A Medieval New World: Nation-Making in Early Canadian Literature, 1789-1870

Home , Alexander Croke, Burning of Parliament, Henry James Morgan, Peregrine Maitland, The Canadas, Union of the Crowns

Elana Laurel Aislinn Ryan

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto

A Medieval New World: Nation-Making in Early Canadian Literature, 1789-1870

Elana Laurel Aislinn Ryan

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English University of Toronto

2015 Abstract

This thesis examines how medievalist narratives of nationhood developed in the early days of English Canadian literature, from 1789-1870. Early Canadian authors imagined a past for Canada tied not to the land but to cultural memory; they created a medieval history for Canada by adapting European medieval myth and legend. Adaptation was a powerful tool in the hands of authors struggling to negotiate North America’s multiple colonial relationships: it allowed them to embrace European cultural histories, to stake a claim to those Old World cultural inheritances, while simultaneously appropriating those histories into new narratives for the New World.

This project, as the first large-scale study of medievalism in Canada, involved finding and cataloguing instances of medievalism in Canadian literature. The trends explored in this thesis are based on 443 works of Canadian medievalism published between 1789 and

1870.

Chapter One analyzes Canada’s first literary magazines in the late eighteenth century.

Responding to revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic, these magazines advocated a revolution not of arms but of manners, with medieval chivalric codes as the exemplar.

Chapter Two turns to the literary aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

These wars instilled in many Canadian authors anxieties not only about France and the

United States, but also about the role of empire in the modern world. In this new world order, medievalism became a source of validation, a keystone that held together a nation or empire’s history from antiquity to the modern day. Chapter Three examines the reemergence of French-oriented medievalism after the failed rebellions of 1837-1838 and the ensuing unification of the Canadas. In the hands of English Canadian authors, even sympathetic French characters were stuck in the past, thus relegating their roles in

Canada to those of cultural progenitors but not modern political participants. Chapter

Four, on the period leading up to and immediately following Confederation, examines the expansion of racialized narratives of Canadianness to include pan-British and pan- northern conceptions of Canadianness. This northern identity particularly embraced

Canada’s history of Viking contact as integral to the nation’s hardy northern character.

iii

Acknowledgments

This thesis was generously funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research

Council of Canada Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, a Dr.

Ranbir Singh Khanna Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Canadian Studies, a Kathleen

Coburn Graduate Admission Award at the University of Toronto, and a University of

Toronto Doctoral Completion Award.

Sincere thanks to my supervisory committee for their help throughout the project.

Heather Murray’s thoughtful guidance has shaped not only my scholarship but also my approach to academia in many ways: thank you for modeling the type of scholar I hope to become. Nick Mount’s knowledge of Canadian literary society helped buttress the project’s literary foundations. Thanks to Will Robins for believing in the success of the project from the beginning, and for helping me share it with the world of medieval studies.

The feedback of my examining committee, including Colin Hill and Lynne Magnusson, has helped me imagine new directions of research emerging from this project. I particularly appreciate Cynthia Sugars’ thoughtful and thorough report, as well as her enthusiastic support of my other projects in development. Thanks also to Russell Poole for inspiring my love of the medieval world, to Nandi Bhatia for teaching me to think across national boundaries, and to Karis Shearer and Richard Moll for sharing their troves of Canadian medievalism.

I am grateful for the assistance of many friends who doubled as study partners and editors. Special thanks to Kailin Wright, Gillian Bright, and Leif Einarson for their keen

editorial eyes, and to Jenny O’Kell, Melanie East, and Marci Prescott-Brown for sharing this journey with me. Noelle Gadon, Erin Reynolds Webster, Jude Welburn, and

Christina Galego made studying for comprehensive exams not only productive but also enjoyable. Thank you to MaryAnne Mason, Laurie Jennings, and Zheng Shao for their constant encouragement and for reminding me that there is a world outside academia.

My family deserves recognition for the myriad ways in which they have both directly and indirectly supported this project; the following can express only a small fraction of my gratitude. Thanks to my brother, Colan Ryan, for understanding the process and for bringing the family together on many occasions, to Kish and Gord Kightley for giving me another home, and to Kristin Kightley for helping me transition to the professional side of academia. Finally, my most heartfelt thanks to my husband, Michael Kightley, and my parents, Leonard and Kathleen Ryan. Thank you for eagerly reading all of my work, and for encouraging me every step of the way; most of all, thank you for your love and support. I dedicate this thesis to you.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iv List of Figures ...... vii List of Appendices ...... viii Introduction ...... 1 The Database and Some Broad Trends in Early Canadian Medievalism ...... 19 Chapter 1. Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the New Canada: the Beginnings, 1789-1794 ...... 27 Chapter 2. The Aftermath of War: 1800-1835 ...... 78 Chapter 3. Rebellion, Responsible Government, and the French Question: 1837-1848 ...... 138 Chapter 4. Defining a Nation: 1848-1870 ...... 189 Conclusion ...... 245 Works Cited and Consulted ...... 251 Appendix. Bibliography of Canadian Medievalism, 1789-1870 ...... 278 VITA ...... 309

List of Figures

Figure 1. Medievalism Produced in British North America by Time Period ...... 20 Figure 2. Distribution of Medievalist Publications by Region ...... 22 Figure 3. Distribution by Literary Genre ...... 23 Figure 4. Sources of Medieval Traditions used in Canadian Publications ...... 24 Figure 5. Interest in Regional Celticism ...... 25 Figure 6. “A Sign of the Times” ...... 198 Figure 7. “Humours American” ...... 199

vii

List of Appendices

Bibliography of Canadian Medievalism, 1789-1870 ...... 278

viii 1

Introduction

In 1815, Sir Walter Scott’s brother Thomas — a military paymaster in Lower

Canada — wrote to him about the “literary child” of “an Indian chief” (346): “What do you think of a man speaking the language of about twelve Indian nations, English,

French, German, and Spanish, all well, being in possession of all modern literature — having read with delight your Lady of the Lake, and translated the same, together with the

Scriptures, into Mohawk[?]” (345). The “Indian chief” in question was the half-

Cherokee, half-Scottish John Norton,1 who had been adopted by Joseph Brant

[Thayendanegea] into the Mohawk nation at Onondaga on the Grand River in western

Upper Canada (Klinck, “Norton, John”). Norton was an author in his own right as well as a translator: his primary literary focus was ethnographic travel writing. Thomas Scott was suitably in awe of his accomplished acquaintance, and although his letter veers into romantic stereotypes of noble savagery, it nevertheless provides an important window into early Canada’s literary cultures; moreover, the letter reveals three of the key premises that underlie this project.

First, it suggests the degree to which the business of literature in British North

America was, from its very beginnings, an international affair: British North Americans consumed and responded to literature produced on both sides of the Atlantic, and British

North American authors likewise produced their works for both local and international

1 Norton likely also served as the inspiration for John Richardson’s Wacousta. For more information, see David Beasley’s The Canadian Don Quixote: The Life and Works of Major John Richardson (particularly the second edition), and for a refutation of the biographical similarities between Norton and Wacousta, see Carl F. Klinck’s “John Norton” in Recovering Canada’s First Novelist: Proceedings from the John Richardson Conference.

2 audiences. Thomas Scott wrote that Norton was, for example, “afraid that the Edinburgh

Review will be hard on his book” — a journal that was part travel narrative, part history of the Iroquois nations, and part firsthand account of the War of 1812; in his letter, Scott also fulfilled a promise to ask his influential brother to help the book reach the right literary circles in the United Kingdom (345-346). Second, it suggests the extent to which literary re-imaginings of the medieval world, such as Scott’s Lady of the Lake, had a widespread audience in British North America that transcended even linguistic boundaries: Norton must have felt there was sufficient demand among Mohawk-speakers for such historical fiction in order to choose The Lady of the Lake as one of only two works to translate to Mohawk — the other being the Bible. Norton’s instincts about the appeal of Scott were certainly accurate at least insofar as anglophone Canadian literary communities were concerned,2 nor, as I shall demonstrate in the following chapters, was he wrong about the extraordinary populist appeal of medievalism in general in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British North America.

Unfortunately, there seem to be no extant copies of Norton’s translation of The

Lady of the Lake; there is no record of its ever having been printed, so it may indeed have circulated only in manuscript. More unfortunately, even the manuscript(s) has (or have) been lost, thus mirroring my third key point about medievalist processes: loss and erasure are inevitable by-products of writing about the past. Early English Canadians felt free to select for themselves a history for the nation — a history that extended back beyond the point of colonization into the medieval past; moreover, their selections were predicated on the notion that the land had no pre-existing indigenous histories. These history-writing

2 See Carole Gerson’s A Purer Taste: The Writing and Reading of Fiction in English in Nineteenth-Century Canada for more on Scott’s influence on Canadian literary culture.

3 projects required the land to be a blank space in which European settlers could select and write their own version of a new history for a new nation. Whether parroting, adapting, or even refuting Old World sources, each history nonetheless assumed the New World’s inherent connection to the Old. Norton’s Mohawk version of Scott would have represented a unique and possibly powerful intervention into English Canadian attempts to write such a historical back-story. At the very least, it would have prompted considerations of the interplay between aboriginal and European histories in the story of

Canada; its very existence (if acknowledged) would have suggested that Mohawk and other First Nations literary and historical traditions had the same kind of influence on the colonies of British North America as did Scott’s romantic visions of historical Scotland.

The erasure (whether intentional or not) of Norton’s version from the corpus of Canadian literature is thus a telling instance of one of the central concerns of medievalism around the world: the creative process of medievalism is always necessarily entwined with a process of erasure. Medievalism — or the attempt to establish narrative continuity with the past — is predicated on an already-existing dislocation from that past.

This thesis takes as its foundational principles the three key points outlined above: that Canadian literary culture is and always has been an integral part of international literary conversations; that interest in the medieval world was a widespread phenomenon in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canada; and that that interest — or “medievalism”

— involved both selective inclusion and selective erasure. Building upon these three principles, this project examines how Canadian authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries imagined a medieval past for Canada tied not to the land but to cultural memory. There are two halves to this exploration of Canadian medievalism: one, this

4 thesis, explores specifically how the issues raised by medieval allusions and adaptations in early Canadian literature evolved alongside the shifting sociopolitical concerns of colonies in transition to nationhood. The other half is a database of medievalist literature in Canada; this database — which I explain further at the end of this introduction — aims to make the study of Canadian medievalism accessible to other scholars. As an annotated catalogue of more than one thousand works of Canadian medievalism, the database will enable scholars to search and sort the material according to their own interests, in order not just to identify relevant primary sources but also to find general trends in the history of medievalism in Canada.

What is Medievalism?

Clare A. Simmons has traced the origin of the word “medievalism” to John

Ruskin in 1853; Simmons suggests that Ruskin used it “to describe his own generation’s enthusiasm for the medieval (itself a nineteenth-century term; earlier, the phrase Middle

Ages was used)” (“Introduction” 1). Medievalism for Ruskin thus covered a broad range of cultural phenomena, but over the last century and a half, the term has accrued even further connotations. Tom Shippey, one of the most influential theorists of medievalism, defines the field thus:

Medievalism is the study of responses to the Middle Ages at all periods

since a sense of the mediaeval began to develop. Such responses include,

but are not restricted to, the activities of scholars, historians and

philologists in rediscovering medieval materials; the ways in which such

materials were and are used by political groups intent on self-definition or

self-legitimation; and artistic creations, whether literary, visual or musical,

based on whatever has been or is thought to have been recovered from the

medieval centuries. The Middle Ages remain present, moreover, in the

modern consciousness, both through scholarship and through popular

media such as film, video games, poster art, TV series and comic strips,

and these media are also a legitimate object of study, if often intertwined

with more traditionally scholarly topics. (International Society for the

Study of Medievalism)

The term “medievalism” thus covers broad categories of material: it can be popular or scholarly, creative or critical. Shippey’s initial emphasis on responsiveness to the Middle

Ages suggests a perhaps misleading sense of intentionality on the part of creators of medievalism; although many medievalist works do respond self-consciously and directly to medieval sources, that creative intent is not necessary for a work to be medievalist. On the contrary, the ongoing interaction between the modern and the medieval is often unconscious, and is often most powerful when unconscious — for both author and audience. Even the Canadian national anthem implicitly draws upon the legacy of medievalist discourses without ever having to acknowledge its debt: the modern idea of

“the true north strong and free” would not exist without nineteenth-century Canada’s ideas of medieval Nordicity. We are, in a sense, haunted by the Middle Ages: we have inherited ideas both from and about the medieval world through popular culture and scholarship, and the traces left behind by these ghosts of medieval culture can be every bit as pervasive in and influential upon modern cultural production as are direct engagements with the medieval.

The Problem of Continuity

The multiplicity of forms that medievalism can take reflects an ambivalence inherent in the ways both scholars and authors orient the relationship between the modern and the medieval: Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel argue “It is . . . one of the peculiarities of medieval study everywhere that it constantly hovers between the dual consciousness of the Middle Ages as a place and time of non-origin (that is, the dark period constructed in and by the Renaissance) and that of origin (the origin of the modern state)” (678-679). The Renaissance interpretation of the Middle Ages (and particularly the Early Middle Ages) was one of disavowal, a rejection of the influence of a millennium of cultural production in favour of claiming kinship with Greco-Roman classical cultures. Yet, as Freedman and Spiegel indicate, this claim of a cultural break was complicated by parallel claims of political continuity. Moreover, this ambivalence to reinterpretations of the Middle Ages is not something restricted to Renaissance theorists; it remains an integral part of modern studies of the medieval as well.

Projects analyzing nationalist medievalisms necessarily grapple with issues of how to trace an historical past when both the critics and the authors of the works we study are always chronologically and sometimes geographically displaced from that history. But even in Britain — a country with in situ relics of its medieval past — scholars and authors have long struggled with the ostensibly Anglo-Saxon country’s post-

Norman Conquest displacement from its Germanic history. In Reversing the Conquest:

History and Myth in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Clare A. Simmons discusses the Conquest of 1066 as a moment of rupture that required nineteenth-century authors to

7 work creatively around historical fact in order to imagine an Anglo-Saxon England. In addition to dealing with temporal displacement from the past, the English models

Simmons discusses also involve an almost melancholic sense of trying to recover something of their own now long lost.

Colonial medievalisms in countries like Australia and the United States also deal with rupture and displacement, but they generally do not share the sense of loss prevalent in Old World medievalism. With respect to Australia, Louise D’Arcens discusses the conjunction of temporal and spatial displacements of the nineteenth-century colony from medieval Europe; in the United States, American medievalists such as Freedman and

Spiegel, as well as Candace Barrington, address early Americans’ attempts to reconcile their desire for a continuous thread of Saxon democracy with the rupture from Britain caused by the American Revolution. Early Canadian medievalisms are, however, somewhat different from their other colonial counterparts. As with those of other colonies, early Canadian medievalisms tackle issues of rupture and continuity; yet, like

English models, they also often attempt to recover a lost past. An important difference, though, is that this recovery is rarely a melancholic project, since Canada (like other colonies) did not have the physical traces of European medieval history and therefore had no such history to lose; instead, Canadian medievalisms joyfully recovered what Europe had lost. The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project addresses some similar concerns in its analyses of modern Canadian adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays; even the notion that Newfoundland English is the closest dialectically to Shakespeare’s is a way of reclaiming England’s losses (see, for example, Peter Ayers’ “Learning to Curse in

Accurate Iambics: Shakespeare in Newfoundland.”). This thesis takes a broader view of

8 reclaiming even older histories and literatures: I examine how Canadian authors appropriated European medieval histories, transplanting them to what they believed was a more fertile climate in the New World in order to revive the ancient spirits of traditions that had grown heavy and cumbersome in their original soil.

Medievalism in the Colonies

Shippey argues that one of the features of medievalism is that it must engage with recovering the Middle Ages. Yet, as he also reasons above, this “recovery” is itself a creative practice, one that is not so reliant upon historical truth as it is upon “whatever… is thought to have been” true about the past. In Old Songs in the Timeless Land:

Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840-1910, Louise D’Arcens argues:

medievalism is a hermeneutic rather than a forensic practice; for while it

acknowledges the historical existence of the medieval period, it does not

seek to reconstruct and thereby recover the original ‘presence’ of the

Middle Ages. . . . [T]he modern (and colonial) traces we study . . . do not

point to a pure origin but to a complex, internally divided origin, to which

we cannot have unmediated access and of which we cannot take full

possession through historical knowledge. (15-16)

The study of history reveals not the harmony of a “pure origin” but a complex cacophony of voices clamouring to be heard. All medievalism is, therefore, palimpsestic, since it writes an imagined past over whatever traces of a “real” past might exist. In all nations, the study of history is always, by necessity, mediated; in colonial countries such as

Canada and Australia, recovering histories wherein one layer (that of the settlers) has

9 been written over another (that of colonized peoples) poses its own set of challenges.

Colonial medievalism is thus a double palimpsest.

All re-imaginings of the medieval are based on the absence of the medieval itself, nowhere more so than in colonies with no visible medieval European history of their own. Michelle R. Warren argues that the “importation of the European Middle Ages” is an inherently colonial project, one which

offered one path to integrating “new” nations into global history. This

path, however, led European-identified elites to overlook or explicitly

deny the ways in which Amerindian populations also possessed history.

Recourse to medieval European history thus facilitates colonialist denials

of “coevalness” (in Johannes Fabian’s term)3 to indigenous peoples. In the

Americas, then, nationalist medievalisms occupy a complicated

ideological ground that includes fragmented identifications with European

imperialism, colonial oppression, the prestige of ancient histories, and the

cachet of self-invention. (288)

In the Old World, visible writing upon the slate of history — through artefacts such as written literature and archaeological remains — makes it difficult to select among

European histories to reinvent historical tradition (although the process is by no means impossible). The seemingly blank slate of the New World, however, held great appeal.

The temporal and geographical distance between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century

British North America and the European medieval world gave early British North

American authors the freedom to choose what elements of the European past they wanted

3 See Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Other. New York: Columbia U.P., 1983.

10 to incorporate into their visions of what British North America (and eventually Canada) should be; this perceived absence of history also gave them the power to reject elements they deemed undesirable. They looked to Europe’s past not simply to find, but rather to create literary, political, and racial models for the New World.

Medievalism in Canada: Francophone-Anglophone Tensions

Canadian medievalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries grappled with a further set of complications beyond those of colonizer/colonized and present/past: it also had to attend to the divisions inherent in its multi-ethnic settlers’ racial pasts. Navigating the connections and disjunctions particularly in the histories of francophones and anglophones was a fundamental and defining element of the medievalisms particular to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canada.

In the imagination of medievalist writers, tensions between the English and

French in Canada draw on eight hundred years of conflict between the two groups in the

Old World, reaching back at least to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 CE: the

English lost to the Norman William, and for centuries afterwards, a French-speaking nobility dominated the country. As Simmons explains, British medievalism in the nineteenth century was haunted by the fact of the Conquest, and British authors found numerous creative ways to reverse its symbolic (if not factual) effects. Yet despite this creative leeway, Simmons argues that there were still uncrossable boundaries: “no writer of this time,” she writes, “would have dreamt of literally reversing the Conquest and of giving the victory of 1066 to Harold” (9). In Canada, however, no such blatant revision of history was necessary. For English Canadians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

11 the word “Conquest” took on a meaning different from that which it had for their counterparts in Britain: here, it referred not only to 1066, but also to the 1759-1760

English victory over the French in British North America, and the subsequent cession of

France’s major territories in the region to Britain. For anglophone Canadians, the

“Conquest” of 1759 was not a rupture from the British past, but rather it was a re- entrenchment of that history. In Australia, the US, and the UK, the “rupture” of medievalism has generally referred to an historical moment — whether of colonization, conquest, or independence — but in nineteenth-century Canada, discourses of continuity and displacement revolved not around events but around people. For many English

Canadian authors of the time, their “Conquest” in British North America was a literal reversal of the Norman Conquest (unlike the metaphorical reversals with which

Simmons’ British sources had to content themselves); it set to rights an historical mistake, giving Canadians the chance to rebuild their history from the Middle Ages onwards.

For Canadians, the questions thus became, first, who gets to control the discourses of rupture and continuity, and second, in these discourses, who gets continuous access to history, and whose history is ruptured? For early English Canadian authors, continuity with medieval history became the province of anglophones, and

(perceived) displacement from history became the lot of francophones. As I will discuss particularly in Chapters 2 and 3, by the early- to mid-nineteenth century, medievalism — or, in this case, a continuous access to the medieval past — became a keystone that held together narratives not only of English Canada but also of the British Empire.

Race and Nordicity in Canada

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century constructions of race were both much more fluid and much more narrow than similar discourses are today. Early English Canadians saw, for example, French Canadians as a distinct race, separated from not only English

Canadians but also (to a lesser degree) even the French themselves. English Canadians, by virtue of having been born into a supposedly dominant race, saw the right to access and control historical narratives as part of their racial birthright. As I will explore further in Chapter 4, such attempts to racialize access to the past fed into narratives (particularly among Anglo-Saxon supremacists in Upper Canada) that racialized Canadianness itself.

The distinctiveness of this emergent Canadian race was predicated not only on its unique combination of racial histories, but also on the climate in which it was developing:

Canada’s northernness became an integral component in the production of a superior,

Nordic race.

In White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada, Daniel Coleman argues that in the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries,

What has come to be called ‘the Northern myth’ was central to this

figuration of Canada as a testing and improving ground for effete

European manhood. According to this myth, the rigours of life in a stern,

unaccommodating climate demanded strength of body, character and mind

while it winnowed away laziness, overindulgence, and false social

niceties. Canada’s placement in the North meant that by a process of

social Darwinism, over time its population would shed all over-bred,

aristocratic European delicacy as well as repel ‘southern’ lassitude and

hedonism. (24)

This “Northern myth” took on two forms: the first of these, as above, was the invigorating effect which a cold and bracing climate would have on the Canadian race; the second form historicized the idea of northern superiority, and applied the precepts of environmental effects on race to the medieval progenitors of modern Canadians

(especially the Vikings and other Teutonic peoples). Like Coleman, Jennifer Henderson notes in Settler Feminism and Race Making in Canada, “the hero of this narrative of national maturation is normatively masculine — in the case of nineteenth-century

Canada, a wholesome and vigorous Nordic youth, blazing a westward trail across the northern half of the continent” (3). These gendered tensions featured prominently in late nineteenth century medievalist racial theory, in which northern nations, in particular those of medieval Scandinavia and Germany, were masculinized, and southern ones, such as France, were feminized; however, the medievalist racial theories complicated this gender binary by asserting that feminized Christian civilization was necessary to temper the barbarity of masculinized warrior-paganism. As easily as Canadian medievalism racialized medieval national origins, it also racialized both gender and religion.

Methodology and Overview

This project represents the first comprehensive effort to trace a history of medievalism in Canada. The two parts of the project — the database and the thesis — take different approaches to the material: the aim of the database is to be as inclusive as possible in collecting the works of medievalism produced in and about Canada. The

14 thesis, on the other hand, must be more selective. The thesis thus draws on the database to address the major trends in the evolution of Canadian medievalism over the course of the history of British North America, up to and including Canadian Confederation. The goal of this project is to trace how early English Canadian authors appropriated medieval historical narratives to create a literary, political and racial future for Canada. This study begins in 1789, the year that saw the launch of British North America’s first literary periodical, The Nova-Scotia Magazine. It ends in 1870, a few years after Confederation, in order to incorporate popular responses to the (first) culmination of Canada’s nation- building project.

This project takes as its subject matter the broad scope of early English Canadian literature. It considers not only texts that have since become part of the Canadian literary canon, but also popular literature in general. I use the term “popular literature” to denote any literary materials — including periodicals, pamphlets, novels, book-length collections of poetry, and books of history — that were published in Canada, or that were written by Canadians and circulated in Canada, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite this wealth of literary material produced in and about Canada at the time, the current Canadian literary canon includes relatively few works before those produced by the Confederation Poets starting in the 1880s. Contemporary literary periodicals were the vehicles for the majority of literary production in the colonies; looking at them in addition to monographs thus provides a much more extensive picture of early Canada’s literary cultures, one that represents an intervention into the canonical wisdom stemming from the work of Northrop Frye that early Canadian literature was produced in and about isolation.

Of course, canonical Canadian literature influenced and was influenced by medievalism as well. Anna Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada draws upon an early (and not fully developed) version of the discourses of nordicity that became so influential in Confederation-era Canada. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s

Evangeline directly connects his Acadians and their traditions to the people and culture of medieval Normandy. John Richardson based Wacousta loosely on the life of John

Norton, the author whom Thomas Scott discussed in his letter above; not only did

Richardson take a medievalist author as his inspiration, but he himself played with the

Gothic stereotypes so prevalent in (and popularized by) medievalist literature. The

Canadian Gothic has lately been the subject of much literary interest in Canada; see, for example, Justin D. Edwards’ Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National

Literature and Cynthia Sugars’ Canadian Gothic: Literature, History, and the Spectre of

Self-Invention. Medievalism has thus always interacted with both canonical and popular literary cultures in Canada.

On a theoretical level, analyzing popular literary culture has further benefits, as explained by Coleman:

By examining popular, ‘low culture’ literature, we can observe the

unstable dynamics between the official symbolic history of the nation and

its fantasmic, repressed histories, because popular writing is usually

produced not only by those who securely hold the reins of power but also

by those who are lobbying for power. Popular literature allows us to see a

contest between representations of the nation that had broad appeal and

how these representations jockey for official state adoption. (35)

Non-canonical texts and literary periodicals, with their contesting voices and often anonymous or pseudonymous contributions, represent a populist intervention into (or addition to) official literary histories. Of course, no periodical could claim to represent the entire cross-section of literary thought in Canada at its time; each magazine’s editors had their own biases as to what material they would select and publish. However, that editorial selection process is itself an important part of this project: the act of editing is a creative one, and editors just as much as authors crafted political messages for their readers. One of the underlying premises of this project is that medievalism was a pervasive phenomenon in early Canada’s literary cultures, and that phenomenon influenced all stages of Canada’s literary publishing industry.

The first chapter of this project in particular analyzes editorial interventions in medievalism. In the late eighteenth century, Canada’s first two English literary magazines — The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de

Québec — turned to the medieval world to respond to revolutions on both sides of the

Atlantic. These magazines advocated a revolution not of arms but of manners, with medieval chivalric codes as the exemplar.

As a whole, this project focuses on English-language medievalism in early

Canadian literary culture, but the first chapter also examines some French-language texts that were inextricably connected to the English Canadian literary scene of the time. The

Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec was a bilingual literary magazine whose audience included speakers of both languages; its English articles therefore circulated in

French literary circles, as did its French articles in English ones. Moreover, since it was published and edited by anglophones, it was a direct product of the city’s English literati.

For these reasons, this project analyzes works in both languages in The Quebec Magazine

/ Le magasin de Québec, even though elsewhere it restricts its scope to English-language publications.

Chapter 2 turns to the literary aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of

1812. These wars instilled in many British North American authors, such as George

Longmore and James Martin Cawdell, a natural anxiety about France and the United

States; perhaps more curiously, the wars also prompted an anxiety about the role of empire — including the British — in the modern world. In this new world order, medievalism became a source of validation, the keystone that held together a nation or empire’s history, from antiquity to the modern day.

Chapter 3 examines the re-emergence of French medievalism in English Canadian literature after the failed rebellions of 1837-1838 and the ensuing unification of the

Canadas. The French, whose medieval history had been employed only as a foil to that of the British in the 1820s, reappeared quite suddenly as sympathetic or even heroic characters in medievalist narratives, such as those of Eliza Lanesford Cushing. However, in the hands of many anglo-Canadian authors — most notably John Breakenridge — even these sympathetic French characters were stuck in the past, thus relegating their roles in British North America to those of cultural progenitors rather than modern political participants.

Chapter 4, on the period leading up to and immediately following Confederation, examines the expansion of racial Canadianness. In this period, English Canadian authors emphatically rejected perceived ideas of Americanness as a model for their new nation, and they even began to turn away from Englishness: instead, they developed a more

18 inclusive brand of Canadian Britishness and northernness. The influence of Irish

Canadians such as Thomas D’Arcy McGee was profound: Irishness, long Othered by

England, became an acceptable and even (in very limited circumstances) desirable heritage. Canada’s new Nordic identity, as promoted by Anglo-Saxon supremacists such as Robert Grant Haliburton, particularly embraced Canada’s history of Viking contact as integral to developing the nation’s hardy northern character.

The cultural narratives in these chapters are thus largely framed by the contexts of three sets of relationships: those between anglophones and francophones in early North

America; those between the British North American colonies and the United States; and of course, the relationships between the Old World and the New. In the hands of English

Canadian authors struggling to negotiate these multiple relationships, medievalism was a powerful tool: it allowed them to embrace European cultural histories, to stake a claim to those Old World cultural inheritances, while simultaneously appropriating those histories into new narratives for the New World.

The Database and Some Broad Trends in Early Canadian Medievalism

This project, as the first large-scale study of medievalism in Canada, began with finding and cataloguing instances of medievalism in Canadian literature. The collection process yielded abundant results. I intend to publish the full results of my search — over one thousand entries and growing — as a database for scholarly use; here, though, I will confine myself to an overview of the 443 entries from the period of 1789-1870. The appendix includes a bibliographic list, and below are statistical overviews of medievalism in the period.

A note on the aids that facilitated my search: Thomas B. Vincent’s Index to Pre

1900 English Language Canadian Cultural and Literary Magazines was an invaluable search tool. Richard Moll also very generously shared with me his collection of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian Arthuriana. The University of

Rochester’s Camelot Project was another helpful finding aid.

The data presented below are based on the database’s 443 entries from the period of 1789-1870. An “entry” in the database can be anything from a short note in a literary magazine to a book-length collection of poetry. For periodicals, I group the serialized publication of one long work into only one entry (even though it may appear in six different numbers of a magazine). Each entry in the database is tagged with attributes noting details such as the type of work and its basic relationship to medieval literatures and cultures. For example, a poetic work of historical fiction set in fourteenth-century

Switzerland would have tags denoting its genres, the time and place of its setting, and important historical figures. A literary adaptation might have additional tags, such as those denoting the adapted text and author, and any particularly important characters. An

20 interested scholar could thus search and sort the material by attributes, in order not only to find texts that meet certain criteria, but also to identify literary trends and to see how these trends vary by time and place. For example, if one were interested in works engaging with both Nordic and Celtic medievalism in the early 1850s, one could search for “Nordic” and “Celtic” attributes, and limit the date range to 1850-1855. Such a search would yield two results: a work of fiction by Caroline H. Butler entitled “The Cave of

Eigg — A Legend of the Hebrides,” and a semi-fictional editorial in the Anglo-American

Magazine. A search for Nordic or Celtic attributes in the same time frame would yield fifteen results, including the two above.

Figure 1 Figure 1, above, shows a breakdown of medievalism produced in British North

America by the time periods covered by each of my four chapters. Although the fact that

443 works of medievalism were published in Canada over this eighty-year period is considerable in itself, there are a number of factors that suggest this statistic perhaps

21 underrepresents the importance of medievalism in early Canada. For example, this list includes major book-length publications as well as magazine articles, so “one” work of medievalism might indeed represent a very significant literary output. Moreover, eighty years is a misleading time frame, since the literary publishing industry in British North

America almost completely collapsed for about twenty-five of those years, as I discuss in

Chapter 2. Before this collapse, the only two literary magazines (The Nova-Scotia

Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec) were monthly publications, between them producing 55 issues over almost five years; the fifty-six medievalist works in their pages average, then, to a work of medievalism in every issue.4

This consistency of medievalist publication is not limited to these first two magazines; indeed, one of the most notable elements about medievalism in Canada is its pervasiveness across time and region: whenever and wherever the literary publishing industry was active, so too was the production of literary medievalism. In later years, interest in medievalism was certainly not so evenly distributed amongst all Canadian publications, but there were no time periods or regions that did not feel its influence.

Medievalism was not a fad: rather, it thrived in Canada’s growing literary industry.

Indeed, its popularity may even have contributed to the industry’s growth.

4 There were, of course, some issues of both magazines that did not have any medievalist material, counterbalanced by multiple articles in some other issues.

Figure 2 In the early years of British North America, the major publishing houses were in

Eastern cultural centres — namely, Halifax and Quebec. Next, Montreal and then York

(Toronto) developed as literary centres. The growing population of the Canadas by mid- century contributed to the growth of the publishing industry in Montreal and Toronto, but it was also boosted by the slow decline of publishing in the Maritimes; over the course of the century, the literary industry shifted westwards. As shown in Figure 2 above, the publication locations of medievalism in Canada followed the pattern of Canadian literary production in general. Medievalist activity was thus not strongly regionalized in early

Canada, since its production seems to have depended primarily on general industry strength; however, it would still have had the most cultural influence in the regions most involved in its production.5

5 These places of publication do not necessarily correspond with the places of first publication of any given work; the literary culture of North America at the time was such that reprinting articles with or without acknowledgment of the source was common practice. Figure 3, then, tracks not necessarily where medievalism in Canada was first produced, but more broadly where it was being selected and shared with the public.

Figure 3 As shown in Figure 3 above, at the beginning of the period, prose non-fiction was by far the most popular genre of medievalism. As I discuss in Chapter 1, historical and anthropological studies, such as those of Edward Gibbon and William Jones, were enormously popular and influential at the end of the eighteenth century. Scholarly studies remained popular throughout the period, but their market share of medievalism declined as more authors experimented with creative forms. Verse was a consistently popular form of creative medievalism across the century, but other creative forms such as prose fiction, and, towards the end of the period, satire, grew significantly in popularity. Illustrations too became more common, in part due to cheaper and easier printing methods, and in part due to the increase in skilled engravers in North America. The shift towards creative medievalism coincides with a general increase in creative literary production in Canada; it reflects a shift in the self-consciousness of Canadian literary culture recognizing itself as such rather than as a disparate group of producers and consumers.

Figure 4 Among the most intriguing applications of the database is the ability to track early

Canada’s relative interest levels in different cultural and literary traditions. Figure 4, for example, plots the number of medievalist publications engaging with specific national traditions over time. Chapter 2 draws on this type of data in its discussion of the relative silence about medieval France in the early decades of the nineteenth century; given

Canada’s colonial history, France would be a natural source of historical inspiration, so such a gap is unusual. As the data shows, however, in the wake of the 1837-1838 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, interest in French medievalism surged (as examined in Chapter 3). Chapter 4 examines the rise in interest in medieval Scandinavia in the years leading up Confederation. Working with the database has revealed minor trends that are beyond the scope of this thesis but that are well worth exploring; for example, searching the database for Middle Eastern medievalism indicates that it was of enduring interest in early Canada, a phenomenon seemingly belonging to Edward Said’s

25 notion of Orientalism rather than to any limited Middle Eastern ethnic presence in early

Canada.

Figure 5 As shown in Figure 4, the strain of medievalism that enjoyed the greatest overall popularity and most consistent growth was that of Celtic medievalism. However, at various times, Canadians were interested in different specific national origins of

Celticism (Figure 5). Chapter 2 discusses the rise in popularity of Scottish medievalism, and the integration of Scottish heritage into definitions of Canadianness. Chapter 4 examines the rise of interest in and acceptance of Irish heritage, a phenomenon surprising at a time when Irish famine refugees faced persecution around the globe. Although, as shown above, Irish history did not achieve the popularity of that of the Scottish, it was nevertheless a significant current in medievalism in Canada.

Using the database to identify these trends in Canadian literary medievalism is only the first step. The purpose of this thesis is to trace why these trends occurred in their particular sociopolitical environments; it is, moreover, to examine how these processes of

26 literary appropriation narrativized and even justified Canada’s progress from colony to nation. The following study begins thirty years after the British “Conquest” of the French in North America, at the time of the French and American revolutions; British North

America, facing a crisis of identity as to its own place in the new world order, responded with its first “quiet revolution.” Its revolution of chivalric manners, rather than of arms, began the process of remaking Canada’s history into a new narrative for the new world.

Chapter 1

Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the New Canada: the Beginnings, 1789-1794

From its inception, Canadian literary culture has self-consciously engaged with medieval precedents. Canada’s first two English-language literary magazines,6 The Nova-

Scotia Magazine (1789-1792) and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec (1792-

1794) both displayed a strong interest in the medieval world: they contained, on average, a work of medievalism in every single issue of each magazine. In both of these literary magazines, most of this content was drawn from already-published European sources, although some of it was original to the North American magazines. Establishing originality is a task ranging from difficult to impossible in this era of reprint culture, which saw periodicals borrowing freely from one another without feeling the need to provide detailed (if any) citations; however, even where the content is a direct reprint from a European source, what the editors selected to present to their North American audience reveals just as much about New World interests as do the compositions originating in North America. One element encouraged by this reprint culture was the interaction between conversations happening on both sides of the Atlantic, so even though these two literary magazines had a rather limited local audience, they were still participating in international literary discourse. Reprinting also freed the magazines to present a broad spectrum of interests: even just among the medieval articles, they covered religion, history, and culture in Western Europe, in the Celtic world, in Scandinavia, in

Arabia, and even in Persia. Yet, these diverse interests work together in the magazines to establish a narrative that is distinctly Canadian in focus; the magazines combined all of

6 Fleury Mesplet’s Gazette du Commerce et Littéraire, published in Montreal from 1778- 1779 (see Barbour 1-4; Fleming 64; Hébert 333) was Canada’s first literary periodical.

28 these traditions from the medieval past to comment on the chaotic events of the late eighteenth century.

The reasons for turning to the medieval world were manifold. One such motivation was the lack of an independent press with guaranteed rights to free speech: the history of censorship in early British North America, along with the necessity of gaining government printing contracts, made it much safer for printers and publishers to avoid involving themselves directly in contemporary politics. The Nova-Scotia Magazine and

The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec may, then, have turned to key figures and events from medieval history as allegorical substitutions for reasons of political expediency; even though there were certainly others at the time (Jacob Bailey and

Alexander Croke, for example) who were willing and able to publish openly political satires without retribution, getting a reputation for being politically troublesome would not be good for a printer’s business. Perhaps, though, medievalism held its greatest appeal to these magazines in that it allowed them to appropriate and reshape historical examples for modern sociocultural ends. Drawing on a thousand years of literature and history (or, more accurately, presenting the image of drawing on such a connection to the past) could be a persuasive justification for modern sociocultural arguments. The growing trend of Evangelical Protestantism in Nova Scotia prompted The Nova-Scotia Magazine to denounce certain medieval evangelical preachers, thereby warning its audience about the dangers of evangelical fervour. Moreover, in response to the political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic, the two magazines drew upon medieval periods of revolt to advocate a path between blind loyalty to the crown and the outright revolutions of France

29 and America. On questions of both faith and government, the magazines turned to the past for help in creating a new Canadian society.

A Brief Literary History of New France and British North America

The literary histories of New France and British North America set up the conditions for the production of medievalism in The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The

Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec in two ways. First, the multiplicity of these histories — along with their transatlantic nature — created precedent for the intrinsically international nature of Canadian medievalism; second, the history of powerful political influence over British North America’s early presses established the wisdom of political circumspection in the printing industry.

The first of these conditions — that of the historically transatlantic nature of

Canadian literature — has its roots in the earliest French expeditions to the New World.

Although printing presses were banned in New France,7 various European settlers still participated in a literary culture that was necessarily international. In general, literature in

New France followed the pattern set by Marc Lescarbot’s Le Théâtre de Neptune en la

Nouvelle-France, a play composed and performed in 1606 in Port-Royal (now Annapolis,

Nova Scotia) for Samuel de Champlain’s quasi-chivalric “Ordre de Bon Temps” (Marsh).

Although the play reflects distinctly New World creative efforts, it was published in print only in France itself, rather than in Acadia or Canada (Blais 31-33). Other literary endeavours in New France faced a similar transatlantic split between text and performance: because of low rates of literacy, local literature was largely oral (from

7 The suggestion that Bishop of Quebec, Henri-Marie Dubreuil de Pontbriand, had a press for personal use has been discredited (see Tremaine 12-13; Melançon 415 n. 1).

30 occasional songs, to public readings of ordinances, to spiritual recitations) whereas the written word (apart from administrative manuscripts) was often either imported from or exported to France (Melançon 46-48).

France’s cession to Britain of much of Acadia, including Newfoundland and peninsular Nova Scotia, as per the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 at least officially lifted the restrictions on local literary production. Unlike the French, the British did not ban printing in the colonies, but nevertheless the first press did not arrive in the new province of Nova Scotia until Boston printer Bartholomew Green moved to Halifax at the end of

1751, two years after the founding of the city. Green’s former partner and fellow

Bostonian John Bushell followed soon after, and he established British North America’s first newspaper — the Halifax Gazette — in March of 1752 (Fleming 61). That Bushell printed government proclamations in both English and French suggests two things: firstly, it reflects the government’s acceptance — at least on a purely practical level — of the multicultural nature of Nova Scotian society, and secondly, it indicates that the audience of the new press extended beyond the anglophones of Halifax to the francophone Acadian population.

Since the Treaty of Utrecht, the Acadian population had insisted on remaining neutral in any conflict between England and France: in large part they feared reprisals from the Mi’kmaqs, who were French allies, if they took up arms against the French.

However, the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War between France and England in 1754 made the province’s new Lieutenant Governor Charles Lawrence rethink his acceptance of the Acadians’ professed neutrality. In 1755, he and the Halifax Council decided that they could not risk the continuing presence of a large French-speaking population that

31 would not submit themselves entirely to the British crown; they expelled the Acadians from Nova Scotia and present-day New Brunswick, dispersing them haphazardly across

British territories where they thought the Acadians would have the least influence

(Francis, Jones, and Smith 117-121). During the war, Britain encouraged occupants of

New England to resettle in Nova Scotia, advertising the area’s wonderful fecundity; thousands of fishers and farmers (who became collectively known as the New England

Planters) took over the century-old farms that the Acadians had been forced to abandon

(Francis, Jones, and Smith 197). Although Britain eventually allowed the Acadians to return to the colony, they could not return to their own fertile lands, which by then were occupied by the Planters. Instead, many of them resettled on much less productive land on the eastern coast of present-day New Brunswick, as well as in southwestern Nova

Scotia, Cape Breton (Île Royale) and Prince Edward Island (Île St-Jean) (Francis, Jones, and Smith 124).

The Seven Years’ War also caused drastic changes in the French territory of

Canada (the southern part of modern-day Quebec, on both sides of the St. Lawrence). In

1759, the British successfully captured the city of Quebec, and the surrender of Montreal in 1760 put the province under British military rule, leading to France’s ceding Canada in its entirety to Britain under the Treaty of Paris in 1763.8 Under the terms of the treaty,

8 Whether France would cede Canada or Guadeloupe was a matter of some debate: British Prime Minister William Pitt chose Canada, mainly to avoid further wars with the French in North America (Francis, Jones, and Smith 155-156). There were, however, concerns that without the French presence, the American Thirteen Colonies might be more likely to rebel against Britain. Ironically, Benjamin Franklin convinced Pitt and his cabinet that keeping Canada as a British colony would lead to peace in the region, and that the colonies would certainly not take up arms against their mother country unless Britain were to act in such a hostile manner as giving Canada back to France (“Treaty of Paris”).

