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Heavysege, Charles, the gifted author of “Saul,” was born in Liverpool, England, May 2nd, 1816. On his arrival in Canada in 1853, he took up his residence in Montreal, where for a time he worked as a machinist, earning by hard labour a modest subsistence for himself and his family. Afterwards he became a local reporter on the staff of the Montreal Daily Witness; but, as has been the case with many another son of genius, his life was one long struggle with poverty. Through all his earlier years of toil and harassing cares, he devoted himself to study and poetical composition, but published nothing till he was nearly forty years of age. A poem in blank verse saw the light in 1854. This production, crude, no doubt, and immature, met with a chilling reception, even from his friends. Some time afterwards appeared a collection of fifty sonnets, many of them vigorous and even lofty in tone, but almost all of them defective in execution, owing to the author’s want of early culture. “Saul,” his greatest work, was published in 1857, and fortunately fell into the hands of Hawthorne, then a resident of Liverpool, who had it favourably noticed in the North British Review. Longfellow and Emerson, too, spoke highly of its excellence, the former pronouncing it to be “the best tragedy written since the days of Shakespeare.” Canadians then discovered that Heavysege was a genius, and made partial atonement for their neglect; but even to the end the poet’s struggle with fortune was a bitter one. In 1857, he published “Saul: A scriptural tragedy.” “Count Flippo or, The Unequal Marriage:” a drama in five acts (1860). This production is inferior to “Saul,” not only because it does not possess the epic sublimity of the sacred drama, but because in it there is too much straining after effect, the characterization is defective, and the criticism of life displayed is not of the highest quality. “Jephthah’s Daughter,” (1865): a drama which follows closely the scriptural narrative, and, so far as concerns artistic execution, is superior to “Saul.” The lines flow with greater smoothness; there are fewer commonplace expressions, and the author has gained a firmer mastery over the rhetorical aids of figures of speech. His mind, however, shows no increase in strength, and we miss the rugged grandeur and terrible delineations of his earliest drama. “The Advocate:” a novel (1865). Besides these works, Heavysege produced many shorter pieces, one of the finest of which, “The Dark Huntsman,” was sent to the Canadian Monthly just before his death. To Art Heavysege, so his critics say, owed little. Even his most elaborate productions are defaced by unmusical lines, prosaic phrases and sentences, and faults of taste and judgment. But he owed much to Nature; for he was endowed with real and fervid, though unequal and irregular, genius. To the circumstances of his life, as much as to the character of his mind, may be attributed the pathetic sadness that pervades his works. Occasionally, it is true, there is a faint gleam of humour; but it is grim humour, which never glows with geniality or concentrates into wit. Irony and quaint sarcasm, too, display themselves in some of the Spirit scenes in “Saul.” But for sublimity of conception and power of evoking images of horror and dread, Heavysege was unsurpassed except by the masters of our literature. He possessed also, an intimate knowledge of the workings of the human heart; his delineations of character were powerful and distinct; and his pictures of impassioned emotion are wonderful in their epic grandeur. Every page of his dramas betrays an ardent study of the Bible, Milton, and Shakespeare, both in the reproduction of images and thoughts, and in the prevailing accent of his style. But he had an originality of his own; for many of his sentences are remarkable for their genuine power, and keen and concentrated energy. Here and there, too, we meet with exquisite pieces of description, and some of the lyrics in “Saul” are full of rich fancy and musical cadence. Without early culture, and amid the toilsome and uncongenial labours of his daily life, Heavysege has established his right to a foremost place in the Canadian Temple of Fame: what might he not have done for himself and his adopted country, had he been favoured by circumstances as he was by Nature! His death took place at Montreal, in August, 1876.