in the evolution of Canadian literature.

John Howe was a printer, and a cultured Loyalist. He brought to Nova Scotia two ideals. These were, first, the ideal of the free and democratic expression of the spirit in word and deed; and, secondly, the ideal of the expression of thought in strictly literary form. When, therefore, the Boston News-Letter was amalgamated with the Halifax Gazette, Loyalist culture and journalistic ideals and practice infected and enhanced Nova Scotian (that is, Canadian) journalism. The amalgamation changed the scope and quality of Canadian journalism. For in 1828 Joseph Howe became sole owner and editor of The Novascotian, and proceeded systematically, and with better effect, to put into practice the social, journalistic, and literary ideals of his father.

When Joseph Howe assumed absolute control of The Novascotian, in the same year (1828) he also brought together the band of Nova Scotia writers known as ‘The Club.’ In the twenty years from 1828, when Howe became active in creative journalism, to 1847, when the struggle for Responsible Government in Nova Scotia ended and Howe retired from The Novascotian, Howe raised journalism to the dignity of literature. He achieved this in two ways: first, by publishing in The Novascotian his own and Haliburton’s original ‘Club’ prose sketches, Haliburton’s first series of The Clockmaker, and the prose and verse of other contemporary Nova Scotia writers; and, secondly, by establishing, in his own narrative and descriptive sketches, essays, legislative reviews, reported legislative speeches, pamphlets, and public letters, a new standard of literary prose. Those twenty years—1828 to 1848—may be called the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature of Canada.

The epithet, ‘independent,’ as applied to the literature of that period in Nova Scotia means that Howe, along with Haliburton, set up standards of prose which in substance and style broke away from English traditions and models. Howe’s and Haliburton’s writings were not only an indigenous product of Nova Scotia, a native literature, but also a new literature, absolutely independent of other literatures—in matter, form, and style. Moreover, The Novascotian, in which were published the skits, sketches, essays, and letters of ‘The Club,’ the sketches and essays of Howe, the first of the Sam Slick humorous sketches, and, later, the texts of Howe’s literary and forensic orations and public letters, circulated not only in the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas but also in the United States and Great Britain. The Novascotian thus introduced Howe and Haliburton, as creative prose writers, to the literary world. We may, therefore, mark the twenty years from 1828 to 1848 as the Epoch of the First Nativistic Literature of Canada.

Howe’s own creative literary work by itself deserves particular notice, inasmuch as it was a distinct contribution to the genuine Nativistic Literature of Canada. In 1828 Howe himself began a series of narrative and descriptive writings, intimate, gossipy ‘genre’ and ‘color’ sketches, which he published in The Novascotian and which he named Western Rambles. In 1830 he followed these with a similar series which he named Eastern Rambles. In 1838 and in 1839, while he and Haliburton were in Europe, Howe published in The Novascotian two series of essay-like sketches, The Nova Scotian Afloat and The Nova Scotian in England, in which it appeared that Howe was developing for himself a new literary style. For though these sketches are somewhat in the manner of Goldsmith they have a merely outward essay-like formality, but are distinguished by an originality of their own, an inward spirit of fresh humor and a humanity, almost urbanity, which are wholly Howe’s own creation.

In another department Howe added creatively to the prose literature of Canada. He laid the foundations of a political literature, which was not journalism, but authentic literature. He did this, first, by his inimitable so-called Legislative Reviews, when, in 1830, he began what is admitted by all critics to be in literary form and style a brilliant series of discussions of public affairs. Again: Howe enhanced the political literature of Canada by his pamphlets, public letters and his speeches and addresses, which were all published in the press.

It is not, however, by his legislative reviews, pamphlets, essays, sketches and public letters that Howe must be given a unique status in Canadian creative prose literature. He wins his unique status by virtue of his Speeches and Orations. They are really ‘great’—noble in thought, beautiful in literary style and finish, extraordinarily fine examples of a Western reincarnation of the rhetorical and literary gifts of such consummate parliamentarians and statesmen as Edmund Burke, John Bright, and William Ewart Gladstone.