32 the French colonists could choose to stay in Canada, now known as the Province of

Quebec, or emigrate; those who chose to stay were guaranteed freedom of religion insofar as the laws of Great Britain allowed. Unlike the Acadians, these French

Canadians were never threatened with expulsion. Britain did hope to assimilate the francophones into British culture via immigration of New Englanders, but few New

Englanders chose to move to Quebec, preferring instead Nova Scotia or the rich farmlands of the newly created Indian Territory to the west. The demographics of the province, 500 British to 70 000 Canadians in 1765 (Francis, Jones, and Smith 163), meant that the British government had to find reasonable compromises for the francophone population in matters of daily life, much as had happened in Nova Scotia with John Bushell’s printing government proclamations in both English and French. With the sanction against printing no longer in effect, William Brown and Thomas Gilmore — both of whom had trained as printers in Philadelphia (Gervais, “Brown, William”;

“Gilmore, Thomas”) — established a press in the city of Quebec in 1764, starting the bilingual Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec that June (Fleming 64). Although the

Gazette was not an official publication of the government, it was a convenient method for the governor, James Murray, to communicate ordinances to the public, both anglophone and francophone; Murray therefore designated laws printed in the Gazette as having been officially published, even going so far as to require priests to read such sections of the newspaper to their congregations (Gallichan, “Official Publications” 310). Aside from the

Gazette, Brown and Gilmore did not restrict themselves to publishing only in English or

French (or both): they also served the print needs of a range of cultural and spiritual

33 communities in the province, printing in German, Latin, Abenaki, Mohawk, and

Montagnais (Fleming 64).

Yet, this burgeoning linguistic range did not actually indicate freedom of the press: the governments in both Quebec and Nova Scotia exerted strong control over the printing industry. Printing government legislation was a significant source of revenue for printers, and being the official king’s printer provided a measure of financial stability, though that office did not come without its costs. In response to the Stamp Act of 1765 — which required that many forms of print, including newspapers, had to be printed on paper that had been taxed and stamped accordingly — Bushell’s successor Anthony

Henry printed the Halifax Gazette with black edging to indicate mourning, and in some cases he used a skull and crossbones or devil as a counter-stamp. This act of protest cost his shop its role as the king’s printer, as the government soon withdrew its contracts, effectively muzzling the paper: because of the loss of revenue, Henry had to cease publication of the Gazette (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 321-322). After the British parliament revoked the Stamp Act in 1766, newspaper production did start again in

Halifax and Quebec,9 but printing anti-government material remained perilous.

In Montreal, the printing industry also started with cultural conflict and political censorship. During the American Revolution, the American Continental Army succeeded in capturing Montreal for a period of seven months, between November 1775 and June

1776, as part of their strategy to limit the ability of the British to attack the Thirteen

Colonies from the north (Francis, Jones, and Smith 175). In order to encourage

9 Brown and Gilmore’s Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec ceased publication for the duration of the Stamp Act but resumed in May 1766. In Halifax, Robert Fletcher — the new king’s printer — started the Nova-Scotia Gazette in August 1766 (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 321-322).

Montreal’s inhabitants to join in the revolution, the Continental Congress commissioned

Fleury Mesplet to set up a French printing shop to disseminate propaganda to the francophone population (Galarneau). Mesplet had quite the international background: born in France, he trained as a printer there under his father before setting up printing businesses first in London and then in Philadelphia. His arrival in Montreal and attempt to set up a press there did not go smoothly: he arrived in May 1776, only a month before the Americans withdrew, and the reinstated British government imprisoned him for nearly a month on suspicion of his being an American spy. However, following his release, he soon established his shop and started Canada’s first literary periodical, the

Gazette du commerce et littéraire, with Valentin Jautard as editor. The paper was, as

Patricia Lockhart Fleming describes, “Suspect from the outset, with too much Voltaire for the church and too much popular sympathy in the government’s view” (64). Mesplet and Jautard were arrested after the paper had been in existence for only one year; they were held without charge by executive order for forty months (Fleming 64; Laurence,

“Newspaper Press” 233). After this second incarceration for Mesplet, he founded a less controversial paper, the Montreal Gazette / Gazette de Montréal in 1785.

The Establishment of Literary Magazines in British North America

Mesplet was not the only printer brought to British North America by the

American Revolution. Loyalists of all trades moved northwards, particularly to Nova

Scotia and to the western portion of Quebec, or Upper Canada as of 1791, thereby significantly increasing literary commerce in these regions. One such Loyalist immigrant was the printer John Howe, who left Boston for Halifax

not . . . from his devotion to the crown as such and especially not to King

George III. What counted with him, as with many New England loyalists,

was the British heritage, the contributions of Britons over the centuries to

politics, the arts, science, and literature. He was determined never to

relinquish his membership in a nation whose accomplishments he admired

and idealized. (Beck)

Together with editor William Cochran, Howe founded The Nova-Scotia Magazine, a literary monthly, in 1789. Cochran had also come to Halifax as a result of the American

Revolution, but for reasons different from those of Howe: he had emigrated from Ireland to America because of his belief in the ideals of the revolution, but the new republic did not live up to his expectations. Disillusioned with the political realities of the United

States, and in particular with the institution of slavery, he left the United States to seek ordination in the Church of England in Nova Scotia (Wright). Howe’s respect for cultural heritage combined with Cochran’s attention to the North American element of British

North America to produce an Anglo-centric magazine that also emphasized local culture.

Thomas Brewer Vincent, Sandra Alston and Eli MacLaren argue that the magazine

“appears to have been designed primarily to maintain the cultural imprint of Britain on

Maritime society, but Cochran also sought to encourage young local writers. . . . What emerged was a version of ‘Britishness’ that had more to do with local values than with the realities of contemporary Britain” (241).

In Quebec, printer Samuel Neilson founded British North America’s third literary periodical (and second literary magazine), The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de

Québec, in 1792. After the first issue, he enlisted the Presbyterian minister Alexander

Spark as editor; Spark stayed with the magazine until its end in 1794, also acting as a mentor to Samuel’s brother John, who took over as printer after Samuel died in 1793

(Vincent, Alston, and MacLaren 242; Barbour 10). The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec seems to have held similar views to The Nova-Scotia Magazine regarding its cultural role in British North America. The full titles of both magazines reveal that, to their editors, the magazines occupied a special place between Old World and New World societies; they were not simply importing, but instead carefully curating, adapting, and adding to European scholarship. The later volumes of The Nova-Scotia Magazine give it the full title of The Nova-Scotia Magazine and Comprehensive Review of Literature,

Politics, and News. Being a Collection of the Most Valuable Articles Which Appear in the

Periodical Publications of Great-Britain, Ireland, and America, with Various Pieces in

Verse and Prose Never Before Published. This title emphasizes the magazine’s curatorial role to select only the best of the best amongst the periodicals in the English-speaking world. If its standards for republished works were so high, then presumably its editors believed — or intended their audience to believe — that the original Nova-Scotian compositions also ranked among the best on an international scale. The full title of The

Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec also indicates its participation in the international literary and political discourses of the time, but its stated emphasis (at least in the English version) is on the adaptation of international works to a specifically

Canadian context. Given at the beginning of each volume, its full title is The Quebec

Magazine, or Useful and Entertaining Repository of Science, Morals, History, Politics,

&c. Particularly Adapted for the Use of British America. By a Society of Gentlemen in

Quebec. // Le magasin de Québec, ou receuil utile et amusant de literature, histoire,

37 politique, &c. &c. particulierement adapté a l’usage de l’Amerique Britannique. Par une societé de gens de lettres. The title emphasizes the editorial process involved in publishing the journal: even though most of the content has originally been published elsewhere, all of the editorial choices – such as selecting what to include and organizing the material – are acts of adaptation. Moreover, the title page’s claim that the journal is offered “By a Society of Gentlemen in Quebec” asserts local and communal ownership of the literary product. The claim of a society’s participation seems unlikely: Alexander

Spark is the only person to have drawn a salary for editing the magazine (Vincent,

Alston, and MacLaren 242), and there is no record of other editorial assistance (either paid or unpaid). Moreover, Neilson makes this claim on the cover of the first issue, even before he had enlisted the help of an editor. Neilson thus promoted the probable fiction that the magazine was the result of the efforts of the community, thereby again stressing local relevance. By adapting the (largely European) source material for a Canadian audience, the magazine effectively reimagines the content itself as Canadian.

Of note is the difference between the English and French editorial bylines of The

Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec. The English version emphasizes the social rank of its editors – even though they are in the provincial city of Quebec, with its population of 14 000 in 1790 (Cartier), they are “gentlemen”; on the other hand, the

French version ignores rank (the editors are simply “gens”) and instead focuses on the

“societé . . . de lettres,” the literary nature of their society. In this respect, the magazine seems to have modeled itself after some its European sources: both the Bibliothèque de l’homme publique and L’esprit des journaux françois et étrangers include in their bylines the notion of being written by “gens de lettres.” (I discuss articles borrowed from these

38 two magazines later in this chapter.) The English version of the full title of The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec invokes a sense of displacement from the centre of gentility and learning, whereas the French suggests a comfortably homegrown literary society that interacts with similar bodies elsewhere. Also of note is that the title is in both

English and French, reflecting the fact that it is indeed a bilingual literary periodical: some articles appear in both languages (in “double”), but often a work is presented in either French or English, with no division of articles by language. The journal thus assumes bilingualism among its audience. The magazine’s choice to be bilingual would have been in response to historical precedent as well as demographics. It followed in the footsteps of Brown and Gilmore’s Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec, as well as

Mesplet’s Montreal Gazette / La Gazette de Montréal, but whereas those papers were designed to inform the general public, a literary venture such as The Quebec Magazine /

Le magasin de Québec would have targeted a more elite audience with an interest in the arts — and the leisure time to pursue such an interest. The first subscription library in the country, established by Governor Frederick Haldimand in Quebec City in 1779 (K. Smith

145), was also bilingual (Beckman, Dahms, and Bruce); it was open to any member of the public who could afford to purchase a membership share and pay the annual fee, again reflecting an economic, rather than linguistic, divide in Quebec society. Most of the

British elite — including the governors and lieutenant-governors of Quebec — needed at least some facility with the French language, if not complete fluency: French, after all, was “the language of international diplomacy,” in which even the Treaty of Paris was written (“Treaty of Paris”).

Religious Controversy in Nova Scotia

By the time of The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, history had proved through the experiences of Mesplet, Jautard, and

Henry that publishing political commentary in British North America had the potential to be both personally and financially ruinous. The situation was less fraught when it came to publishing religious commentary, since religious institutions had far less control over the printing industry than the government did. Yet, turning to medieval exemplars was still not only a prudent practice, but also one well-established in various forms of Christian

Protestantism. Indeed, a fundamental part of many Protestant doctrines involved looking to the Middle Ages to determine at what point the Church had deviated from the ‘true faith.’ In British North America, The Nova-Scotia Magazine employed medieval religious models to justify its position on the religious upheaval that swept the region following the arrival of the New England Planters in Nova Scotia. In the early- to mid- eighteenth century, New England had experienced an evangelical religious revolution commonly called the Great Awakening,10 but this transformation had not extended across the border to Nova Scotia’s Anglican and Reformed11 churches. The Evangelical

Congregationalism of the Planters was in many ways foreign to the faiths established in the province, and The Nova-Scotia Magazine regarded evangelical tendencies with significant distrust: its series on populist preachers in the Middle Ages clearly reveals its skepticism about the viability of evangelical faith, either in the past or present.

10 See Thomas S. Kidd’s The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America for a study of this period of religious reform. 11 Nova Scotia’s churches were by no means unified at the time; I use “Reformed” to designate a broad category of mainstream Calvinist religions, including Presbyterianism.

In Nova Scotia, one of the most influential of the evangelical preachers was a

Planter named Henry Alline, who even as a child in Rhode Island was already aware of a religious calling. However, his formal religious education ended when his family emigrated to the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia. The centralization of political power in

Halifax under its merchant clique had a secondary effect of further isolating poor rural communities, and there were no educational or religious institutions in the rural Minas

Basin area that Alline could attend. He did read voraciously, and he attempted to return to

New England in 1775 for further education, but the outbreak of the American Revolution prevented his return. Soon after the start of the Revolution, the Nova Scotia provincial government called up part of its militia, and Alline was encouraged to seek a commission in the army. Alline declined the offer, deciding that his mission was “to go forth, and enlist my fellow-mortals to fight under the banners of King Jesus” (qtd. in Bumsted). The war seems to have helped galvanize his decision to preach, even though he was unordained. (He eventually was ordained by three separate churches in 1779, two of which he had been instrumental in founding.) Starting in 1776, he travelled around the

Minas Basin from his home in Falmouth, preaching what J.M. Bumsted calls “a spiritual assurance which rejected and transcended the tribulations of the secular world, whether

British or American. It was a message unmistakably Nova Scotian in its emphasis.” He maintained that Nova Scotia was “the new centre of Christendom” (Francis, Jones, and

Smith 201). His preaching encouraged his audience not only to reject the secular world in favour of the spiritual one, but it also called upon his followers to reject even established religious structures. He emphasized a cathartic experience of a religious “new birth” in

Christ; he preached that this cathartic experience in itself qualified one for the ministry,

41 and he encouraged those who had experienced it themselves to become preachers

(Bumsted). Alline’s death in 1784 prompted another period of turmoil for his “New

Light” churches, many of which eventually formed the Baptist Church in Nova Scotia

(Eaton 278-279). In his revivalist doctrine, Alline challenged the Calvinism of the

Congregational Church to which most of the Planters belonged, as well as the

Anglicanism of the British settlers. In his opposition to secular and clerical hierarchies, he also challenged Nova Scotia’s relationship with both Great Britain and the United

States.

That Nova Scotia remained a British province is in some ways surprising, given that more than half of its inhabitants at the time of the Revolution had come from New

England. The Planters had been brought to the province to stabilize and entrench British culture in the region, by virtue of their being manifestly more British than the area’s former French Acadian inhabitants; they were not, however, any more British than their

American brethren, and they had come to Nova Scotia only fifteen years before the start of the American Revolution. Most of them did not join the Americans, but neither did they want to fight their own relatives: when Governor Francis Legge called up part of the militia in 1775, many regions of the province sent the governor missives asking to be treated as a neutral party in the war (Francis, Jones, and Smith 199). Numerous explanations have been proposed for the Planters’ lack of interest in the American cause, including the idea that they left the Colonies before anti-British rhetoric came to a head, and thus were less inclined to see a war as necessary. However, Alline’s teachings also contributed to sublimating political frustrations into religious enthusiasm. He gave his

42 followers the mission to bring the world back to God, to “fight under the banners of King

Jesus” — and not under the banners of any worldly ruler.

The Nova-Scotia Magazine took issue with Alline’s brand of self-taught evangelicalism, preferring instead to advocate the type of Protestantism favoured by denominations such as the Church of England. In some ways, Alline’s personal religious beliefs overlapped with the Sandemanian faith of John Howe, the magazine’s printer/publisher: both the New Light and Sandemanian faiths shared emphases on pacifism, on rejecting the material world in favour of the spiritual world, on charity, and on anti-hierarchical church structure.12 Despite these similarities, the founders of

Sandemanianism (John Glas and Robert Sandeman) spoke passionately against the evangelical revivalism of the Great Awakening. However, neither the New Light

Congregationalism nor Sandemanianism was a unified faith: indeed, both suffered from sectarian struggles. The Sandemanians as a whole felt that loyalty to the monarchy was a matter of religious principle; however, while the greater portion of the faithful held as religious tenets the avoidance of political interference or military service, the Boston

Sandemanians (to which Howe belonged) were far more vocal in their political views.

The Boston Sandemanians never actually took up arms, but they did actively support the

Loyalist cause in other ways. Howe, for example, joined the British troops in their occupation of New York and Newport during the Revolution in order to print a Loyalist newspaper (J. Smith 148). Howe’s branch of Sandemanianism also maintained a greater degree of class consciousness and hierarchy than did most Pietist Christians, and in this

12 See John Howard Smith’s The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century for a discussion of Sandemanianism in Nova Scotia, and of John Howe’s contributions to the church (148, 177-179).

43 respect Howe’s beliefs aligned with those of William Cochran, The Nova-Scotia

Magazine’s editor. The Church of England, to which Cochran belonged, was the model of Christian practice against which the New Lights rebelled, with its hierarchical structure that separated formally-educated clergy from the laity. The issue of ministerial education seems to have galvanized Howe and Cochran’s opposition to the New Lights.

In The Nova-Scotia Magazine, Howe and Cochran published a selection of essays from Edward Gibbon and Joseph Berington that cast suspicion on uneducated, evangelical preachers from the Middle Ages and promoted a successively more specific view of acceptable modern Christian practice. These essays appear in several issues of

The Nova-Scotia Magazine over the course of a year; notably, this series on controversial religious figures in medieval history ceased when Cochran resigned and Howe took over as editor. Berington had published his History of the Lives of Abeillard and Heloisa in

1787, and Gibbon had published the final installment of his History of the Decline and

Fall of the Roman Empire even more recently: volumes four through six were released simultaneously on Gibbon’s 51st birthday, 8 May 1788 (Womersley). All of Cochran’s selections from Gibbon come from this last installment, rather than from his wildly popular and controversial first volume (published 1776) or his less popular (but also less controversial) second and third volumes (published 1781). This focus on the most recent volumes indicates that The Nova-Scotia Magazine, much like modern periodicals, wanted its scholarship to be current; it did not feel the need to catch its readers up on scholarly developments of the previous ten or fifteen years, but rather it wanted to disseminate the most recent in historical thinking. Yet restricting himself to the last three volumes of

Gibbon’s opus did little to change how selective Cochran had to be in his editorial

44 process: in the original 1788 quarto printing, volumes four through six together command nearly two thousand pages of text, not including apparatus, out of which he chose to share approximately two dozen pages with the readers of The Nova-Scotia Magazine — all of which related to the medieval world.

Cochran chose the works of Gibbon and Berington as much for their personal religious views as for the quality of their scholarship on the history of religion in the

Middle Ages. Gibbon had a complicated spiritual path: raised in the High Church of

England, at the age of sixteen he converted to Roman Catholicism, much to the consternation of his father (Mankin). Gibbon attributed his conversion to a pair of literary sources: he liked to say that an ironic reading of Conyers Middleton’s attack on the

Catholic Church’s claim to miraculous power was the catalyst, but in his Memoirs he instead attributes his conversion to reading works by the Elizabethan Jesuit Robert

Parsons (Womersley). In an attempt to counteract Gibbon’s conversion, his father sent him to study first under sceptic David Mallet and next under the Reformed minister Mr.

Pavilliard in Switzerland; a year and a half after his conversion to Catholicism, Gibbon returned to Protestantism and “suspended Religious enquiries” (qtd. in Womersley).

Gibbon’s historical writing bears the marks of this spiritual journey, of someone who has set aside his interest in theological questions: much of the controversy surrounding his first volume stemmed from his refusal to give special consideration to the official version of medieval Church history but rather to view it with the same critical eye he would give to any set of historical documents. For subsequent editions, Gibbon severely redacted

Chapters 15 and 16, which covered early Church history, the relationship of Christianity to other modes of worship, and the usefulness of religion to governance. This historical

45 approach prompted outrage against Gibbon; his critics questioned both his scholarly method and his moral character. However, the picture that The Nova-Scotia Magazine presents of Gibbon through its choice of excerpts is very different from the one presented by his detractors after the publication of his first volume. Each of the sets of excerpts that

The Nova-Scotia Magazine published includes at least one article on medieval religious history; Gibbon’s commentary in these pieces shows a strongly Protestant viewpoint, one that is perhaps Calvinist but not necessarily so. In this way the magazine catered to the religious sensibilities of the established churches in Nova Scotia at the time.

Through this series on religion in the Middle Ages, The Nova-Scotia Magazine promoted a successively more specific version of acceptable faith in the New World. In its first issue, the magazine begins its selections from Gibbon’s works with a piece entitled “Character of Mahomet [From the 5th vol. of the Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire, by Mr. Gibbon, lately published.]” In this excerpt, Gibbon provides a character sketch of Mahomet13 (the Prophet Muhammad, c.570-632), emphasizing his personal nature rather than his life’s story. He constructs Mahomet as an “illiterate Barbarian”

(18), but one with exquisite manners. This notion of a civilizing veneer over the truth extends from Gibbon’s perception of Mahomet to his perception of Islam as well. He refers to the “artist” (18) of the Koran and indicates uncertainty whether Mahomet

“consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm” (18-19); he describes the resulting faith as one “which, under the name of Islam, he [Mahomet] preached to his family and nation is compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction, THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE

13 For the sake of consistency with the source text, I use “Mahomet” to denote Gibbon’s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad; my comments relate exclusively to this characterization and not to the actual religious figure.

GOD, AND THAT MAHOMET IS THE APOSTLE OF GOD” (19, emphasis in original). In his emphasis on the artifice and artistry of Islam, Gibbon strongly affirms a

Judeo-Christian point of view. By selecting this as its first excerpt from the History, The

Nova-Scotia Magazine refutes the direst of the charges against Gibbon, namely his paganism. However, since Islam did not gain a significant following in Nova Scotia until the mid-twentieth century, this sketch of Mahomet also serves as a politically safe introduction to Gibbon’s skepticism about the accuracy of official religious histories.

Gibbon constructs a dichotomy between how Mahomet’s followers described him and his deeds, and “our more accurate enquiry” (18), but although he questions the actual breadth and usefulness of Mahomet’s travels, he nevertheless admires his “pious and contemplative disposition” and his attempt “to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and error” (19). In what becomes a recurring theme in discussions of medieval religions in The Nova-Scotia Magazine, the excerpt goes on to express deep skepticism of the ability of any individual religious reformer to retain pure motives when confronted with political realities:

Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were those of

pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is incapable of

cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims, despise his

arguments, and persecute his life . . . . In the exercise of political

government, he [Mahomet] was compelled . . . to employ even the vices of

mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use of fraud and

perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation

of the faith . . . . Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; and a

politician will suspect, that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at

the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes. (19)

Gibbon charts a trajectory of corruption for Mahomet, from a pure desire to save his fellow citizens, to the hypocrisy of believing he alone as the Prophet of God could break

God’s commandments in His name. Gibbon’s admiration for Mahomet’s spirit dissolves in the wake of two main obstacles: Mahomet’s personal ambition and his fraudulence.

Although Gibbon does not make an explicit connection between Mahomet’s lack of formal education and his being an impostor, they certainly seem related. Gibbon could forgive Mahomet’s being an “illiterate Barbarian” underneath a veneer of grace and hospitality in “the enthusiasm of his [Mahomet’s] youth,” but he returns yet again in his condemnation of Mahomet’s ambition to the notion of fraud — which, at the beginning of the excerpt, is clearly linked to Mahomet’s lack of education. In part, the fraudulence at the end of the piece refers to Mahomet’s unfair dealings with prisoners who follow other faiths; however, given the construction of artifice at the start of the sketch, and given the attitude towards religious enthusiasts in subsequent selections, I argue that The

Nova-Scotia Magazine casts suspicion on any untutored proselytizer; in particular, it uses this sketch of Mahomet along with those of other medieval religious figures to promote mainstream Reformed or Anglican Protestantism and to cast suspicion on the more extreme Evangelical movements such as Alline’s.

In its subsequent numbers, The Nova-Scotia Magazine promotes a conservative

Protestantism that would have appealed to adherents of both the Anglican and Reformed churches. The magazine includes two excerpts of a religious nature from Gibbon in the second number, one on the “Character of Peter the Hermit” and the other on the

“Numbers and Spirit of the First Adventurers in the Crusade.” Together these two excerpts condemn both what Gibbon saw as the degeneracy of the Roman Catholic

Church at the time of the Crusades and the excess of religious enthusiasm among the laity in certain eighteenth-century Evangelical Protestant sects. The “first adventurers” to whom Gibbon refers are those who participated in a branch of the First Crusade often referred to as the People’s Crusade, which saw tens of thousands of peasants march from

France, Italy and Germany to Constantinople. Gibbon describes the “genuine leaders” of one such group from Germany as “a goose and a goat, who were carried in front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit” (102). In medieval bestiaries, goats could serve a dual purpose: the Second-family bestiary, for example, compares the goat to Christ, but it also associates the he-goat and kid with wantonness and gluttony, respectively (Clark 136-137, 152). However, by Gibbon’s time, goats had come to be strongly associated with the Devil, so much so that in 1726, Daniel

Defoe felt it necessary to complain in his Political History of the Devil that “among all the horribles that we dress up Satan in, I cannot but think we shew the least of invention in this of a Goat” (229). The audience of The Nova-Scotia Magazine would have understood the story of the People’s Crusade on one level as idolatry, and on another as an allegory of the Devil leading sinners astray. The story thus expresses Protestant concern about icons, idolatry, and degeneracy in the Roman Catholic Church; however,

Gibbon’s distrust of evangelicalism (and by extension Evangelical Protestantism) is equally evident in his denunciation of the preacher Peter the Hermit (c.1050-1115), one of the leaders of the People’s Crusade, who was commissioned by Pope Urban II to whip up enthusiasm for the Crusades across France and Italy. Gibbon condemns Peter as an

“accomplished fanatic” who “excelled in the popular madness of the times” (102). Much as in the sketch of Mahomet, Gibbon strongly disapproves of Peter’s “ignorance of art and language” (102); also as with Mahomet, Gibbon is surprised at Peter’s success as an orator, but argues that Peter “supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent appeals to Christ and his Mother” (102). The simplicity of Peter’s approach seems to offend Gibbon as much as does his cause of recruiting for the Crusades. Although

Gibbon could find redeeming qualities in Mahomet’s bringing monotheism to his people, and leading them out of what Gibbon sees as a spiritual dark age, he can find no such redemptive features about Peter the Hermit. Peter’s flock, and those attracted to the

Crusades by similar leaders such as Walter the Pennyless and the monk Godescal, are

“the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal license of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness” (“Numbers” 102). Peter is the metaphorical goose and goat for his branch of the People’s Crusade: instead of leading the Crusaders towards an eternal truth — even one “compounded... by a necessary fiction” (“Mahomet” 19) — he leads them from a spiritual darkness into a spiritual quagmire. In these two excerpts, the supposed righteousness of the People’s Crusade, assured to the participants by religious figures Peter and Godescal, gave the people license to commit a range of sins. Historically, even many of those who would not naturally be violent or vicious had to turn to morally questionable activities such as theft in order to survive. Of those that made it to the Holy Land, most (unarmed, untrained peasants) were slaughtered by the better-trained army of the Seljuk Turks (A. Murray

939-941, M.C. Barber).

The Nova-Scotia Magazine furthers this theme of mistrust of evangelicals with a passage in its October 1789 number from Berington’s History of the Lives of Abeillard and Heloisa, originally published in England in 1787. Although this excerpt is the only one from Berington’s History included in the magazine’s entire run, it focuses on neither the twelfth-century French philosopher Peter Abelard (1079-1142) nor his lover Heloise

(c.1098-1164). Instead, its subject is Arnold of Brescia, a twelfth-century religious reformer who preached the spiritual importance of poverty. Berington considers Arnold’s quests for reform to be motivated mainly by ambition and only secondarily by a desire to correct the abuses in the church:

To collect a party, to give his name to a sect, or to attack the rich and

powerful, were ideas before which his mind expanded . . . . He viewed the

depraved manners and the intemperate lives of the monks and clergy, and

against them he would direct the severest opposition. His cause, he well

knew, would be popular, and the better under the guise of sanctity, to

effect his purpose, he threw over his shoulders, the austere dress of a

religious man. (265)

To Berington, Arnold is a fraud, an actor who wishes nothing more than to be famous; underneath his costume of religiosity he is “daring, impetuous, self-sufficient, vain”

(267). Berington is galled by Arnold’s challenge to established order, but at the same time he not only admits but also condemns the existence of corruption and depravity in the Church: “Indeed, nothing could be more glaringly offensive than the ostentatious parade of the bishops and great abbots, and the soft and licentious lives of the monks and clergy; but Arnold, in his declamation, far exceeded the bounds of truth” (266). This

51 passage expresses in equal measure fascination with and revulsion by the notion of an egalitarian society. Berington, a Roman Catholic priest, was a reformer himself: he advocated for political freedom for Catholics and for religious tolerance, while criticizing the political power of the Papacy (Chinnici). However, Berington draws a sharp distinction between his approach to reform and Arnold’s. In Berington’s text, Arnold represents a threat to authority both secular and spiritual with his quest to “pull down the proud, and to exalt the humble” (265), whereas Berington himself had no desire to overthrow established order completely, but instead to reform the Church from within.

Berington’s rhetoric of finding a middle ground between allowing abuses of power to continue unchecked and launching outright revolution would have found a receptive audience in Nova Scotia of the 1780s, in a province that had stayed loyal to Britain through the American Revolution. The first stirrings of the French Revolution in the spring of 1789, only five months before The Nova-Scotia Magazine published this excerpt, would again have raised questions in the province of the proper functions of secular and religious power.

Mahomet, Peter the Hermit, and Arnold of Brescia stand in stark contrast to Pope

Gregory I (c. 540-604), of whom The Nova-Scotia Magazine published Gibbon’s biographical account in April 1790. Gibbon emphasizes Gregory’s own education and scholarship, as well as his patrimony of monasteries in Rome and Sicily. Gregory,

Gibbon claims, “was second in erudition to none of his contemporaries,” and his pontificate was “one of the most edifying periods in the history of the church” (257).

Gibbon admits that Gregory had his shortcomings, but he argues that “His virtues, and even his faults, a singular mix of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense

52 and superstition, were happily suited to his station, and to the temper of the times” (257).

The very things for which he criticizes Peter the Hermit and Mahomet (such as pride, and even the mix of simplicity and cunning) he sees as suitable for Gregory’s time and position. In Gregory’s case, Gibbon praises any subterfuge he may have been involved in for the good of the Church: “the credulity or the prudence of Gregory was always disposed to confirm the truths of religion by the evidence of ghosts, miracles, and resurrections” (258). Gibbon implies that Gregory may or may not always have believed stories about the supernatural, but regardless knew it would be prudent to give credibility to stories that support “the truths of religion.” This type of deception earns Gregory high praise from Gibbon, instead of the label of “impostor” like Mahomet, or that of

“accomplished fanatic” like Peter the Hermit. Gibbon considers Gregory to be a true leader of the Christian faith, not tainted by the degeneracy he saw as widespread by the time of the Crusades. In this belief, Gibbon follows John Calvin, who also believed the teachings of Gregory to be of paramount importance to the modern church: in his

Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin frequently turned to the writings of Gregory to support his argument for a non-hierarchical clerical structure (Little 149). Much more educated than the newly “awakened” itinerant preachers, but at the same time not too removed from his flock by Catholic hierarchies, Gregory serves — for Cochran’s purposes — as an appropriate model for leaders of Christianity in Nova Scotia.

Revolution and Government

Cochran’s choice to excerpt heavily from Gibbon seems to stem from the alignment not only of their religious sympathies but also of their political ideals. Much

53 like Cochran with the American Revolution, Gibbon initially supported the ideals of the

French Revolution; however, he too became disillusioned with the violence (Womersley).

Although he had not yet abjured the French Revolution at the time The Nova-Scotia

Magazine published excerpts from his History, Gibbon’s discussions of medieval chivalry — particularly in France — do reveal political ideals applicable to Nova Scotian society during a time of territorial exchange and bloody revolution on both sides of the

Atlantic. Included in the magazine’s first number, Gibbon’s “Character of Charlemagne” comments on the responsibilities of good — if imperfect — government. In this piece,

Gibbon draws a distinction between public and private virtues that is pointedly absent in his discussions of religious figures. The excerpt begins with a brief discussion of the moral failings of Charlemagne (c. 742-814) (such as his lack of chastity, and his possibly incestuous relationships with his daughters), but Gibbon’s tone is conspicuously non- judgmental because, he says, “the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines” (20). Gibbon suggests, then, that a certain amount of moral corruption is acceptable in government, so long as it does not infringe on public well- being. In Nova Scotia, the Halifax merchant clique that controlled the legislature certainly had its share of corruption, but the article suggests that revolution is not always a necessary cure. Remarkably, given Gibbon’s disgust at pride and ambition in the character of religious figures, he claims that he “shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the ambition of a conqueror,” even though “in a day of equal retribution, the sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same spot, would have have [sic] something to alledge [sic] against the justice and humanity of Charlemagne” (20). He avows

Charlemagne’s “treatment of the vanquished Saxons was an abuse of the rights of conquest” (20). Although in another time, Britain’s treatment of the Acadians could have been much worse (unlike Charlemagne, Britain did not behead those whom they had conquered), this comment would undoubtedly have created an uneasy reminder of the responsibilities of a conquering nation towards all of its subjects, both new and old. The inclusion of this article perhaps then offers a subtle social critique of the government’s treatment of the Acadians, an issue that would still have been quite current, with Acadian communities struggling to reestablish themselves from the mid-1760s onwards.

In Cochran’s selection, the final verdict on Charlemagne is that his

“encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on ... [his] character” (20), even though his attempts “to improve the laws and character of the

Franks” (20) failed to create a stable political system that would survive his death. In

Gibbon’s view, this instability was one of the primary factors that led to the development of chivalry in the Middle Ages. In an excerpt entitled “Origin of Knighthood,” he describes the rise of chivalry as a type of “revolution” that takes place “among the

Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was gradually extended to the rest of

Europe” (100). The excerpt expresses ambivalence towards revolution: on the one hand, the values inherent to chivalry taught

the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace; to esteem

himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries; and proudly to

neglect the laws of civil society and military discipline. Yet the benefits of

this institution, to refine the temper of Barbarians, and to infuse some

principles, of faith, justice and humanity, were strongly felt, and have been

often observed. The asperity of national prejudice was softened; and the

community of religion and arms spread a similar valour and generous

emulation over the face of Christendom. (101)

Despite the significant drawbacks of losing peaceful cultural pursuits and of effectively erasing any legal systems, this revolution nevertheless in some ways expresses ideals that would have been shared by imperial Britain, namely those of erasing distinctions and prejudices between countries, of having one community of faith, and of “refining”

Barbarian temperaments. Moreover, this chivalric revolution serves not only to refine the

Barbarians but also to purify former exemplars of culture, such as that of ancient Greece.

Gibbon claims that “impartial taste must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic games of classic antiquity. Instead of the naked spectacles which corrupted the manners of the Greeks, and banished from the stadium the virgins and matrons; the pompous decoration of the lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and high-born beauty”

(101). In Gibbon’s formulation, the chivalric revolution thus softened Barbarian society, civilizing it, while simultaneously undoing some of the corrupt excesses of a society that had become too civilized for its own good. It is interesting that Gibbon uses the status of women as a barometer of the moral corruption of society, but he was no early feminist: he assumes that women in both (and perhaps all) time periods had the same natural sensibilities, and that those sensibilities allowed them to attend only the most refined entertainment. Still, he does see the ability to include (pure, chaste, high-born) women in public life as a distinct improvement. A further advantage of the newly reformed society is that it combines an aristocracy with a meritocracy: most knights achieved the honour of knighthood through the pure and unblemished “dignity of their birth . . . but a valiant

56 plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the father of a new race” (101).

Because of these merits, then, Gibbon does not blame the general populace or even the knights for their role in this chivalric revolution, but he does speak harshly of the dukes and barons, the leaders of the revolution, for “usurp[ing] the rights of sovereignty” (100) and for creating an order “which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species with themselves” (101). In this statement, Gibbon expresses two divergent impulses: a monarchical one that is offended by the usurpation of power, and a more democratic, egalitarian one that takes umbrage at the suggestion that the working class is less than human. The effect of this essay, then, is to promote a middle path between the anarchic revolutions of the Americans and the French, and the corruptions of a perhaps too-civilized British society. Its inclusion in the magazine suggests that Nova Scotia could follow this middle path: while retaining the advantages of British cultural institutions such as the legal system, as an increasingly multicultural society — as a citizenry comprised not only of direct immigrants from Britain and

France, but also the local Mi’kmaq population, German immigrants, and American

Loyalists (in itself a diverse group, including African-American and Iroquois Loyalists

[Francis, Jones, and Smith 205]) — perhaps it too could shed “the asperity of national prejudice” and develop a partial meritocracy without threatening to “usurp” the rights of sovereign Britain.

Medievalist Politics in The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec

The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec shared The Nova-Scotia

Magazine’s desire for a middle path, for a monarchy eager to promote merit amongst all of its subjects. Its printer/publisher and editor, Samuel Neilson and Alexander Spark respectively, also shared The Nova-Scotia Magazine’s approach to religion: Spark, a

Presbyterian minister in Quebec, preached a distinctly anti-evangelical message, leading to a split in the congregation between Spark’s “moderates” and the evangelicals. Neilson was a loyal member of Spark’s group of moderates. Neilson and Spark were mainstream by choice in their approach to religion, and Spark was strongly loyal to the British government; however, it is likely that the political views they printed were at least in some ways shaped by the nature of their government contracts. Neilson also owned and printed the weekly newspaper The Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec; the newspaper was the official publication venue for government announcements. Moreover, even though Neilson wanted The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec to operate independently from government influence, in order to keep the magazine financially solvent, Spark accepted direct government oversight in order to secure government advertising contracts (Lambert). In the newspaper, Neilson devoted significant space to contemporary news of the French Revolution (Hare), and this interest was certainly also reflected in The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, the more literary venture of the two. Whereas the Gazette naturally focused on news articles, in The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec Neilson and Spark explored medieval literary history in order to comment on contemporary politics.

In March 1793 (one month after revolutionary France had declared war on

Britain, although this news had not yet reached North America), Neilson republished an

58 article from the Italian Mercury14 which describes an attempted coup d’état in fourteenth- century Naples, and the subsequent advice of Italian poet Francis Petrarch (1304-1374) to the new king consort of the restored queen (via their chief steward). On the one hand, the article overtly supports a strictly inherited monarchy as the correct form of government, and rejects any usurpation of power: the introduction to Petrarch’s letter (also from the

Mercury) states that the people are most desirous for the return of the queen and her consort to the throne — even though they have no reason to believe the new consort will be any better a ruler than the usurper, or for that matter the last consort, who, the author declares, was universally disliked. On the other hand, despite this dogged support in the preface of an inherited monarchy, regardless of the merits of any individual ruler,

Petrarch’s own comments subtly criticize the concept of monarchy-through-inheritance.

Both in London (the home of the Italian Mercury) and in Halifax, this strategy of professing complete support for the monarchy in the article’s introduction avoids political fallout by locating all of the possibly controversial elements solely in the text of a much- admired and long-dead poet and scholar.

Petrarch tells Niccola Acciajoli (Niccolò Acciaiuoli, 1310-1365), the Steward of

Naples, to advise the king that “it is much less honourable to be born a king than to be chosen by the will and judgment of the people; the former being made by fortune, the latter by merit” (64). On the surface this statement supports the article’s earlier assertion that the people rallied to the cause of the briefly-ousted Queen Jane (Joan I, 1326-1382) and her consort King Lewis (Louis of Taranto); however, it also suggests rather darkly that matters would be quite different if the people had chosen the usurper, King Lewis

14 A literary periodical in both English and Italian, edited by Francesco Sastres and published in London from 1789-1790.

(Louis) of Hungary. It reminds the Steward and his monarchs that “the will and judgment of the people” is a powerful force that is not to be taken for granted. Petrarch further advises Acciajoli to “persuade him [the king consort] not to think himself a happy and true king, till he shall have, by his own virtues, caused the calamities of his kingdom to cease, repaired its losses and ruins, restored peace, subdued tyranny, and restored liberty to the people” (64, emphasis in original). That the magazine italicizes the phrase about restoring “liberty” is particularly provocative given the prominence of the word in the discourses around both the French and American Revolutions.15 It goes on to reinforce this ideal of equality amongst the people even in a monarchy, with Petrarch’s advice that the king should “not presume to deny himself to any, as he was not born . . . for himself alone, but for all the Republic” (65). Petrarch’s reference to the Kingdom of Naples as a

“Republic” emphasizes the notion that the monarchy and the government exist for the people. The footnote to this passage goes on to describe the historical precedent for this interaction between government and subject by explaining that “Petrarch had seen living examples at the court of the great King Robert [of Milan, grandfather of Joan], a philosophic prince, at the gate of whose palace was a large bell, and the lowest of his subjects were permitted to ring it, and this was the signal that they requested audience of the sovereign, which was immediately granted” (65 n.). The “great King Robert” was, then, immediately responsible to all of his subjects, no matter their status in society, and at their beck and call; presumably he was great because he worked for them, and not the other way around. Via Petrarch, Neilson and Spark proffer Robert’s kingdom as the

15 For example, Patrick Henry’s famous speech to the Virginia Convention, which included the rallying cry “Give me liberty, or give me death,” and the motto of the French Republic: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

60 standard for a pure, uncorrupted monarchy that also has the ability to function as a republic, but the epistle also warns of the possibility of corruption particularly in the most successful societies. As with Gibbon in later centuries, Petrarch believes in the dangers of luxurious complacency in a civilization that has reached its zenith: as a warning to the restored line, he writes that “The Romans, invincible, and conquerors of other nations, were overcome by luxury” (63).

The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec furthers this construction of monarchy as a way of protecting the liberty of the people in an essay on the “Histoire

Générale du Sénat de Suede.”16 The essay begins with an idealized description of recently

Christianized medieval Sweden, an elective monarchy in which the roles of the king and senate were primarily legislative. For the senators, under the new Christian system “leur titre de drott fut changé en celui de conseiller ou sénateur du royaume” (150), but such a change of title implies the more drastic reform of giving up independent control over a small region in order to work together to advise the monarch of the realm. However, much as with Petrarch’s description of Milan, “La souveraineté se maintint toujours dans le peuple” (150): the author goes on to explain that “Depuis les tems les plus reculés, il jouissoit du droit d'élire ses juges provinciaux (Lagmœn) qui, dans les assemblées des

états, portoient la parole pour les paysans de leurs proivinces, et se virent toujours soutenue par les suffrages de la multitude” (150). The king and the senate may have had the responsibility of governing, but the author suggests that they acted only on behalf of the people, who had direct control over the election of the judiciary; the text thus asserts

16 The essay is a translated excerpt and review of Carl Hillebransson Uggla’s Svea-Rikes Råds-Længd, published in Stockholm in 1791; the translation comes from the September 1792 issue of the Paris review magazine, L’esprit des journaux, françois et étrangers. Par une societé de gens-de-lettres.

61 that real sovereignty, then, always rested with the people. The author claims that the system faltered, however, when the people’s representatives became too “entreprenans,” obliging the king and the senate “de se servir mutuellement d'appui, et même de chercher des moyens pour rétablir l'équilibre trop dérangé par la prépondérance de la démocratie,” eventually creating a system in which not even the judges are responsible to the people anymore, and “le gouvernement devin aussit aristocratique qu'il avoit été démocratique auparavant” (150). Rather ironically, the author’s solution to a government in which the pendulum of power has swung too far away from the people is one of the most autocratic of monarchies: he lauds the achievements of Gustave Vasa (Gustav I of Sweden, r. 1523-

1560), in particular his strict control over the aristocratic senators:

la fermeté de Gustave Vasa soutint les droits du trône, en même tems qu'il

défendit la liberté du peuple; le sénat en corps redevint le conseil du roi et

le tribunal suprême du royaume, et ses membres épars dans les provinces

n'avoient d'autre autorité que celle que le roi voulut bien leur confier, et

dont ils étoient responsables à lui. Les assemblées des états furent

retablies, et les sénateurs n'y assistoient guere que pour signer et publier

les décrets. (151)

The author fears the corruption of an upper class whose role was originally to safeguard the rights of the people, and the usurpation of royal prerogatives by that class. At least superficially, Gustave Vasa’s reign creates a more egalitarian society by restoring the state assemblies so that the people again have a voice in their government, and also by curtailing the power of the senators so that they are again part of the public. However, unlike in earlier times, the senators — and perhaps by extension the people — are

62 responsible to the king, and not the other way around. The author recognizes some problematic potential in this system, in that it works only with the right monarch: he comments, for example, on situations such as “la longue minorité de Charles XI” (r.

1660-1697) and “Les malheurs de Charles XII” (r. 1697-1718) (152) that weakened the monarchy and again allowed abuses of senatorial power. Just as much as the author is convinced that aristocratic governance will do its utmost to abuse the rights of king and people, he is equally convinced in the power of a strong monarch to balance his power with that of the people, and in doing so to uphold the liberty of all. His final word is in praise of monarchical power in contemporary Swedish politics, on the dissolution of the senate in 1789 and the dispersal of the senators to various advisory departments: “il auroit

été difficile pour le souverain de faire un meilleur choix” (152).

A serial essay on the “Constitution du corps helvétique,”17 also in The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, shares the above author’s concern about corrupt mid- level aristocrats; this essay explores what can happen when, as a remedy, the balance of power shifts entirely to the people instead of to the monarch. In response to the quickly- shifting political powers in thirteenth-century Switzerland, various cities formed a league to defend themselves from “le despotisme des grands”; however, finding their league inadequate, they sought the protection of Rudolph of Hapsburg (1218-1291), while “se

17 The main content of this serial essay is from Jean Louis Antoine Reynier’s Le guide des voyageurs en Suisse, précédé d’un discours sur l’état politique du pays,” published in Paris in 1791. The introduction to The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec’s version of the essay is taken from a review of the guidebook in the Bibliotheque de l’homme public; ou analyse raisonnée des principaux ouvrages françois et étranger, Sur la Polituque en général, la Législation, les Finances, la Police, l’Agriculture et le Commerce en particulier, et sur le Droit naturel et public. Par M. Condorcet, Secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des Sciences, l’un des Quarante de l’Académie Françoise, et autres Gens de Lettres. Seconde Année. Tome Cinquieme. Paris: Buisson, 1791.

63 réservant leurs droits et leurs franchises” (7). As in the previous examples of idealized

Sweden and Milan, a strong king works for the people, and protects both them and their rights, but a weak king exposes his subjects to danger. Rudolph, “devenu empereur, protégea les citoyens des villes libres contre les petits tyrans qui vouloient les opprimer; mais Albert d’Autriche18 imita l’orgueil de ces tyrans plutôt que la modération de son pere” (7). Although Albert, in his pride, is ultimately responsible for the mistreatment of the Swiss population, the article places the most direct blame on the governors he appoints, citing their “tyrannie” (as opposed to Albert’s “indifférence”) as the causes of a rebellion in three Swiss cantons (7). The rebellion is thus not directly against the monarch, thereby making a more palatable event to the magazine’s modern audience. The author praises the “modération” of the rebels (including William Tell):

les mesures des confédérés se trouverent si bien prises que, dans le même-

tems, les garnisons des trois châteaux furent arrêtées et chassées sans

effusion de sang, les forteresses rasées; et par une modération incroyables

dans un peuple irrité, les gouverneurs furent conduits simplement sur les

frontières, et relâchés après en avoir pris le serment qu’ils ne

retourneroient jamais dans le pays. (8)

Yet despite this praise of the foresight and reason of the people, immediately after the description of the rebellion and attempts by Austria to reclaim the Swiss Confederation, the author details the extreme coarseness of Swiss life in the Middle Ages:

“l’administration des troupeaux les occupoit seule dans un tems où l’agriculte leur étoit à peine connue . . . . Le pain, que l’Europe entiere regarde comme une denrée de premiere

18 The eldest son of Rudolph, and his successor in the duchy of Austria but not in the elective monarchy of Germany.

64 nécessité, est mis au nombre des superfluités” (8-9). The author even goes so far as to suggest that it is “la simplicité des mœurs auxquelles ils devoient leur liberté” (9).

Although their simplicity protects them from tyrannical abuse of power, it also prevents them from forming any functional society, as “tout gouvernement paroissoit un joug” (9).

Precisely because they are so resolutely independent, the author suggests, their culture stagnates: as a people entirely opposed to intellectual and technological progress, they are unsuited for interactions with the modern world. Indeed, in the essay’s description, contact with other European nations throws the country into turmoil before it starts the process of rescuing the Swiss from themselves: “Les Suisses étoient plongés dans la barbarie, lorsque les autres peuples s’éclaroient déja: mais les voyages, des communications plus faciles, et les alliances étrangeres, ont enfin commencé à détruire cette ignorance” (9).

This series of essays on political upheaval in medieval Switzerland, Sweden, and

Italy expresses fear about the possible outcomes of contemporary political turmoil in

Europe and North America. On the one hand, The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de

Québec expresses anxiety about whether (in the absence of a strong monarchy) an upper class can ever be relied upon to protect the people; on the other hand, it fears the ignorance and stagnation that might accompany giving too much power to the people. All of the essays take for granted the relevance of monarchy in the modern world, but how the monarchy interacts with the citizens is a matter of debate. In the first number, Neilson includes a piece entitled “Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les revolutions des Etats,” from an address given by the Prussian Minister of State, Count Hertzberg, to the Academy of

Sciences of Berlin on October 6, 1791; this speech directly addresses the question of the

French Revolution, though within the context of revolutions throughout history. In 1791, the revolution is in its relatively early stages: France is still a monarchy, with Louis XVI as king. Hertzberg expresses his hopes for the form of government the revolution will produce in France: “la nation françoise, éclairée et excitée par les philosophes du tems, veut se donner la meilleure constitution possible, et surpasser même celle de l’Angleterre, en unissant ou en mélant le monarchie avec la republique, et en assurant le pouvoir législatif à la nation, et le pouvoir exécutif au roi, subordonné cependant aux représentans de la nation” (12). Hertzberg advocates for what he perceives as the ideal balance in government, a balance also called for in all of Neilson’s chosen excerpts on political history, from Petrarch’s epistle to the histories of Sweden and Switzerland. In this ideal system, although the people and the monarch each preside over different elements of the government, the state nevertheless belongs to the people, and the role of the monarch is to work under their guidance for their best interests. Much like The Nova-Scotia

Magazine, The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec constructs the ideal society as a unification of republicanism and monarchy, a middle path between the anarchy of living only for oneself and the corruptions of a long-established civilization.

Using Racial Origins to Imagine the New World

By publishing on issues of political upheaval and revolution, both magazines address the idea of how societies become corrupt, and how to fix this corruption — particularly while staying within the bounds of loyalty to the British crown. In this context, it is particularly interesting that both magazines (although predominantly The

Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec) should publish multiple excerpts from the

66 works of English lawyer and orientalist Sir William Jones. Jones’s philological studies helped not only to destigmatize, but also to ignite a popular craze for, medieval Germanic and Celtic literatures, in which both The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec participated: Jones and the magazines turned to the

“barbarian” races of the north as models for reinvigorating British society in the New

World.

Jones built his primary reputation as a linguist, particularly of eastern languages, and his major scholarly contributions were threefold: his translations and analyses of medieval Persian, Turkish, and Arabic poems helped to ignite the craze for romantic orientalism; his production of a Persian grammar had commercial value for the East India

Company; and his groundbreaking work on Indo-European language families changed conceptions not only of linguistic history — thereby laying the groundwork for the studies of medieval philology in the nineteenth century — but also of global racial origins.19 Although Jones built his primary reputation on his scholarship, he was also deeply involved in the political developments of the time. In Wales, early in his legal career, “he championed the rights of a peasantry oppressed by the arbitrary and discretionary power exercised by the largely Anglicized landowners” (Franklin); this early tendency towards egalitarianism later manifested itself in Jones’s arguing for universal suffrage. Given his legal and political bent, the American Revolution understandably captured his interest, and although he was not an official diplomatic emissary, he nevertheless travelled to France in 1779 to meet with Benjamin Franklin and

19 Jones used to be credited with the discovery of the relationship of Sanskrit to European languages, but the French Jesuit Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux had previously remarked upon this similarity in 1767, nearly twenty years before Jones.

67 to discuss potential articles of compromise between the nations. He wrote various essays on the reformation of government, but he was not entirely sympathetic to the revolutionary cause of the Americans. Part of what would have made him so appealing to

The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec was his advocating for balance in government. He wrote to one of his friends and pupils, Lord Althorp, of his political affiliations (or lack thereof), explaining:

The friends of lord North were too monarchical, and those of the late

Marquis [of Rockingham], in general, far too aristocratical for me; and, if

it were possible to see an administration too democratical, I should equally

dislike it. There must be a mixture of all the powers, in due proportions

weighed and measured by the laws, or the nation cannot exist without

misery and shame. (qtd. in Franklin)

The Nova-Scotia Magazine published a few of Jones’s poetic works, including a translation of Petrarch (“Laura: an Elegy”), and “Solima: an Eclogue,” an original verse based on themes and images Jones had identified in medieval Arabian poems. The

Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, by contrast, focused on his historical linguistic studies: over the course of six issues in 1792-1793, Neilson included six excerpts from Jones’s third through seventh annual speeches to the Asiatic Society. These excerpts discuss primarily the linguistic and literary history of the Middle and Far East, from the ancient world through the Middle Ages. “On the History of the Arabs” discusses religious and literary differences before and after the time of the Prophet Muhammad;

“On the History of the Tartars” describes the development of literature — including the development of a system of writing — through the times of Chengiz (Genghis Khan,

1162-1227), Kublai Khan (1215-1294), and Tai’mur (Timur or Tamerlane, 1336-1405);

“On the History of the Ancient Persians” includes a discussion of two of the most influential works of poetry in medieval Persia, the Gulistan and Bostan of Sadi (c. 1213-

1291), and it also theorizes the racial origins of various groups across Europe and Asia.

To introduce its readers to Jones, The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec chose “On the History of the Hindu’s [sic],” from his Third Anniversary Discourse in

1786. This excerpt includes the instrumental passage in which Jones posits a common ancestor-language from which stemmed various Indo-European languages:

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful

structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and

more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger

affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could

possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no

philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have

sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there

is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both

the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom,

had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added

to the [s]ame family, if this were the place for discussing any question

concerning the antiquities of Persia. (92-93)

This assertion was revolutionary in a number of ways, not least in that it challenged the accepted supremacy of Greco-Roman cultural and literary production. By suggesting that a British colony (in this case, India) might have a more refined language — and along

69 with it, perhaps equally refined cultural products — than the centre of the empire, Jones catalyzed a paradigm shift in literary and cultural studies. He also destigmatized Celtic language and culture by suggesting that it, too, is part of the same family tree that produced all of the Western European languages. It was common practice among British scholars of the time to trace England’s literary and cultural history back only as far as

Chaucer, before turning to his continental early Renaissance influences; the legacy of

Germanic and Celtic cultures in England was not well-acknowledged, let alone embraced, in the late eighteenth century. Jones’s argument was thus revolutionary not only in giving the margins of the British Empire credibility as sites of valuable cultural production, but also in giving English language and culture an alternative genealogy of which to be proud. According to Jones, if the Germanic languages are as refined and culturally valuable as are those that derive from Greek or Latin, then English culture should begin to embrace its Germanic elements as much as it does its Latinate ones.

The Nova-Scotia Magazine takes this destigmatization of Celtic and Germanic races to another level in an article reprinted from the Universal Magazine,20 entitled

“Reflections on the Age of Chivalry.” This article, a response to Edmund Burke’s

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), contends that the northern European races were integral to what Burke calls the “glory of Europe” (222 n.) during the age of medieval chivalry. Whereas Burke laments the death of chivalry, and the rise of the age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators” (222 n.), the anonymous responding author counters by explaining that chivalry itself was the product of the overthrow of a corrupt society much like the one Burke describes — namely, that of the Romans. The author

20 The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, published in London from 1747- 1814.

70 argues that “it is to the barbarians, who spread conflagration and ruin, who trampled on the monuments of art, and spurned the appendages of elegance and pleasure, that we owe the bewitching spirit of gallantry which in these ages of refinement, reigns in the courts of Europe” (222). He contends that the former Roman subjects were “a corrupted people, who had all the vices of former prosperity, along with those of present adversity” (223).

The true seeds of chivalry lay not in their corrupt civilization but rather among the warrior cultures of the northern nations, whose “great respect to women” was the only thing that “soften[ed] their ferocity” (222-223). Interestingly, the author remarks in his explication of this “great respect” that “The climates of the north required little reserve between the sexes; and, during the invasions from that quarter. . . it was common to see women mixed with warriors” (223). In this formulation, chivalry’s origins lie not in worshipping women from afar, but rather in associating with women as equals. The author acknowledges that the invasions did not instantly reinvigorate the stagnant Roman culture to create a new model society with gender equality, but rather admits that in the short term, “Anarchy and confusion were the result of so many contrasts” (223); however, he argues, “by degrees, were laid the foundations of new manners, which, in modern Europe, have brought the two sexes more on a level, by assigning to the women a kind of sovereignty, and by associating love with valour” (223). The “barbarians” of the north “carried their opinions along with their arms” and created a “revolution in the manner of living” in the southern European civilizations (223). The warrior cultures, combined with a respect for social equality (and a good dose of Christianity), produce a society that is more socially equitable than that of the pre-“revolution” Roman world. The

71 article claims that the barbarian revolution of manners was necessary to propel a degenerate society out of its vices and towards a new age of glory.

Ironically, then, “Reflections on the Age of Chivalry” suggests that an infusion of barbarian manners was necessary for moral refinement. However, this article was not alone in this seemingly counterintuitive stance: in 1820, Sharon Turner expanded upon and popularized this theory in the third edition of his History of the Anglo Saxons, generalizing that all civilizations tend to corrupt and stagnate, and require an invasion by a nomadic race to reinvigorate society (1: 12-13). In The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec, the Count Hertzberg’s discourse on revolutions reveals a similar attitude:

Ces destructions et ces révolutions des grands empires . . . sont

notoirement arrivées par leur trop grande étendue, qu’un seul homme peut

difficilement embrasser, gouverner et défendre; par la foiblesse,

l’incapacité et la mauvaise politique de leurs souverains, par le

relâchement du caractere, et par la dégénération des mœurs des nations qui

ont habité ces vastes monarchies, ainsi que par la civilisation et la valeur

naturelle et supérieure des nations voisines, qui ont profité de la décadence

du gouvernement et du caractere des souverains et des habitans des

grandes monarchies, enfin par cette vicissitude qui regne assez

généralement dans les choses humaines. (10)

The article’s editor refers specifically to “la fameuse migration des nations septentrionales et germaniques en Europe, de même que par les Arabes et les Turcomans en Asie et en Afrique” (10) as one of the three great examples of external revolutions,

72 suggesting, then, that the Roman Empire fell as much because of the moral superiority of the Nordic and Germanic tribes as because of the flaws in Roman society itself.

Given this intellectual climate, The Nova-Scotia Magazine’s and The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec’s inclusion of Celtic, Germanic and Norse sources takes on new meaning: by creating an affinity with “barbarian” groups, the magazines create the necessary revolution of manners without ever promoting armed revolution, thus reinvigorating colonial British society. The frontispiece of the November 1792 number of The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec shows a “View of a Druids

[sic] Temple in the Island of Jersey,” and it is accompanied by a description in both

French and English. The editors are quite proud that the “elegant and correct” illustration was created by “a Gentleman at present in this City” (205), thus claiming ties not only to the picture but also by extension to the temple itself. The article describes the earliest function of the temple as “a place whereon sacrifices were offered by the Druids before christianity [sic] had shed its mild influence over Europe. These sacrifices consisted not only of beasts, but of their fellow creatures who were immolated also, to appease the wrath and avert the vengeance of their sanguinary Deities” (206). It goes on to decry in the strongest terms the modern disrespect shown to the ancient structure: before the artist had the opportunity to visit it and share his picture with a Canadian audience, the temple

“had been mutilated and defaced by the unskilful [sic] hands of modern workmen” (206).

The article suggests that the values of modern society, with workmen who mutilate and deface ancient artifacts, are deficient. The emphasis on the barbarity of the Druids, who sacrificed their own people to the gods, does nothing to take away from the need to preserve their history; instead, the article creates an affinity with the Druids — albeit one

73 tempered by the “mild influence” of Christianity — to promote a value system more refined than that of a society that lets a wealthy private citizen remove a temple to his own estate for private enjoyment.

The Nova-Scotia Magazine too emphasizes rather than softens “barbarian” elements. In the March 1792 issue, the magazine includes a verse translation of “Hirlas,” a poem by twelfth-century Welsh poet Owen, Prince of Powis (Owain Cyfeiliog) about a battle between Owen’s warriors and Saxon nobles. The poem emphasizes the animalistic or natural associations of the warriors, referring to various warriors as a dragon, a lion, a hurricane, a wolf, or eagles (184-185). In the poem, these animal associations are words of praise, meant to congratulate each warrior on his fierce conduct in battle; these speeches are part of the ceremony of passing around the drinking horn (185). The wild elements in the poem are thus a way of reinforcing communal bonds. That the horn travels to each of the warriors emphasizes the egalitarian nature of the community — with room to reward particular merit. The magazine also includes “The Vegtams Quitha,” an attempted literal translation of the Old Norse poem “Vǫluspá,”21 so that readers can compare “the rugged materials of the Skald” (134)22 to a version by Thomas Gray that would have been famous at the time. (By popular request, the magazine also included

Gray’s version in a later number.) Whereas Gray chooses repeatedly to soften the poem, to make it more romantic and accessible, and less mythic and foreign, the attempted literal translation highlights the poem’s foreignness. Gray’s “Descent” translates the

21 The poem “Vǫluspá” belongs to a medieval Icelandic verse collection of Norse mythology called the Elder or Poetic Edda. The Elder Edda is preserved primarily in one manuscript from the thirteenth century, the Codex Regius. 22 The Old Norse/Icelandic word for poet, similar to the English bard in that the roles of both were highly performative.

74 poem into rhyming couplets; the literal verse “Quitha” uses short lines. Gray’s protagonist is simply called the King of Men; in the “Quitha,” he is Odin. Gray reduces the powerful all-seeing Volva to a prophetic maid. Gray’s King of Men claims to be simply a traveller, a warrior’s son, where in the “Quitha,” Odin assumes the guise of a personified “Vegtamr” (Toil), the son of “Valtams” (War). Gray also eliminates the first five stanzas of the poem, which in the “Quitha” describe the beloved god Ballder’s

“portentous dreams” of his own death, and the “universal oath” taken by “nature’s general race/ . . . For Ballder’s safety” (134). In Gray, Odin’s journey turns into a contest to see whether he can outwit the prophetic maid, but in the “Quitha,” Odin’s mission to see the Volva is one of love: he and all the gods are horrified at the prospect of losing

Ballder, and wish to protect him. Again, the more “rugged,” “barbaric” version places a greater emphasis on the value of community, adhering to the theory of a “revolution of manners” set forth in “Reflections on the Age of Chivalry.”

Canadian Voices in an International Conversation

The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec were not alone in looking to the medieval races of the north for sociopolitical models. On both sides of the Atlantic, scholars and politicians looked to the Anglo-Saxons for inspiration for modern political systems, often citing an idealized free Saxon constitution, or looking to the Saxon political assemblies as the ancestor of modern parliaments.23 In

23 J.R. Maddicott summarizes the nature of the Saxon assemblies, sometimes called the witan or witenagemot (respectively, “wise ones” or “meeting of the wise ones”) thus: “For a period of nearly 150 years, from Æthelstan’s accession in 924 to Edward the Confessor’s death in 1066, central assemblies summoned by the king played a crucial part in the management of the English polity. Drawing the king’s great men and others

Rights of Man, political philosopher Thomas Paine24 argued that the government of

William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087) destroyed the constitution of the Anglo-Saxons,25 and that “the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution” (28). In the United States, Thomas Jefferson argued, “Has not every restitution of the antient Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that we return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever yet devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the 8th century?” (qtd. in Horsman 22).

Moreover, Jefferson so valorized Hengist and Horsa, the fifth-century Saxon conquerors of southeast England, that he wished to put them on the Great Seal of the United States;

John Adams recorded that Jefferson thought of Hengist and Horsa as “the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and

less great into the government of the realm, they both overtopped and complemented the local assemblies of shire and hundred which drew the freemen of the shires into its government at a subordinate level. Both exemplified a society where participation in the processes of the state was, by comparison with any other European country, uniquely widespread. It was one where the early Germanic tradition of large assemblies in which non-noble freemen had some part to play not only survived but flourished, while elsewhere in Europe during the late tenth and eleventh centuries that tradition failed, as ‘assembly politics slowly turned into the politics of royal and princely courts.’ From the start of the period the regularity and frequency of the meetings of central assemblies, and the broad but consistent range of their business, gave them the character of an institution. These features should in themselves inhibit us from regarding assemblies as no more than gatherings of the king’s ‘wise men’: the literal translation of the word ‘witan’ almost always used in laws, charters, and the narratives of the Chronicle, and often too in poetry and homiletic prose, to describe this body. Its members were not merely ‘witan’; they comprised ‘the witan’” (49-50). 24 Paine was also an active participant in both the American and French Revolutions. 25 Following the Norman conquest of England, which began in 1066, William I did in fact still convene assemblies, but he restricted participation to vassals of the king, and he transformed the assemblies into one of his feudal rights as king: giving counsel thus became an obligation of fealty (Maddicott 57-78).

76 form of government we have assumed” (qtd. in Horsman 22).26 Reginald Horsman argues that “To many Americans the sweeping away of entail and primogeniture after the

Revolution eliminated the last remnants of the feudal system and restored the freedoms of the period before 1066” (16). Whereas Jefferson’s rhetoric in America was inherently about conquest and dominance inasmuch as it was about democracy — Hengist and

Horsa betrayed the Britons, at whose behest they had originally come to Britain (Bede

44-48) — in the provinces of British North America, the literary magazines preferred a more moderate approach. In contrast to American discourses of conquering the land, and

British ones of reforming political rights, The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec looked to the medieval north for models of how the ruggedness of the landscape — and the necessary hardiness of its inhabitants — might give birth to a new form of civilization in the New World. In doing so, they added a new and distinctly Canadian voice to an important international debate.

Although The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de

Québec were the first literary magazines in the provinces that became modern-day

Canada, they saw themselves not merely as provincial magazines but as valuable contributors to a global literary discourse. Because they intended to participate in an international literary community, they picked up the conversations that were happening in

Europe and added their own commentary; they did not insist on starting a completely new discussion for the New World. Medievalism has thus always existed in Canadian letters, because it has always existed in European literary discourse ever since the late Middle

Ages. Just as European authors have used the medieval past to comment both subtly and

26 See Allen Frantzen, Desire for Origins 15-18 for more on Jefferson’s infatuation with Anglo-Saxon history.

77 directly on current political events, so too did Canada’s early literary magazines use the past to critique the momentous social changes — both religious and political — happening on both sides of the Atlantic in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Although the magazines supported mainstream Anglican and Reformed religious ideals, and both overtly supported the monarchy, the history of censorship in British North

America made it safer to comment on current events via writings on the past. In both religion and politics, the magazines advocated a middle path, calling for Canadian ideals lying between perhaps-outdated European systems and untested American ones. Timed as they were between Henry Alline’s New Light movement and the second Great

Awakening, which swept across the United States in the early nineteenth century, the magazines rejected both Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism in favour of a conservative Protestant doctrine. Likewise, they called for a middle path between aristocratic governance and revolutionary republicanism, for a monarchy responsible to the people. Even in reprinting prominent European intellectuals, both The Nova-Scotia

Magazine and The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec promoted a message that was distinctly Canadian, a call to reform society through a revolution of manners, not one of arms. If, according to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thought, the harsh northern climes bred values necessary to regenerate a corrupt society, then Nova Scotia and Canada were ideal settings for a newly regenerated golden age of civilization.

Chapter 2

The Aftermath of War: 1800-1835

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, two competing trends emerged in medievalist production in Canada: the first of these trends was a decline in French- oriented medievalism, and the second was the beginnings of the century-long rise of

Celtic medievalism. These trends both emerged in the context of the British Empire’s wars on both sides of the Atlantic, wars which loomed large in both the daily lives and the cultural imaginations of Canadian authors. The ongoing military threats to Britain from both France and the United States led to marked uneasiness in British North

America about the stability of its particular mixture of ethnic backgrounds, since a significant percentage of the population claimed either French or American descent.

Despite this intense interest in all things military, the war with France seems not to have stimulated interest in French history and culture among English Canadians but rather to have stifled it: from the demise of The Quebec Magazine / Le magasin de Québec in 1795 until the late 1830s, Canadian literary publications were almost entirely silent on the subject of French medievalism. This absence is particularly notable after the subject’s promising beginnings in the magazines of the late eighteenth century as well as in comparison with the later flourishing interest in medieval France in the 1840s.

The reduction in the English Canadian production of France-related medievalism assumed two aspects. First, there were simply fewer works of French medievalism being published than there were in both earlier and later periods, both in terms of absolute numbers and in terms of proportions. For example, in the period of 1789-1795 (covered by Chapter 1), 18% of the medievalist works drew on medieval France; in the period of

1800-1835, only 11% discussed French medievalism. The other aspect regarding this silencing of French history in English publications is less straightforward: some authors in fact made a point of dissociating the modern French from their medieval roots. In this chapter, I examine how the work of George Longmore (1793-1867), one of the first anglophone authors born in Canada, performs this silence. Longmore is a particularly important figure in early nineteenth-century English Canadian literary history because he was one of early Canada’s most prolific authors, and he was all the more prominent due to the depressed state of the Canadian literary publishing industry in the 1800s through the 1830s. Longmore’s reputation, though, was not limited to Canadian literary culture; indeed, he published extensively on both sides of the Atlantic. He travelled widely with the military, and his experiences fighting against the armies of Napoleon undoubtedly shaped his perception of French Canadians, as well as the French themselves. In The War of the Isles, for example, he portrays modern France as a broken society. Whereas he explores in some depth the medieval histories of England and Spain, he largely excludes

French history. Even more tellingly, he actively distances the modern French from their medieval traditions, thereby denying that they have a right to control their own historical narratives. For Longmore, access to the past is a profoundly political and religious privilege, not a right.

In contrast to the glaring absence of French history in English Canadian publications in these first decades of the century, this same period saw English Canadians begin a century-long obsession with the medieval Celtic world — or rather, with the way

Celtic medievalism had been modelled for them by Scottish authors such as James

Macpherson (1736-1796) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). (The expansion of this trend

80 to Irish Celtic medievalism will be discussed in Chapter 4.) For example, James Martin

Cawdell (1784-1842), who made a career in both the military and the civil service in

Canada, was a vocal proponent of recreating Canadian society after the traditions of medieval Britain; his literary endeavours reveal his fascination with a pan-British model that combined both Celtic and Germanic medieval influences. The pervasiveness of such ideas about Celtic — and particularly Scottish — medievalism was such that even the teenaged Robert Baldwin (1804-1858) wrote a pair of prose-poems in declared imitation of the ostensibly medieval Scottish poet Ossian. The combined effect of these racialized inclusions and exclusions from the narrative of English Canadian society was clear: whereas the history and people of Scotland were a safe and valuable addition to British

North America, those of France were too volatile, too dangerous to be normalized by inclusion in the realm of English Canadian literature.

Literary and Historical Developments

Despite the auspicious start of The Nova-Scotia Magazine and The Quebec

Magazine / Le magasin de Québec in the 1790s, the demise of the latter in 1795 signalled the beginning of a quarter-century hiatus in the publishing of literary magazines in British

North America. As Vincent, Alston and MacLaren suggest, this interruption was due at least in part to the outbreak of war for the British Empire (242), both in North America and in Europe. The government of revolutionary France declared war on Britain in

February of 1793, a war that lasted until the Peace of Amiens in 1802, but this peace proved short-lived: Britain declared war on France (now under the control of Napoleon) again in 1803. The war between Britain and France was primarily naval until 1807, when

France invaded Portugal and carried out a coup d’état in Spain, thus beginning the

Peninsular War (so named for the Iberian Peninsula). Britain, as an ally of Portugal, came to its aid and thus became embroiled in a land and naval war against France (W. Turner).

Although the effects of these wars on North America were indirect, they were nevertheless drastic, affecting not only French-English relations within British North

America but also the relationship between British North America and the United States.

Napoleon’s losses in the Caribbean, combined with the financial pressures of facing war again with England, led him to sell the area then known as Louisiana (an area extending all the way from modern Louisiana to Montana) to the United States (“Louisiana

Purchase”), effectively ending French colonialism in North America. Moreover, the naval tactics of both Britain and France contributed to the War of 1812. In response to the

British blockade of Spanish America from France and Spain, France imposed a European naval blockade called the Continental System, separating Britain from trade with all continental and Baltic European ports and requiring that neutral parties not visit a British port before a Continental one. Britain retaliated by requiring that neutral parties first visit

British ports in order to obtain a license to trade with the Continent. These restrictions greatly benefited Maritime logging and shipping industries in Canada, since Britain now looked to Canada for raw materials that it had previously also sourced from the Baltic; however, the United States — neutral in this conflict — resented Britain’s interference in its international trade, and this grievance contributed to the outbreak of war between the

United States and Britain in 1812 (W. Turner).

War may have stimulated the economies of maritime British North America, but it did little to encourage literary or cultural pursuits. However, publishing of a more

82 practical nature — newspapers, for example — continued and thrived throughout this period, even by those publishers whose literary magazines had failed. Several of these newspapers did in fact include literary content, although not as their primary focus. John

Howe, who had published and edited The Nova-Scotia Magazine, continued to publish his Halifax Journal (est. 1780) until 1800 (Tremaine 610); in 1801, he took over as king’s printer and also as publisher of The Nova-Scotia Royal Gazette from Anthony

Henry (Beck). Likewise, John Neilson (the younger brother of Samuel Neilson, of The

Quebec Magazine / Le Magasin de Québec) continued to print and publish The Quebec

Gazette / La Gazette de Québec until 1822, when he passed it on to his son Samuel and to

William Cowan (Gallichan, “Official Publications” 314). The Quebec Gazette / La

Gazette de Québec was so successful, in fact, that it had more than a thousand subscribers between 1810 and 1820 (Hare and Wallot 75). It was, however, unusual in its ability to resist for so long the polarization along both political and linguistic lines that was occurring within much of the press in the early nineteenth century. Newspapers like The

Quebec Mercury (est. 1805), for example, championed the rights of English merchants, to which members of the Parti canadien responded with the French-language Le Canadien

(est. 1806); other newspapers also tended to align themselves along this linguistic- political divide (Laurence, “Newspaper Press” 235). Consequently, there were very few bilingual publications by 1820, but The Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de Québec maintained its bilingual editions until 1832, at which time it began issuing separate

English and French editions (Laurence, “Newspaper Press” 236). The newspaper’s (albeit secondary) interest in literary matters nevertheless managed to survive this period of politicization: although primarily a news publication, The Quebec Gazette / La Gazette de

Québec had included a “Poets [sic] Corner” segment as early as 1775, featuring both original and reprinted songs and poems (Gerson, “English Literary Culture” 393-394).

Even after the linguistic split in the 1830s, La Gazette de Québec printed satirical dramas

(Andrès 390) and literary reviews (Parker, “Courting Markets” 347). Yet even as papers became ever more political — or perhaps in reaction to this trend — literary magazines reestablished themselves in Lower Canada and in Nova Scotia: the 1820s saw the emergence of such magazines as The Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository out of

Montreal and The Acadian Magazine in Halifax.

As in Lower Canada, literary endeavours in Upper Canada likewise figured in news gazettes, but except for the brief run of the Christian Recorder (1819-1821) and the even briefer appearance of James Cawdell’s Rose Harp in 1823, there were no dedicated literary magazines in the province until 1831 (Vincent, Alston and MacLaren 243, 246).

The Kingston Gazette (est. 1810) steadfastly supported local literature, including in every issue at least one poem, many of which were written expressly for the paper (Peterman

402-403). Charles Fothergill, the editor of The Upper Canada Gazette from 1822-1826, took a different approach: he produced a non-official supplement of a largely literary nature, the Weekly Register. Through the Register, Fothergill gave voice to a number of local poets, including James Cawdell (Peterman 403-404). Although these opportunities for literary publishing in Upper Canada were relatively scant, there were other outlets for expression, such as literary societies. The first of these in Upper Canada, the York

Literary Society (1820-1825), counted James Cawdell and Robert Baldwin among its members; both men would join other, larger associations in the 1830s (H. Murray, Come

Bright Improvement 36-38).

The Wartime Poetry of George Longmore

Although literary publishing slowed dramatically during wartime in British North

America, the wars nevertheless dominated the literary consciousness of the provinces until the 1840s. Several of British North America’s authors and poets served in the military either on the home front against the Americans in the War of 1812, as in the case of James Cawdell, or in Europe against Napoleon, as with George Longmore. Born in

Quebec City in 1793, Longmore was one of the first anglophone poets to come from

British North America (MacDonald, “Further Light”). Longmore’s father, the Scottish- born Dr. George Longmore, was one of Quebec City’s prominent physicians, and also a supporter of its literary and educational institutions: he was a member of its Agricultural

Society, and he advocated the creation of a university (Tunis). Longmore’s mother

Christina was the daughter of Nicholas Cox, the former lieutenant governor of the Gaspé

(Tunis, Lee); because of these connections, the Longmores undoubtedly moved in Lower

Canada’s privileged and influential social circles (although not those of the truly elite).

George Longmore Jr. was sent to England to attend the Royal Military College, graduating in 1809 with a commission as Ensign in the Royal Staff Corps, a field engineering unit (MacDonald, “Further Light”, “George Longmore” 268). Promoted to lieutenant in 1811, he spent the next three years serving in the Peninsular War against

Napoleon; after the war in Europe ended, Longmore and his unit returned to its headquarters in England until he was redeployed to Lower Canada from 1819-1824

(MacDonald, “Further Light”, “George Longmore” 268).

It was during his deployment to Canada that he wrote and published his most famous work, The Charivari,27 as well as “Tecumthé” and several other poems; these latter he republished in Scotland (where his military service took him from 1825-1826) under the title of Tales of Chivalry and Romance. Also in 1826, he published a poetic account of his experiences in the Peninsular War, The War of the Isles. His service took him briefly back to England, where he published Matilde, or the Crusaders: A Drama

(1827) before a stint in Mauritius from 1827-1832, and finally to South Africa from 1834 until his death in 1867. His appointment in South Africa was in the British Empire’s civil service, the Staff Corps having disbanded in 1832. This last move occasioned a ten-year hiatus in his artistic output, but he began publishing again in 1837, regularly producing volumes of poetry until 1860 (MacDonald, “Further Light”). Interestingly, MacDonald notes that Longmore attempted to return to Canada, seeking a post there in 1847, but his request was turned down. However, it is difficult to ascertain whether he wished to return to Canada out of any particular love for the country, or whether he was simply desperate for employment: his appointment as Magistrate of Wynberg had ended in 1846, and knowing his term was about to end, Longmore had also applied for positions elsewhere in

South Africa as well as in Mauritius (“Further Light”).

Longmore’s devotion to the military informs even his early writings, beginning with his accounts of the Peninsular War (The War of the Isles) and the War of 1812

(“Tecumthé”). His choice of historical topics, such as “The Fall of Constantinople” and the Crusades more generally, also naturally reflects his military focus, but perhaps more

27 Longmore published The Charivari under the pseudonym “Launcelot Longstaff,” a reference not only to the Arthurian knight but also to the pseudonym of “Launcelot Langstaff” used by Washington Irving and James Kirk in their Salmagundi Papers (Bentley).

86 significant is the reverse, that his military writings reflect a fascination with history. Even his poetry on modern warfare draws heavily on his interest in both classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. In The War of the Isles, Longmore uses medieval history in particular to establish the character of the modern nations involved in the Peninsular War. As I will argue, in Longmore’s formulation, the ability — or perhaps the right — to access the past becomes one of the key factors distinguishing England and its allies from Napoleonic

France.

Although The War of the Isles was first published in 1826, Longmore’s preface indicates that it was “written more than ten years since, although some alterations and modifications have been made since its first completion” (iii). Both the timing that

Longmore claims for its composition and the narrative structure of the poem make it likely that he wrote or at least drafted the poem during his deployment to the continent during the war. The poem follows the progress of the British Army through the war, from

England through Portugal and Spain to France, then to England in seeming victory, and finally back to the Continent to defeat Napoleon one last time at Waterloo. Longmore mixes accounts of the battles with musings on the history and cultures of the nations involved. However, Longmore avoids discussing France’s medieval history for the entire section of the poem in which the country is under Napoleon’s control; the country is effectively disconnected from its medieval past during what Longmore sees as its

“thraldom” to Napoleon (e.g. 8.3, among others).28 Access to history thus becomes symbolic in the poem of the current state of freedom in a country. For Longmore, this historical access consists of two related elements: first, continuity of tradition from

28 Citations of The War of the Isles refer to canto and verse number.

87 ancient history to the present, and second, the ability to participate in the processes of historiography — in the creation and interpretation of history. The British, whose traditions stretch unbroken to the Middle Ages, control their histories by participating fully in the creative processes of historiography. On the other hand, because the medieval traditions of the French have been ruptured by the Revolution, the French in Longmore’s poem no longer have the ability to influence or interpret their own history. Medieval history, as the link between the classical age and the modern, acts as a keystone in

Longmore’s poem: medievalism holds together the complete narrative of nations such as

Britain, enabling the entire structure to be orderly and sound. On the other hand,

Longmore’s narrative of France lacks this keystone of medievalism, and without it,

French society lies in ruins.

In its form and in its content, The War of the Isles attempts to strengthen the connections between its modern audience in the British Empire and both the recent and the distant past. Longmore chose to structure this long poem in Spenserian stanzas, not only because the form fits his grand theme of nations (and their ideologies) at war, but also because Spenser first used this stanza for his Faerie Queene, another work that looked to the medieval world to glorify the England of his own time. Moreover,

Longmore constructs the poem as if it belongs both to the medieval world and to the nineteenth century. He conceives of his speaker as a “minstrel” (9.53) paying tribute to the fallen soldiers29 with “the wanderings of . . . [his] lay” (10.51). The poem is both a public oral/musical performance (as the “strains” of his “harp”) and a private reading, addressed to the singular “Stranger” who “scans” the poem (10.51). Yet, these divisions

29 This quotation refers specifically to those fallen at Waterloo, but it is equally applicable to those lost throughout the Peninsular War.

88 between public and private, and familiar and unfamiliar, become more complicated: the medieval bardic performance, although public, nevertheless creates an intimacy between the performer and the audience, an intimacy that is glaringly absent in the speaker’s address to the reading “Stranger.” The solitude of Longmore’s modern reader of poetry does not lend itself to community-building, except insofar as readers might imagine themselves to be part of a collective audience, much as Benedict Anderson suggests that citizens of a nation imagine their communion with each other (6). However, as

Longmore’s project is in large part about defining and building a national ethos for the whole British Empire, he anticipates Anderson by imagining a pseudo-medieval community of listener-participants for his lay.

Early in the poem, Longmore establishes that the British and their allies have access to a history that is continuous since Roman times, but he leaves conspicuous blanks in French history. The two most prominent nations in the poem (despite the fact that most of it is set in Spain), England and France both have at least some access to

Greco-Roman history and culture, as emphasized by Longmore’s frequent reference to them by their Roman names of Britannia and Gallia. Even more frequently, though, he refers to Britain by its older Celtic name of Albion, thereby establishing an even longer lineage for Britain than for France. Not only does Longmore’s Britain have access to

Roman and pre-Roman Celtic histories, but it also combines these with medieval history, something that his France is not able, or not permitted, to do:

Britannia, . . . with calm, unshaken form,

......

Clad in Minerva’s suit of armourye,

In lofty accents, thus, address’d the good and free: —

“Offspring of Albion, — whom great Alfred first

“Awoke to Nature’s most benignant call;

“And Reason’s light, in solemn charter nurs’d,

“Charming those clouds, which did its beams enthrall;

“Ennobling ye, with the firm-binding wall

“Of laws and bold allegiance; . . .” (1.9-10)

Here, a personified Roman Britannia borrows the Middle English “armourye” of

Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, to speak to the modern British offspring of

Celtic Albion about Alfred the Great, the tenth-century King of Wessex (in southwest

England) and self-styled King of the Anglo-Saxons. This astonishing merging of mythic and historical referents constructs a vision of Britishness that transcends time and place.

In this vision, the essence of Britishness is so consistent across the ages that it can combine elements from its various periods of history without creating any conflict. The history of Celtic Albion merges seamlessly with those of Roman Britain and Anglo-

Saxon England, all of which draw upon — and contribute to — one continuous sense of

Britishness that is also shared by the speaker’s modern comrades. This consistency is a key element in one of the most important ideas of the poem: that political freedom comes with the freedom of uninterrupted access to history, the freedom to participate in a continuous historical narrative. Moreover, these freedoms — both of politics and historiography — stem from “the firm-binding wall / Of laws and bold allegiance.”

Longmore’s choice of Alfred is particularly important: although the Vikings had been raiding the English coasts for three quarters of a century, it was during Alfred’s brother’s reign and at the beginning of his own kingship that they invaded in earnest, establishing settlements in northeastern England and conquering the neighbouring regions to expand their kingdom (“Alfred”). Although all of the other major kingdoms in

England fell to the Vikings, Alfred and Wessex managed not only to withstand the invading forces, but also to drive them back to the northeast (although not out of the country). Under the peace treaty negotiated by Alfred, the northeast became the Danelaw, or the area ruled by the law of the Danes. The parallels to early nineteenth-century

Europe are striking: the French army takes the place of the Vikings, conquering all except the last bastion of “the good and free,” leaving the inheritors of Alfred’s legacy to drive back — but not annihilate — the invaders. This potential link between French domains and the Danelaw resonates in Canada as well: the Vikings of the Danelaw eventually submitted to Anglo-Saxon rule (in part peacefully, and in part by force) and were gradually assimilated into English culture. England’s assimilationist approach to the

Vikings within the Danelaw paralleled late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century

English Canadian political approaches to the French in Canada; for example, as I will discuss in Chapter 3, in 1839, the Governor General (Lord Durham) officially endorsed the project to assimilate the French, thus codifying what had been unofficial practice for the better part of a century.

As Longmore suggests, the laws of Alfred are quite important: he was certainly not the only – nor even the first — king in Anglo-Saxon England to assemble a code of law, but his was quite comprehensive, referencing and including many of the laws of the

91 neighbouring English kingdoms as well as those of his own design (“Alfred”). For

Longmore, Alfred stands as a paragon of law and order, compared to the lawlessness of the French who “martyr’d [their] king” during the revolution, “That war of civil strife which then did wage; / Making men’s carcasses, the stepping stool / To whom should prove the most cunning of the age” (1.6). Longmore’s choice of “martyr’d” seems odd at first, in that it suggests that the revolutionaries persecuted Louis XVI for his religion, but

Longmore elaborates on this idea: not only have the French committed an offense against

God by executing their king, but they also actively continue to spurn God and

Christianity through their attempts to subjugate all of Europe under someone who was able to seize power through cunning and guile, not through divine birthright. Britannia asks the (emphatically Christian) British soldiers,

. . . shall the impious, urg’d to overwhelm,

(And scorn all thoughts of HIM, whose spirit awes

The wise and the virtuous,) devastate each realm,

Denying e’en the POWER, which guides Creation’s helm[?] (1.15)

Britannia’s questioning whether the British can allow the “impious” French forces to devastate Europe again recalls her invocation of Alfred, who also fought a heathen army.