Finally: Howe contributed to the Nativistic creative literature of Canada considerable journalistic verse which, in virtue of its humanity, and sincerity, its imaginative beauties, pleasing conceits and sentiments, and flowing rhythms (though it lacks somewhat in original verbal music) is quite on the plane of the journalistic verse of the 18th century neo-classical school, especially the verse of Goldsmith, upon which most of the verse of Howe was modelled. Howe wrote inspiriting Imperial verse, as, for instance, his Flag of Old England, a really fine example of patriotic poetry. He wrote colorful and musical descriptive verse, as, for instance, his long unfinished poem Acadia (in the 18th century rhymed couplet). He wrote infectious humorous poetry, as, for instance, The Blue Nose, To Mary, A Toast (to Haliburton), which is as near poetry as that species of verse ever reaches.

If Johnson and Goldsmith raised journalistic verse to the plane of poetry, so did Joseph Howe. Or, concretely, if Goldsmith’s Deserted Village is authentic poetry, so is Howe’s Acadia. Consider this excerpt from Howe’s Acadia:—

Pearl of the West!—since first my soul awoke

And on my eyes thy sylvan beauties broke,

Since the warm current of my youthful blood

Flowed on, thy charms, of mountain, mead, and flood

Have been to me most dear. Each winning grace

E’en in my childish hours I loved to trace,

And, as in boyhood, o’er thy hills I strode,

Or on thy foaming billows proudly rode,

At ev’ry varied scene my heart would thrill,

For, storm or sunshine, ’twas my Country still,

And now, in riper years, as I behold

Each passing hour some fairer charm unfold,

In ev’ry thought, in ev’ry wish I own,

In ev’ry prayer I breathe to Heaven’s high throne,

My Country’s welfare blends—and could my hand

Bestow one floweret on my native land,

Could I but light one Beacon fire, to guide

The steps of those who yet may be her pride,

Could I but wake one never dying strain

Which Patriot hearts might echo back again,

I’d ask no meed—no wreath of glory crave—

If her approving smile my own Acadia gave!

Are those lines any less true, human, sincere, winning poetry than the opening apostrophe of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village?—

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;

Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain,

Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,

And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delayed:

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,

How often have I loitered o’er thy green,

Where humble happiness endeared each scene!

How often have I paused on every charm....

and so on. ‘Pearl of the West!’—in just as short, apt, and felicitous poetic phrase as Goldsmith’s apostrophe ‘Sweet Auburn!’ Howe signalizes Nova Scotia, her natural beauty and magic, her ‘homeland’ thrall over the heart and imagination of her native sons, a thrall of mountain, mead, and wood, and flood, of kinship with nature and of pride in her resources on land and sea. His Acadia is all authentic poetry.

As a lyrist of the beauty and pathos of the Commonplace, after the manner of Burns, Howe ranks well, as in his lyrics of this species, To The Linnet, The Deserted Nest, and To the Mayflower (trailing arbutus). It is, however, as a Poet of Humor that Howe must be regarded as somewhat unique in the literary history of Canada. For in his humorous verse Howe does not indulge in the ludicrous or in sheer absurdity, as did George T. Lanigan. Rather Howe employs an unconventional method of dignifying the human spirit, as in his playful manner of signalizing the heart qualities of the Nova Scotian in his poem The Blue Nose and in A Toast (to Haliburton). Seldom did Howe use satire in humorous verse. But whenever he did so, he employed the manner of Burns, and in the form of epigram, as in To Ann and in this smart epigram, To a Lady (whose Eyes were Remarkably Small):—

Your little eyes, with which, fair maid,

Strict watch on me you’re keeping,

Were never made to look; I’m ’fraid

They’re only fit for peeping.

Joseph Howe was a ‘poet frustrate.’ Had he been able to devote himself wholly to verse, there is no doubt that he would have left a considerable body of authentic poetry. The bad in his verse is like the bad in the verse of his superiors, but the best of Howe’s verse is genuine poetry. Yet however high or low individual critics may estimate the aesthetic and artistic qualities of his verse, Joseph Howe has a right to a place in the history of Canadian poetry, and to a distinctive place in the history of Canadian humorous poetry.

As the inaugurator of the Epoch of the Independent Nativistic Prose Literature of Canada, as an authentic creator of Literary Journalism and Literary and Forensic Oratory, and as a significant, though frustrate Poet, Joseph Howe was, as Samuel Johnson said of Goldsmith,—‘a very great man.’