One of the conditions of the peace treaty he negotiated with the Vikings was the conversion of Guthrum, the king of the Danes in England, to Christianity, thereby bringing the Danelaw into communion with the other regions of England (“Alfred”).

Alfred, and by extension the modern “offspring of Albion,” thus defend faith, law, and order against the onslaught of forces — whether Danish or Napoleonic — that are attempting to destroy all three.

Longmore’s chosen examples from history parallel his desired outcome of the

Peninsular War: he cites moments from the past in which Britain or her current allies defeated the French. He invokes, for example, the victory of Charles I of Spain30 over the

French at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 (4.10), and the expulsion of the French from Genoa by the admiral Andrea Doria, later Prince of Melfi, in 1528 (4.7).31 It is likewise unsurprising that he chooses to invoke the early English victories in the Hundred Years’

War; however, the reasons he gives for these victories and the motives he attributes to the

French are certainly more ideologically charged than realistic. Britannia addresses her forces thus:

Sons of the valiant, who on Cressy’s day,

With Edward built their monument of fame;

And ye, whose fathers stood in bold array

At Agincourt, by Henry, and o’ercame

The race that dare you now — and darkly aim

To mar the freedom which they cannot gain . . . (1.11)

The French are almost an afterthought in this depiction of the glorious achievements of

Edward III, Henry V, and the English soldiers who fought with them, figuring only — if ironically — as a jealous, freedom-hating collective. Although the idea that Napoleon’s

30 Although Spain had been an ally of France and not of Great Britain, Longmore still sympathizes with the country for having been deceived by Napoleon: because of their alliance, Napoleon was able to execute a coup d’état, capturing Spain’s royal family, overthrowing its government, and installing his brother Joseph as king in 1808 (W. Turner; Parkinson 12-13). 31 Although Longmore laments that “There are no Dorias now, to earn a claim / On freedom’s smile” (4.7), he neglects to mention that Doria had, in fact, been in the service of Francis I of France for several years and had been instrumental in the French capture of Genoa before his change of heart (“Andrea Doria”).

93 reign restricted the freedoms of his subjects more than did those of previous French monarchs is at best dubious, it is certainly valid to claim that his conquering other nations restricted the freedoms of those peoples; it seems less justifiable, however, to suggest that these conquests occurred as the result of a natural hatred of freedom among the French race, particularly since freedom from tyranny was one of the goals of the French

Revolution. Perhaps what Longmore means to suggest, though, is that at the peak of

Napoleon’s power, the people’s desired freedom lay so far outside their grasp that they enviously attacked the freedom others enjoyed. Even this interpretation, however, cannot quite justify Longmore’s correlation of the modern with the medieval French as if they suffered from the same freedom-destroying despair: in the Hundred Years’ War, the

French aim was to retake formerly French-governed lands on the continent that had, for various reasons, fallen under English control. Both the French and the English sought to enlarge their territorial possessions on the continent, but the French also fought for freedom from foreign control; if there was an imperial aggressor, it was the English.

Through this revision of history, Longmore is able to define freedom in a manner very different from the cries of “liberty” in the French and American Revolutions: freedom instead finds its roots in law, order, and Christian obedience.

As long as the war rages in the poem, Longmore depicts medieval French history and culture only as a backdrop to the valiant deeds and great artistic accomplishments of other nations. England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and even to a minor extent

Russia are all exalted by their own medieval histories in the poem, but strangely, although Longmore praises many of these nations by alluding to episodes that should also ennoble the French, Napoleon’s France gets no part of the country’s historical glory.

Sometimes Longmore deliberately draws attention to this absence, as in the case of his praise of Agustina de Aragón (also known as Agustina Zaragoza y Domenech), whose bravery during the French assault on the Spanish town of Saragossa (Zaragoza) in 1808 helped temporarily drive back the invading forces, and he wonders how the annals of history would read

Had thy dark sons, rush’d on to emulate

The deeds, oh Spain, of Saragossa’s maid!

In firmness far above her haughty mate, —

Tho’ formed for Love and softness, not afraid

To share the battle’s toil, and wield the avenging blade. (2.22)

The image Longmore presents of Agustina is one of soft femininity and purity leading the

(unfortunately too few) troops into battle, but the latter half of this claim rings truer than the former. Agustina certainly did not shy away from “sharing the battle’s toil”: she operated the cannons on the city walls when the city’s troops started to fall back, and later in the war she fought against the French occupying forces at numerous battles, even being granted a military rank and pension in her own right for her services (Fernandez).

The reality of her efforts is certainly no less brave than Longmore suggests, but his depiction deliberately invites a comparison to Joan of Arc, leading the French troops to victory in several battles in the Hundred Years’ War by virtue of her piety (and presumably of her innate grasp of military strategy). Indeed, Longmore acknowledges in his notes that Agustina’s “history reminds us of the exploits of the Maid of Orleans, and may furnish some future minstrel of Spain, a subject worthy of Epic poetry” (272 n. 9).

Even the titles he uses for them are similar — “Saragossa’s maid” and “the Maid of

Orleans” — despite the fact that Agustina was married, as Longmore recognizes with his nod to her “haughty mate.” Yet, Longmore’s reference to Joan in his notes calls attention to her absence in the text proper, as well as the absence of other models of French heroism — whether medieval or modern. Moreover, Longmore invites “some future minstrel of Spain” to take advantage of the comparison between Agustina and Joan; even in the notes, he does not envision the French regaining control of their history.

Two figureheads of French chivalry and sovereignty do appear in the text proper, but not as models nor as inspiration for the French army. When the British army, which has been fighting its way across Spain, arrives in Roncesvalles in the Spanish Pyrenees, the speaker launches into a rapturous address to the city about the glorious tales of heroism in its history:

Oh, Roncesvalles, long renown’d in song,

Fam’d in the minstrel’s wild, chival’rous [sic] strain,

For brave Orlando, in the battle strong,

And conflicts of imperial Charlemain . . . (7.12)

The “wild, chival’rous strain” to which Longmore refers is the twelfth-century French chanson de geste, La Chanson de Roland, which celebrates the tragic heroism of Roland, a knight of Charlemagne’s court, at the Battle of Roncesvalles in 778. In the Chanson,

Charlemagne and his army have been fighting the Saracens in Spain for seven years, but they head back for France after Marsile, the last undefeated Saracen king, sues for peace and (falsely) offers not only to pledge fealty to Charlemagne but also to convert to

Christianity. However, at the urging of Roland’s treacherous stepfather, the Saracens break their agreement: they ambush Roland and the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army at

Roncesvalles. Roland and his soldiers fight heroically, but they are finally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Saracen army. Charlemagne and the main Frankish army arrive too late to save the rearguard, but they avenge the deaths of their comrades by defeating the Saracen army and executing the traitors.

It is logical for Longmore to invoke La Chanson de Roland in that he sees the conflict between Napoleon’s France and the allied forces as a religious one, pitting

Christians against a nation that has abjured God, and the Chanson is certainly as much (if not more) concerned with the triumph of Christianity as it is with the tragic martyrdom of

Roland. However, the Chanson also emphatically supports the extension of

Charlemagne’s imperial power not only into Spain but also across Europe — a situation repeated by the armies of Napoleon. Yet Longmore calls for the upcoming battle at

Roncesvalles to follow in the footsteps of the city’s fabled history:

Oh, Roncesvalles fam’d in war; again,

And gloriously as thou wert nam’d of yore,

Shall history’s muse send forth its glowing train

Of thoughts, to give thee splendid place once more

Amidst fair freedom’s deeds, and chivalry’s bright yore. (7.12)

Two things seem to make this invocation possible: first, Longmore’s association of

Charlemagne’s side with Christianity and justice (and therefore freedom), and second, his dissociation of the characters of the story from both the eighth-century Franks and the modern French. His choice to spell the emperor’s name “Charlemain” is not unusual among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century references to the historical figure; however, it does deviate from the traditional spelling in the Chanson. The twelfth-century Oxford

97 manuscript, the oldest extant copy of the Chanson, gives the name as either

“Carlemagne” or simply “Carles” (the respective equivalents of Charlemagne and

Charles in modern French). Longmore’s naming Roland “Orlando” has much deeper significance: it removes the character from the French tradition and places it instead in the Italian. Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato (1495) and Ludovico Ariosto’s

Orlando Furioso (1516-1532), both Italian epic poems, take this same paladin Roland as their hero, although neither tells of his death or of the battles at Roncesvalles. Longmore completes this de-Gallicizing of the heroic story by apostrophizing the city of

Roncesvalles directly, rather than his Charlemain or Orlando: twice he insists that it is

Roncesvalles itself that is “long renown’d in song” and “fam’d in war.” The heroism of

Roland, Charlemagne’s vengeful justice, and the divinely ordained triumph of

Christianity over heathendom all belong to the battlefield in the Spanish Pyrenees, and not to the national mythos of the French.

It is only when the British army arrives victorious in France, having freed the citizens from their “thraldom” (8.3) to Napoleon, that Longmore finally reintroduces

French history to the text; Longmore’s French characters can thus claim access to their own history only through the mediation of the British. As the army passes Pau, the birthplace of France’s King Henry IV (1553-1610), Longmore finally allows the French to have a “heroic . . . friend and father” (8.15), telling us:

And here it was one of Earth’s magnates drew

The breath of life, ’midst this contented race,

Henry, the good and brave. . . .

......

And Love’s and Chivalry’s first shoots entwin’d

Their tendrils round his heart, devotedly inclin’d. (8.14)

Once the French people are again, as they were in Longmore’s idealized view of Henry’s time, a “contented race,” the poet allows them to remember and build upon their contributions to the days of heroism and chivalry. Yet it is unlikely to be a coincidence that Longmore chose Henry IV as the one of only two heroes32 to whom the French have claim in the poem: Henry was by upbringing (if not by birth) a Huguenot, even though he turned from Protestantism to the Roman Catholic faith on ascension to the throne of

France, in an attempt to maintain peace in the kingdom. He also issued the Edict of

Nantes, which guaranteed civil liberties to the Huguenots and other Protestant groups in

France (Holt 166-171). Moreover, it was under Henry that France established the colonies of Acadie and Nouvelle-France in Canada. However, Longmore feels compelled to remind us that France’s days of freedom, chivalry and nation-building do not continue uninterrupted (unlike those of Britain): “Anarchy hath laid that mansion low” (8.15), he writes, lamenting the assassination of a king who satisfies “every claim / Which Justice could require, Integrity could name, — / or Heroism honour” (8.15-16). Henry’s attempts to create religious stability within France were not effective in the long term, and he was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic in 1610. Thus, Longmore’s focus on Henry reinforces his poetic formulation of uneven historical continuity: even when he grants his French characters access to their own history, it is only in an interrupted form.

This ebb and flow of a country’s fortunes is the model that Longmore sees for all nations, empires, and even races, with the notable exception of the British. The poet

32 The other French hero is the crusader Raymond of Toulouse (8.25).

99 challenges his audience to “Search the world’s annals, and then know, the end / Of each republic hath been Empire’s bond” (10.38). The measure of a country’s greatness is, for him, freedom — the freedom provided by law, faith, and allegiance. When that freedom is tested, Longmore asserts that “The brave will rally ’gainst oppression’s weight, / But they who bear the yoke must be degenerate” (10.37). On the surface, Longmore’s racial theory seems to stem from other theories emergent in the early nineteenth century, notably Sharon Turner’s assertion that all societies undergo cyclical change. According to

Turner, over time, barbarian peoples gradually cultivate art and culture until their refined civilization has lost all trace of its roots, at which point civilization stagnates and corrupts; these soft, “effeminate” (12) cultures then tend to be overthrown by another

“manly” (18) warrior culture, which — despite the violence of the transition — reinvigorates the moral and cultural progress of the civilization, and the cycle begins anew. Yet, there is a key difference between Longmore’s and Turner’s formulations of race and culture: Turner envisions the rise and fall of a race’s culture and morals, whereas

Longmore sees changes in how much power a race or nation holds — its essential character remaining constant through this change. Whereas Turner foresees that a people and their civilization will degenerate, Longmore suggests that a people who allow this to happen “must” themselves “be degenerate” (emphasis added).

Alone of the nations Longmore surveys, Britain is immune to the shifting political systems of republics and empires, to the highs and lows of fortune. The reasons for this stability are twofold: one, its rulers possess the kind of “true majesty . . . [which] is to move / Just in the eye of law, and in a people’s love!” (10.39) and two, the people uphold fiercely the country’s “watchword” of “her liberty and her laws” (10.50). Because of

100 these two traits, Britain is “immortal,” and her people the “bright sons of Chivalry”

(9.38); in the “Land where an ALFRED reign’d! and where a GEORGE now reigns”

(10.49), the British are the true heirs to the romantic heroism of medieval legend, as well as to the legacy of justice and faith in their nation’s history.

The Fall of Empires

Despite Longmore’s faith in Britain’s immortality, paradoxically, he seems disquieted by the idea of empire. His suggestion in The War of the Isles that empire is the doom of every republic touches on this anxiety, which he explores in greater depth in another long poem, “The Fall of Constantinople.” Longmore originally published “The

Fall of Constantinople” in two installments, in the December 1823 and January 1824 issues of The Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository, a Montreal literary magazine edited at the time by David Chisholme. Longmore and Chisholme seem to have developed a rapport, because when Chisholme left the Repository, he took Longmore’s business with him: Longmore published his next long poem, “Tecumthé,” in Chisholme’s own new magazine, The Canadian Review and Literary and Historical Journal, instead of in the Repository. This affinity may have stemmed from an alignment of their political beliefs: Chisholme certainly shared both Longmore’s faith in British superiority as well as his dim view of the French. Chisholme’s views were perhaps even more extreme than

Longmore’s — or failing that, certainly more vitriolic; as Carl Ballstadt notes, “his essays were so full of invective and abuse that he did his tory patrons more harm than good. He attacked all persons inclined to reform, but was particularly vicious in his

101 denunciation of [French-Canadian politician Louis-Joseph] Papineau and of French

Canadian character generally” (“Chisholme”).

Yet whereas Chisholme felt entirely assured of the moral and cultural superiority of the British Empire over all other nations, Longmore’s writing suggests he struggled with anxieties about the moral place of (any) empire in world history. “The Fall of

Constantinople” does not, as the title suggests, focus exclusively on the conquest of

Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, nor on the subsequent demise of the Byzantine

Empire; instead, it takes as its theme the volatility of imperial power. Fully the first canto

(of the poem’s two) is devoted to classical history leading up to the establishment of

Constantinople as the centre of the Byzantine Empire. Longmore’s introduction to the poem indicates his perspective of the changing fortunes of an empire rather than simply its rise and fall:

Amongst the varieties and vicissitudes of time,— the decline and fall of

empires,— the disorders of military despotism, and the revolutions and

usurpations of states,— nothing perhaps forces itself more strongly on the

mind, in the perusal of the History of mankind, than the Fall of

Constantinople,— and the subversion of the Roman Empire and its Cæsars

after her long struggle thro’ all the changes and chances of the world . . . .

A melancholy reflection on the instability of human greatness crosses the

mind in reviewing its fate, and which did not even escape the remark of

the stern Mahomet [Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II] himself as he passed

along the august but desolate mansions of an hundred successors of the

great Constantine, after his capture of the city, and could not refrain from

102

repeating this elegant distich from Persian poetry — “The spider hath

wove his web in the imperial palace, and the owl hath sung her watch-

song on the tower of Afrasiab.” (497)

Longmore’s emphasis on mutability in this commentary suggests that empires — including the Roman — are not so much destroyed as undermined; they are not obliterated, but rather transformed. His anxiety about empire thus works through multiple stages in his explanation of the poem. On one level, if all empires must fall, then so too must the British; yet, if the Eastern Roman Empire could survive through a millennium of

“changes and chances of the world,” only to be brought low by the “instability of human greatness,” then perhaps the British Empire might survive “the varieties and vicissitudes of time” through the constancy of divine Christian greatness.

Longmore’s reflection on “the instability of human greatness” certainly has a religious element, and perhaps a racial one as well, as the thought leads him immediately to comment (or, more accurately, to borrow Edward Gibbon’s comments)33 on Mahomet

[Mehmed II], the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople. A respect for Mahomet and for the artistic achievements of non-Judeo-Christian middle eastern civilization is evident here in the notes, in a fashion that it is not in the poem, yet Longmore has structured this discussion so as to indicate the inevitability of the spider weaving his web in the palace of the Ottomans (as well as in that of the Romans). It is worth noting that

Longmore’s generosity towards the Persian and Ottoman cultures extends only to their poetry, and only insofar as Gibbon expressed his own respect for it: in the poem proper,

33 Longmore quotes the translated Persian distich directly from chapter 68 of Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6: 507), and his depiction of Mahomet is heavily influenced by the same.

103 he complains of “the wild sounds of many a Turkish song; / Not as of yore — when the more tuneful Greek / Skimm’d its [the Propontis’s] calm waters with his light Caïque”

(2.6.132-134). Predictably, he is even less sympathetic to the Ottomans’ adherence to

Islam, referring to Mahomet’s victory as beginning “a period inglorious to the efforts of

Europe’s offspring, who might at the time by their united efforts have crushed the hydra of Mahometanism” (497). Given Longmore’s animosity towards the Ottomans and Islam in general, his grimly fatalistic adherence to the idea of the wheel of fortune would have provided him some solace in its reassurance that even the “hydra of Mahometanism” — much like Greco-Roman culture before it — must also fall.

Longmore goes on to address an issue that would have been vastly more troubling, an idea that he touched on briefly in The War of the Isles: that empires are already morally fallen, that they are an inherently degenerate form of government because their very nature curtails the possibility of the freedom of self-government in the areas under their control. This oppressive nature can arise not only through conquest, but also through the natural growth of a free republic into a bloated empire. Longmore writes that his “final ideas” on the “false hopes of all sublunary grandeur . . . are naturally drawn to a termination, in the subjugation of Greece under the power of Philip of Macedon,— with the decline of Rome under the degeneracy and luxury of her Emperors, and by the fall of the Eastern Empire at last, under the overwhelming torrent of her mahometan invaders” (497). It is telling that Longmore chooses to focus on Philip (II) of Macedon rather than on his son, Alexander the Great, whose empire far exceeded the area ruled by

Philip. Although Philip never managed to conquer central and southern Greece, the areas he did rule were all Grecian in culture; Alexander, on the other hand, extended his empire

104 from Greece to Egypt to the Himalayas, overthrowing the vast Persian Empire in the process. Longmore’s sympathies for the loss of liberty under imperial rule clearly lie primarily with the Greeks conquered by Philip, and only to a small degree with the peoples conquered by Alexander. Longmore sees Philip as the orchestrator of the downfall of Greek civilization, even referring to Alexander as “that victor’s son”

(1.4.110). Philip appears as the worse evil of the two Macedonian rulers, perhaps for two reasons: one, Longmore certainly greatly admires Greek culture, whereas he shows little respect (if indeed any that is not borrowed from Gibbon) for the Persians; two, he may consider Alexander’s overthrow of the Persian Empire to be simply an exchange of one emperor for another, thus in no great degree changing the state of liberty of his subjects.

Both of these reasons suggest that Longmore values the free association of self-governing states — an arrangement such as Greece had before Philip and Alexander.

Philip and Alexander’s creation of a Macedonian empire leads Longmore to muse upon a modified version of the medieval concepts of the translatio imperii and translatio studii. In the High Middle Ages, both England and France attempted to justify their claims to dominion in Europe via their connections to Ancient Greece and Rome. The passage of knowledge and culture (the translatio studii) from the classical world to these two medieval nations supported their separate claims to be the true inheritors of Greece and Rome’s political power as well (the translatio imperii). These issues became particularly important after the Norman Conquest, since the King of England was also

(through William the Conqueror’s lands in France) the Duke of Normandy, and thus technically a vassal of the King of France (Schwartz). The relationship between the

French language and Latin led to a more self-evident cultural connection between Rome

105 and France than between Rome or Greece and England, so English authors such as

Geoffrey of Monmouth sought alternative connections between England and the ancient world. Monmouth claimed that Britain had been conquered, settled, and named by

Brutus, a Roman descendant of the Trojan Aeneas (6-30). The Britons were therefore, in

Monmouth’s fictional representation, a Greco-Roman people long before the historical occupation of Britain by the Romans; thus, they would naturally retain their birthright of classical culture and power long after the real Romans withdrew from England in the fifth century. This Greco-Roman ancestry gave the British a claim to classical knowledge and power at least equal to that of the French, thus establishing the two medieval nations as sibling cultures and thereby refuting any fealty that England might owe to France.

Longmore’s version of this translatio is the flight of personified Liberty, rather than the movement of people (real or fictional). In his formulation, the collapse of the independence of the Greek states leads directly to the greatness of Rome, because it is only in this collapse that Liberty takes flight across the Ionian Sea:

From the strew’d embers, where her [Liberty’s] last hopes lay

Warm to her breast, she caught one lambent ray,

Spread her fair wings, whilst Mercy helped to soar,

And led her onwards to Italia’s shore. (1.4.113-116)

Longmore’s poetic version of Liberty can reside in only one nation at a time, and she follows the westward path set out by the classical translatios. However, the exclusivity of the relationship between Liberty and her home seems to be more than simply poetic convenience for Longmore: as we have seen in The War of the Isles, he sees Great Britain as the current guardian of Liberty, a relationship that is exclusive in that poem as well.

106

Yet it seems strange that the British Empire can be the true home of Liberty, in that the creation of empire has, in the past, caused her to take flight in search of more receptive climes: in Rome, not even “the Brutus’ arm, which tore the pall / Of dark oppression off”

(1.6.143-144) by assassinating a would-be emperor “Could save her liberty from that thraldom’s state” (1.6.154).

Longmore’s resolution to this apparent paradox is the advent of Christianity. In his view, empires that existed before Christianity were oppressive by their very nature, thus driving out Liberty; however, empires that embrace the Christian faith can manage not only to escape this miserable fate, but moreover to become paragons of freedom. “But lo, a sun had risen in the East” (1.8.191), he writes,

Tortur’d and torn by Persecution’s rage,

And bound by chains, and threats in vassalage—

Though all the Cæsars on the shrine had trod,

Still, still, it beam’d the beacon of a God,—

It rose, the landmark of a power divine,

Whose glory graced the hand of Constantine.

And on Byzantium’s shores, at length unfurl’d

A light, whose splendour should eclipse the world. (1.8.209-216)

This “eclips[ing] of the world” by the “power divine” of Christianity is intimately connected with the worldly presence of the Byzantine Empire — an empire that, by liberating Christianity from its “chains, and threats . . . [of] vassalage,” exemplifies

Longmore’s sense of true freedom. It is interesting that Longmore describes early

Christianity’s persecution by the Romans in terms of the feudal relationship of vassalage,

107 a term belonging to the High Middle Ages and therefore anachronistic for the era of the

Roman Empire. Vassalage was a system of mutual responsibility between a lord and subordinate involving two related concepts: homage — the promise of allegiance of the vassal to the lord — and fealty, or “fidelity, trust, and service . . . which the vassal swore with his hand on relics or a Bible” (Rosenwein 157). A lord would both have vassals and be a vassal to a higher-ranking noble, or to the king himself. Vassalage was also intimately connected with Christianity. It was a network of relationships binding together not only the knights and nobles of a kingdom, but also its religious institutions: monasteries and convents would themselves have vassals, and (perhaps more strangely) their abbots would serve likewise (Rosenwein 156). In “The Fall of Constantinople,” the persecution of Christianity by binding it with “chains, and threats in vassalage” is ultimately self-defeating, since the method of oppressing Christianity — vassalage — is also an instrument of that same faith.

The poet makes the connection between Christianity and the reinvention of empire all the more explicit in a footnote, claiming that it was a combination of Emperor

Constantine’s “embrac[ing] the Christian Religion” combined with his “disgust . . . with the adherences of the Romans to their ancient rites . . . which induced him principally to remove the seat of Empire to Constantinople, and raise the Cross on the tower of St.

Sophia” (503 n.). Longmore thus presents us with a dual perspective on the relationship between government and freedom: in pagan societies, he clearly finds governments that are either regional (such as those of Greece’s city-states) or driven by the populace (such as the Roman Republic) to be desirable, and in such societies he feels that the centralized government and personality cults of empire stifle the freedom of a civilization. On the

108 other hand, among Christian societies, empire becomes not just acceptable but even desirable, because it serves to further the purposes of divine (rather than temporal) power.

Through this belief, Longmore seems able to reconcile his desire for the British Empire to be a beacon of hope and freedom for the world with his anxieties about the problematic nature of imperial power.

The Empire in Canada

Although Longmore had a fondness for the government models of Greek city- states and of the Roman Republic, and despite his high valuation of Liberty, he was certainly no revolutionary republican. In The Charivari, published in Montreal in April

1824 — mere months after “The Fall of Constantinople” — Longmore’s narrator decries populist uprisings. In an appendix to the text, Longmore notes that “The Charivari is an ancient custom, which, as far as can at this remote period of time be learned, had its commencement in the Provinces of Old France; and from them spread over the whole

Kingdom; from thence it was transplanted into Canada with the earliest settlers from that country, and has been kept up ever since.” Emma Dillon elaborates on the tradition’s origins: “The earliest records of the term ‘charivari,’ ‘charivaria,’ or ‘chelevelet’ date from the late thirteenth century, from cities such as Paris, Lyons, Avignon, and Bourges, recounting aggressive and sometimes violent outbursts of civic protests around marriages” (92). Dillon further notes that the practice spawned comparable traditions in

Scotland and England, as well as in the Americas. As in The War of the Isles,

Longmore’s British Empire inherits Old French tradition, but in this case, the legacy is decidedly not a positive one. The potential for civic engagement in such a practice is

109 instead misdirected into an abuse of the privileges of a free society. In response to the group gathered to censure a seemingly inappropriate marriage, Longmore notes:

For such a crowd in Canada’s a rarity,

Not as in England,— where your mob’s, a measure

For people to declare their “Freedom’s” pleasure. (1062-1064)

The inverted commas around the word “Freedom” indicate that Longmore believes these

English mobs fundamentally misunderstand the word, misusing it to support demands for personal desires, instead of for law and order in the nation — which, combined with

Christian faith, form the fundamental elements of Longmore’s conception of true freedom. Moreover, Longmore’s note on the continuity of the tradition of charivari in

Canada belies his narrator’s assertion that unruly crowds are a rarity in Canada; indeed, it suggests that the tradition of charivari will have primed Canadian citizens for acts of rebellion similar to those happening in England.

D.M.R. Bentley has explained the immediate circumstances of rebellion and calls for reform to which Longmore refers:

Longmore viewed with dismay the agitation for political reform and

republican government that lay behind three events which, in 1824, were

still fresh in the minds of Britains and British North Americans alike: the

Spa Field Riot of 1816, the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, and the Cato Street

Conspiracy of 1820. Longmore’s readers would have known [James]

Watson [referenced in line 1104] as one of those charged with High

Treason after the earliest of these events, and would have recognized the

“Hunt” of a previous line (1071) as the “Orator” [Henry] Hunt who

110

presided over the huge and disastrous meeting of reformers at Peter’s

Field. They would also have had very fresh in their memory the attempt of

the few extreme radicals of the Cato Street Conspiracy to assassinate

members of the British Cabinet and establish a provisional government in

London. And surely they could not have doubted that, if such things could

happen in England, they were also possible—even likely—in Canada.

(Introduction to The Charivari)

Moreover, these anti-government factions are not the only ones Longmore accuses of misusing and undervaluing the freedom enjoyed by England (as well as by extension the rest of the British Empire): he implicates the entire democratic process, not only by referring to voters at an election as a “mob” (1073), but also by mocking the elected officials of “the Common’s House of Parliament” (1078) for their ostensible jurisprudence, as evidenced by their causing “King Charles’ decapitation” (1080).

Longmore’s narrator describes in order of best to worst the stereotypical Tory, Whig, and

Reformer. Although the narrator’s scathing tone at first seems to implicate all three in this governmental disorder, he in fact praises the Tories for defeating and exiling

Napoleon, while the Whigs come off as silly but necessary fools; it is for the Reformer that he saves his worst censure:

Then, your Reformer comes,— who thinks each measure,

Conjur’d within his brain, must be much wiser,

Than those, which Britain has esteem’d its treasure

For generations past . . . (1097-1100)

111

Longmore’s veneration of established British tradition is evident in his mockery of the arrogant Reformer who wishes change for change’s sake. As Bentley suggests, Longmore does indeed seem to have been worried about the effect of these parliamentary “mobs” in

Canada, despite his narrator’s claim that mobs in Canada are a “rarity.” Longmore follows his discourse on the British parliament with a similar critique of Canada’s.34 He maintains that both the British protestors and the Canadian members of parliament suffer from their lack of understanding of such foundational elements of British law as the

Magna Carta. The British misappropriate it as a call for personal license, whereas the

Canadians would far rather devote themselves to pecuniary measures: “They understand,

‘the Arithmetical,’— / Profit and Loss,— Tare,— Tret,— Discount or Barter,— / And any ‘Bill,’ — better than ‘Magna Charta [sic]’” (1118-1120). Longmore’s invocation of the thirteenth-century Magna Carta does not simply reinforce his reverence for the historical traditions of British law; it also serves to further entrench his Tory sympathies.

He is quite right that any protestor appealing to the Magna Carta as precedent for personal liberties would indeed be misinterpreting the document: although the charter did establish the rights and liberties of England’s barons while simultaneously limiting the power of the king, it did little to establish or protect the rights of the peasant class. Taken with his disdain for the mercantile considerations of Canada’s members of Parliament,

Longmore’s sense of freedom seems to be primarily concerned with the upper classes of society — the aristocrats for whom he says the Tories are so named (1084).

34 Although Longmore does not specify to which of the Canadian parliaments he refers, it is logical to assume that his target is the parliament of Lower Canada, since both The Charivari and his own experiences were based in that province.

112

Longmore’s distaste for those who do not respect tradition is as much inflected by race as it is by class. At the end of the narrator’s rant about the Canadian parliament, he reveals that the quarrelsome figures are “‘soi-disant’ [self-proclaimed] patriots,— [and] their communion / Bars any creed, whose psalmody is ‘Union.’” (1127-1128). The troublesome members turn out to be the French-speaking ones, presumably members of

Lower Canada’s Parti canadien. Although the party would not officially be renamed the

Parti patriote until 1826 (Roy), Longmore’s choice to refer to them as “‘soi-disant’ patriots” was no doubt influenced by the discourses of patriotism and French nationalism that were circulating in the mid-1820s. Yet, the narrator (and quite probably Longmore as well, given his perception of the French in The War of the Isles) clearly rejects the idea that there is anything patriotic about the goals and actions of these parliamentarians, believing them not to be acting in the best interests of the nation or the empire. His critique is linguistically, religiously, and racially charged. The abundance of religious imagery in his description of the “patriots” invites the reader to question what their true creed might be, what communion they practice, what psalms they sing. Though we might expect the answers to accord with Roman Catholicism, the poem does not provide this solution, nor in fact any obvious identification (the terminology used being equally applicable to the Anglican tradition as to Roman Catholicism). Instead, the narrator tells us only what their communion does not allow, what is absent in their faith rather than what is present; what it bars is “Union.” Much as with the French in The War of the

Isles, Longmore constructs the French Canadians as deficient in their religious sensibilities; he informs us that these French Canadians share in the general

113

Parliamentary reverence for arithmetic and finance, but he leaves it an ominously open question whether they revere anything else.

By rejecting “Union,” the French Lower Canadian parliamentarians reject not only the idea of cooperation with their fellow legislators, but also the more official concepts of union in circulation at the time, such as the possibility of political unification with the majority-Anglophone Upper Canada. More symbolically, they also deny the rule and order of the British Empire by rejecting its and Canada’s flag, the Royal Union (now commonly referred to as the Union Jack). These acts all go against what Longmore — as an officer in the British army, as a decided Tory, and as a member of one of Lower

Canada’s elite Anglophone families — would have seen as the best interests of the

Canadian provinces and those of the British Empire as a whole. Since they reject (British) order, they create disunity in their country, and their faith is suspect at best; they thus fail to achieve any of the three elements that form Longmore’s concept of freedom — the same concept that he introduced in The War of the Isles and developed in “The Fall of

Constantinople.” Indeed, the Lower Canadian parliamentarians not only fail to meet

Longmore’s standard of freedom, but they are even actively suspicious of what Liberty has to offer them: they “think th’entail of Liberty has got / Most specious pleaders,

(barring slips of grammar) / To bind their privileges to a spot” (1124-1126).

James Cawdell’s Canada: A New Old England

At the same time as Longmore was lamenting the difficulties that the traditions of the British Empire, as “th’entail of Liberty,” faced in Canada from a vocal French opposition, James Martin Cawdell was also advocating for a return to medieval traditions

114 in the Canadas. Like Longmore, Cawdell served in the military, but he took a path opposite to Longmore’s, both literally and figuratively. Whereas Longmore was born in

Canada and moved to Britain (and from there to other imperial postings), Cawdell moved from England to Canada; while Longmore’s career was generally distinguished (although somewhat marred by political circumstance), Cawdell’s led him deeper into obscurity.

Cawdell was born in Durham in northern England in 1784; he received a classical education as well as training in the law, but he found legal studies distasteful, and in

1810, he purchased a military commission at the rank of ensign in the 100th Regiment of

Foot, then stationed in Montreal (Fraser). He was soon deployed to York (Toronto), where his choice of friends brought him into disfavour with Upper Canada’s Lieutenant

Governor, Francis Gore. When Brigadier-General Isaac Brock redeployed Cawdell to the regiment’s headquarters at Fort George (Niagara-on-the-Lake), Cawdell’s lack of political circumspection got him into further trouble: he wrote a piece satirizing Gore, a piece which Brock believed to satirize himself also. This satire provoked Brock to exile

Cawdell to a remote post on St. Joseph Isle (near modern Sault Ste-Marie). Cawdell attempted to resign his commission in protest, but the outbreak of the War of 1812 forced him to change his plans; his resignation was delayed until October of 1813 (Fraser). With the war still raging, Cawdell wished to be of service to his country in a way that he hoped would garner him some fame, although unfortunately his skill as a military tactician seems to have been on par with his political acumen. In a letter to Noah Freer, the

Military Secretary, he proposed an eccentric plan to form near Fort George an independent state, whose neutrality he was certain the Americans would respect, and from which he and “two or three hundred men” could “never cease to be a thorn to the

115

Government of the United States” (Cruikshank 96). The conclusion of his letter divulges his real motivation in making such a proposal: he writes, “By this means I am confident that I can be of more service to myself and country than if I remained a humble subaltern without a name and without distinction” (Cruikshank 96). These years seem to have set the pattern for the rest of his career: he earnestly desired to gain a name and distinction within society’s inner circles, but he lacked the tact to avoid offending the members of the very circles he so wished to join.

Cawdell’s subsequent attempts to gain a militia commission proved unsuccessful, and he secured his exclusion from public offices of any prominence by again satirizing

Gore in 1816; he later compounded his problems by writing quite unrepentantly to the new Lieutenant Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, about his penchant for political invective (Fraser). Although he continued to seek public office, he was forced by the lack of forthcoming appointments to turn his hopes for fame to other avenues. In addition to his literary endeavours (which will be discussed in the next section), he wrote political prose to advocate restructuring Canada’s social system. In a pamphlet entitled The

Canadian Conservative, which he claims to have written in 1818 although he did not publish it until 1839, he argues for a rethinking of Canada’s place within the British

Empire — in no small part, it seems, for the purposes of creating and distributing honours to Canadians. “Certainly it is a folly to suppose,” he argues, “that where colonies have territories more extensive than the mother country, and at the same time a considerable distance from it, that they, any more than children, are to remain for ever in a state of infancy. The time of emancipation must come” (7). Cawdell desires an arm’s-length relationship between Canada and Great Britain, ostensibly to help Canada come into its

116 own as a nation, but it seems that his real desire is not to see a child grow up but instead to see a clone develop with the same advantages as its original. He envisions a Canada that is modelled directly after medieval England, from its governments to its hierarchies to its military.

Cawdell sets out what he sees as the basic principles of feudal society in late medieval England as the guidelines for the ideal operation of Canadian society. He appeals to England’s voting policies during the late fifteenth century as a way of limiting the powers of democracy (that system being, to Cawdell, “Of all the different forms of government, . . . the worst” [6]). Cawdell argues that “all who reasonably may be thought to be free agents, and to possess some degree of information, should have a vote in the election of their Legislators” (6), and he accepts wholeheartedly as a test of this qualification

the spirit of the law which first authorised the yeomanry of England, who

possessed freehold estates of the yearly value of forty shillings, to vote for

members of parliament, (in the reign of Henry VI, nearly 400 years ago,)

for owing to the difference in the value of land, wheat, money, &c. at that

time and in the present day, forty shillings would be equal to thirty or forty

pounds now, and the land that would have given that rent, (forty shillings)

would not, in all probability, have been less than thirty or forty arable

acres, (the common yearly rent of land during this period was a shilling an

acre); of course that law will never be brought back to its original

intention in England, but it might and ought to have been in Canada. (6)

117

Interestingly, if Cawdell did write the pamphlet in 1818 as he claims, then he would not have passed the test that he here sets out: until 1822, his only position was as a teacher at a country school for an annual salary of £16 (Fraser), well short of the £30 or £40 he recommends as a prerequisite for being able to vote. Presumably Cawdell believed himself “to possess some degree of information” regardless of his financial straits, even if he did not believe in extending the same benefit of the doubt to his fellow citizens. As his appeals for public office demonstrate, he certainly felt he deserved a place among the province’s elite, and he must have believed he would soon join their ranks. More telling than this apparent hypocrisy, though, is his assertion about what is right and possible in

Canada compared to in England. He acknowledges that times and laws have changed in

England, and that neither can become again what they once were. However, he seems to feel that Canada, as a young colony, has the chance to make itself into a new version of medieval England — to put into modern practice what he saw as the best of England’s history, without making the same mistakes England made along the way.

The most pressing need that Cawdell identifies in remaking Canada into a pseudo- feudal society is, naturally enough given his own desire for advancement, the establishment of “an order of Nobility and Knighthood” (8). This idea had been discussed by the British Parliament, but Cawdell feels its dismissal was too hasty:

In the debates on the Canadian Constitution, in the English House of

Commons, the idea of a Canadian Nobility was laughed at by the then

opposition, as, in all probability, they would have been too poor to keep up

their dignity . . . We read that in Henry VIII’s time, amongst the palace

regulations of that Monarch, he gave orders that the Knights’ hall, in the

118

palace, should be strewed with fresh hay every day, that the Knights and

Gentry in waiting might be more comfortable; but in our days, even the

poorer order of people have their carpetting, instead of carpetting their

apartments with hay, and many instances might be named, to shew what

are necessaries of life with our yeomanry of the present day, were luxuries

with Nobles and Knights of former days. (8)

Cawdell’s comparison between early modern knights and modern “yeomen” is somewhat contradictory to his argument for establishing a class of nobles in Canada. He disputes the charge that Canada is too poor to support an entrenched division of classes by pointing to the general improvement of living standards for the entire populace, an argument that seems to lead to the equalization rather than stratification of classes.

Cawdell’s argument blurs the distinctions between class and wealth, thus leading to a problem of circular logic in which at times he invokes wealth as a reason to create the honours of class, and at others he uses class distinctions to argue for better compensation.

The increased standard of living of the general populace is, however, at best a mixed blessing in Cawdell’s opinion. In his mind, it perhaps actually acts to the detriment of society, since he believes it reduces the power of the people he thinks should rightfully govern the country:

There is at present another defect in the formation of our legislature,

which did not exist at its formation, but has arisen since, from the

increased wealth and advanced state of society amongst us. In England,

the wealth and influence of old families ensure the election of the gentry

and connections of the nobility, for the counties, and for some of the

119

boroughs, but we have no such advantage here — our gentry are mingled

with the general body of yeomanry, and have no real representation in the

House of Assembly. (10-11)

Cawdell’s worry that the gentry in parliament will be eclipsed by the “general body of yeomanry” reveals his rather essentialist notions about class: there are people whose birthright it is to govern (and if this class does not exist, it should be created), and then there is the rest of society. His real argument, then, is emphatically not that the “poorer order” of Canadians should be granted titles by virtue of having the material qualifications for early modern knighthood, but rather, that (extraordinary) wealth is not necessary to maintain the dignity of the noble classes — even if, as in the case above, it helps maintain their influence. He points to the case of Germany: “what a numerous train of Princes, Nobles, and Knights, who have scarcely any other inheritance than their honours, and their military pay in the service of their Sovereigns. Are they despised? —

No” (8). Yet here too his example proves to be a less-than-ideal foundation upon which to build a stable, prosperous nation: even in the mid-nineteenth century, contemporary historians accepted that the proliferation of small, poor and weak duchies making up the

Holy Roman Empire35 contributed to its collapse in 1806.36 Not only were the smaller

35 The Holy Roman Empire consisted, at its peak, of modern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Italy, and border regions of France and Poland. 36 Likewise, the German Confederation, established in 1815, essentially maintained the sovereignty of its individual member states, thereby leading not to national unity but to further discord. The Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire — the two largest member states — were mutually suspicious of each other, and the princes of the larger, wealthier states controlled the Diet, or national assembly, to the detriment of the princes of the smaller states. None of the general citizenry of any of the states had any representation in this national body, and in fact many of their liberties — such as freedom

120 territories easier to conquer, but Napoleon was also able to convince many of the princes to mediatize their neighbours in order to enlarge their personal territories, while voluntarily subjugating themselves to the French Empire (Bryce 1866 398-400). Yet despite these significant problems with Cawdell’s own model, he thinks that the pride of the powers-that-be in Britain is the only thing preventing them from granting titles to

Canadians. “But alas!” he moans, “I am afraid the British administration is too proud to allow the Colonies to participate in the splendid honours of the Empire, and yet on this system, ‘the salvation of Canada depends, and the wiles of Democracy could not prevail against it’” (8).

The counterpart to the loyalty inspired by these honours, in Cawdell’s system of defense, is “a good and efficient Militia, to defend us from our insidious neighbours [the

United States]” (11). Cawdell complains that “The Militia plan of all modern colonies, seems to have blindly copied from those of ancient Greece and Rome, or the feudal system in England, without paying sufficient attention to the peculiarities incident to the manners and customs of different nations and of different ages” (11). Despite this objection, quite ironically, Cawdell’s own plan for a Canadian militia also mimics feudal military systems. England’s feudal armies were composed of three roughly defined groups: levies of serfs, mercenaries, and the knightly classes (including both influential magnates and lesser landholders) (Prestwich); it is upon this last, most elite segment of the fighting classes that Cawdell bases his proposal for the Canadian armed forces. His plan is the creation of a militia that is well paid, well trained, well respected, and well bred — essentially, a new knightly class. Again, he sees Canada’s social climate as more

of the press, which Cawdell surely appreciated in Canada — were severely curtailed under this system (Bryce 1911 459-461).

121 appropriate to this medieval reincarnation than England’s: “The great body of the

Canadian militia, being men of landed property, or the sons of those who are, of course form a more respectable class of society, and are accustomed to live better and more comfortable [sic] than those from which the greater part of the English militia are drawn”

(13). Cawdell’s belief that Canadian soldiers are “more respectable” than English ones stems from the fact that even the lower classes in Canada — unlike in England — tended to be “landed,” thus establishing them as akin to at least the lower orders of knights and gentry in medieval England.

For Cawdell, this innate degree of respectability among the Canadian soldiers should naturally be rewarded financially and materially, an argument he supports by again referring to England’s late medieval past: “A few centuries ago, professional soldiers, or men at arms, as they were called, (Cavalry) were much better paid than at present; in the 15th century, their average pay was 2 shillings sterling a day, which was also the pay of a member of parliament sent by a city or borough” (13). This comparison seems to be as much about social status as it is about compensation: Cawdell envisions that the members of his ideal Canadian militia will be public officials of equal standing and importance to members of parliament. This comparison becomes even more favourable in light of Cawdell’s previously discussed argument that members of parliament should primarily be gentry. It is at this point that Cawdell’s argument coalesces. Coming from landed families, the members of the militia should enjoy similar privileges as knights of the emerging gentry in late medieval England; the gentry, in their turn, should not only be rewarded with honours and titles but should also control the government. Despite the contradictions in the finer details of Cawdell’s argument, these

122 broader contentions work together to support his main thesis: that Canada should remodel itself as a chivalric society.

Celtic Influences

Although Cawdell had no political influence to achieve sweeping political reforms, he nevertheless attempted repeatedly to establish medieval ideals and institutions in Canada through his literary endeavours, in the process drawing upon the taste for Celtic medievalism that was emerging in both Canada and the British Isles.

Whereas his overtly political commentary had focused on specifically English medieval history, his creative works took a broader view of history of the British Isles, merging

Celtic and English influences in his literary attempts to medievalize Canada.

Cawdell tried at least twice to launch a literary magazine entitled The Roseharp, although unfortunately neither time did it prove viable. No copies exist of his 1823 attempt, and it seems that he was able to produce only the first sheet of what was to be the introductory number of his 1835 Roseharp: for Beauty, Loyalty and Song. In this latter attempt, Cawdell announced the launch not only of the magazine but also of the corresponding “Roseharp Patriotic Academy,” a quasi-chivalric institution which he envisioned to “be somewhat similar to the Masonic Society of the Knights Templars” (1).

Membership in this chivalric order would be open to both sexes, and general members it seems would be styled “Academians,” “Knights,” or “Ladies” of the Roseharp. The upper levels of this order were to include the “Knights St. George of the Roseharp,” the

“Roseharp Chieftain,” and numerous other positions all ultimately subordinate to “The

Sovereign Liege Lady of the Knights of the Roseharp” (2). Cawdell was clearly heavily

123 influenced by the courtly love tradition in medieval romances in his structuring of the order to give at least symbolic primacy to ladies of the court. More remarkable though is the combination of cultural referents he includes in the titles of the ranks as well as in the title of the order itself. By itself, his invocation of St. George, the patron saint of England, would be standard, but it seems unusual that Knights of St. George would associate with a “Chieftain”; this latter title in particular stands out from the others on the list, since it is not a traditionally chivalric designation, but rather (in this case) a Celtic one. Although the label could be culturally ambiguous, the context of the rest of the magazine clarifies its origin: most of the number is taken up with “The Raven Plume,” a work of prose fiction set in 12th-century Wales, which Cawdell uses to establish an origin story for the name “Roseharp.” The story is unfortunately incomplete, in fact ending mid-sentence since Cawdell seems to have been able to produce only one 8-page sheet of his projected

24-page first number. However, it still serves to set up the basic plot of the story, a romance (in both the medieval and modern senses of the word) set in twelfth-century

Wales involving the daughter of an exiled noble family and a nobleman fighting to defend the throne of the rightful prince against a usurper. The noble soldier recognizes the high status of his lover and her family through their possession of and proficiency with a harp.

Cawdell explains the significance of the harp in a footnote, crediting the

“Encyclopedia Britanica [sic]” as his source:37

The Harp was the favorite musical instrument of the Britons and the other

Northren [sic] Nations, (Harpa, is the Welsh word). By the laws of Wales,

37 The passage is closely adapted from the entry on “harp” that appeared in the fourth through sixth editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1810-1823).

124

the harp was one of the three things that were necessary to constitute a

Gentleman, and none could pretend to that character who had not one of

these favourite instruments, or could not play upon it. By the same laws, to

prevent slaves or inferior persons from pretending to be gentlemen, it was

expressly forbidden to teach or to permit them to play upon the harp; and

none but the King or Sovereign Prince, and then Musicians and Gentlemen

were allowed to have harps in their possession. A Gentleman’s harp was

not liable to be seized for debt, because the want of it would have

degraded him from his rank. The Harp was in the same estimation, and

had the same privileges amongst the Saxons and Danes. (7 n.)

Cawdell’s explanation stresses two things: the noble associations of the harp in Celtic cultures, and the broader Britishness/Germanicness of these same customs. His assertion that “none but the King or Sovereign Prince, and then Musicians and Gentleman” would have harps is, on its own, not illogical: there would be little reason for a non-musician to own a harp, unless its owner was wealthy enough to afford decorative luxuries. There is, however, little evidence (either in Cawdell’s Britannica source, or in other contemporary scholarship) to suggest that possessing or playing a harp under other circumstances would be a crime. Indeed, Bede’s story of Cædmon suggests that some level of musical talent with the harp was valued at all ranks of Anglo-Saxon society: the story begins with the shame of a cowherd at not being able to take his turn in the singing in the feast-hall, when the expectation is “þæt heo ealle sceoldon þurh endebyrdnesse be hearpan singan”

(Mitchell and Robinson 222) [that they all must in succession sing with the harp].

Likewise, the bardic orders of Wales do not seem to have been restricted to — or even to

125 any significant degree composed of — the nobility, although many of the bards certainly worked under the patronage of noble houses (Lewis). The use of the harp does not seem to be quite so restricted historically as Cawdell suggests, but given the name of his magazine and order, it suits his purposes to imagine that association with the instrument confers gentility.

Cawdell’s commentary seems designed to lead his readership to the belief that the cultures of the medieval Welsh, the Saxons, and the Danes were to a large degree interchangeable. Indeed, even the title of the magazine indicates this cultural fusion: his choice of the name Roseharp could not more clearly indicate his desire to integrate Welsh and English heritage, the rose symbolizing England (“Official symbols of Canada”), and the harp symbolizing Wales (Morgan 91). Likewise, Cawdell’s explanation of the importance of the harp claims sweeping cultural similarities; significantly, Cawdell modifies his source text to present an even more homogenous image of the medieval north. The original Encyclopædia Britannica entry asserts, “The harp was in no less estimation and universal use among the Saxons and the Danes” than it was among the

Welsh (276), whereas Cawdell goes so far as to declare, “The Harp was in the same estimation, and had the same privileges amongst the Saxons and Danes” (7 n.). Cawdell’s adaptation accomplishes two things: firstly, it seeks to reinforce the exclusivity of the harp in all three cultures by replacing the Britannica’s claim of its “universal use” with an assertion of privileged use of the instrument. Secondly, by stressing the similarities of the harp’s place in all three cultures, Cawdell seeks to establish uniformity among what he refers to as the “Northren Nations” — “northren” being the spelling of “northern” in the Lowland Scots dialect. Notably, the Britannica on this point reads simply as

126

“northern nations” (275). Cawdell further conflates Welsh and Anglo-Saxon cultures by accepting the Britannica’s claim that “harpa” is the word for “harp” in Welsh — or, as the Britannica puts it, “in the language of the Cimbri” (275): harpa is in fact the Old

Norse term, closely related to the Old English hearpa, but not at all related to the Welsh word telyn.38

The sense of Britishness that Cawdell thus creates is an emphatically northern

European one, merging elements of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian cultures; importantly, however, this Britishness is dissociated from any French roots. In his description of the cultural roots of the harp, Cawdell chooses to highlight the Britons as the primary group among his “Northren” nations, and this choice is a racially charged one. The Britons were a Celtic people who inhabited the majority of the island of Britain, the Brittany region of France, and Britonia in northern Spain. In the fifth century, the

Anglo-Saxons conquered most of the Britons’ island territory, except for a few areas such as Wales and Cornwall. The Britons did not simply disappear from the Anglo-Saxon controlled areas — some high-born Briton women may even have married into Saxon royal families (Campbell 41) — but linguistically and culturally the traditions of the

Germanic invaders predominated in the area that became England; Wales, on the other hand, maintained its British character and its close cultural ties to Brittany in France.

Cawdell’s invocation of the Britons as a specifically northern people actively dissociates them from their French and Spanish connections. Moreover, his appeal to them as a

Celtic culture whose name has been appropriated by the English supports his project of

38 The Encyclopædia Britannica corrected this mistake by its ninth edition in 1880, which clearly lists the Germanic and Celtic etymologies (Hipkins 488-489).

127 creating a concept of Britishness that is northern, Celtic and Germanic, but most emphatically not French.

There are a number of factors which may have contributed to Cawdell’s impulse to merge medieval Celtic and English histories. To begin with, Cawdell has significant precedent upon which to draw for associating the Celtic Britons with English chivalric culture: King Arthur — a central character in chivalric romance, and a hero to the modern

British — was a Briton. As such, however (if indeed he existed at all), he would have fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons; he is therefore not a prime example of cultural cooperation. Furthermore, only in fiction were he and his round table an example of

Celtic chivalry in the mode of post-Norman Conquest England: he would likely have lived sometime in the fifth through seventh centuries (R. Barber, King Arthur 1-11), whereas chivalric culture peaked some five to six hundred years later, so his life would not have borne a recognizable resemblance to that of the character in Arthurian legend.

Moreover, Arthur is intimately connected with French chivalry, since many (if not most) of the legends about him were written in France; the body of Arthurian literature would not, then, reflect the sense of northern Britishness that Cawdell wished to create.

A more immediate influence on Cawdell’s writing seems to have been the work of Sir Walter Scott, who was perhaps even more beloved in Canada than in his native

Scotland. As a Scot, Scott also fit well into Cawdell’s project of northernness. Scott enjoyed such popularity in Canada that, as Carole Gerson argues, his brand of historical romance set the “pure standard” (Purer Taste 69) for the writing of fiction in Canada for nearly a century, even after his popularity had waned in the rest of world. Gerson attributes this astonishing degree of influence to a number of factors. On the most basic

128 level, in early nineteenth-century Canada, “Scott was esteemed for having made fiction respectable and directly or indirectly received the homage of scores of imitators who filled the pages of Canadian literary periodicals with historical romances set in Europe”

(Purer Taste 67). On another level, Canada’s political circumstances and ethnic heritage fostered a climate to which Scott’s work was especially suited: “The threat of cultural and political absorption by the United States further consolidated the appeal of Scott, a representative of the nation [of Scotland] from which approximately one-quarter of

English-speaking Canadians claimed descent, to those desiring to strengthen Canada’s emotional ties to the British Empire” (Purer Taste 70). Moreover, Gerson contends

Scotland and New France served similar roles in the English/English-Canadian literary imaginations: “Both nations, having suffered defeat at the hands of the English, had ceased to present a political threat. English-Canadian writers were quick to find in French

Canada a New World counterpart to the folklore, history, and local colour of Scott’s fiction, which they could develop with a mixture of condescension and nostalgia” (Purer

Taste 71). However, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, French history was unsafe territory during the British Empire’s war with Napoleon’s France, as well as during

Lower Canada’s social unrest in the 1820s and 1830s. It was not until after the 1837-1838 rebellions and the ensuing unification of the Canadas in 1841 that the spectre of New

France truly ceased to be dangerous and became instead inspirational for English-

Canadian literature, as will be discussed in the next chapter. Until that point, the relationship between the medieval Scottish and the English as imagined by authors such as Scott — a relationship based on cultural assimilation — may have served as a model

129 for the kind of relationship English-Canadian authors wished to cultivate between

Canada’s anglophone and francophone populations.

Ossianic influences on Robert Baldwin

As the “pure standard” for English-Canadian fiction, Scott was certainly the driving force behind the popularity of Celtic culture and history in English Canada, but he did not initiate the craze for Scottish medievalism. Scott himself was influenced by

James Macpherson’s Ossian stories, which had been extremely popular (if controversial)39 in Britain in the mid- to late-eighteenth century (Waterston, Rapt 44).

Beginning in 1760, Macpherson published several volumes of what he claimed were translations of early medieval Scottish Gaelic manuscripts that he had discovered. Except for the first volume, these manuscripts of poetry were all narrated (and supposedly composed) by Ossian, a character Macpherson based on the Irish legendary figure Oisìn.

Dafydd Moore argues that “This appropriation and misrepresentation of Irish culture and history, which naturally enough attracted the outrage of Irish antiquarians, was not inadvertent, and indeed central to Macpherson’s cultural agenda of instating Celtic

39 Dafydd Moore explains the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the Ossian poems thus: “Macpherson, along with several associates, made two tours, in the early Autumn of 1760 and late Spring of 1761, collecting manuscript material and taking down songs from oral sources. It was from these materials, supplemented with a large amount of “creative reconstruction”, that the two books of epic poetry with a single identifiable author were fashioned, in a process that has never been entirely clear. Careful examination of the poems in relation to the Gaelic materials it is known that Macpherson had at his disposal have failed to decisively separate honest mistakes from wishful thinking from a deliberate attempt to mislead and it is likely that, initially at least, Ossian was a potent combination of all three. It should be noted however that the volumes, and particularly the Temora volume contain significant amounts of material for which no source has been discovered. The Ossian poems were in no way what Macpherson said they were, but neither were they an entire fabrication.”

130

Scotland as the spiritual home of the values of heroic Sensibility manifest in the poems.”

The political element of Macpherson’s Ossian project involved attempting not only to shift the focus of Celtic history and culture from Ireland to Scotland, but also thereby to heighten Scotland’s influence within the United Kingdom and on the world stage. Moore contends that these political motives were a product of the literary atmosphere in the

Scottish Lowlands at the time:

the true inspiration for the poet and poems is . . . to be found in the literary

scholarship of the eighteenth century on the subject of primitive peoples,

language and poetry, and in particular the literary and wider cultural and

political imperatives of the lowland Literati of Scotland . . . . First

amongst these imperatives was the production of an ancient literature that

demonstrated that Scotland was a country of long-standing civilisation. . . .

If Ossian’s sentimental heroes offered some sort of model for the

eighteenth-century British citizen, they also offered important propaganda

tools for a Scottish cultural and political elite eager to be seen as an equal

partner in the Union.

These fashions for Celtic medievalism shaped the literary and philosophical tastes of Canada’s young Robert Baldwin. Baldwin was born in York in 1804 into an influential and politically-minded family. His father, William Warren Baldwin, was a doctor, lawyer, and architect as well as charismatic politician; his mother, Margaret Phoebe

Willcocks, had not only wealth and connections, but also such acuity that Baldwin saw her as the real “master mind of the Family” (qtd. in Cross 11). He was still a child when the War of 1812 broke out, but nevertheless he had occasion to see the war firsthand.

131

When the American forces invaded York in April 1813, Phoebe and the children evacuated the city, and walked north to the farm of a family friend; they had managed to get only a few kilometers away when the York garrison exploded. They were close enough both to hear the blast and to see the smoke rising from the ruined buildings (Cross

14). As Michael S. Cross argues, the sight indelibly shaped Baldwin’s perceptions of the

United States and its values, making their “menace more apparent. . . . [H]e would forever see the curling smoke of burning York” (15).

Baldwin was educated at the most prestigious school in Upper Canada, the Home

District Grammar School, where (according to his father) he particularly excelled at classics (Cross 13). It was during these teenage years that he dabbled in poetry, frequently exchanging verses with James Hunter Samson. In their letters, Samson and

Baldwin both mention the possibility of publishing their work; however, Samson seems to have been the more enthusiastic of the two about producing a collaborative volume,

Baldwin seeming more interested in publishing his own poetry (H. Murray, “And Every

Lawyer’s Clerk”). The product of these exchanges was an 1820 manuscript volume entitled Poems. By Robert Baldwin. & Others. Collected by James Samson Hunter. Vol.

1st. The title page of the manuscript seems, however, to be misleading: Heather Murray has argued that its various oddities (including the misnaming of Samson) likely reflect

“the running jests and innuendoes” of their correspondence, and that it was likely that the page could “be decoded by only a select few” (“And Every Lawyer’s Clerk”). Her analysis of the manuscript concludes that Baldwin, not Samson, was the collector and copyist, and that apart from two poems attributable to Samson, the rest were likely

Baldwin’s. Most of the volume addresses fairly standard topics such as love, friendship,

132 and nature; however, the final two entries stand out from the rest of the volume in both form and content. Whereas the rest of the manuscript consisted of 52 poems (according to the index, since two leaves are now missing), the final two pieces are written in prose; whereas the poems address general or contemporary themes,40 the prose pieces are works of historical fiction whose titles announce that they are written “In imitation of Ossian”

(72, 76).

Given Macpherson’s appropriation of Irish history and culture, Ossian is perhaps a strange model for Baldwin. He was of Irish, not Scottish, descent; his father and grandfather had emigrated from Ireland in 1799, only five years before his birth, and they maintained significant ties to their former country. Baldwin himself visited Ireland in

1836, in the hope of becoming “a better Irishman” (Cross 3). The entire family maintained the political values that had been so important to them in Ireland, and indeed

Baldwin’s greatest achievement in Canadian politics — the institution of responsible government — was something that his grandfather had fought for unsuccessfully in

Ireland in the 1780s (Cross 8, 18). It is, therefore, unsurprising that unlike Macpherson’s use of Ossian to establish an alternate history, Baldwin’s stories do not actively disenfranchise Ireland. For one, Baldwin’s stories are not geographically rooted. The names and place names in them replicate the cadences of those in Macpherson’s, but they are sufficiently vague as to defy attribution even to a specific Celtic language. Baldwin thus did not so much appropriate Irish history with his Ossianic stories as he did express

40 The only other poem that could be construed as historical is “The Death of Tecumsee” (25), a fictionalized account of the death of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh in 1813, during the War of 1812. The volume also includes an ode “To Tecumsee” (39), but that poem is purely commemorative, and devoid of historical detail.

133 his interest in a broad form of Celtic medievalism — as mediated by the values and literary sensibilities of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The foremost of these values that Baldwin explores in his Ossianic stories is the place of duty, both within the bonds of family and within the larger context of obligations to one’s community. His vehicle for these concerns is two short prose-poems, both relating the tragic extinction of the same noble family. Baldwin prefaces each piece with what he refers to as an “Argument,” although that of his first story, “The death of Sickla,” functions as the first part of the plot rather than as a synopsis. The first argument recounts the shipwreck of two brothers, Gador and Salnim, their sister Sickla, and the sister’s lover, Balnor.41 The storm separates the family into pairs, washing them ashore in two lands at war with each other; the (male) guests, having been “hospitably receiv’d” (72) by the chiefs of the lands, repay their hosts’ kindness by joining the next day’s battle. Their duty to their respective hosts leads them unknowingly into conflict with each other:

Gador kills Balnor, and Salnim avenges Balnor’s death by killing Gador. When Salnim realizes that he has killed his brother — who was both his host’s enemy and his friend’s killer — he immediately kills himself. The web of obligations seems to leave him no other solution. The same compounded sense of duty claims the life of Sickla in the story proper, as she mourns the deaths of her brothers but especially that of her lover. She hears

Balnor’s spirit “calling vengeance on . . . [her] race” at the same time as it “chide[s] . . .

41 Heather Murray suggests that the characters’ names in the Ossianic stories are in fact veiled references to Baldwin’s social group, whether to his close friends and family or to his specifically literary connections. In addition to exchanging poetry with Samson, Baldwin also sent various samples to his friend James Givins. Moreover, in 1820, Baldwin belonged to the ten-member York Literary Society, along with his cousin and future brother-in-law Robert Baldwin Sullivan, Givins and James Cawdell (“And Every Lawyer’s Clerk,” Come Bright Improvement 36-38).

134

[her] for delaying” (74) in answering his call to kill herself. However, her duty in dying is not simply to satisfy a blood feud: as Baldwin reveals in the next story, “Departure of

Calinda,” Sickla’s death frees her to join Balnor in the afterlife, to ride “on a beam with the lord of her soul” (79). Baldwin does not at all problematize the suicide of an innocent in the conflict; indeed, in the story it seems the natural outcome not only that family members bear responsibility for each other, but also that lovers should follow each other to the grave. This Romantic idea of love that can be fulfilled only in the afterlife seems to have held particular appeal to Baldwin, since he repeats this motif with Sickla’s sister

Calinda: Calinda’s lover also dies in war, and his spirit also fetches her to ride with him on a beam of light. After all of this death, only their father Giflor remains, the “last of . . .

[their] race” (80), and the narrator worries about who will bear the responsibility for

Giflor’s commemoration when the time comes. Baldwin’s narrator laments to Giflor:

no son shall reuse the stones over thy tomb; no daughter with her soul of

sadness mourn over thy ashes. Yet will the friend of thy son wake a

parting lay over thy tomb; he shall drop a tear to console thy remains; the

light of his soul shall awake to ring thy dirge; and when thou ridest on the

beam; when the gale bears thee on its wings; he shall mourn thy fate. (81)

In a way, Baldwin ends the story as he began it, by extending the bonds of duty beyond bloodlines and into the broader community: even in the absence of descendants to honour their patriarch, the community (via the friend of the son) takes on the familial duties both to mourn and to remember.

This emphasis on duty in the stories of Baldwin’s youth proved to be much more than an idealistic fancy of a nobler time: indeed, Baldwin’s devotion to duty was perhaps

135 the most powerful force in his life. Despite his “oppressive shyness and discomfort in the glare of public performance” (Cross 25), he nevertheless followed the path expected of him by his father, first establishing himself as a lawyer and then entering politics. Duty ruled his private life as well, even keeping him from joining his ill wife Eliza — on whom he doted — at her place of convalescence in New York on their eighth wedding anniversary; he deeply regretted not being able to leave York and be with her, but, he wrote to her, “it would be inconsistent with duty” (qtd. in Cross 24; emphasis in original).

Unfortunately, his writing of the doomed love of Sickla and Calinda proved prophetic for his own relationship: Eliza died soon after returning to York (Cross 24). The two had been married for not quite nine years. Like his heroines, Baldwin became obsessed with being united again with his love in the afterlife; at the time of her death he wrote, “in the waste that lies before me I can expect to find joy only in the reflected happiness of our darling children, and in the looking forward, in humble hope, to that blessed hour which by God’s permission shall for ever reunite me to my Eliza in the world of Spirits” (qtd. in

Cross 2). In his final years, he even carried a letter in his waistcoat with instructions in case of his death: he was adamant that he was not to be interred without his body being given a wound to match that of Eliza’s Caesarean section (Cross 1-2). His family complied with his request, allowing Baldwin to fulfill what he saw as his final obligation in this world.

Robert Baldwin was one of Canada’s consummate Reformers, yet ironically his liberal political views perhaps owed much to his deeply conservative personal values: he looked to the past to form his own chivalric code, one which had love as the figurehead of his soul but duty as its true sovereign, and it was this code that compelled him again

136 and again to sacrifice his own political advancement for what he considered to be the good of the people. He found his ideals in an idealized past, in the world of the romantic heroes of Sir Walter Scott and James Macpherson. James Cawdell shared Baldwin’s affinity for the world of the medieval Celts, but he was politically at the opposite end of the spectrum from Baldwin: Cawdell was not a Reformer but a reformer, a staunch Tory who wanted to remodel Canada’s entire sociopolitical system after late medieval

England’s. George Longmore, also a Tory, was the most typically conservative among the three: he advocated a return in the spirit of politics to traditional English ideals while strongly supporting the letter of the political status quo. Among the values espoused by elite society in the Canadas, Baldwin’s politics could not have been more different from those of Cawdell and Longmore, yet all three sought in their own ways to bring the medieval world to Canada, looking to the past for models of how to construct the ideal

Canadian society. For Baldwin, the influence of medievalism was inward-looking, intrinsically about codes of personal behaviour; both Cawdell and Longmore, on the other hand, looked outward to examine how people of a variety of ethnic backgrounds ought to interact with each other. Yet despite these authors’ differences in politics and in literary focus, the racialized narratives of Canadianness promoted by all three complement each other. Scotland, having been conquered centuries before by the

English, proved itself to be a safe source for English Canadian writers looking to incorporate a rustic, rugged, noble back-story into narratives of the early Canadian experience. Modern France under the control of Napoleon, on the other hand, was much too dangerous an influence to court, particularly in light of the growing social unrest in

Lower Canada in the 1820s; French history was therefore not safe either. For the first

137 third of the nineteenth century, English Canada was decidedly silent on the heritage of its

French neighbours. Indeed, French history and culture would not become a popular topic in English Canadian literature again until after the failed rebellions of 1837-1838 and the ensuing unification of the Canadas.

138

Chapter 3

Rebellion, Responsible Government,

and the French Question: 1837-1848

On the surface, the dominant trends in English perceptions of the medieval French changed radically from the 1810s to the 1840s. As discussed in the last chapter, until the late 1830s, English Canadian authors denied a voice to French medievalism, refusing to grant the French control over their history, and thereby rejecting the validity of the modern French nation-state. In the 1840s, the discourse shifted: suddenly, the French became one of the most popular topics in the realm of literary medievalisms, particularly in literary magazines such as The Literary Garland (1838-1851) and The Amaranth

(1841-1843). In general, 16% of the Canadian medievalism of the period explicitly addressed medieval French traditions; The Literary Garland matched this overall average, but in The Amaranth, fully 29% engaged with medieval France. Although this re-emergence of English interest in medieval French tradition might seem like a multicultural embrace — and in some ways, it was — the ways in which English-

Canadian literature appropriated French history also replicated many of the same patterns that had been used in previous decades to discredit the validity of modern French self- governance. As I argued in the last chapter, English Canadian authors still saw the French

Revolution as creating a fundamental break in French history. Unlike their French counterparts, French Canadians did not go through a complete revolution (although many did rebel, unsuccessfully, in 1837-1838); the French in Canada, then, were still linked to their history in a way that the French in France were not. However, the ways in which anglophone authors portrayed French Canadian connections to the past differed greatly

139 from their portrayals of English Canadian history: whereas they saw English Canada (and the British Empire in general) as adapting the spirit of its history for a new, modern world, they portrayed French Canada as simply stuck in the past, irrelevant to the development of a modern Canadian nation except as a repository of old-fashioned pastoral traditions.

Although in previous decades the subject of French history was almost taboo, the rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada in 1837-1838 forced considerations of the French to the forefront of English Canadian discourse. Despite the English-French tensions in

Canada, however, the relationship between England and France during this period was unusually peaceful and cooperative. The so-called “Pax Britannica” was an entire century of relative peace in Europe following the downfall of Napoleon, although there were notable exceptions, such as the Italian revolutions of the 1820s that eventually led to the unification of Italy. French and British relations were particularly calm in the 1830s and

1840s, when King Louis Philippe I sought to ally himself and the country with Britain.

Louis Philippe had spent much of his exile from France during the Napoleonic era in

England, and he maintained sufficiently close ties with England that it sheltered him in exile again after his downfall in 1848. For many anglophone Canadian authors, France and its history thus ceased to pose a direct threat during these decades. The situation in

Canada, however, was different. The Lower Canadian rebellions remained an open wound, as evidenced by the decade-long controversy surrounding Lower Canada’s

Rebellion Losses Bill, which was finally enacted in 1849 (Mills, “Rebellion Losses

Bill”). Perhaps because of these lingering tensions, portraying French Canadian society as little changed from its medieval predecessors became quite popular in the 1840s.

140

These portrayals did not reflect political reality, but rather they strove to create it: in general, anglophone discourses of French cultural heritage became a way to control the narrative of francophone societies, to render them politically impotent in the modern era by trapping them in the past.

Not all anglophone Canadian authors participated in that particular discourse of

French medievalism: one in particular, Eliza Lanesford Cushing, actually used the examples of French medieval history to advocate modern political reform in a way that included the modern French Canadians in the debate. Yet, the approach of John

Breakenridge was more common. His volume of poetry, The Crusades, and Other Poems covers topics from the Crusades to Napoleon; although he embraces French chivalry, he also appropriates it for the modern British, depicting France as a nation that has inherited only a perversion of chivalric tradition. As in George Longmore’s work (discussed in the previous chapter), in Breakenridge’s poetry, the modern British Empire enjoys continuous access to its history — and indeed this continuous access is essential to its modernity; in contrast, modern France’s relationship with its past is fundamentally flawed.

In the Maritimes, the narrative of French medievalism similarly re-emerged, but its concerns were slightly different from those of the Canadas. French medievalism in

The Amaranth, in Saint John, New Brunswick, reveals anxieties about tensions between

English and Acadian communities, specifically about which community might assimilate the other. This anxiety emerges as a gendered disparity in the magazine: medieval French women can be assimilated into English culture safely, bringing with them welcome

141 chivalric codes of love and duty. Narratives of medieval French noblemen, on the other hand, deal with the fear that they will assimilate and corrupt English society.

Literary and Historical Developments

The social unrest that British North America had been experiencing in the 1820s only intensified in the 1830s, with growing opposition to the political oligarchies that controlled the various provincial governments. In Upper Canada, the Family Compact — a group of wealthy Tory politicians — controlled not only the executive and legislative councils but also the judiciary as well as the highest-ranking positions in the civil service.

In Lower Canada, a group of anglophone merchants known as the Château Clique dominated a similar range of positions. In Nova Scotia, the situation was even more extreme: there, in addition to the powers exercised by the oligarchies in the other colonies, the Council of Twelve enjoyed lifetime appointments. Although the responses to these centralizations of power varied, all of the colonies of British North America

(including New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island) agitated for political reform and responsible government.

In the Canadas, this political agitation turned violent. Having failed in its attempt to achieve political reform through the British Parliament, and feeling it had exhausted all legal means of resistance, Lower Canada’s Parti patriote (under Louis-Joseph Papineau) moved to open rebellion late in 1837. Although the British army easily won most of the initial skirmishes, the Patriotes nevertheless had significant popular support. After regrouping in exile in the United States, the rebels made a second and equally ill-fated attempt at revolution in November 1838. In Upper Canada, news of the Lower Canadian

142 uprisings emboldened two groups of rebels in December 1837, one under William Lyon

Mackenzie in York, and one following Dr. Charles Duncombe in Brantford. The Upper

Canadian rebels were even more disorganized and even less successful than their Lower

Canadian counterparts, and most fled quickly to the United States (Francis, Jones and

Smith 286; Buckner and Foot).

The other colonies of British North America also pushed for political reform, but none engaged in outright rebellion. In New Brunswick, Reformers led by Charles Fisher and Lemuel Allan Wilmot were relatively successful in achieving limited governmental reforms in the late 1830s through political avenues. In Nova Scotia, Joseph Howe — the youngest son of printer and publisher John Howe — led the movement to reform, largely through his own involvement in the newspaper industry (Francis, Jones and Smith 369-

370). The Howe family ran one of the most important printing dynasties in the Maritimes, and Joseph expanded the family business when he took over The Novascotian from

George Renny Young in 1827 and turned it into the colony’s most influential newspaper

(Hare and Wallot 75). Howe used the paper as a vehicle for direct and indirect attacks on the government, in part by printing satirical pieces (such as Thomas Chandler

Haliburton’s Sam Slick stories) and in part by publishing prose essays detailing government corruption (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 327; Panofsky 352). His stance in opposition to Halifax’s Council of Twelve landed him a libel charge in 1835; his successful defense against the charge — claiming the “overwhelming public necessity” of exposing corruption — helped to establish the freedom of the press in Nova Scotia

(qtd. in Parker, “Joseph Howe” 331).

143

The immediate outcome of this political discontent across the colonies was the appointment in 1838 of John George Lambton, Lord Durham, as Governor General of all

British North America (Francis, Jones and Smith 287). Durham’s task was to analyze the political situation and to propose solutions to stabilize the colonies. For Lower Canada, the appointment of Lord Durham was not the only consequence, however: the British government suspended Lower Canada’s constitution, dissolving its parliament and curtailing civil liberties (Francis, Jones and Smith 261). In both the Canadas, the rebels and their leaders faced arrest or exile, but in Lower Canada, printers and publishers who were sympathetic to the Patriote cause were equally targets. Ludger Duvernay, printer of

La Minerve, is but one example: he had to flee to the United States to escape arrest, and the paper itself was banned mere days after Duvernay’s arrest warrant was issued. For the rest of the 1830s, it remained dangerous to print — or to have printed — anything other than outright condemnation of the rebels. One printer, Napoléon Aubin, was jailed for publishing a single piece praising the Patriotes; printer Étienne Parent and publisher Jean-

Baptiste Fréchette were imprisoned for having expressed moderate support of the

Patriotes more than a year before the rebellions (Gallichan, “Political Censorship” 328-

329). By implementing such harsh measures, the British imperial government sought to control not only dissident elements but also French Canadian society at large. Lord

Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America, released in 1839, was even more forthright about assimilating French Canadians into English Canadian society as a way of controlling and eventually eliminating any threat French culture might pose in

Canada. Yet the Durham Report also offered hope for greater citizen involvement in the governments of all the colonies, including Lower Canada: it recommended instituting

144 responsible government, a system in which the executive council would be part of and responsible to the elected legislature — and thereby to the people, rather than to the governor alone (Francis, Jones and Smith 290).

Local contributions were also becoming more important in literary periodicals such as The Literary Garland in Montreal (1838-1851) and The Amaranth in Saint John

(1841-1843). The Garland, printed by John Lovell and edited for most of its run by John

Gibson, was Canada’s first commercially successful literary magazine; it was also the first to pay its contributors (Parker, “Lovell”). It supported the careers of a number of authors who became quite important to the development of literature in British North

America, including Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill, John Richardson, Charles

Sangster, Rosanna Eleanora Leprohon, Elizabeth Mary MacLachlan, and Eliza Lanesford

Cushing (Gerson, “English Literary Culture” 395; Parker, “Lovell”). The Amaranth, published by Robert Shives, also focused on local literary production: the majority of its contributors were from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, although it also reprinted material from British and American magazines. However, even in the pieces Shives selected from foreign sources, he demonstrated his commitment to local literature: from the London Sporting Review, for example, he reprinted the fictional stories of Saint John lawyer Moses H. Perley (Rice). By the time The Amaranth appeared on the literary scene of the Maritimes, Saint John had established itself as a rival centre of print culture to

Halifax. The emergence of the magazine signalled a shift in literary capital towards Saint

John throughout the 1840s, and although the magazine lasted only three years, it helped to solidify the city’s place as a centre of literary production (Davies 382). Yet these magazines’ focus on local literary production in no way restricted their field of vision to

145

British North American topics; indeed, their local authors wrote on a wide array of subject matter, including the medieval world.

The Literary Garland

The business acumen of John Lovell, the printer and publisher of The Literary

Garland, was instrumental in securing the magazine’s success and influence across

British North America. Lovell was born in Ireland in 1810, but when he was still a child, his family immigrated to Lower Canada, near Montreal, in 1820. The family business was farming, but since Lovell had no agricultural inclinations, he instead apprenticed himself to the printer Edward Vernon Sparhawk, of the Canadian Times and Weekly

Literary and Political Recorder of Montreal. He spent his early career first in Montreal, and then in Quebec City, returning to Montreal in 1832 as a foreman in the printing office of the Sulpician newspaper L’Ami du peuple, de l’ordre et des lois (Parker, “Lovell”).

The views of L’ami du peuple towards Lower Canada’s social unrest — and particularly towards the Patriotes — seem to have influenced Lovell’s own: the paper was ostensibly moderate, opposing what it saw as Louis-Joseph Papineau’s extremism, but in essence was still conservative and loyalist (Sylvain). When Lovell started his own printing office in partnership with Donald McDonald, one of the first French newspapers they printed,

Léon Gosselin’s Le Populaire (1837-1838), held similar views. Although the paper tried to be moderate in its approach to the political crisis, Papineau nevertheless ordered its boycott; the paper also came under attack from conservative anglophone publications for not taking a hard enough stance against the rebels. As Gérard Laurence has noted, “its sympathies, therefore, did not follow ethnic lines” (“Gosselin”), nor, it seems, did

146

Lovell’s. When the rebellions broke out in late 1837, he joined the Royal Montreal

Cavalry to fight against the rebels, even volunteering for dangerous missions; yet despite his political allegiance, in his business practice he seems to have held little cultural bias against the French. He was quite clearly comfortable working in French-language environments and publishing in French; George L. Parker asserts that Lovell “supported the flowering of French Canadian literature in the 1840s and early 1850s” through publishing important works of literature and literary scholarship by French Canadians

(“Lovell”).

For The Literary Garland, which Lovell launched with his brother-in-law John

Gibson as editor in 1838, Lovell actively recruited writers such as Susanna Moodie for their pro-British sentiments (Ballstadt, Hopkins and Peterman 78-79), but apart from such recruitment, Lovell and Gibson seem to have taken a politically moderate approach, including on issues of French cultures. Indeed, in the opening number, Gibson notes that the magazine’s

pursuits are designed to interfere with no man’s opinions — to encroach

upon no man’s preserves — but rather to still the angry passions as they

rise, and shed upon the troubled waters the oil of peace . . . believing as we

do, that, whatever opinions, political or polemical, may be individually

held, there are none with “souls so dead,” that they will offer other than a

cordial welcome to a fellow labourer in the good cause of their country’s

weal; and we have no hesitation in contending, that with the true

prosperity of every country, its literature is indissolubly associated. (3)

147

The magazine’s stated goal, then, is to be a moderating influence on society, to promote the peaceful development of Canadian society through promoting its literature. On the one hand, his desire to “still the angry passions” suggests a definite stance against the

(mainly French) rebels for disturbing the peace, yet he moderates this conservative sentiment with his encouragement of patriotic debate amongst “fellow labourer[s].”

Although his use of the term “labourer” seems broad enough to include anyone who works for civic betterment, it also necessarily invokes the working classes, the true labourers, thus positioning the magazine as sympathetic to — or at least willing to entertain — concerns that cross socioeconomic boundaries. Taking into account the date of publication of this number of the Garland — December 1838, in the immediate aftermath of the rebellions — Gibson’s statements seem remarkably even-handed.

Gibson also observes that “There are many who deem, that in a country yet in infancy, with little of storied or traditionary lore, the sphere of our action must be circumscribed, and that our efforts, like those of our predecessors, will end in failure. We have no such fear” (4). Perhaps one of the reasons that Gibson and Lovell did not fear this particular kind of failure is that the magazine did, in fact, supply British North

America with “traditionary lore” by publishing a wide variety of creative engagements with medieval literature and history. Although the magazine displays quite a breadth of interest in the medieval world — ranging from accounts of the Crusades, to Norse mythology, to Italian political feuds — the country of single most historical interest to the authors and editors of the Garland was France, surpassing even England. Nor was the magazine’s interest in France restricted to the medieval era; like English Canadian print culture in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, the authors of the late 1830s and

148

1840s wrote of the modern French peoples as degenerate. In the “Sketches of Paris” series, for example, the author E. compares the practice of animal fighting to the supposedly animalistic nature of the French themselves; in another instalment, E. describes how the festival of Mardi Gras has lost its former glory amidst the French people’s fruitless struggle for liberty. Moreover, in “The Battle of the Plains of Abram,” an author using the initials D.C. espouses the historically questionable argument that the

British — the “freest of the free” — fight for the freedom bequeathed to them by their ancestors, whereas “France’s chivalry” is seemingly dead (105). The anonymous review of X.B. Saintine’s Picciola makes a point of denouncing the immorality of most modern light French literature before praising Picciola as an exception to the rule. The magazine even published an anecdote about “La Fontaine,” the lyricist of the opera Astrée, who thinks that the work is such “wretched! detestable! trash!” (390) that he looks down upon the Parisians for embracing it. In “Acquaintance with the Great,” one A.R. recommends that readers should generally avoid the writing of modern French patriots; the same author comments further in “Intelligence Not the Test of Virtue” that the French lost their moral principles in the rush towards the principles of enlightenment. Common among these and many other depictions of the French in the Garland is the sense that the culture of modern France had degenerated since the days of chivalry. Even though English

Canadian authors saw modern French culture as suspect at best, and degenerate at worst, they could nevertheless appreciate medieval French cultural traditions; associating

French Canadians with medieval French culture thus became a way of establishing a further rupture between French Canada and modern France.

149

English Canadian depictions of French history changed dramatically after the rebellions. Whereas the literary magazines and general print culture of the 1820s and early 1830s denied the legitimacy of French cultures by silencing their histories, magazines of the 1840s such as the Garland actively embraced the medieval French, particularly for their contributions to the arts and to high European society. One particularly interesting series on medieval French rebellions, though, breaks this mould of discussing only artistic or cultural pastimes. Eliza Lanesford Cushing (a frequent contributor in the magazine’s early years, and, after the death of John Gibson, its editor) personally contributed several fictional works of both prose and poetry set in medieval

France; Cushing’s repeated return to the theme of rebellion in these pieces offers insight into her shifting attitude toward rebel activities in contemporary Lower Canada — an attitude which gradually attached more and more justification, even righteousness, to rebellion by the French populace.

Eliza Lanesford Cushing on French Rebellions

Born in 1784 in Brighton, Massachusetts, Eliza Lanesford Cushing (née Foster) belonged to a family of literary women. Her mother, Hannah Webster Foster, and her sisters Harriet Vaughan Cheney and T.D. Foster, were all authors. The eldest sister,

Hannah White Barrett, contributed greatly to the benevolent societies of Montreal

(MacDonald, “Foster Sisters”). Barrett was the first to move to Montreal, arriving by

1826; her sisters followed in the early 1830s. There, the youngest three contributed as authors and as editors to the local literary scene. All three wrote extensively for the

Literary Garland, which Cushing also edited from 1850-1851. Cushing and Cheney also

150 co-published and edited The Snow Drop or Juvenile Magazine from 1847-1853. Susan

Mann Trofimenkoff argues that Cushing’s writing seems divorced from its historical and political context, claiming, “Few of Mrs. Cushing’s pieces have any Canadian content or interest; only one (published in Godey’s Magazine in Philadelphia) even hints that she was aware of living in exciting times in Lower Canada.” However, I argue that Cushing did indeed react to her political surrounds with her writing, but chose to present her arguments through historical fiction rather than through direct commentary on contemporary events. Even in the earliest days of her career, while she was still living in the United States, she published two historical novels, Saratoga: A Tale of the Revolution

(1824) and Yorktown: An Historical Romance (1826). These novels about the American

Revolution cannot avoid being political; they certainly reveal Cushing’s pro-American sentiments, but as Elisa Tamarkin describes, they also participate in a trend in which “by the nineteenth century, the revolutionary moment is fungible enough to recall America’s admiration of the British” (188, emphasis in original). In British North America in the

1830s, Cushing’s combination of Anglophilia and pride in the American rebels puts her in a relatively unbiased position from which to comment on the Lower Canadian rebellions. As in her early works, Cushing turned to historical fiction in The Literary

Garland to explore issues of loyalty and rebellion, particularly among the French.

In the May 1840 issue, under the initials “E.L.C.,” Cushing contributed a poem entitled “Francis I, and the Chevalier Bayard,” which she indicates was written in

Montreal on February 25 of that year. By this time, Lord Durham, who had been sent by the British Parliament to examine the causes of the rebellion and propose solutions to stabilize the Canadas, had completed his Report on the Affairs of British North America

151 and presented it in England. Although Durham made a number of recommendations, his three main suggestions were to unite the Canadas, to give the colony more independence of government, and to enact what came to be called responsible government – i.e., that the governor’s executive council had to be comprised of elected members of the majority party in the colonial Assembly (Francis, Jones and Smith 290). Cushing’s poem, though set in France in 1515, grapples with some of the issues of colonial rule by questioning what good government should look like.

The poem deals with the knighting of King Francis I of France (1494-1547) after his victory at the Battle of Marignan. Young Francis, just turned 21, had been king for less than a year, and this was his first major military action; in a way, this battle proved his ability — and justified his right — to lead. Historically, after such a battle, it would be appropriate to distribute honours to those who had fought with especial bravery, such as a knighthood to those who had merited it, but in the poem Francis claims that his kingship alone does not qualify him for this happy duty: before he can knight anyone else, he himself must win that honour. Addressing his army, Francis says:

Ye well may claim, a guerdon meet, for valour such as yours,

But e’er my hand crown your deserts, I for the boon must sue

To him, ‘sans peur et sans reproche,’ Bayard the wise and true. (267)

Francis submits himself for the honour of knighthood to Pierre Terrail, the seigneur de

Bayard, who was generally esteemed as one of the noblest and kindest knights of the time, a knight “without fear and beyond reproach.” In late medieval and early modern

France, the power of the king was conceptually absolute and God-given; the king was, except for the pope, the ultimate authority. This mentality of the king’s ultimate

152 superiority is borne out by Jacques de Mailles’s 16th century biography of the Chevalier

Bayard, an excerpt from which Cushing uses (via Sara Coleridge’s 1825 translation) as the epigraph for her poem. The epigraph reads: “The king, desirous of doing him

[Bayard] signal honour, received the order of knighthood from his hands. Wherein he did wisely; for by one more worthy it could not have been conferred on him” (267). In de

Mailles, the emphasis is on the king’s wisdom and generosity in honouring Bayard. The opportunity to knight the king is just another honour that Francis distributes — albeit a very high one. The flow of power is unidirectional from king to subject. However, in

Cushing’s account of this episode, the king’s authority seems to derive from — and be responsible to — the “wise and true” people. In order for him to do his job, to exercise his authority, his command must first be validated by the knight held in highest esteem by his peers. This is akin to a form of responsible government: the king — much like a governor in Canada, according to Durham’s proposal — seeks the counsel and approval of Bayard, who is in a way elected by his peers as the best of their fraternity. However,

Cushing moderates this republican sentiment: Bayard initially demurs, replying that the king is already “knight all knights above” (268). He refuses to act until the king

“charge[s]” him with a “royal mandate” (268) to invest him with the rank; only then does he happily and faithfully spring into action. This pseudo-accountability to the people — at least, to the elite among the people — may be a courteous formality, but if it is so, it is one that endears the king to his people and indicates the strength of his character and the depth of his subjects’ love.

In the poem, Cushing performs a diplomatic balancing act: of course responsible government would affirm the authority of the governor (and by extension the British

153

Parliament), but it would be the polite and chivalric thing to allow the people the opportunity to express their allegiance directly. Cushing goes into raptures about the flowering of chivalry in France throughout Francis’s reign; she also tells us that more than any other pleasure, Francis “better loved to meet the foe ’neath the Oriflamme of

France” (268). The oriflamme, a banner with a golden sun and flames on a red background, was the battle standard of the kings of France for much of the Middle Ages; however, the last recorded instance of its use was at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415

(R.W. Barber 224), after which it was replaced by fleurs de lys on a white background.

The Battle of Marignan occurred a full century after the oriflamme fell into disuse, so it is highly unlikely that Francis I ever fought anyone under that banner. Although it is not hard to imagine that Cushing did not know the history of French battle standards and that this is simply a mistake on her part, this “mistake” still accomplishes a purpose quite appropriate to France at the end of the Middle Ages. It establishes her account in a deeper medieval past, closer to the height of chivalry – something late medieval French culture itself was quite keen on. As Barbara Rosenwein puts it, “the end of chivalry was paradoxically the height of the chivalric fantasy” (319). It is at the end of the Middle

Ages that heraldry becomes popular; the various chivalric orders – the Order of the

Garter, the Order of the Golden Fleece – are established as the period draws to a close. In this context, Cushing’s identifying chivalry as a governing principle in the age of Francis

I is quite appropriate. The more she emphasizes the chivalric nature of Francis’s reign, the more she reveals her desire for chivalry in contemporary society, particularly in contemporary government. In the fantasy of a chivalric society, only the best and most virtuous would speak for the people; only the best among those would govern. Restricting

154 membership on the Executive Council to those in the Assembly would ideally yield exactly the same results as letting the governor choose whomever he wished, because merit would be conspicuous, easily ranked, and rewarded appropriately. Were Canada a chivalric society such as Cushing’s fantasy of the society of Francis I, allowing Canada more self-government and responsible government would be a formality, but a courteous one — and courtesy is the heart of chivalry.

In contrast to this first portrayal of Francis I stands one that Cushing published two years later in 1842, a work of fiction called “Bourbon: An Historical Tale.” This piece is also set early in the reign of Francis I, but it provides a very different portrayal of the king and court. This story centers on the Duke of Bourbon, a noble of Francis’s court who has risen to prominence in part through his natural abilities and in part through the intervention of the king’s mother, who is madly in love with him. Her love, however, is unreciprocated, and she uses all of her power to exact revenge by poisoning the king’s relationship with Bourbon. Until his mother’s words worm their way into his heart, King

Francis is poised on the brink of greatness:

jealous of his [King Francis’s] glory and renown, of his splendid

conquests, and rapidly increasing power, all Europe had banded in a

general confederacy against him; but, undaunted, and self-confident, he

was preparing to defy them, when the startling fact was forced upon him,

that in the person of his high constable and sword-bearer [Bourbon], he

must recognize a domestic foe, whose enmity was more to be dreaded than

the united machinations of Emperor and Pope. (79)

155

With this depiction of Francis, Cushing establishes a precedent in the story for a smaller power standing up to the unjust acts of a larger one. We are clearly meant at this point to sympathize with the “undaunted and self-confident” Francis, who is merely defending himself against the bullying of jealous Europe. (One wonders, though, how this fictional

Francis achieved his splendid conquests if not at the expense of the other European nations; perhaps their “united machinations” are not unprovoked.) In the story, Francis’s battles against more powerful forces are clearly well justified; however, at the same time as Cushing establishes this dynamic of the plucky little guy standing up for his rights, she also turns the tables and makes Francis the unjust persecutor of his sword-bearer, the

Duke of Bourbon. Bourbon has shown no disloyalty to the king, and to Francis’s credit, he initially rebuffs all such suggestions, but his mother’s continued assault on Bourbon’s honour eventually insinuates itself into the king’s mind, and he begins to suspect

Bourbon of treason. He unfairly accuses the duke and seizes his lands, ironically driving

Bourbon to commit the crimes of which he was first accused: “Driven to desperation by a long series of injuries, and at that moment smarting beneath that last cruel act of tyranny, which stripped him of fortune and estates, the duke rushed to open revolt, not only to gratify his revenge, which was a virtue of the age, but as the only alternative which remained to him from disgrace and want” (87-88). As with Francis’s reaction to the

European powers, Bourbon’s revolt is not only understandable but also justified and even honourable. Even though Cushing tells us that avenging one’s honour “was a virtue of the age,” in order to make Bourbon’s actions more palatable to modern sensibilities, she casts his decision as the only one available to him that would not be utterly disgraceful. Even though both Francis and Bourbon are justified in defending themselves, the situation does

156 not work out well for either one of them. Francis loses a key advisor and a strong ally who could have helped him further his international ambitions; Bourbon flees into exile, and although he does win some glory as a mercenary, he dies alone after learning that his love has been forced to marry someone else.

This shift in Cushing’s characterization of Francis I seems remarkable given that the two accounts were published less than two years apart. No longer the ideal chivalric king, extending every courtesy to his knights, deriving his authority from them and responsible to them in turn, Francis is instead fallible, despite his best intentions for his kingdom and his subjects. During these two years, only one of Durham’s recommendations had been implemented, that of uniting the Canadas. Lower Canada

(now Canada East) got the worse part of the bargain: despite its having a significantly higher population than Upper Canada (670 000 to 480 000) (Francis, Jones and Smith

331), the two regions received equal representation of 42 seats each in the new Assembly.

To further the indignity, Lower Canada was relatively solvent before unification, whereas

Upper Canada had an unsustainable level of debt, which the two regions now had to share. The issues of self-government and responsible government were not even being debated in the British Parliament at this time. The chivalric fantasy made possible by the

Durham report had been betrayed, perhaps despite Britain’s best intentions towards

Lower Canada’s Anglophone population. Britain’s intentions for Lower Canada’s French population, on the other hand, were not so benign, since one of the stated goals of the

Durham report was to assimilate the French and eradicate French culture in the colony.

As time progresses, Cushing becomes even more sympathetic to rebel causes: in

“The Knight of Navarre: A Tale of the Fourteenth Century,” published in March of 1843,

157 rebellion is not merely justifiable but morally righteous. The French have captured the territory of Evreaux (Évreux), which lies in Normandy although it belongs to the

Kingdom of Navarre (primarily on the French/Spanish border); the French have also imprisoned the Navarrois king despite having sworn not to. The rebellion in this story assumes both a political and a religious element: the French are “invaders” and

“oppressors” (98) in the Navarrois territory, and one of the knights even profanes the local church by spilling the holy wine and killing the priest. It is worth noting, too, that the priest has just blessed the wine, and thus the knight spills the blood of Christ as well as the blood of the priest. The sacrilege is against an emphatically Catholic church. It is thus the moral and spiritual duty of the Navarrois to retake the castle and overthrow their oppressors, to whom they have been forced to swear oaths of loyalty. One possible reading of this story is as an allegory of French Canadian oppression at the hands of the

English. However, I argue that the nuances of the story also comment on two of the ways that French chivalric tradition could develop, one representing the path of Revolutionary

France, and the other, that of modern French Canada. The Navarrois in Evreaux, much like French Canadians in Lower Canada, are an isolated colony; in their isolation, they have maintained the spiritual and chivalric traditions of their ancestors. On the other hand, the French knights are like Napoleon’s army: godless, imperial aggressors who have given up both the honour and the faith required by the chivalric code. The rebellion in the story is in order to restore civil liberty under the traditional spirit of chivalry, not to break from the past by renouncing tradition.

Over the course of these three stories, we see the progress of Cushing’s political sympathies: she begins by wishing for an idealized, chivalric version of responsible

158 government, but at least initially her hopes fail to materialize and Lower Canada is left with less economic and political power than before the union. Let down by the British

Parliament, Cushing next concedes in “Bourbon” that rebellion can be justified, even if it often ends in sorrow. Finally, with “The Knight of Navarre” in 1843, Cushing articulates a context in which rebellion is necessary to resist cultural hegemony. The growing divide between the governor and the Assembly in the Canadas may have inspired Cushing’s dramatic endorsement of civil liberties in this last story. In 1842, governor Charles Bagot did abide by the spirit of responsible government and ask the elected politicians Louis-

Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin to be part of his Executive Council, but in

1843, the new governor Charles Metcalfe refused to have anything to do with the French politician, Lafontaine. Despite these disappointments, and the initial failure of the rebellions to achieve responsible government, the work of authors like Cushing in keeping the discourses of reform alive in the popular consciousness eventually paid off: the Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia would all achieve responsible government a few years later, in 1848.

Cushing was not the Garland’s only author to take an interest in French medievalism. Indeed, Gibson and Lovell printed quite a few other works relating to

French history that contributed to their goal of establishing in British North America a culture that was, in the words of Mary Lu MacDonald, “moral and genteel — Christian and middle class” (“Foster Sisters”). Once the rebellions were so thoroughly (and brutally) quashed, the French in the Canadas — like the French in Europe — posed little real military threat to established British power; not having broken from Christian tradition, though, the French Canadians also posed somewhat less of a religious threat

159 than did the newly secularized nation of France. Where both the French and the French

Canadians were safe, in the eyes of mainly Protestant English Canadian authors, was in the medieval past, before Catholicism and Protestantism parted ways. After the French-

English divide forced its way to the forefront of public discourse, Protestant anglophone authors began to write about French history as a way of controlling the narrative of emerging Canadian society, as a way of locating modern French Canadians (made

“Other” by their Roman Catholicism) within the safe space of a unified Christian past.

The Literary Garland on the Civility of the Medieval French

Although the rebellions were over by the time Gibson and Lovell launched The

Garland, they did print material written in the midst of the turmoil revealing English

Canadian anxieties about the French threat. Susanna Moodie, one of their most patriotically British authors, submitted to the magazine a poem dated January 2, 1838.

This poem, entitled “The Banner of England. A Loyal Song,” exhorts her fellow citizens to defend “the standard of the free” (35) and not to let “A rebel band advance” (34).

Moodie takes some liberties with the exact nature of England’s battle standards in order to claim a longer symbolic history for the current British flag, one which would include its use during medieval conflicts with the French. Referring to the deeds of future King

Edward III of England (1312-1377) and his descendants in the Hundred Years’ War against France, she urges her modern compatriots to honour the example of “Brave

Edward and his gallant sons, / [Who] Beneath its shadow bled” (9-10). Just as the English banner was, during the Hundred Years’ War, “O’er Gallia’s hosts victorious, / [and] It

160 tam’d their pride of yore” (21-22), Moodie calls upon it now to tame the French rebels again.

Yet apart from Moodie’s piece written during the rebellions, the magazine is quite open to French medievalism, particularly in the less controversial realm of its cultural history rather than international military conflicts. In an excerpt entitled “Duelling

Anecdotes,”42 the author, John Gideon Millingen, credits France with introducing to

England the “honorable pastime” of duelling, “the field of single combat par excellence”

(423). More interestingly, it is not just the practice itself he attributes to the French, but also the codes of honour that go along with it. He argues, “If we are indebted to our neighbors for this practice, it is also to them we owe the various codes and regulations drawn out to equalise, as far as possible, the chances of victory, and to prevent any unfair advantage being obtained to the opposite party” (423). The regulations as well as their underlying spirit have their origins in medieval French tradition; therefore, according to

Millingen, contemporary English concepts of fairness in resolving gentlemen’s disputes trace their roots back to a chivalric spirit of fair combat developed in medieval France.

However, Millingen’s focus is not entirely on the indebtedness of English culture to French, but rather on the “most curious” (423) elements of these French traditions.

Before discussing contemporary anecdotes about duelling, he turns to the historian Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (c. 1540-1614) for some of the odder customs.

These “curious” practices include banning “infidel[s]” from participating in any fashion or even witnessing the duel, as well as searching the combatants to make sure they

42 These “anecdotes” come from Volume 1 of J.G. Millingen’s The History of Duelling: including, narratives of the most remarkable personal encounters that have taken place from the earliest period to the present time, originally published in London in 1841.

161 possess no “drugs, witchcraft, or charms about them” (423). Holy relics are permitted,

“yet it is not clearly decided what is to be done when both parties have not these relics, as no advantage should be allowed to one combatant more than to another” (423).

Millingen’s discussion of the strange customs of medieval French duellists emphasizes both their quaintness and their superstitious (i.e. Roman Catholic) nature, thereby simultaneously discrediting them and rendering them safely amusing. (The Church of

England does not share with the Roman Catholic Church a belief in the efficacy of relics.) The quaintness of these French traditions is an essential point: they may be amusing and instructive, but are of purely historical interest to contemporary British society. In the same way, much of English Canadian literary culture strove to depict not only the traditions of French Canadian communities but also the people themselves as relics of a bygone era. Magazines such as The Literary Garland turned increasingly to francophone cultures as sources of fable and fancy; this rooting of British North

America’s French cultures in the past effectively denied their validity in the present.

Other articles in the Garland continue this theme of western civilization being indebted — but not overly so — to the cultural accomplishments of medieval France. For example, T.D. Foster wrote for the magazine a series of “Sketches of the Italian Poets,” a biographical series covering Petrarch (1304-1374), Boccacio [Boccaccio]43 (1313-1375) and Metastasio (1698-1782). In her accounts of both of the late medieval/early renaissance poets, Foster both emphasizes and qualifies their French connections. Foster devotes a significant portion — almost a page out of seven — of her biography of

Boccacio to an anecdote describing how the poet’s father brought him as an infant from

43 Hereafter I use “Boccaccio” to designate the historical person, and Foster’s spelling of “Boccacio” for her characterization of him.

162

France to Italy after the tragic death of his French mother (555). In this, Foster takes her cue from Boccaccio himself, who promoted the idea that his mother was a noble Parisian; there does not, however, seem to be any evidence other than Boccaccio’s own stories

(and the acceptance of his word by a contemporary biographer) to support such a claim

(Papio). Thus on the one hand, Foster takes pains to establish Boccacio’s French lineage, even beyond what the historical record warrants; on the other hand, though, she establishes his lineage through an anecdote of his leaving France (and any maternal

French relatives) behind. Foster does not present this departure as an abjuration of his

French heritage; indeed, her construction of his character seems to belong more to the

“gay metropolis of fashion” (as she refers to modern Paris) than to “the time-hallowed sanctuary of Rome” (555). Nevertheless, in Foster’s story, the adult Boccacio’s ties to

France all lie on a genealogical or spiritual level; any French influence on him is part of his heritage, his past, and not part of the political reality of his present.

Foster’s story of Petrarch presents an interesting case for comparison, because

Petrarch spent much of his life — and many of his most poetically productive years — in

Avignon and Vaucluse, papal enclaves in the south of France. Before naming Petrarch in her story proper (although he is named in the title and epigraph), Foster introduces him to us as “the poet of Vanclusa” (449).44 This sobriquet is perhaps unusual for someone who

(as she acknowledges) descended from a noble Florentine family, wrote in Latin and

Italian, and was crowned the first poet laureate of Rome. Foster explains in the article how one of the most famous Italian poets came to be so intimately connected with a

44 From the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, the modern department of Vaucluse was known as the Comtat Venaissin; in the Middle Ages, the name Vauclusa would have referred specifically to a valley and village famous for its spring within the Comtat.

163 region in southeastern France: Petrarch’s father, having been exiled from Florence for political reasons, brought the family to the Papal seat of Avignon when Petrarch was a small child. While on a short break from his studies, Petrarch fell in love with the nearby rural valley of Vanclusa, and made it his home for much of his adult life. On one level, then, Foster seems to be granting credit to the French region that welcomed Petrarch and his family, and inspired his poetry to such a degree that, Foster argues, “his most striking images are drawn from the varied scenery around the fountain of Vanclusa” (452). Yet again, Foster lessens the debt owed by Petrarch to his upbringing in Avignon and the surrounding areas: she describes the atmosphere at his rural retreat one night as “a lovely

Italian evening” (449). It is unclear whether she means that the weather that particular night was more like an evening somewhere in Italy than in southeast France, or whether she considers Avignon and the region of Vanclusa to have been Italian because they were technically papal fiefdoms, and thus did not belong to the Kingdom of France (or to any of the other Frankish kingdoms which would eventually merge with France) (O’Malley

140). The number of officials of the Roman Catholic Church residing in Avignon throughout the fourteenth century would have given the city quite the cosmopolitan makeup and significantly increased the Italian presence in the city, but the local language and culture — particularly in the more rural areas, such as Vaucluse — was still

Provençal. By acknowledging Vanclusa as the inspiration for some of Petrarch’s best poetry, Foster again allows for French cultural influence, but by claiming the region as

Italian, she also presents the local inhabitants as a colonized people whose French heritage does nothing to change their political present.

164

Modern and Medieval French Crusaders in the Works of John Breakenridge

Another author and poet of the 1840s took a slightly different approach to this phenomenon of distancing French cultural heritage from modern francophone peoples.

John Breakenridge, who wrote for the Garland under the pseudonym of Claud Halcro

(the name of a bard in Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate), also published a separate volume of poetry with the Kingston shop of John Rowlands in 1846. In this independent volume,

The Crusades, and Other Poems, Breakenridge wholeheartedly embraces the bravery and

Christianity of a number of French Crusaders in the Holy Land; yet, he condemns any

French military action taking place in Europe — whether in the Middle Ages, or in modern times. Breakenridge’s appreciation for the medieval French extends to their artistic and cultural developments (such as the entwined traditions of chivalry and of the wandering troubadour), but he sees the British — and emphatically not the French — as the modern inheritors of these cultural accomplishments. In Breakenridge’s view, the

British have built upon the cultural foundations of the past, whereas the French have lost their cultural and spiritual path, misapplying lessons from their history and thus leaving their modern society broken.

Relatively little has been recorded in any comprehensive fashion about the life of

John Breakenridge. He was born in Niagara (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) in 1820 (Rand

388), possibly to John and Ann Breakenridge. The elder John Breakenridge was a barrister in Niagara, and the younger joined the same profession, studying first at Upper

Canada College (Rand 388) before entering Osgoode Hall, Upper Canada’s only law school at the time, in 1837 (“Breakenridge”). Towards the end of his studies, in 1841, he served in Belleville as Deputy Clerk of the Peace for Victoria District (Journals of the

165

Legislative Assembly, Appendices M and N). After his clerkship, he was called to the bar in 1842 (“Breakenridge”). During his legal studies, he also wrote poetry: his poem “The

Crusaders’ Hymn Before Jerusalem” appeared in February 1840 in John Strachan’s

Cobourg newspaper, The Church, and subsequently garnered attention on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, the London magazine The Churchman: A Magazine in Defence of the Church and Constitution reprinted the poem in June 1840. Secular publications likewise took notice of the new poet: The New York Albion also printed the “Hymn,” and

The Literary Garland took it from the Albion in 1846 (“Our Table” 288). It is odd, though, that the Garland copied the poem from the Albion: Breakenridge had already published two of his “Claud Halcro” poems with the Garland, and a third would be published within two months of the appearance of the “Hymn.” Moreover, Breakenridge had just released The Crusades, and Other Poems, which the Garland was able to review the next month. Perhaps Gibson’s unwillingness to wait to review the entire volume stemmed from his enthusiasm for Breakenridge’s poetry and his desire to share it with the

Garland’s readers as soon as possible. In fact, Gibson waxed enthusiastic about

Breakenridge’s newly released volume before he had even had a chance to read it: “We have not yet seen it, but we are certain, from what we have seen of Mr. Breckanridge’s

[sic] writings, that it will adorn the literature of this Continent, and, we would fain hope, win for the author a ‘European reputation’” (“Our Table” 288). Breakenridge’s career was, however, cut short. After a period living in Kingston (at least during 1846-1847), by

1851 he had moved back to Belleville and established a practice there; unfortunately, however, he died not long thereafter, in 1854, at the age of only 34 (Rand 388).

166

Breakenridge’s The Crusades, and Other Poems covers a much broader range of time periods and topics than its title might suggest. Breakenridge divided it into four parts, the first of which is indeed a series of poems about the Crusades; the second versifies a variety of Old Testament biblical stories; the third is a miscellany on modern topics (including a poem about Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution, and another, “Canada,” for which he won Upper Canada College’s poetry prize); the fourth is a fictional long poem about northeastern African nobles sold into slavery. This diverse collection juxtaposes Breakenridge’s characterization of the medieval French at the time of the Crusades with that of the modern French at the time of the Revolution and the

Napoleonic Wars. As George Longmore did two decades earlier, Breakenridge presents a disconnection between the modern Revolutionary French and their medieval ancestors, but unlike Longmore, Breakenridge does not present this disconnection as a gap in their history, but rather as a dysfunctional relationship between the nation’s heritage and the modern needs of its populace. Breakenridge draws a picture of a nation whose leaders are so trapped in its past that it cannot have a stable and functioning present.

Even among the leaders of the First Crusade, the French knights stand out in

Breakenridge’s narratives for their particular bravery and morality. In the first poem in the collection, “The Battle of Dorylæum” (1097), the Crusaders’ army under the command of Lord Boemond [Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch and Taranto] meets

“thousands on thousands” (12) of Turks in battle. Although initially the Crusaders’ hearts

“know no fear” (12), the sheer size of the enemy force eventually leaves them “worn and wearied” (15), until “gallant Normandy” [Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy] rallies their spirits, calling to his fellow knights:

167

“Rally! rally! brave Knights, charge again — wheel about!

O! Boemond, fly not — Apulia’s afar:

Turn, for honor or death, turn again to the war!

Turn Tancred! Otranto lies far from your ken;

Whither fly you? O, charge, gallant Tancred, again!

Bring hither my banner — ‘God wills it!’ I cry,

’Tis better to fall, than dishonoured to fly!”

Shouting Normandy! Normandy! fiercely he rides;

And Tancred returning, the glory divides. (16-17)

The nationalities of the knights in question are all emphasized: Normandy, the only one not to lose faith, is identified exclusively by his northern French duchy, and the other two leaders are tied to their southern Italian roots. Normandy reminds Boemond, the Prince of

Taranto, that his home of Apulia [Puglia, in southern Italy] is far away, as is Tancred’s

Otranto (a city in Puglia). It is partially the threat of dishonour, but also the noble example of Normandy that brings back to the battle those in the midst of retreat. The cry around which they rally is even “Normandy,” a reminder of that knight’s bravery — and by extension that of his people — in sustaining the rest. Soon after Normandy reinvigorates the Crusading army, even if only for an honourable death, reinforcements arrive: “To the rescue De Bouillon bears gallantly down, / and the Turks to the four winds of Heaven are strown” (17). Godfrey De Bouillon, another Frankish knight, thus saves the Crusading army from certain defeat.

168

It is, however, more than simple good fortune that he and the Crusaders under his command arrive in time to save the day; it is a combination of divine providence that seems to shine particularly strongly on Godfrey, and his nearly-mythical knightly prowess. Breakenridge devotes the longest and most exalting description of all of the

Crusaders to Godfrey two poems later, in “The Siege of Antioch.” Breakenridge introduces Godfrey first and foremost among the knights:

Godfrey de Bouillon first behold,

In panoply of burnished steel;

Deftly he doth the saddle hold,

Nor may his weight the war-horse feel:

In council calm, in action fierce,

And as Numidian lion bold,

He can in war the vanguard pierce,

In council, wisdom’s plans unfold.45 (20-21)

Godfrey is such an accomplished equestrian that he floats above his horse; he is both the sagest of strategists and the fiercest of field commanders and warriors. Moreover, his motivation to go on Crusade is properly religious: it is his desire to protect pilgrims “who to the Holy Shrine / . . . Went to implore the aid divine” from the “deeds that made the blood run cold, / Wrought by the bearded Moslem’s power” (21). Breakenridge’s

Godfrey is the ideal Crusader: noble, pious, brave, strong and wise.

For Breakenridge, the French are an integral part of the mythic qualities of his stories of the Crusaders. Yet he does not mythicize only the French Crusaders; indeed, he

45 Breakenridge continues his encomium of Godfrey for another sixteen lines.

169 extends this impulse to the rest of the Crusading army by ascribing French elements to the group as a whole, even beyond what the historical record justifies. In his account of

“The Battle of Dorylæum,” whose historical counterpart took place in 1097,

Breakenridge inserts the Knights Templar and their battle cry: “Beau-seant! Beau-seant!

En avant, brave Knights! / Where the foemen are thickest, the bold Templar fights” (15).

The Knights Templar were, in fact, established in the aftermath of the First Crusade, after

Jerusalem had been conquered, but before the rest of the Levant was safe for Christian pilgrims to travel to other holy sites (M. Barber, New Knighthood 2-8). Even though they would not have been at the Battle of Dorylæum, they would nevertheless constitute for

Breakenridge’s audience a recognizable (and romanticized) Crusading monastic order.

The Templars were not exclusively French, but their motto was, and Breakenridge further emphasizes their Frenchness (and thus the Frenchness of the bravest knights in the thick of the battle) by cheering them onward in French. For Breakenridge, the French — more than any other people — are part of the myth of chivalric heroism, and the myth part of the French: he removes the French Crusaders from the realm of history and integrates them into the realm of fantasy.

Once Breakenridge ascribes this quasi-fantastic status to the French, their story becomes easier to control. He is able to render the mythic elements of French Crusading history a part of British heritage by rendering those who create the myth — the troubadours — loyal to the English crown. In “The Troubadour to the Captive Richard

Cœur de Lion,” Breakenridge writes of the loyalty shown by a French troubadour to

England’s King Richard I during the monarch’s captivity by the Duke of Austria. In his notes, Breakenridge describes the legendary “story of Blondell, or Blundell, discovering

170 the dungeon of the royal captive, Cœur de Lion, by traversing Germany, and singing beneath the walls of every fortress an air well known to his royal master; till at length the

King from his dungeon answered it, and thus his prison was known” (62). Breakenridge’s

Blondell is based on Blondel de Nesle (fl. 12th C), a troubadour from northern France.

Although the troubadour himself was real (and quite artistically productive), the legend of his finding Richard in the dungeon is likely apocryphal, in part because Richard’s captors made no secret of his location. It is somewhat strange that a French troubadour should not only display such unusual devotion to Richard, but also refer to him as “my

King” (44); although Richard controlled extensive lands in France, Nesle was not among his territories. Yet, the legend of Blondell serves the purpose of subjugating French artistic creation to the English crown, thereby laying claim not only to French artistic heritage for Britain, but also to British rights to rule over French subjects (who should be as loyal as Blondell).

In Breakenridge’s version, Blondell completely abjures any political ties he might have to France. In contrast to the Holy Land narratives, in which French knights perform fantastic deeds of Christian chivalry, the story of Richard’s captivity pits French political interests immediately against English ones, a contest that would not be mythic but rather all too real for Canadians in the 1840s. In such a contest for Breakenridge, British political priorities must come first. Quite interestingly, Blondell exhorts England to punish “the traitor-king, Philip of France” (45) for Richard’s unjust captivity, even though Philip was not directly responsible for imprisoning Richard. He certainly made the most of Richard’s captivity, however, by attempting to seize the English king’s

French territories while they were thus vulnerable (“Richard I”). Duke Leopold of

171

Austria and Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI were his immediate jailers, yet Breakenridge does not have Blondell call for vengeance against Austria or the Holy Roman Empire.

Instead, Blondell’s vision of retribution against Austria is one tinged with sorrow and even sympathy, imagining a future time when another French traitor-king will take what is not his:

On my soul there comes rushing a foresight of woe,

And before me long years of the dark future flow.

The palace of Austria, proud Shoenbrunn,

The Gaul hath invaded, the conqueror won.

Long years have gone by, but the Heavens are just,

And Austria’s hopes trodden down in the dust. (46)

The future invading Gaul is presumably Napoleon, who commandeered Vienna’s

Schönbrunn Palace after Napoleon’s troops captured Vienna in 1805 (Iby). Breakenridge casts Vienna’s fall to Napoleon as one immoral act punishing another; this second wrong requires yet another avenger finally to punish the French. Whereas the British lineage inherits the avenging spirit of the Crusaders, Napoleon is heir to Philip’s treacherous impulses.

In Breakenridge’s modern poem, “Napoleon Buonaparte, and the French

Revolution,” the French nobles have likewise inherited the wrong elements of medieval

French culture. The poem opens with a scene that might be taking place at any period of

French history from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century:

Peace o’er the nations reigns!

Gay revel in the monarch’s hall —

172

Sweet music’s soul-entrancing strains!

Licentiousness, that bodes his fall,

Runs riot in the noble’s veins!

Cares not the feudal Lord

For all his vulgar horde

Of starving tenantry. (101)

The scene is a burlesque interpretation of the chivalric courts of legend. The nation is at peace only because the peasants have not yet revolted; a modern troubadour plays “soul- entrancing” music to a noble who seems not to have much of a soul; the “feudal Lord” remembers only his tenants’ obligations to him, and forgets his to them. Although the trappings of the medieval world are at play, the country has lost its true connection to the spirit of its chivalric past. France’s modern feudal rulers hold onto the structure of their medieval world without understanding how to adapt it to modern needs; moreover, the sinfulness of Breakenridge’s French noble indicates that in the author’s mind, France had turned its back on true religion even before the official institution of state atheism under the Republic. Thus, in Breakenridge’s text, the relationship between the modern French and their medieval past is fundamentally broken.

Yet, to Breakenridge, the peasantry is no better: in their uprising, “A godless creed usurps the place / Of Faith — Religion wanes, and dies!” (102). Their revolt against the monarchy — however out of touch the nobles are with modern needs — is, to

Breakenridge, an assault against God, and their battle cry a perversion of Christian teaching:

Death to the Bourbon King!

173

Woe! Principalities and powers!

The giant strength of numbers ours —

Your funeral dirge we sing! (102)

Just as the court scene was a parody of chivalric courts, the revolutionaries’ credo is a distortion of Biblical verse: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (King James Version, Eph. 6.12). For the peasants, the oppressive principalities and powers are not abstract spiritual agents, but quite real and immediate figures of authority. Although the revolutionaries do indeed wrestle against spiritual wickedness in high places, they have abandoned the notion that the strife is “not against flesh and blood.” Trapped in feudal drudgery, the revolutionaries have forgotten the spiritual lessons of their medieval past as much as their oppressors have.

Unlike Breakenridge’s Godfrey De Bouillon, who asserts that his “steel-capped lance” is a Christian “staff” (“Siege of Antioch” 21), the modern revolutionaries place their “Pikes at the palace gate” to declare that “There is no God!” (102)

Napoleon is, of course, one of the worst offenders in using inappropriate means to reclaim the country’s medieval glory. The essence of French chivalry was, in

Breakenridge’s earlier poems in the creation, the innate humanity of the knights, something that Napoleon and his contemporaries sorely lack. Although Breakenridge’s

Crusaders are certainly responsible for killing a vast number of Turks, their French leaders in particular show mercy and kindness to the most vulnerable members of their enemies’ society. Breakenridge’s final poem about the Crusades tells the story of

Godfrey’s brother Baldwin of Boulogne, who became the first king of Jerusalem

174

(although the second ruler, after Godfrey), coming across a lone, pregnant Arab woman in the desert. One of the knights steps forward to kill her, but Baldwin saves her not only from the cruel knight but also from the dangers of giving birth unaided in the desert. He covers her gently with his own cloak “To shelter her from shameless gaze, / While she her babe did bear” (53); moreover, he leaves “his Esquires three, / With camels and attendants there, / To help, if help might be” (54). Baldwin’s generosity and kindness even in times of war puts Napoleon’s vicious inhumanity in stark relief. Breakenridge writes of the massacre in the aftermath of Napoleon’s capture of the Syrian city of Jaffa, exhorting his muse:

while the burning tear

Of pity starts for those who fell

In one red murder, born of fear

Invoke the very fiends of hell

To curse the damning deed!

Three thousand captives feed

Th’uncovered fosse with dead! (109)

Breakenridge is (justifiably) outraged by Napoleon’s slaughter of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war. Even though Breakenridge has no problem with Christian knights killing Muslim combatants on the field of battle, where there is some romantic glory to be won, he cannot condone Napoleon’s ruthless and anti-chivalric massacre of people who have already surrendered. Although Napoleon follows in the physical footsteps of the

Crusaders, reaching “The blood-stained walls of Acre! / . . . [Where] Richard stormed a

175

Paynim band, the Holy Cross upon his breast” (110), his march on the Holy Land is again presented as a perversion of medieval history.

Napoleon reaches out in vain to reclaim the glory of France under Charlemagne, but Breakenridge presents his martial victories as morally empty because they lack the

(Christian) spirit of medieval chivalry. For Napoleon, and for France, the ambition for

“The Crown of Charlemagne!” is a “dream replete with woe!” (118). The abuses of the past by the modern French render hollow the legacy of even Charlemagne for them: like all of the French chivalric traditions that Breakenridge presents in the poem, it has no more substance than a dream. Yet by no means does Breakenridge see historical tradition and glory as things unattainable by modern nations: indeed, England draws upon the strength of its “glorious days” under “England’s noblest virgin Queen” [Elizabeth I,

1553-1603] (116) in order to beat back Napoleon. For Breakenridge, England not only remembers its past but also knows how to apply its legacy in the modern world; France, on the other hand, may remember its chivalric glory but it has forgotten the essential elements that made it great. These elements that to Breakenridge are the essence of

French chivalry — bravery, humanity, artistry, and Christian faith — no longer exist in his depiction of France; he creates a cultural rupture between France’s medieval and modern periods. Breakenridge’s England, on the other hand, takes full advantage of not only its own “glorious days” but also those of France: his England is the true heir to the moral and spiritual legacy of French chivalry.

Assimilation Narratives in Robert Shives’ The Amaranth

Like Breakenridge’s The Crusades, and Other Poems and Montreal’s Literary

176

Garland, Saint John’s Amaranth also contributed to the burgeoning trend of French medievalism in British North America. Like its Upper and Lower Canadian counterparts,

The Amaranth treated French history and culture with a combination of enthusiasm and wariness; yet the relationship between the French and English in New Brunswick in the late 1830s and early 1840s was significantly different from that experienced by the

Canadas. As with the other colonies of British North America, New Brunswick in the late

1830s and 1840s underwent stirrings towards responsible government; there, however, the two decades were not quite as fraught in terms of ethnic and political tensions as they were in the Canadas. Francis, Jones and Smith claim that the political atmosphere in New

Brunswick was more stable than in the other colonies because

A relatively homogeneous group of Loyalists and their descendants had

controlled the colony until the 1830s. Moreover, since Anglicans initially

made up a near majority of the population, the position of the Church of

England as the established church caused less resentment among New

Brunswick’s English-speaking population than it did elsewhere. (369)

The French-speaking Acadians comprised a not-insignificant minority, approximately 15 percent of the population in the middle of the century. They were concentrated in the colony’s northeast, far from the centre of power in Saint John, but they certainly did not live in isolation: in fact, their communities frequently assimilated Irish, Scottish, English and even Québecois/e immigrants (Francis, Jones and Smith 365-366). (In Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, by contrast, the Acadian returnees mainly assimilated into anglophone communities.)

177

Yet despite the assimilation of anglophones by these francophone communities in

New Brunswick, and the Acadians’ loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, the English literary scene in Saint John in the 1840s seemed not to perceive French cultures as enough of a threat to silence their history in English-language publications, as had happened across British North America in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century.

Indeed, The Amaranth engaged extensively with medieval French history. Like many of the works published in the Canadas such as the variety of articles in The Literary

Garland and John Breakenridge’s Crusades, The Amaranth treated the medieval French with somewhat ambivalent feelings; unlike the Canadian publications, however, The

Amaranth did not depict French culture as entirely rooted in the past.46 Although the

Maritimes were certainly affected by the rebellions in the Canadas, the tensions between francophone and anglophone communities were of a different nature: at least according to the anglophone authors, the conflict in the Maritimes was more sociological than economic. To the anglophone contributors to The Amaranth, francophone communities still posed a threat unless and until they could be assimilated into British North American culture. In The Amaranth, representations of French medievalism are split along gendered lines: medieval French noblewomen who marry into English families — and bring with them French cultural pursuits — are safe, but medieval French men are far more dangerous, posing the potential to corrupt and assimilate English society.

Robert Shives, the publisher of The Amaranth, was born in Aberdeen in Scotland around 1815, though his immediate heritage was not Scottish but rather British North

46 The Amaranth thus also stands in contrast to the American vision of French-Acadian medievalism promoted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his long poem Evangeline. In the poem, Longfellow emphasizes the notion that the Acadians’ lifestyle is little different from that of their medieval French ancestors.

178

American: his parents were residents of Saint John, New Brunswick, and were simply visiting Scotland at the time of his birth. Shives entered the printing industry at a young age, working as an apprentice for the New Brunswick Courier starting in 1827. In 1840, he started his own literary publication, The Amaranth, the first number of which appeared in January 1841. Although The Amaranth did not enjoy the success of the Garland, it nevertheless lasted 36 full issues, until Shives decided at the end of 1843 that the slim profit margin was no longer worth the work (Rice). Interestingly, even though the majority of articles in his magazines were originals written by Nova Scotians and New

Brunswickers, apparently some of his readership complained that there wasn’t enough original material. In May of 1841, Shives responded to these apparent criticisms by indicating that some of the magazine’s readers have told him they “preferred a good selected article, to an original one”; moreover, he writes, it “is not a want of such original matter that prevents our complying with their wishes. We have received many original contributions, which we are sorry to say, are not sufficiently well written to claim a place in our pages” (159). Of course he would want to present the magazine as highly selective, but both the criticism and his response indicate the strength of his readership’s appetite for local literature, which would in turn influence what Shives selected from other publications. Logically, he seems to have used local interest in French medievalism to guide his publication of further selections on the topic from other periodicals.

Like that of The Literary Garland, much of the French-related material in The

Amaranth praises the historical cultural accomplishments of the French: the article

“Charlemagne,” for example, praises the emperor for being “the wisest man of the age”

(14) and for contributing to the state of Christianity throughout France. An anecdote

179 about “the first troubadour on record” (48), William Count of Poitou, is likewise appreciative of the count’s sacrifices as a crusader. The Amaranth also shared with the rest of British North American print culture the general sense that the modern French are corrupt and dissipated; however, The Amaranth saw this power to corrupt as particularly strong among French men (and especially noblemen). Virtuous women of all nationalities, including the French, are frequently depicted as the victims of this fearsome strain of French masculinity. In “The Condemned of Lucerne,” a previously honourable

Swiss man falls prey to “the soul-destructive atheistical philosophy of the French school”

(34) while fighting to defend his country against the French Directory and then Napoleon.

He becomes a robber and murderer, in the process inadvertently implicating — and condemning to death — his beloved and pure-hearted wife. In Emma C. Embury’s “The

Abbot of La Trappe,” the young abbot succumbs to the corrupting influence of the court of Louis XIV, taking a lover who dies as a result of his dissipation. Because of her death, the abbot deeply repents his debauchery and reforms his own behaviour as well as the code of conduct of his order. In “Pauline Rosier,” a poor but virtuous French woman is cast aside by her wealthy and noble French husband, and her child taken away from her by his order to be raised by peasant strangers. Nor are French noblemen in The Amaranth dangerous only to French women: in “The Treacherous Duke,” the Duke of Brittany covets a Spanish noblewoman, and imprisons her husband in an attempt to remove the obstacles from his path. In Mrs. B—n’s “Adelaide Belmore,” the exiled and disguised future king of France, Louis Philippe, falls in love with an American girl who spurns him; even when she finds out his true identity, she is happy with her choice to have married a middle-class American instead. These stories among others reveal that Shives

180 and the magazine’s authors were clearly anxious about what they saw as the corrupting influence of French noblemen; this anxiety extends to their representations of France in the Middle Ages, with virtuous French noblewomen being safe to assimilate into British society, but with French noblemen possessing the threatening potential to corrupt and assimilate other societies.

In the February 1842 number, Shives printed two stories dealing with the lives

(and courts) of Henry V (1386-1422) and his French wife, Katherine [Catherine of

Valois] (1401-1437). The first of these, named “A Tale of the Fifteenth Century” and attributed simply to “Clara,” is an original work for The Amaranth; the second, “The

Captive Prince” by the American author Mrs. Caroline Orne, is almost certainly a reprint.

The similarities go beyond the historical figures: both are romances in which loyal women become involved in semi-illicit romances with disguised male lovers. Yet whereas Orne’s story traces the affair between Henry’s captive cousin, the future King

James I of Scotland, and Joanna Beaufort, one of Queen Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting,

Clara’s story addresses the courtship of Henry and Katherine themselves.

“A Tale of the Fifteenth Century” opens with Katherine and her cousin Marie discussing marriage prospects, and Katherine reveals herself to be a romantic, insisting on the ideals of courtly love instead of on worldly power: “Oh, I tell you truly, ma . . . cousine, that even if England’s lion-hearted Henry were to sue for my hand I would refuse him. Katherine of France gives not her hand where her heart is not given; and I . . .

[shall] be right well wooed before I allow myself to be won” (52). Of course, the aforementioned Henry overhears their conversation; he conspires with Katherine’s father,

Charles VI of France, to win her heart while pretending to be a mere nobleman instead of

181 the king. Once Henry is sure of her love, he concludes his peace treaty with the French king, part of which grants him Katherine’s hand in marriage. He then tests Katherine by having her father tell her only that she must marry the King of England, without revealing the deception. Despite her pleas not to be forced to marry against her will, Charles tells her in seeming cruelty, “your country demands this sacrifice of your feelings. France is in a wretched situation, England has seized many of our towns; I have this day, concluded a treaty with England’s Monarch, your hand is the pledge of our mutual good faith, and now my child, all you can say will not change my purpose” (53). (Ironically, Charles’s speech, delivered here as a test, is likely to be more accurate in describing the real motivations of the marriage than is Clara’s chivalric fiction.) Katherine passes all the tests given her: she falls in love for love’s sake, but she puts her country’s needs above her own and accepts the need to do her duty even if it costs her all of her happiness. She is the ideal object of courtly love: noble, beautiful, self-sacrificing, seemingly unattainable, and above all loyal. Moreover, her marriage to Henry represents a dual assimilation: the first is of Katherine’s bloodline and culture into the royal house of

England, and the second is of France itself into English domains. Although Clara does not directly address the question of royal succession, historically, upon the signing of the peace treaty and Henry’s marriage to the real Catherine, Charles VI named Henry the heir to the French throne (“Henry V”). However, as Henry died before Charles, the two kingdoms were never consolidated.

Other works in The Amaranth likewise present the idea that medieval French women are desirable cultural influences to assimilate into English society: Orne’s “The

Captive Prince,” for example, portrays the same Catherine as above (here, “Queen

182

Catharine”) as a courteous, artistic, and gracious queen. Moreover, in H.W. Herbert’s “A

True Tale of the Crusades” (published anonymously in The Amaranth),47 it is only the self-sacrificing love and bravery of the half-Spanish, half-French wife of England’s crown prince that saves his life. In the story, the future King Edward I (1239-1307) is on

Crusade in the Holy Land, and his wife Ellenore (Eleanor of Castile) has accompanied him. As the previous authors did with Catherine of Valois, Herbert emphasizes Ellenore’s artistic sensibilities — and the French nature of this artistry. Ellenore’s belongings lie scattered in the Prince’s tent:

On a light chair, not far removed from the Prince’s couch, there hung a

lady’s mantle of rich crimson . . . and on it lay a lute, which had

apparently been just laid down, while on the floor were scattered several

sheets of written music, not written as is now the case, by musical

notation, but by words, or mots, as they were then termed. (259)

The lute and French sheet music serve more than an individual recreational purpose:

Ellenore uses them to sooth the cares of the crusading prince, that he might more effectively address his army’s needs. Ellenore’s music is but one expression of her devotion to the prince; in a different context, her love is the only thing able to save his life. After an assassin manages to wound Edward with a poisoned dagger, none of

Edward’s crusading knights are willing to risk exposing themselves to the poison by drawing it from the wound. However, Ellenore’s “pure, strong, holy love” is strong enough for her to risk sucking out the poison; Edward owes “his life to the undaunted faith and more than heroic valour” of Ellenore (264). As in Clara’s story about an English

47 Originally published as “Ellenore: A True Tale of the Crusades” in Godey’s Lady’s Book, and Ladies’ American Magazine (Aug. 1843): 70-75.

183 monarch and his French consort, so too in Herbert’s story does the French-and-Spanish consort prove her absolute loyalty to her new monarch and kingdom. The marriage of the historical Eleanor to Edward — like that of Catherine to Henry — also brought about a double assimilation, both of the woman and of her French territory. Eleanor’s personal hereditary right to Ponthieu passed into the line of the English royal family. Beyond the lofty and romantic ideals of embracing French culture by marrying (or assimilating)

French women, amassing French territory for England posed another obvious benefit to the medieval English noblemen who sought noble French wives.

The Amaranth discusses the other half of this cultural contact — that of medieval

French men with the English — in A.D. Paterson’s “The Last Days of Princes,” a series reprinted from The Ladies’ Companion in New York. Unlike Clara’s non-threatening depiction of the female side of French society, Paterson’s series reflects a deep anxiety that French men might be more likely to try to conquer English society than assimilate into it. Paterson writes of the fates of William the Conqueror and his four sons, and the relationship of this Norman family to England. Paterson has little good to say about any of these Normans except for the second son Richard, who died young in a hunting accident; the sins of the rest seem to be innumerable. Paterson acknowledges,

the character of King William was not deeply reproachable, particularly

when the fierce and warlike dispositions of both the claimants [to the

English throne upon the death of Edward the Confessor] and their

followers are considered, and still further when we remember that the

greatest virtue of the period was valor, and its most appropriate reward

was acquisition.

184

. . . But there was one great consideration which either seems never to

have occurred to William or else seems to have been disregarded as

unworthy his ambitious spirit. This was, the affectionate regard which the

English people had for their Saxon monarchs and for the Saxon race. (36)

Paterson can accept that William, as a nobleman with as valid a claim to the throne of

England as any, should pursue that claim; given the culture of the time, he can even accept William’s acquisition of England through war. However, what he cannot accept is

William’s importing and imposing Norman cultural values at the expense of their Saxon heritage. To Paterson, William’s great and unforgivable sin is trying to make England assimilate into Norman culture. William’s sin is made all the worse by the Norman connection to the Danes, “that hated people from whose dominion they [the Saxons] had so recently become emancipated” (36).

This heaviest of sins propagates itself through the Norman line, in true Biblical fashion. Paterson writes, “Well indeed is the denunciation in the decalogue, that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on their children unto the third and fourth generation, illustrated in the descendants of the Conqueror. Unnurtured in kindly affections towards each other, the whole [family] of the first William were in constant hostility among themselves” (140). The oldest son, Robert, is the only one who “possessed any feelings of humanity” (140), but he is “indolent” (162); William Rufus “possessed not one virtue under heaven”; and Henry, whom Paterson particularly seems to despise, is “cunning,”

“selfish and ambitious” (140), and “cruel, as well as treacherous” (145). Perhaps Henry’s worst sin of all is that he pretends to be English, when (to Paterson’s mind) he can never be anything but a duplicitous Norman. Paterson writes indignantly:

185

He proclaimed himself an Englishman, which in fact he was by birth; he

distributed liberally and with discretion the funds which he had seized, and

thus obtained many an influential voice when he declared that his desire

was to be, not the inheritor of his deceased brother’s kingdom, but the

King of the people’s choice; still farther he won the hearts of the English

by solemnly promising to restore the Saxon laws which had been collected

by King Edward the Confessor; and he put the finishing stroke to his

popularity by marrying the daughter of the King of Scotland, the last scion

of the Saxon royal house. (147)

Henry’s embracing the Saxon English is, to Paterson, terrifyingly insidious because it is all a prelude to his psychological conquest of the nation. None of his seemingly positive qualities or acts (including his clear skill as an administrator and diplomat, or even the accident of his birth in England, which in no way makes him English to Paterson) make him any less of a threat to the Saxon people; in fact, these very qualities demonstrate him to pose even more of a threat than the rest of his “hard” (36) family because he is able to convince the Saxon English to give up elements of their culture without resistance.

Yet England does not submit to this foreign influence without managing to exact some retribution. To Paterson’s delight, the power struggles between Robert and Henry cause the brothers themselves “to be the unconscious instruments of England’s vengeance on Norman invasion” (162). In order to prevent any possibility of his brother’s challenging his claim to the English throne, Henry pre-emptively attacks Robert’s territory of Normandy. The “mainly English” forces of the King thus annex the province of Normandy to the English crown, “and what was most remarkable, the victory was

186 gained on the same day of the same month which, forty years before, had been so fatal to

English liberty at Hastings” (162). Paterson sees a nice parallel between the two battles: in the first, the Normans take England, and in the second, the English (even if led by a

Norman) take Normandy.

Paterson’s series is not alone in The Amaranth in worrying about the potential for

French societies to assimilate English ones. In the context of this series, Susanna

Moodie’s poem, “The Banner of England” (which Shives reprinted from the Garland in

May 1841) takes on new meaning. Whereas in the Garland, the poem appeared with the date and place of its composition (Jan. 2, 1838 in Melsetter, Douro Township, Upper

Canada), in The Amaranth, Shives strips it of these important contextual details.

Moodie’s calling upon the “Sons of Britain” (33) to “tam[e]” the “pride” (22) of “Gallia’s hosts” (21) seems, out of context, more proactive than reactive. Its worries about the

“advance” of “a rebel band” (34) is likewise unfocused on any specific rebels, and therefore casts all of the French in British North America in the role of potential aggressors. Without the context of the Lower Canadian rebellions, Moodie’s poem magnifies existing anxieties about the threat of Acadian cultures in New Brunswick — even if that threat is not armed rebellion, but rather cultural assimilation.

Although the same literary phenomenon — that of the re-emergence of French medievalism — was occurring through British North America in the 1840s, it manifested itself differently in the different colonies. Anglophone New Brunswickers had not experienced outright war with the Acadians in their generation, but there still lingered not only the memory of the expulsion of the Acadians nearly a century before, but also anxieties that the returned Acadians might be planning to act on that grievance.

187

Anglophone authors perceived French Acadian cultures as a latent threat because of their potential to assimilate English-speakers and other cultural groups in the colony. On the other hand, The Amaranth was more than happy to assimilate elements of French culture into a dominant British society.

In the Canadas, after the crushing of the 1837-1838 rebellions, English literary culture adopted a slightly different attitude towards French literature and culture. Many authors in the Canadas rooted French Canadianness in the past, thereby attempting to accomplish two purposes: the first of these was to separate French Canada further from post-Revolutionary France, and the second was to deny French Canadians any significant degree of political relevance in the developing Canadian nation. Eliza Lanesford Cushing was one of the few voices (particularly in a patriotic magazine such as the Garland) to see medieval French struggles for justice in government to be an integral part of the modern colony of Canada’s struggles towards responsible government, to see, in other words, medieval French and modern French Canadian political battles as intrinsically linked. For a number of others, the approach of John Breakenridge was the norm: he appreciated and even glorified the medieval French for their arts, culture, and Christian chivalry, all of which he sees as having formed part of the modern British character. In his view, the British have a healthy approach to their past (and to the past of related nations) in which they understand their history and know how to apply its lessons to the modern world; on the other hand, even though the French are aware of their glorious past, modern French society has lost the spiritual and cultural elements that gave medieval power structures their meaning. Whereas his British kept the spirituality and the culture,

188 but developed new political systems for the modern world, his French tried to keep the old political structures alone, structures that do not work in the modern era.

In the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, English Canadian authors controlled the French narrative by silencing its history; by the 1840s, the methods had changed, but the outcome had not. Just as in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century,

English Canadian authors like Breakenridge still constructed the modern French as having a fundamentally flawed relationship with their history. Even though they no longer attempted to silence that past, these anglophone authors depicted the Revolution as an insurmountable rupture between French history and modernity. This rupture also separated the modern French from modern French Canadians: whereas (to anglophone authors) the French were disconnected from the past, French Canadians were anchored to it. Portraying French Canadians as inhabiting a cultural past strategically denied the validity of their culture in the political present. With the move towards responsible government in the colonies of British North America in 1848, and the subsequent discussions of confederating the colonies, English Canadian authors became increasingly interested in the question of nationhood. For those who believed national identity to be the same as racial identity, the project of establishing the racial origins of various segments of Canadian society — and not just French Canadians — became all the more imperative in the drive towards Confederation.

189

Chapter 4

Defining a Nation: 1848-1870

As we saw in the first three chapters, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canadian writers had sought to define what sort of social models would be appropriate in the new world, but had maintained their racial and ethnic models as British; in the middle of the nineteenth century, however, narratives of Canadian ethnicity began to shift away from the exclusively English or Anglo-Saxon element of Britishness to a new, more inclusive, and more particularly Canadian form. In the period leading up to and immediately following Confederation, Canadian authors took a new approach to writing a history for

Canada: for the first time, authors wrote about Canada as having a serious and worthwhile history of its own, one that should be contextualized and understood in terms of its medieval European predecessors, but that also stood distinct from those European histories.

In English Canada, the first of these history-building projects was John Mercier

McMullen’s 1855 History of Canada, From Its First Discovery to the Present Time;48 as its title suggests, McMullen’s attempt to catalogue Canadian history considered the events of even a few years prior to be worthy of setting down for posterity. Although

McMullen’s primary topic was, of course, Canadian history, he mobilized references to

48 This is not to say that McMullen’s work represented the first literary interest in Canada’s history: for example, in 1824, Julia Beckwith Hart published St. Ursula’s Convent, or the Nun of Canada, a novel about the 1759 siege of Quebec; in 1832, John Richardson published the historical fiction novel Wacousta, set largely during the 1763 siege of Detroit; in 1845, François-Xavier Garneau published the first volume of his French-language Histoire du Canada; and numerous works of short historical fiction (often focused on the early days of Quebec) had appeared in the literary magazines. However, McMullen was among the first to present English Canadian history not only as the stuff of romance but rather as the serious beginnings of a new nation.

190 medieval history as a way of helping his audience understand current events. In 1869,

Robert Grant Haliburton took a very different approach to Canadian history, as we shall see in the last section of the chapter: instead of examining specific historical events, he looked at general racial theory, using what he saw as the essential characteristics of races from the Middle Ages to project a racial future for the newly-Confederated Canada.

These attempts to codify Canadian history developed alongside debates about the essential nature of Canadian culture. Earlier in the century, authors such as Thomas

Chandler Haliburton (of The Clockmaker fame) had rejected American culture as a model for Canada, but political unrest in the United States leading up to the American Civil War further reinforced the idea for many Canadians that Canadianness was most definitely not the same as Americanness. In the flurry of outrage among English Canadians that followed the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill in 1849, politicians toyed briefly with the idea of annexing the Canadas to the United States; although the idea was relatively quickly rejected, it nevertheless inspired anti-American literary protests, such as various works by John Henry Walker and Charles Dawson Shanly in the satirical magazine

Punch in Canada. Walker and Shanly conceived of the United States as regressive and feudal in the worst sense of the word; like Longmore’s and Breakenridge’s conceptions of France (discussed in chapters 2 and 3, respectively), the America depicted by Walker and Shanly had a fundamentally flawed relationship with the past. For Walker and

Shanly, Canada would be able to progress economically and socially only through maintaining a relationship with the British Empire at large (but not exclusively England).

In general, Canadian literary culture of the time embraced a pan-British identity rather than a more specific Englishness. Of 203 instances of medievalism in British North

191

American literary magazines from 1848 to 1870, 43 of them — more than one fifth — address the Celtic areas and cultures of the British Isles, while only 17 address explicitly

Anglo-Saxon heritage. In Canada, authors expanded Canadian Britishness to include some of the cultures that English notions of Britishness had excluded and Othered. In

Britain and even more particularly in England, mid-nineteenth-century discussions of

Britishness used modern military conflicts (such as the Napoleonic wars) to define themselves against, and thereby exclude, racialized Others; Canadian authors, on the other hand, looked to the medieval past to justify including a broader spectrum of racial groups in the new Canada. Thomas D’Arcy McGee, for example, explored medieval

Ireland’s role as a centre of scholarly Christianity to encourage appreciation in Canada for Irish culture. Even at a time when the mass migration of Irish refugees was causing elevated social tensions, McGee’s Popular History of Ireland was very well received; contemporary reviews of his history reveal the willingness of Canadian literati to accept

Irish heritage into Canada’s expanding sense of Britishness.

Even for Anglo-Saxon supremacists in Canada, there was more to Canadianness than simply re-learning to appreciate all of the British racial groups. The Anglo-Saxon supremacist Canada First movement, which emerged shortly after Confederation, championed Canada’s role as a specifically northern nation with a northern climate, populated by historically northern racial groups. The theory of northern superiority, as most famously expounded in Canada by Robert Grant Haliburton — one of the founders of Canada First — held that northern climates breed hardy people and productive societies. Canadian Britishness would thus not be diluted by expanding to include more racial groups, but would rather be tempered and hardened by forging certain races

192 together in the bitter cold of the Canadian north. Canada’s brief history of contact in the

Middle Ages with the Vikings — known at the time only through the evidence of the medieval Icelandic sagas, since the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was not discovered until 1960 — along with the coincidence of Canada’s and Scandinavia’s northern latitudes, led Haliburton and others to claim a pan-northern kinship that should propel Canada to greatness in the decades to come. This cultural philosophy of pan- northernism embraced not only the rigours of Canada’s northern clime but also the cultural and genetic inheritance of immigrants from northern European countries. Part of this inheritance certainly was English, but it came to emphasize the other northern

European contributions, particularly the Irish, Norse, and Danish cultures. The quantity of Nordic medievalism published in Canada in the 1860s bears out this increasing fascination with northern cultures: 13 of the 38 works of medievalism in literary magazines of the 1860s had Norse themes. Interestingly, despite Canada’s increasingly diverse racial makeup, this emphasis on the benefits of northernness required authors to posit a much greater influence of medieval Scandinavia on Canadian culture than would be accounted for simply by the number of Canadians of ethnic Scandinavian backgrounds. The new emphasis on northernness thus involved a deliberate and creative inflation of Canada’s medieval Norse heritage for the purposes of imagining a new national identity for a new nation.

Necessary for Haliburton’s and the Canada First movement’s belief in northern superiority, however, was their equally strong faith in southern inferiority. Haliburton believed that southern (and particularly tropical) climates inculcated a type of cultural lethargy that would, over the course of centuries or millennia, lead to the downfall of

193 every southern civilization that should rise to prominence. Notably, Haliburton’s distrust of southern cultures led him to reimagine the French influence on Canada as a specifically northern influence, tracing the lineage of French Canadians through the

Normans to the medieval Norse, and through the Bretons to medieval Celts. Although

Haliburton’s theory was certainly problematic in itself, its true danger lay in its potential to influence Canadian immigration policies, which in the following decades did indeed embrace racial hierarchies that assumed the superiority of northern peoples. The decades leading up to Confederation saw an expansion of what being Canadian could mean racially and culturally, but that expansion came at the expense of an ever-shifting set of

Others.

Literary and Historical Developments, 1848-1870

In 1849, more than a decade after the 1837-1838 rebellions, Lower Canada (now

Canada East) had still not resolved the issue of recompensing citizens for damages sustained during the course of the fighting, even though Upper Canada (Canada West) had settled the same issue without incident in 1845. Because of the difficulties of separating rebel losses from loyalist losses, the legislature accepted that it would have to allow claims from anyone who had not been convicted of participating in the rebellions.

John Mercier McMullen, a contemporary historian, wrote in his History of Canada about the tensions emerging from the Rebellion Losses Bill as stemming directly from the “old antagonism of races” (488) between the English and the French in the Middle Ages; many English Canadians were deeply opposed to what they saw as using their taxes to pay French Canadian rebels for having rebelled. When Montreal’s anglophone

194 inhabitants learned that the Governor General, Lord Elgin, had approved the Rebellion

Losses Bill, riots broke out in the streets: the houses of the bill’s key sponsors were attacked, and the Parliament House was looted and burned to the ground. In comparison to the degree of violence and destruction which occurred during the French Revolution,

McMullen believed the Montreal rioters to have acted far more like the barbarous early medieval mobs that brought down the Roman Empire: “The Paris mobs, in the midst of revolution and anarchy, respected public buildings, the libraries, and works of art; and it remained for the vandalism of Montreal rioters to inflict a public injury on themselves, of a character adopted by the Saracens and Huns, and other barbarians of the middle ages, to punish their enemies” (491). Although McMullen’s faith in the artistic sensibilities of the

French revolutionaries is not entirely warranted, his condemnation of the (primarily anglophone) Montreal rioters is striking. Through their wanton destruction of the city, these Montrealers lose their Britishness and instead become even worse than the

“barbarians” of the Middle Ages: whereas McMullen’s Saracens and Huns reserved such devastation for their enemies, the Montreal rioters wreak it upon themselves.

The Rebellion Losses Bill had consequences reaching far beyond the riots in

Montreal; it also wrought a curious change in “patriotic” discourse in the Canadas. The

Tories took their protests to Queen Victoria, calling for her to dissolve the Canadian

Legislative Assembly and to veto the offending bill. The failure of this tactic, combined with the economic upheaval wrought by Britain’s shift towards a philosophy of free trade rather than one of colonial protectionism, pushed many among the Tory ranks to advocate annexation to the United States. McMullen notes the irony of their stance:

195

To escape from French domination, as it was termed, the more violent

Tory members of the Conservative Party, declared they were prepared to

go to any lengths — even to annexation with the United States, a measure

which in the passionate excitement of the moment was openly advocated.

Thus parties who had long made boast of their loyalty to the British

Crown — of their hatred of republican license and extreme democracy,

were now seen supporting the same treasonable measures, precisely, for

which so many in 1838 had perished on the scaffold. (488)

In this way, open dissent became reframed as patriotism. Yet, in a further twist, these violently anti-French anglophone Tories found unlikely allies for their annexationist movement. In Canada East, a small number of radical francophone intellectuals — including Louis-Joseph Papineau and his nephew, Louis-Antoine Dessaulles — advocated annexation because of the British government’s perceived betrayal of Lower

Canada, particularly in the matter of the Canadian union. Most of the French Canadian elite, however, opposed such a measure. In Canada West, meanwhile, the Tories

(including John A. MacDonald) launched the British American League in Kingston in

July 1849. At this convention, a resolution proposing annexation to the United States was raised, though rejected. Indeed, at a meeting mere months later, this same league (which had been formed with the idea of annexation in mind) turned completely away from the possibility of joining the American states and instead proposed an idea that would later become Confederation. This idea was to unite the British North American colonies as an alternate way of evading the feared French domination (Francis, Jones and Smith 342-

344).

196

Thus having rejected the “Maelstrom of American dissension,” to borrow

McMullen’s phrase (Preface), and having been cut loose from the protections formerly offered by the trade framework of the British Empire, the British North American colonies faced a crisis of identity. Yet the colonies did not necessarily see each other as natural partners for a new federal union; indeed, that Confederation happened at all is somewhat surprising, given the significant resistance to the idea in the Maritime colonies.

In general, Upper Canada/Canada West was most enthusiastic about the proposed union, because (with the largest population) it would hold the greatest power in the proposed representation-by-population governmental structure. The literary publishing industry in

British North America had also largely shifted to the Canadas by this time, and thus literature of the 1850s and 1860s tended to over-represent nationalist discourses specifically from the Canadas. Much of this Canadian literary discourse emphatically rejected the notion that Canadianness (or British North Americanness) had much in common with American cultural identity; furthermore, although many (if not most)

English Canadian authors still looked to Britain for the basis of their cultural identity, the

Britishness they saw in Canada was Britishness with a difference.

Anti-American Sentiment and Satire in Punch in Canada

Even though the standard methods for publishing illustrations remained hand- engraving and lithography until the late 1860s, when the relatively inexpensive method of photolithography gained traction (Williamson 388), illustrating books and magazines became increasingly popular throughout the mid-century. In part this rise in popularity can be attributed to the increasing availability of local illustrators and engravers (although

197 artists practising these trades were by no means numerous). One of the most prolific of these artists was John Henry Walker, an Irish-born and trained engraver who immigrated to Canada in 1842 and was prominent in Montreal’s engraving trade for over five decades. Walker was the first to publish cartoons regularly in Canada (Rousseau and

Vachon). Although he engraved for a wide variety of publications, his own publishing interests leaned towards satire, and he produced a number of satirical magazines over the course of his career. His first, Punch in Canada (1849-1850), modelled itself after the recently-established British Punch, or the London Charivari. Although locally-produced political satire was nothing new to British North America (see, for example, Thomas

Chandler Haliburton’s Clockmaker stories in the 1820s), Walker’s visual satire added a new element of interest. Moreover, as Dominic Hardy has argued, the anti-Union and anti-Confederation climate in Montreal at the time made the city particularly fertile ground for political satire (311). Walker enlisted Charles Dawson Shanly, an Irish-born poet and humourist, as editor for the Canadian Punch, and Shanly also wrote and illustrated for the magazine. Like Walker, Shanly had a long career in the literary industry. Shortly before he immigrated to Canada in 1836, he had some of his poetry accepted for publication in London; once in Canada, though, he made his primary occupation the civil service while writing and editing on the side. Ironically, given the strong anti-American bias of Punch in Canada, Shanly moved to New York in 1857 to devote himself exclusively to journalism (F. Walker); either his political ideals had changed since the demise of Punch in Canada, or he was unable to withstand the appeal of turning a literary sideline into a true career.

198

Figure 6: From Punch in Canada 23 Feb. 1850: 39.

Despite Shanly’s later personal decision, the editorial stance of the magazine was quite decidedly opposed to annexing Canada to the United States. A cartoon that David

Spencer attributes to Walker, “A Sign of the Times,” makes significant use of medievalist rhetoric: it depicts a “good and loyal subject” (39), in the role of England’s patron Saint

George, slaying the dragon of annexation; the hero uses a giant feather-edged quill as a lance, playing with the aphorism that the pen is mightier than the sword (Figure 6).

Moreover, the magazine suggests that its readers thrust home this political attack by displaying this “sign of the times” as a literal sign at every door. Notably, the dragon seems to be (at least for now) small and relatively powerless compared to the mature,

199 stalwart hero, suggesting that the cartoonist believes that the threat of annexation is not yet fully-fledged and thus those who stand with the hero should be confident of victory

(provided, of course, that they take swift action before the dragon matures).

Punch elaborates in prose, verse and cartoon on the reasons why it believes annexation to the United States would be a regrettable move for Canada. The poem

“Humours American” draws upon some of the most unsavoury aspects of American political and economic practices, such as the slave culture in the south and the political corruption in the north; in Pittsburgh, criminal behaviour seems to be widely accepted, because “they’ve elected their magistrate / Inside the walls of the gaol” (18). The satire is not, however, aimed so much at the American institutions as it is at those leaning in favour of annexation. “These little traits are intended to warn you,” the poet writes;

“You’ll find plenty of such on hand” (18). Although the poem metaphorically attacks

American culture, its message is one of defense, warning Canadians to stay away from the United States.

Figure 7: from Punch in Canada 26 Jan 1850: 18.

Despite the defensive nature of the text of “Humours American,” the accompanying illustration explicitly goes on the offensive, showing Punch literally

200 skewering the American eagle (Figure 7). In this case, the magazine associates the character of Punch (the defender of British institutions in Canada) with the medieval period. It depicts Punch, dressed as a knight, in a jousting match with the American eagle; Punch’s lance pierces the eagle’s shield (and presumably the eagle itself) before the eagle’s talons can reach Punch. The Latin motto of Punch’s shield, “Cave, adsum

[Beware, I am here],”49 reinforces the characterization of Punch as (an albeit aggressive) defender of the realm. The Americans have inherited the worst parts of medieval Europe: in lieu of serfdom, they have slavery, and perhaps because they treat a whole race of people as sub-human, they themselves do not merit human characterization in the cartoon. The Canadian Punch, on the other hand, stands proud as a knight (at least, as proud as the magazine’s farcical mascot can stand), exemplifying to his best abilities the spirits of chivalry and bravery.

Punch in Canada often employed images (both textual and pictorial) specific to feudalism as a foil to the magazine’s own political ideals. As in Figure 7, chivalry may not and should not be dead, but Punch had no interest in reviving feudal economic or political policies. On the issue of free trade, Walker and Shanly felt strongly that the current system of protectionism employed by the British Empire was a regressive relic of the feudal system. In March of 1850, the editors (writing as the figure of Punch) penned a letter addressed “To the People of Canada, on the Position of the Government”:

My soul rejoices in the prospect of a war between the old rotten remains of

feudalism, as evidenced in the existence of legal spiders, and their webs of

49 Punch’s chosen motto has precedent in both fact and fiction: it remains the motto of the Lowlands Scottish Jardine Clan, and Sir Walter Scott used it as the motto of the baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf in Ivanhoe.

201

fiction and extortion, the union of church and state, and the conspiracy of

capital against labor in the system of customs and excise, or, in other

words, the idiotic system called protection, and the disciples of elective

institutions, free church, simple laws, free trade, and DIRECT

TAXATION. . . . Indirect taxation is the invention of the dark ages, when

the people were PROTECTED by the tender mercies of kingcraft and

priestcraft united; when, for a consideration, kings and bishops, and

abbots and lords, granted charters and monopolies, or, in other words,

robbed the many to benefit the few; the monopolists then levied indirect

taxes on the people for their own aggrandizement. (62)

Combining the questions of annexation and free trade, Punch took the perhaps counterintuitive stance that an alliance with the United States would serve to entrench feudal economic systems, whereas economic progress would be achieved only by maintaining Canada’s political and economic arms-length connection to Britain. The magazine saw these two questions (of economic policy and political allegiance) as so inextricably linked that it declared them in fact to be the same question, one that should and would be decided in favour of Britain and economic advancement:

there is but one great question before the country, and that is not

annexation. . . . All parties will eventually resolve themselves into

protectionists and free-traders. Annexation or British connexion will be

decided on these grounds. The protectionists, whatever they may now call

themselves, will become annexationists; the free-traders will stick to

202

sound principles and the old flag,—and that the latter may triumph is . . .

[our] fervent wish . . . (62)

With this sentiment of establishing free trade while maintaining British connections, Walker and Shanly’s political views coincided with those of publishing magnate George Brown, who, as David Spencer writes, “was devoted to creating in

Canada the equivalent of a liberal, free enterprise state such as that emerging in the

British Isles as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution” (89). Punch’s logic seems to be, firstly, that protectionism is a form of economic subjugation akin to feudal lord-vassal relationships; secondly, that annexation would subjugate Canada to the rule of the other

American states; and finally, that by opposing Britain’s push towards free trade, the advocates of protectionism would naturally align their interests with those of the annexationists. Although proposals for various forms of economic and political relationships with Britain and the United States abounded in the 1850s and 1860s, Punch in Canada and Canada’s satiric press in general were united on both issues, insisting upon Canada’s economic independence from as well as political loyalty to Britain, as

Spencer has argued. In Drawing Borders: The American Canadian Relationship during the Gilded Age, Spencer asserts that “As much as the country was divided intellectually,

Victorian Canadian editorial cartoonists were consistent in their view of Americans.

Trade and commercial alliances were quite acceptable. Anything bordering on political union was not” (91). For Shanly and Walker, the economic opportunities offered by the industrial revolution presented a path for Canada to the future, a future that included taking advantage of trade relationships with all modern countries. In their eyes, Canada could not move into the future but instead would reenact Europe’s past on a different

203 continent if it were to pledge fealty to the United States. Having a connection to the past through Britain would allow Canadians to move forward in a way that Americans — who by revolting had severed their connection to history — could not. Shanly and Walker used their magazine as a vehicle to bring awareness of the medieval past to the Canadian present, thus not only reinforcing the connection to the past but also spurring progress into the future.

Shanly and Walker’s use of the medieval past was not limited to the question of

American annexation; they used it equally forcefully in regard to anglophone- francophone tensions internal to the Canadas. Significantly, their approach to these tensions did not pit the English against the French in Canada; rather, they saw the conflict as one between an emphatically broader (and Celtic-inclusive) British people and the

French. In this conflict, Shanly and Walker thought that medieval political models should not be misappropriated for modern political ends. Punch in Canada treats Governor

General Elgin’s claimed ancestral connection to the medieval Scottish king, Robert the

Bruce (1274-1329), particularly contemptuously: in “Lines Addressed to the Celebrated

Earl of ‘Dignified Neutrality,’” the magazine treats Robert the Bruce himself with reverence, calling him “a patriot rare,” but declares of Elgin’s boasted lineage, “If your descent indeed be such / You have descended very much” (127). The unnamed poet of this piece lives up to the name of the magazine and indeed pulls no punches in his attack on Elgin. The poet accuses him of “secret criminality” by assenting to the Rebellion

Losses Bill: in the poet’s view, Elgin sells out the country and “become[s] the tool / Of

Frenchmen whom . . . [he] ought to rule” for his salary of “About five thousand Pounds a year” (127). (The logic of how the salary of the governor, who served at the pleasure of

204 the British Parliament, depended on his becoming the tool of Frenchmen is not explored.)

Moreover, the poet vows that Elgin’s supporters

Shall never either curse or bully

Our British nationality!

We were not for french thraldom born . . . (127)

Many English Canadians believed that British superiority over the French had been proved on the battlefield many times over, not only in the recent rebellions but also eighty years before with Britain’s victory over New France, and again in 1815 with

Napoleon’s final defeat. In 1849, then, many of these same English Canadians felt that their government had been either hoodwinked or bullied into betraying them. Walker and

Shanly believed that any concessions to French Canadians could alienate English

Canadians ever further from Britain, disrupting Canada’s political stability as well as

(what they saw as) its essential British character.

Given the anti-French, pro-English stance of Punch in Canada, the admiration of

Robert the Bruce in “Lines Addressed to the Celebrated Earl of ‘Dignified Neutrality’” seems a bit puzzling: not only did Robert reestablish Scotland’s independence after

Edward I of England’s attempted subjugation of the entire island of Britain to the English crown, but he also renewed Scotland’s alliance to France (Barrow). Yet, removed from the specific context of French-English relations, Robert the Bruce stands as a medieval

British icon of resistance against oppressive government — unlike Lord Elgin, who, to

Punch in Canada and many English Canadians, was the very embodiment of oppressive government. The implied moral degeneracy of Elgin as compared to his illustrious ancestor emphasizes the expectation that modern political leaders should live up to

205 historical models; it suggests that Canadians should be held to the same high standards as

European medieval heroes, because Europe’s history is Canada’s history too. The

Bruce’s emphatically anti-English Britishness acts in Punch as a reminder, however, that

Canada’s medieval history is not identical to England’s, but rather, it draws upon a broader, more inclusive view of the medieval world. Punch’s admiration of Robert the

Bruce reinforces that it is possible for a nation in a colonial relationship with England to be strong and independent, yet still very much British.

Expanding Canadian Britishness: the Uneasy Place of the Irish in Canada

Canada was not alone in exploring the complex and sometimes conflicting elements of Britishness. Writing about the emergence of “British” identity in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Linda Colley stresses that

the cacophony and the slippages that were so often evident in expressions

of allegiance and belonging: as, for instance, in the procession in support

of parliamentary reform in Edinburgh in 1832 . . . which featured banners

celebrating legendary Scottish war-leaders against England such as Robert

Bruce and William Wallace, but simultaneously flourishings of red, white

and blue Union flags. (xv)

Indeed, Colley sees such tensions as “integral” to “the growing traction of ideas of

Britain and of British identity” (xv). Colley argues that the emergence of a British identity did not signify or require its various elements to merge into one cultural identity, nor, indeed, would a singular cultural identity be possible in the formation of empire. As

Ian Baucom argues, as much as imperial conquest challenges the identities of its

206 colonized peoples, so too can empire “equally disrupt the cultural identity of a colonizing nation” (14). Baucom argues that even the concept of Englishness within British identity was subject to re-formation in the diverse spaces of the British Empire: he sees

Englishness as “something communicated to the subject by certain auratic, identity- reforming places, as something, therefore, that can be both acquired and lost” (5-6).

If not even Englishness was a stable cultural identity in the milieux of empire, then neither could the British Empire provide a stable, unified identity to its subjects. The unity of Britain rested not on a shared culture, but rather, on the shared political (and to a large degree, religious) experience of its citizens:

the Welsh, the Scottish and the English remain in many ways distinct

peoples in cultural terms . . . . The sense of a common identity here did not

come into being, then, because of an integration and homogenisation of

disparate cultures. Instead, Britishness was superimposed over an array of

internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in

response to conflict with the Other. (Colley 6)

Colley sees Great Britain itself as “an invention forged above all by war” (6) and above all by war with France. The British, she argues, “defined themselves as Protestants struggling for survival against the world’s foremost Catholic power. They defined themselves against the French as they imagined them to be, superstitious, militarist, decadent and unfree” (6). British North America did not have an “Other” that was quite so neatly defined — English Canadians were not, for example, at war with French

Canadians — but the very nature of British definitions of Britishness allowed for this flexibility. The idea that Britishness was a superimposed political construct made it easier

207 for Canadians to redefine Canadian Britishness to include some of Britain’s Others — such as Protestant Irish immigrants in the work of McGee, and even French Canadians in

Haliburton’s vision of the new Canada, as the last section of this chapter will discuss.

The militarism around which Britishness in Britain revolved was strongly linked to European conceptions of the role of class hierarchies in government. Even if anglophone British North America had fewer military Others against which to define their patriotism, questions of class were certainly not unfamiliar territory. In The English

National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair, Peter

Mandler examines the relationship between militarism and class hierarchies in European forms of patriotism; he contends that Britain’s ability to develop a common sense of

Britishness independent of cultural unity hinged on its approach to the Napoleonic wars.

Mandler argues that Britain — unlike France and even the German states — “was able to mobilize its people with appeals to patriotism that did not require a levelling sense of solidarity” (21). Because British wartime patriotism did not require erasing class distinctions, it was also able to maintain broader cultural divisions. In France, by contrast, the dominant discourses of patriotism from the late 18th through mid-19th centuries sought to create a unified national character through erasing not only class distinctions but also regional cultural differences. An essential part of Britishness — being “Other” to the

French, per Linda Colley — meant that if the French were leveling society, Britain had to find a way to maintain hierarchies as an integral part of its character.

Even if, by the 1850s, “the British were coming to see themselves as more homogeneous and uniform, less fissured by differences of region, religion, morals and class if not gender” (Mandler 66), hierarchical thinking nevertheless still played a

208 significant role in British racial theories. Mandler argues that Britain’s particular brand of

Anglo-Saxon patriotism (or “Teutomania”) in the 1860s responded to trends of democratization while simultaneously reinforcing existing power structures:

Teutomania neither swept all before it, nor did it erase — rather it over-

laid — the pre-existing Christian and Enlightenment traditions that had

asserted a common humanity, linked by the rungs of a ladder rather than

separated by the branches of a tree. Not even Teutomaniacs necessarily

believed in an ineradicable racial basis for Teutonic virtue: their ‘race’

was one you could join, as well as be born into. . . . [T]hese decades saw a

heightened sense of global responsibility on the part of liberal Englishmen

who lent their support to nationalities on the Continent struggling towards

the common goals of liberty and order. (60)

One could, theoretically, acquire Britishness by evolving into it, by climbing up the cultural evolutionary ladder. Mandler argues that this Victorian Teutomaniac version of the “ladder” of evolution characterized even entire cultures as able to climb the ladder, presumably aspiring towards the high rung theoretically occupied by Britishness, in order to reach “the common goals of liberty and order.” This ladder model thus differed from its Enlightenment predecessors in

its tendency to view whole peoples — races or nations — rather than

individuals or legislators as travellers along the rungs. A social

evolutionary perspective, it was felt, could explain why a given people

stood on a given rung at a given time in terms of that people’s inner state

209

rather than their institutions. It was, in short, a machine for delineating and

explaining national character. (77)

Combining both racial and national evolutionary models, the idea of Britishness embraced by Victorian Anglo-Saxon supremacists was thus particularly suited for adaptation in the New World. Its hierarchical thinking set itself apart from the class- levelling French and American ideas of patriotism, yet it also allowed for social mobility for both individuals and nations. It provided a middle path for the evolution of a fledgling nation and its inhabitants. Because the idea of social evolution necessarily involves starting from a less-developed, less-polished state, this social theory allowed for the inclusion of a greater variety of racial elements — including Britain’s Celtic Others — in the formation of a new, growing nation such as Canada.

As discussed in Chapter 2, anglophone Canadians had been enthralled by Scottish culture in particular since the early decades of the nineteenth century, and Canada’s love affair with Sir Walter Scott showed no signs of waning. What was more radical by the

1850s, however, was the (somewhat fraught) induction of Ireland into the pantheon of acceptable Canadian Britishness. Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s A Popular History of

Ireland: from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics (1863) was a major, multi-volume work of medievalism published in North America that focused not on the English or the French, but on Irish history and culture. Contemporary reviews of

McGee’s History, even more than the work itself, provide a window into how Irish history was being accepted as part of Canadian history by the 1860s. Moreover, the reception of McGee’s work provides insight into how the Canadian literary community at

210 the time read histories in general, and how they applied medieval histories of non-English nations to developing notions of Canadianness.

Irish immigration to British North America surged in the wake of the Potato

Famine: approximately 90 000 Irish refugees arrived in the Canadas alone during the famine years (1845-1852). As happened in other countries that received massive numbers of Irish refugees, xenophobia played a large role in Canada’s reception of the new immigrants. The established populace was not without its reasons in fearing the influx of immigrants: predictably, many of the new immigrants were not only starving but also quite ill, a situation worsened by crowded and unsanitary shipboard conditions. Cholera was a particular scourge of both the refugees and the established residents, since it repeatedly escaped the quarantine stations. Moreover, the extreme poverty of the refugees placed a significant burden on an already unstable economy. Perhaps the surprising thing, then, is not that the Irish immigrants were treated with wariness, but rather that this xenophobia was largely sublimated into the already-existing religious tensions in the

Canadas. More than two thirds of the newcomers were Protestant, but it was primarily the

Catholic minority who were targeted for particular exclusion; the Irish Protestants (many of whom belonged to the Orange Order) were much more able to find allies among other

Protestant working- and middle-class social groups (Francis, Jones and Smith 310-311).

Francis, Jones and Smith note:

The Orange Lodge celebrated the British Crown and Protestantism. “No

Surrender” was the order’s rallying cry. The Orange Order opposed

Catholic schools and the use of the French language outside of Quebec.

But in the British Protestant fortress of Victorian Toronto, Irish Catholics,

211

not French Canadians, constituted the resident minority group. . . . In mid-

nineteenth-century Toronto, Protestants outnumbered Catholics by three to

one. Clearly religion, not “race,” was the focus of opposition of the order;

the Orange Order in Canada allowed Protestant First Nations and

Protestant African-Canadian males to join. (311-312)

Although the Orange Order was founded in Ireland specifically to commemorate the triumph of the Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic James II, in Canada the

Order found new purpose in promoting not just anti-Catholic but also specifically anti-

French Catholic policy. The Order became deeply enmeshed in the less sanguine (but more sanguinary) elements of Canadian politics, ranging from nepotism to voter suppression to rioting, including the burning of Parliament in 1849. Ironically, the

Order’s blatant sectarianism, religious discrimination, and bias against French Canadians spawned some limited interracial and interethnic cooperation: non-Irish Protestant men were also welcome to join the Orange Order to fight for (their vision of) the common good of all Protestant Canadians.50

The Orange Order was remarkably successful in promoting the careers of its members, including those of Irish extraction. Being Irish in Canada was thus not necessarily a hindrance to ambitious men in these middle decades of the nineteenth century; indeed, it became an acceptable addition to Canadian Britishness. By making

Protestant Irishness acceptable, the Order had the side effect of making Irishness in general less unpalatable in Canada to audiences of English descent. Moreover, the nature of anglophone Canadian reading audiences was expanding to include the influx of Irish

50 The beneficent functions of the Order should not go unmentioned: it played an important role in social welfare with various charitable programs.

212 immigrants; literary magazines therefore would have had a more diverse base of potential readers. The favourable reception given to Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s A Popular History of Ireland: from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics (1863) testifies to just how accepted Irishness in Canada had become — particularly given McGee’s

Catholicism and his advocacy against British colonial rule in Ireland. Born in the northeast of Ireland in 1825, McGee spent much of his childhood in Wexford, a town whose political climate surely shaped McGee’s own views. Wexford had been crucial in the 1798 Irish rebellion against British rule, a rebellion in which McGee’s mother’s family allegedly participated. In 1842, at the age of seventeen, he emigrated to the United

States, and quickly made a name for himself by lecturing and writing about Ireland’s politics and literature. It was surely to his advantage that he had already begun to establish himself in North America before the famine struck and Irish refugees arrived en masse: by the height of the migration, he was in a position to advocate for better treatment of the refugees, and he used his position to try to dispel some of the religious prejudice and nativist attitudes that hindered the acceptance of the refugees into

American society. He returned briefly to Ireland from 1845-1848, during which time he became deeply involved with the nationalist Young Ireland group. In 1848, McGee was involved in organizing an armed rebellion. When the rebellion failed, he returned to the

United States, where he published his account of recent events in Ireland — an account that, as Robin Burns notes, McGee signed quite boldly, “Thomas D’Arcy McGee, A

Traitor to the British Government.” McGee followed up this act by supporting nationalist causes across Europe, and even advocating for Canadian annexation to the United States

(Burns).

213

Had McGee’s political views remained such, it seems unlikely that he would ever have wanted to move to the Canadas, and even more improbable that he would be invited and welcomed. However, McGee’s views did change: whereas he had once been a liberal revolutionary, according to Burns, he came to condemn that philosophy “as a threat to

Christianity and civilization”; moreover, he gradually became disenchanted with

American society, believing it to be too “disorderly” (Burns). As for Canada, he came to appreciate its state-sanctioned tolerance and support of Roman Catholicism; indeed, by

1855 he was even lauding Canada’s advantages over the United States to potential Irish emigrants. In 1857, the leaders of Montreal’s Irish community invited McGee to move to the city and represent their interests. McGee was immediately popular with Montreal’s

Irish community at large: they collectively raised the money necessary for McGee to meet the property qualifications to run for a seat in the legislative assembly (a seat which he won and held for the next decade). Yet he did not restrict himself to representing Irish interests; indeed, he was vocal in his support of various minority rights, including those of francophones, First Nations, and religious minorities. He also softened his views on

British colonial connections, now believing it to be better for both Canada and Ireland to work autonomously within the British Empire than entirely independently without it. He renounced his republicanism, but in order to keep an arms-length relationship with

England, he proposed a separate British kingdom in British North America, one that would be headed by one of Queen Victoria’s younger sons (Burns). He exchanged the idea of annexation for that of Confederation.

McGee’s political evolution made him much more palatable to mainstream

Anglo-Protestant society (even if it was eventually to cause him grief with the Irish

214 community). His Popular History of Ireland, published in Toronto and New York in

1863, sought to make Irish history likewise mainstream: McGee repeatedly compares early medieval Ireland to modern nations such as the United States and England, thereby not only deemphasizing Ireland’s foreignness but also suggesting the debt owed by modern Western religion and politics to medieval Ireland. Instead of highlighting

Ireland’s difference, McGee emphasizes international continuity.

In terms of religion — the most significant modern marker of Irish difference —

McGee quickly establishes Ireland’s medieval role as a centre of Christian faith to which other Western European nations turned for spiritual guidance. McGee has little to say about pre-Christian Ireland, remarking early in the text that “The conversion of a Pagan people to Christianity must always be a primary fact in their history” (10), and he keeps to his word: only ten pages into an eight-hundred-and-four page text, he turns to the history of Saint Patrick (fl. 5th C) and to his establishment of the Irish Church in 432 CE.

Patrick’s physical and spiritual journey takes him across much of Europe, first as a slave and then as a student of theology. Patrick’s international travels mirror the widespread influence of the Irish Church in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire:

The empire of barbarism had succeeded to the empire of Polytheism;

dense darkness covered the semi-Christian countries of the old Roman

empire, but happily daylight still lingered in the West. Patrick, in good

season, had done his work. And as sometimes, God seems to bring round

His ends, contrary to the natural order of things, so the spiritual sun of

Europe was now destined to arise in the West, and return on its light-

bearing errand towards the East, dispelling in its path, Saxon, Frankish,

215

and German darkness, until at length it reflected back on Rome herself, the

light derived from Rome. (16)

McGee alludes to his Roman Catholicism by declaring that the “light” of Christianity was

“derived from Rome,” but the focus of his early Church history is on the unity of medieval Christianity, rather than on its modern divisions. He presents medieval Ireland as the immediate (although not original) source responsible for converting or re-

Christianizing the rest of Western Europe. To McGee, Ireland was the only nation that held firm in its faith through the Middle Ages, and had it not been for that steadfastness, the “darkness” of Polytheism would still cover the Western world.

Likewise, McGee emphasizes the debt owed by modern Western nations to the political developments of medieval Ireland. He compares the legal and political structures both of democracies (such as the United States) and of constitutional monarchies (such as

England) to those of medieval Ireland; for example, he asserts that the relationship between Ireland’s medieval federal province of Meath and the other Irish provinces “may be vaguely compared to those of the District of Columbia to the several States of the

North American Union” (7). Moreover, he contends that medieval Ireland’s legal and political structures have parallels in those of modern nations. He describes two important medieval documents: one, Ireland’s early constitution, which McGee claims was

“prepared under the auspices of Saint Patrick” (17) and which forms part of Ireland’s

“Book of Rights,” and two, the “Brehon laws,” or literally, the laws of the judges. “The

Brehon laws,” he argues, “bear the same relation to ‘The Book of Rights,’ as the Statutes at large of England, or the United States, bear to the English Constitution in the one case, or to the collective Federal and State Constitutions in the other” (17). Again, McGee

216 strives to make Ireland’s medieval history less foreign to modern British and North

American audiences, and in so doing, he also works to prove medieval Ireland’s role as the trailblazer for modern Western religion and politics.

McGee’s Popular History of Ireland proved “popular” in multiple senses of the word. It was, as McGee intended, written engagingly for public consumption rather than scholarly study; moreover, it was very well received by public intellectuals across British

North America. Hamilton’s Canadian Illustrated News printed a passage from the book before the magazine had even seen a full copy; the editor (Alexander Somerville) noted that he had seen passages printed in various American and Canadian magazines, and he included one such passage in the August 1, 1863, number in order to add his own context to McGee’s discussions of the 1798 French invasion of Ireland and the United Irishmen rebellion (140).

Some of the publicity for McGee’s Popular History came from parties with a vested interest in promoting sales of the book: for instance, McGee was a contributor to the British American Magazine, which gave the Popular History a very favourable (and extensive) review, referring to it as an “able, impartial and most attractive popular history” (200). Moreover, the review identifies the Canadian publishers/distributors of

McGee’s Popular History as Rollo & Adam,51 the same house that published the British

American Magazine. In an even greater conflict of interest, Graeme Mercer Adam (of

Rollo & Adam) wrote book reviews for the British American Magazine and may indeed have penned the review of McGee’s Popular History. However, even though these

51 I have been unable to confirm the existence of a separate Canadian publication. It is possible that Rollo & Adam distributed in Canada the New York edition of D. & J. Sadlier & Co., but even in that case, Rollo & Adam would have had financial incentive to promote McGee’s book.

217 numerous overlapping interests almost certainly caused the magazine to give McGee’s work extra publicity, the review itself seems genuine, its praise measured and its concerns typical for an educated Anglo-Protestant reader. Indeed, the review helps to explain why a young publishing house seeking to establish itself might invest both its finances and its reputation in McGee’s book.

The reviewer takes pains to assure potential readers that McGee’s Catholicism, while personally disagreeable to the reviewer, does not overly influence the presentation of facts in the text or affect its overall readability:

The history of any living people must necessarily be tinged, in some

degree, with the political and religious opinions of the writer, especially if

he be the chronicler of the land of his birth; but when that writer is an

ardent adherent of the ecclesiastical system which has ruled Ireland so

long; it would be rediculous [sic] to suppose that the time honoured church

of his fathers should not be spoken of with affectionate regard, and an

apparent acknowledgement of many religious influences and powers,

which those who are not of her communion would coldly pass over or

loudly deplore.

Let it not, however, be understood, that in the first volume of Mr.

McGee’s history, now under review, there is the slightest taint of

illiberality, or undue religious bias; on the contrary it cannot fail to be

remarked, that in many particulars where one would have looked for

severer criticism and perhaps merited condemnation, events and characters

are described with a freedom from any approach to bitterness,

218

partizanship, or bias, and always with the good points and redeeming

features placed side by side with qualities or distinctions of doubtful

character to many minds. (84)

The reviewer treats McGee’s Catholicism with almost a sense of indulgence, at least until

McGee’s second volume reaches the Protestant Reformation, but even then, given the common rhetoric of the time, the reviewer’s response is remarkably moderate, commenting only that “During the reign of Elizabeth, the history of Ireland viewed and described from a Roman Catholic stand-point necessarily invests some prominent characters with honour, which the earnest Protestant regards with dislike if not with disgust” (197).

Interestingly, the review highlights (and accepts) McGee’s characterization of the historical role of the Irish race as world leaders in various fields of scholarship and theology. The commentary reveals a relatively considered theological stance that accepts the Irish church as perhaps Europe’s most influential force in both Christian evangelism and scholarship in the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages. The reviewer acknowledges the international importance of early Irish Christianity: “The Irish Schools of the first three christian centuries [i.e. 6th through 8th centuries C.E.] acquired a European reputation, and as teachers of human and divine Science, the Irish Saints exercised great power over their own countrymen, and far beyond their insular home” (85). McGee’s own commentary, as discussed above, was much more effusive, describing Ireland in lofty terms as Europe’s last beacon of Christianity, from which all other flames were rekindled. McGee’s exalted rhetoric notwithstanding, the significance of Ireland’s early

Christian theologians was hardly in dispute, in either Roman Catholic or Anglican

219 scholarship; however, the reviewer’s choice to include this particular topic reveals the limits of his bias. His religious beliefs are quite compatible with Irish Christianity at least until the schism of the Protestant Reformation — and indeed, he acknowledges the great debt owed by European Christianity to the Irish School. By extension, he implies that

Protestant audiences as well as Catholic ones should find little to quarrel with in McGee’s book, and much to be grateful for. The reviewer gives the medieval history of the Irish a figurative stamp of approval: by emphasizing the parts of that history that are compatible with Protestant Britishness, he creates a safe space of cultural contact for his readers to deal with the Irish presence in Canadian communities.

Moreover, not only does the reviewer seem not to harbour racial bias against the

Irish, but indeed, he promotes an image of the Irish as a naturally erudite, culturally advanced society when not subjected to the pressures of foreign control. Commenting on the period following the Danish and Norse invasions of Ireland, the reviewer declares:

“The state of Irish and Anglo-Irish Society, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are still visible to us at the present day. The love of learning, always strong in this race of men and women, revived in full force with the exemption from the immediate pressure of foreign invaders” (86). This concept that, historically, the Irish needed to be free from foreign oppression in order for their scholarly and artistic cultures to flourish — notably, a sentiment belonging to the reviewer, and not just to McGee — seems eminently transferable to modern Ireland, whose people and culture were still reeling from the famine caused directly by the systematic oppression of the Irish people by the English.

The reviewer even comes dangerously close to sympathizing with contemporary Irish nationalists in his sympathy for the plight of the early modern Irish, the first to be

220 subjugated to English rule: “The union of the Crowns of England and Ireland inaugurated a new era. The social condition of the people under English authority, is described as very depressed and harassing. The feudal system was rampant with all its cruel exactions and hopelessness of relief” (86). The “union of the Crowns” to which the reviewer refers is not the Act of Union forced upon Ireland in 1800, after the failed rebellions in 1798, but rather the personal union of the Crowns of Ireland and England in 1542, under Henry

VIII. The reviewer stops short of endorsing more recent Irish nationalism (such as that espoused by the United Irishmen rebels in 1798), lamenting only “that the excessive hardships of those times, should have consigned to a felon’s cell and a shameful death, so many bright spirits in the hey-day of youth, and for the sake of what they believed to be a patriot’s noblest cause” (200). The reviewer thus selects what histories to admit into

Canadian identity; for him, medieval Irishness is perfectly acceptable and desirable, but the closer one gets to the present day, the less desirable the histories become. The challenge thus becomes to integrate the essence of medieval Irishness into Canadian character without also importing modern national strife.

If agitation by the Irish for their independence was not deemed to be suitably patriotic, then what would be the true course for Irish patriotism? To the British

American Magazine, the answer lies in the political unity of the British peoples — but a unity properly expressed and respected by all parties. Building on the notion that the

English and Irish in Ireland are all one people, albeit one divided by caste and culture,

McGee argues for the necessity of universal enfranchisement within any nation; he (as well as the reviewer) concludes by calling for the end of “every code, in every land beneath the sun, which impiously attempts to shackle conscience, or endows an exclusive

221 caste with the rights, and franchises which belong to an entire People” (McGee 804; also qtd. in Adam 200). The logic of McGee and the British American Magazine seems to run thus: Ireland has the potential to be a centre for high culture — as it did in the Middle

Ages — as long as it is not oppressed by foreign rule, but both foreignness and oppression exist on a sliding scale. The English are foreign as long as they oppress the

Irish, but distributing power more equally amongst the nations and peoples of the United

Kingdom would lead to true British patriotism. The suggestion for Canada is thus that it too needs an arms-length relationship to England in order to establish itself as a new centre of learning and culture; as with the medieval Irish, modern Canadians need universal enfranchisement (at least as universal as that offered in England itself) to flourish as equals in the developing British Empire.

After McGee’s assassination in 1868, the tone of responses to his work shifted from that of rational intellectual engagement with his ideas to near-beatification of the man himself. The assassination was allegedly part of a Fenian plot. In the years leading up to Confederation, McGee had publicly denounced the policies of the Fenians (or Irish

Republican Brotherhood), including their plan for an armed invasion of British North

America; McGee had advocated instead for Ireland to adopt Canada’s model of self- government within the British Empire, a stance that made him unpopular not only with

Fenians in Ireland and the United States, but also among some of the Irish Canadian community. There was, however, never any proof of a Fenian conspiracy to assassinate

McGee, and the man who was hanged for the crime was never even officially accused of having Fenian ties (Burns); it is, therefore, entirely possible that Irish extremists simply

222 became the scapegoat for the killing, while McGee became the martyred voice of Irish

Canadian moderation.

Even Grinchuckle, a satirical magazine that specialized in lambasting contemporary politics and society, found itself unable to criticize McGee. In “A Rarity,—

An Honest Review,” the editor directs his satire at the genre of magazine book reviews, while honouring McGee himself. The editor willingly admits that he “had not read the book;— Montreal editors never do. But he had known the author,— known and loved him, and from the deep fountain of hallowed recollections could draw copy enough to fill the maws of a legion of printer’s devils” (129). Yet the irreverence towards the newspaper editorial process disappears once the editor begins to write about McGee. The magazine itself commented on this break from tradition: “Grinchuckle, whose natural bent is to find the elements of the absurd in all mortal things, has for once been completely non-plussed” (129). McGee was beyond reproach:

Of all the elements of the poet not one was lacking to D’Arcy McGee.

With an eye quick to note the ceaselessly changing aspects of Nature to

which his soul was wedded, with a hand whose felicity in delineating what

he saw was unrivalled, with a memory so tenacious that nothing generous

ever slipped from its grasp, with Hibernian blood, which boiled at every

tale or spectacle of wrong—he was qualified for the sacred mission of the

bard. With the high qualifications just enumerated, he had an adequate

sense of the greatness of his calling. He never extolled what was paltry, or

passed contemptuously by what was feeble and forlorn. He sang for love

223

of song; he loved song only as a potent instrument for heightening the joys

and lightening the sorrows of his kind. (129)

In Grinchuckle’s estimation, McGee’s “Hibernian” [Irish] nature is intimately connected with not only his desire for social justice, but also his poetic ability. Like the reviewer in the British American Magazine, Grinchuckle’s editor believes firmly in the high literary culture of Ireland’s bards; indeed, he views Ireland’s bardic profession — both medieval and modern — as a sacred calling, irrespective of religious denomination.

The Rev. George M. W. Carey was likewise able to appreciate McGee’s brand of high Irish culture and religion; moreover, he perceived the necessity of integrating the kind of Irishness that McGee represented into the racial makeup of the newly-formed

Dominion of Canada. That McGee’s work resonated so deeply with a Baptist minister in

New Brunswick is a testament to its ability to break through religious divisions.

Interestingly, amidst his profuse lamentations for McGee’s untimely death, the one section of praise for McGee that Carey italicizes is the least exaggerated in tone, thus doubly marking the comment as one he particularly wants his readers to take to heart: he writes that McGee was “peaceful, inoffensive, talented, and much needed at this critical juncture of our Colonial History” (165). As for the Popular History of Ireland, Carey felt it should be required reading:

As a Historian, he [McGee] is candid, impartial, and fearless in stating

what he conceives to be the truth. His History of Ireland should be widely

spread among his countrymen, and frequently perused; for it would tend

greatly to their enlightenment on many important points, to the removal of

their prejudices, and the softening of the asperities of their nature. (166)

224

Carey feels the Irish would be greatly improved by learning more about their own history as well as by adopting McGee’s philosophical stances; perhaps he also thinks that Irish emigrants would become better potential Canadians by modeling their own expressions of Irishness after McGee’s. Moreover, his statement demonstrates how he thinks histories should function in the multicultural New World: both writing and reading history should not only provide educational value but should also serve in the interests of integrating cultures. Similarly to the other reviewers, Carey points out the indebtedness of all

Christianity to the Irish Church; however, Carey also acknowledges the political debt owed by modern political systems to early Irish culture. Even prestigious positions within the Church were filled by a “method of promotion . . . [that] was modeled on the electoral principle which penetrated all Celtic usages” (McGee, qtd. in Carey 167). The vision of

Irishness that Carey shares with McGee’s History is thus one that lay at the very heart of contemporary Canadian principles of both religion and politics. Like the other reviewers,

Carey embraces a democratic, scholarly Irish culture that shines with the light of the early medieval Christian church; that vision of medieval Irishness (one very much separated from the reality of the modern sick and destitute refugees) is one that all of the reviewers welcome into Canada.

Lords of the North

As Canadian literary society began to promote a truly pan-British identity for

Canada — a national identity that that did not merely accept but instead celebrated elements of Celtic cultures — another parallel impulse for an even broader ethnic definition arose. These efforts to create a pan-British sense of Canadianness also

225 contributed to a new project of differentiating Canadian Britishness from all other expressions of British identity (whether those of the British Isles or of the other colonies).

For many authors and scholars, Canada’s key difference, and what many of them believed would propel her to prominence (if not supremacy) on the world stage, was her northernness. This northernness was not only geographical, but it was also racial; in order to establish Canada’s racial northernness, English Canadian authors looked to create a kinship with the cultures of medieval Scandinavia.

A century earlier, Charles de Secondat, the baron de Montesquieu, had theorized about the effects of climate upon human physique, character, and culture. He justified his belief in northern superiority through pseudoscientific analyses of the human body:

A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of the

body; this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of the blood from

the extremities to the heart. It contracts those very fibres; consequently it

increases also their force. On the contrary a warm air relaxes and

lengthens the extremes of the fibres; of course it diminishes their force and

elasticity.

People are therefore more rigorous in cold climates. . . . This

superiority of strength must produce a great many effects, for instance, a

greater boldness, that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority, that

is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security, that is, more

frankness, less suspicion, policy, and cunning. In short this must be

productive of very different characters. . . . The inhabitants of warm

226

countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like

young men, brave. (316-317)

On the other hand, Montesquieu believed that inhabitants of temperate and warm countries have much more “lively sensations” than people of colder climes. These lively sensations seem for Montesquieu to correlate with artistic sensibilities: he writes, “I have seen the operas of England and of Italy; they are the same pieces and the same performers; and yet the same music produces much different effects on the two nations, one is so cold and indifferent, and the other so transported, that it seems almost inconceivable” (319). Yet, the south’s seeming facility for cultural production and appreciation was not enough to prevent Montesquieu from condemning the entire region of the globe: whereas “in northern countries,” he argues, “we meet a people who have few vices [and] many virtues . . . . If we draw near the south, we fancy ourselves removed from all morality” (320).

Whereas Montesquieu and those who followed him in Europe were primarily interested in the long-term evolution of peoples in a particular climatic region, in Canada, nineteenth-century racial theorists faced slightly different questions: what would be the effects of Canada’s climate on various immigrant peoples, and what mix would produce the ideal northern character? The two main elements of this character were Canada’s physical geography and the medieval ethnic heritage of her inhabitants. There was more interoperability between those two elements than one might expect: even before British

North America (and later Canada) experienced significant immigration from Scandinavia, various authors heralded Canada’s Viking character based on Norse-Icelandic contact with the New World in the Middle Ages. Even though Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux

227

Meadows, the only currently-known Viking settlement in North America, was not discovered until 1960, the lack of physical evidence proving medieval Viking habitation in the New World did not preclude rampant speculation based on the literary evidence of the medieval Icelandic Vinland Sagas (The Greenlanders’ Saga and The Saga of Erik the

Red). For example, in 1867 the New Dominion Monthly asserted the historical importance of “The Northmen’s Discovery of America,” even going so far as to claim several centuries of “considerable immigration” (86) of Norse peoples to colonies stretching from Newfoundland to the Carolinas. Even earlier, in 1863, G.H. Squire won University

College (Toronto)’s English language poetry prize for “The Northmen in America.”

Squire’s poem not only asserts Viking contact with North America “Ages ere the

Genoesan / … crossed old ocean’s stream” (80), but also claims a Canadian right to inherit the Viking spirit. Squire justifies this inheritance through the history of Norse contact with North America as well as through medieval genealogy: the Norman conquest “Gave unto the slower Saxon / Quicker motion in the blood” (80). For Squire, the Normans were more Norse than French, and the conjunction of this mode of Norse contact with that of Viking exploration gives British Canadians a unique claim on the spirit of the early Viking explorer:

the old Norse fire yet liveth

Glowing in our hearts to-day!

He has perished, but his spirit

Empire’s roll through time shall sway! (80)

Squire’s version of Canadianness was more than willing to adopt the medieval history, heritage and spirit of a small minority of Canadian citizens as essential to the identity of

228 the whole. Canada’s lack of a singular medieval history made it possible for Squire, among others, to choose which minority elements to include in their vision of a new

Canada.

Yet medieval Norse heritage was not embraced unreservedly or in its entirety; indeed, attitudes towards Scandinavian cultures (much like those towards Celtic cultures) were influenced by religious considerations. Even though some Canadian authors were quite willing to find a muse in pagan Norse mythology, in general, their depictions of the practitioners of that mythology were much less sympathetic than their portrayals of Norse

Christians. Canadians of the time believed northern climes bred peoples who were strong both mentally and physically. However, they perceived pagan Viking cultures as too fierce, too barbaric; tempered by Christian influence, though, fierceness became bravery, and barbarism became hardiness. The ability to select which elements of Viking culture to incorporate into the new Canadian identity thus became crucial to discourses of

Canadian northernness.

Interest in medieval Scandinavian cultures took root in Canada before any concerted attempt to incorporate such heritage into a Canadian national identity. For example, in Susanna and J. W. Dunbar Moodie’s short-lived Victoria Magazine (1847-

1848), Dunbar Moodie published two separate poems inspired by medieval Norse history, both of which involve contact with the Celtic world. Moodie’s interest in Norse-

Celtic contacts was quite likely personal. He was born in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, which have deep Norse and Celtic cultural roots: the islands were inhabited by various

Celtic groups for centuries before being annexed by Norway in the 9th century, and it was only at the end of the 15th century that Scotland regained control of the Orkneys.

229

The first of Moodie’s Norse-Celtic poems, “Iarl Sigurd,” concerns a battle between pagan Norse and Scottish forces; in it, Moodie follows the natural Norse bias of his source, the thirteenth-century Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson. The second poem, “Brodir’s Fleet in Clontarf Bay,” characterizes a similar conflict between ethno-religious groups, though this time with Norse-Irish contacts. This poem fictionalizes the battle in 1014 between forces led by Brian Boru, King of Ireland, and those of two Vikings: Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, and Brodir of the Isle of Mann. However, the battle lines were not drawn strictly between ethnic groups, as both sides included

Viking and Irish troops, nor, historically, was the battle explicitly about religion.

Historically, the conflict lay between those who supported a nationalist approach to government (all Ireland united under the High Kingship of Brian), and those who rebelled against Brian’s recently-acquired overlordship in favour of maintaining local control.

However, Moodie casts the battle as a specifically religious one. In his prose narrative accompanying the poem, he claims:

The contest was one between Christianity and Heathenism. Of the noble

and truly christian character of the celebrated Brien Boroimhe, the pious

and patriotic King of Ireland, we have every reason to form the highest

estimate, from the histories of his enemies, the Norsemen. Brodir, the

Vikingur, or Pirate, on the other hand, it appears from their histories, had

once been converted to Christianity, but had relapsed into Idolatry. To

show his contempt, no doubt, for the religion to which he had become an

apostate, he chose to fight Brien on “Good Friday,” the day on which our

Saviour died for mankind. In this battle, in which the Irish King fell by the

230

hand of Brodir, at the advanced age of eighty-eight, the Norsemen were

almost utterly destroyed. ; and Brodir himself was taken alive and suffered

a cruel death. . . . If ever there was an adequate motive for the interference

of Providence in the affairs of men, this was one of them. (75)

Moodie sees the divine hand of Providence in the symbolic Good Friday martyrdom of

Brien, who was not only a Christian himself but also a great patron of the Church; moreover, he takes great satisfaction in the destruction of an apostate. He takes pains to emphasize his perception of the battle as proof of Christian superiority, giving little weight to the combatants’ races: he places the poem’s climax not in a fight between

Brodir and Brien, but rather in a conflict between two Vikings, Brodir and his brother

Ospac [Ospak]. Historically, Ospak did fight on the side of Brian Boru against his own brother. Moodie retains that fraternal conflict, while adding another layer: he has Ospac announce his conversion to Christianity to Brodir on the very eve of battle, renouncing his brother and condemning him as the “scourge of men and cursed of God!” (74). The poem even stops before the battle itself; Ospac’s conversion and pledging of faith to “that glorious Christian King” [whether Brien or the Christian God] (74) is victory enough.

McGee’s Popular History of Ireland similarly identifies the Battle of Clontarf as at least partially religious in nature, referring to it as “the last field day of Christianity and

Paganism on Irish soil” (96); however, he also acknowledges other factors at work.

McGee admires Brian Boru for his nation-building efforts both physical and spiritual, and acknowledges that Brian’s victory at Clontarf was due in no small part to his excellent planning of infrastructure:

231

He labored hard to restore the Christian civilization, so much defaced by

two centuries of Pagan warfare. . . . Many a desolate shrine he adorned,

many a bleak chancel he hung with lamps, many a long silent tower had

its bells restored. Monasteries were rebuilt, and the praise of God was kept

up perpetually by a devoted brotherhood. Roads and bridges were

repaired, and several strong stone fortresses were erected, to command the

passes of lakes and rivers. The vulnerable points along the Shannon, and

the Suir, and the lakes, as far north as the Foyle, were secured by forts, of

clay and stone. . . . What increases our respect for the wisdom and energy

thus displayed, is, the fact, that the author of so many improvements,

enjoyed but five short years of peace, after his accession to the Monarchy.

His administrative genius must have been great when, after a long life of

warfare, he could apply himself to so many works of internal improvement

and external defence. (95)

Despite his natural bias, McGee’s admiration was not reserved solely for Brian and the

Irish. Although he loathed the destruction that had been caused by Viking raids in Ireland

— particularly the desecration of churches and monasteries by pagan Vikings — he was able to appreciate the cultural achievements of Vikings who came to colonize rather than simply to pillage. Of course, it was easiest for him to appreciate these Viking dynasties in countries other than Ireland:

The Northmen had never yet abandoned any soil on which they had once

set foot, and the policy of conciliation which the veteran King adopted in

his old age, was not likely to disarm men of their stamp. Every

232

intelligence of the achievements of their race in other realms stimulated

them to new exertions and ashamed them out of peaceful submission.

Rollo and his successors had, within Brian’s lifetime, founded in France

the great dukedom of Normandy; while Sweyn had swept irresistibly over

England and Wales, and prepared the way for a Danish dynasty. (96)

For McGee, as for Moodie, Scandinavians were not essentially incompatible with other

Western European cultures, and indeed, such contact could even be greatly productive — as in the case of Rollo of Normandy — provided the Vikings, like Rollo, embraced

Christianity.

Similarly, a work of historical fiction that appeared in the Literary Garland in

1850 stresses the Christian conversion of medieval Scandinavia as both a prerequisite for and the means to cultural blending. “The Cross on the Snow Mountains. A Scandinavian

Tale”52 — published anonymously in the Garland, but written by English author Dinah

Maria Mulock Craik — is based very loosely on the life of the ninth-century Saint

Ansgar (801-865) and the conversion of King Olof of Sweden [Olaf, in Craik’s text].

Craik depicts Christianity as composed of two seemingly opposite characters, one represented by the missionary Ansgarius, and the other by Hermolin, a delicate French girl who marries Olaf: “The strong, fearless man of earth, the meek and gentle woman, were types of the two foundations on which the early Church was laid — the Spirit of holy boldness, and the Spirit of love!” (351). Without both of these elements, neither the

French nor Viking culture is able to thrive in the story. Regarding the court of Sir Loys of

Aveyran (one of Charlemagne’s knights), Craik repeatedly emphasizes the “frail[ty]” of

52 “The Cross on the Snow Mountains” was originally published in the February 1849 number of the Dublin University Magazine.

233

“Southern flower[s]” [i.e. French women] (306), and despite the supposedly Christian culture, there is a rather spectacular dearth of Christian love at the court for Hermolin, the youngest and frailest of the knight’s daughters. The northern court of Olaf (and before him, his father Hialmar) has its own problems, but frailty is not among them; instead, they are products of the “wild and savage North” (306), possessing a surfeit of bloodthirsty energy and no compassion for the least fortunate among them. The arrival of

Hermolin brings the warmth of Christian kindness to the Viking court, her faith and tenderness slowly “melting the frost off his [Olaf’s] stern Northern heart” (350). The union of Olaf and Hermolin regenerates the country not only religiously but also racially: presumably their descendants — uniting the essences of North and South, masculine and feminine, strength and meekness — become the perfect race in which the dual spirit of

Christianity can thrive.

Charles Sangster’s “A Northern Rune,” first published in the British Canadian

Review in 1863, marks a shift in the discourses surrounding Vikings and northernness, particularly as they apply to Canadian society. The poem describes a winter storm as the metaphorical song of a mythic “Norse-King-Harpist bold” (103); Sangster also explicitly links the poem with modern Canada by identifying Kingston, Canada West, as the place of composition. Sangster’s North is not “wild and savage” like Craik’s; instead, it is

“hardy” (103). Like the land that is welcoming but tough, Sangster’s Norse King is both friendly and accessible but emphatically not weak: “O hale and gay / Is that Norse King gray, / And his limbs are both stout and strong” (104). This Norse King is already an ideal amalgam of hard and soft, of courage and charisma with artistic sensibility; his character needs no further tempering. While not explicitly Christian, the Norse King has

234 the potential to satisfy an audience who might read religious faith into his “sincere” heart

(103) and his “keen” eye for justice (104). The most surprising element of the “rune” — a term by which Sangster primarily means a song — is the rousing cheer into which he leads his audience/singers at the end of the poem:

Then hurrah for the rune,

The North King’s rune,

For his sons, his sons are we! (104)

Sangster, a Canadian, explicitly claims Old Norse ancestry for his Canadian audience — even though by 1863, there were not yet any significant Scandinavian communities in

British North America. The kinship that he claims thus seems to come not through traditional genealogy but through being bred by similar climates. An Old Norse rune had multiple layers of meaning: it could be a letter of the alphabet, a word or concept, and a magical inscription, all at the same time. Sangster’s use of “rune” to describe a song is not historically accurate, but he comes closer to the mark by allowing the song-within- the-song to have multiple signifiers. The Norse King’s “grand old hymn” and “the wintry storm” cheered on by the singers in the chorus are largely interchangeable, and since

Canadians certainly experience the winter-storm-version of the “North King’s rune,” through that experience they have some claim to Viking kinship.

As with Squire’s work, Sangster’s selective genealogy for Canada emphasizes the ability of a new nation to choose its own history, to accept (even from within one small segment of society) the elements it values and reject those it does not. Moodie and

McGee had established the Christianity of medieval Scandinavian cultures as a prerequisite for inclusion into civilized Canadian society — thus rejecting pagan Norse

235 society — and Sangster builds upon this selectivity by choosing to embrace only the most benevolent elements of a warrior culture.

Towards Confederation

Sangster was not the only one in Canada to associate northern climates with hardy inhabitants. In the late 1830s, Anna Jameson had commented in her Winter Studies and

Summer Rambles in Canada on the benefits of Canada’s rigorous northern climate on the development of national character (even though at first she found the winter cold to be stultifying). Such views became even more common in the 1860s. For example, an essay in Somerville’s Canadian Illustrated News entitled “Lords of the Manor of the North

Pole” associates cold climates with a range of social benefits, from increased productivity to greater health and happiness. Occasioned by a change in controlling ownership of the

Hudson’s Bay Company in 1863, the essay combines a discussion of the territorial rights of the new Hudson’s Bay Company with “Notes on Natural History” of some of the people and animals in its northernmost territories — namely, the Esquimaux [Inuit peoples] and seals. The magazine applied the title of “Lords of the Manor of the North

Pole” only half in jest: according to the magazine, the terms of the Hudson’s Bay

Company’s territorial rights were feudal in nature: medieval “Lords of the Manor” had exclusive rights to grant hunting, fishing, and other usage leases of their estates to tenants as they saw fit. Likewise, the Hudson’s Bay Company had the exclusive prerogative of keeping for themselves or leasing out hunting, fishing, and mining rights to their vast

236 northern and western territories.53 Given the Hudson’s Bay Company’s rights over the sealing industry, the article’s immediate mention of “the Esquimaux” could indicate some sympathy with their precarious legal situation of potentially being treated as either serfs or poachers on their own land. However, the author takes pains to emphasize the pleasures of life among the Esquimaux — indeed, if cold climes are invigorating, then the coldest of cold climes must surely work wonders on the body and mind:

The travelers who have described the ‘sufferings of the poor Esquimaux’

from cold have not lived in Canada, else they would have learned that the

cold months are our delight, the season of renovated health, of much out-

of-door industry which cannot be accomplished at other times; the season

of traveling to the music of the merry sleigh bells, the time of the year of

social joy. (153)

Not only does the author declare that Canadians are much happier in the cold weather, but he also suggests that races native to bracing climates are more likely to be better- adjusted: “Unlike the Indians of milder latitudes, his [an Esquimaux’s] good humor is imperturbable. He never fights, never quarrels, and seldom steals” (153). The author does not venture a claim about what happens to British peoples in mild climates, but he does aver that “industrial life in Canada” owes much to “degrees of cold . . . ranging from zero to the coldest” (153). One of the natural corollaries to his claim is that colder nations — usually, the most northern nations — are both the happiest and the most industrious. The

53 The 1863 change in ownership was the beginning of the end of the HBC’s semi-feudal rights to the north, since the new owners, the International Financial Society, were “less interested in the fur trade than in real estate speculation and economic development in the West” (Ray and Yusufali). Soon after the transfer of ownership, the HBC entered negotations to sell much of its northern territory (Rupert’s Land) to Canada, a deal finalized in 1870.

237 other insinuation is far more problematic: if the Arctic north is necessary to produce an

“Indian” who “never fights, never quarrels, and seldom steals,” then the author leaves little room for native peoples of even slightly more temperate northern latitudes in his vision of Canadian society.

The “Esquimaux,” in the author’s estimation, represent nordicity without medieval European underpinnings: a bracing northern climate seemingly brings out better qualities in the people than more temperate climes do, but this northernness on its own is still insufficient to produce peoples whom the author considers most desirable for the new nation. The author presents the “Esquimaux” as ahistorical: not only do they not have a recognizably medieval history of nordicity, but — in a rhetorical move not uncommon to nineteenth-century ethnographers of native subjects — the author also depicts them as existing independent of time altogether. Northernness alone thus seems to be only one half of the equation for the ideal Canadian race; an identifiable and extensive

— i.e. medieval — history of nordicity is the other.

These various ideas about the influence of northernness coalesced with Robert

Grant Haliburton and the Canada First movement. Haliburton, the son of Thomas

Chandler Haliburton (author of The Clockmaker) and Louisa Neville, was a successful barrister in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in Nova Scotia; in addition to his legal career, he had a breadth of interests, spanning classical studies, scientific research, agricultural development, and public policy. A strong proponent of Canadian Confederation and nationalism, he — along with William

Alexander Foster, Henry James Morgan, Charles Mair, and George Taylor Denison III —

238 founded the Canada First movement, whereby they “cultivated an aggressive Anglo-

Saxon nationalism” (Huskins).

Haliburton’s interest in the relationship between climate and agriculture linked naturally to his interest in the effects of climate on human culture. At the Montreal

Literary Club on March 31, 1869, he delivered a lecture on “The Men of the North and

Their Place in History.” The basic doctrine promoted by his speech is one of northern superiority. Over the course of many centuries, he argues, humanity (in terms of both its peoples and its cultures) has evolved according to the nature of local environments, such that “southern nations have almost invariably been inferior to and subjugated by the men of the north” (2). To Haliburton, the rigours of cold, northern climates simply must produce superior people — but the process is a long, evolutionary one. This chronological requirement could pose a problem for a country with a short history; it thus becomes crucial to Haliburton’s project that Canada and Canadians stem from a long and illustrious past. For Haliburton, the solution is not that Canadians must live in Canada for eons to take full advantage of their nordicity, but rather, that the climate should augment an already-evolved people. It follows, then, that the greatness of a society depends largely upon two things: first, is it geographically northern? and second, is it populated by an already-improved stock, that is, people whose medieval ancestors were also northern?

For Canada, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes:

A glance at the map of this continent, as well as at the history of the past,

will satisfy us that the peculiar characteristic of the New Dominion must

ever be that it is a Northern country inhabited by the descendants of

Northern races. As British colonists we may well be proud of the name of

239

Englishmen; but as the British people are themselves but a fusion of many

northern elements which are here again meeting and mingling, and

blending together to form a new nationality, we must in our national

aspirations take a wider range, and adopt a broader basis which will

comprise at once the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian elements,

and embrace the Celt, the Norman French, the Saxon and the Swede, all of

which are noble sources of national life. (2)

But what is it that makes these northern races noble sources of national life? For

Haliburton, their truest power lies not in their ability to build nations (although they can, and do), but rather in their power to destroy corrupt and despotic ones (inevitably those of the south). Haliburton believes that northern civilizations will always bear the responsibility of burning sickly civilizations to the ground to allow new, vigorous ones to rise from the ashes. In reference to the sobriquet of Attila the Hun (406-453), Haliburton asserts, “Well might their savage Monarch [Attila] style himself ‘the Scourge of God.’

In every age such will be the title and the mission of the avengers, for to the end of time the North is destined to be the ‘the Scourge of God’ upon the enervated and enervating

South” (6). In their dying throes, these southern empires also manage to suck the life out of the other civilizations they touch. The “mission of the men of the North, to sweep away every vestige of the dead past, and to build up a new world of life and hope in our race” (7) is both necessary and Providential. In Haliburton’s view, one does not have to be Christian to carry out the Christian God’s work; indeed, he describes the Huns,

Vandals, Goths and other Germanic tribes of the early Middle Ages as “the apostles of a new, of a Northern, of a Christian civilization” (8).

240

Haliburton stresses that the civilizations that emerge after a fall must, indeed, be new, developing organically instead of being forced into the pattern of a dead society.

Regarding his investigation into the development of legal systems in Europe, he comments:

I found that the same singular result followed from all attempts to

revive what Providence seemed to have consigned to the grave. Almost all

the Northern nations had similar systems of regulating the rights of

property and the remedies for wrongs. Their laws, were traditions called

by them their customs, an unwritten code which still exists in England

where it is known as the Common Law. . . . [I]t is a remarkable fact that

wherever these unwritten laws have been preserved, civil and political

liberty has survived. But the discovery in the twelfth century of the

Pandects of the Emperor Justinian, led to a great change. It was an

admirable code far surpassing in most respects the ruder customs of our

northern ancestors, but it was the handiwork of despotism, and was the

grave cloths of a world that had long since gone to its rest.

The Southern nations of Europe abandoned their customs, and adopted

the civil and canon law, and in every instance where this has taken place it

has been fatal to political liberty, for only those have retained their ancient

rights that have refused to adopt the laws of ancient Rome. (8)

Haliburton’s cycles of national liberty seem to trap nations along a given path. The northern nations develop their custom based on their hardy self-reliance; because their systems and their characters are robust, they are able to retain their own traditions instead

241 of capitulating to Roman law. Because their cultures develop organically, without being weighed down by failed practices, their political liberty survives and thrives (at least, according to Haliburton). On the other hand, unlike the northern European nations,

Haliburton’s southern nations are too weak to maintain their own customs, and instead accept the laws of a failed society; moreover, accepting those “grave cloths” created by a despot weakens the state of liberty in the southern nations even further. The southern nations are trapped in a downward spiral — until the time comes for them to be sacrificed to the northern “scourge.”

Given Haliburton’s distrust of southern cultures, it is particularly important to his project to emphasize the Germanic and Celtic aspects of French culture, while ignoring the Latinate. Haliburton tries to negotiate multiple Old World inheritances in Canada without having to acknowledge geographical relativity — i.e., that France is more southerly than England, and therefore French Canadians are from more southerly stock.

To solve this dilemma, he glosses over the much more complex historical ethnicities within French Canadian culture, acknowledging only the groups with strong genetic and cultural ties to the British Isles and to even more northerly nations, such as Norway.

Indeed, by tracing the line of the British monarchy through William the Conqueror to the

Norse/Norman Rollo, he makes the internally logical (although externally absurd) argument that Queen Victoria’s lineage ties her more strongly to her French Canadian subjects than it does to any of her British ones:

The Norman French of Quebec may well feel proud when they remember

that they can claim what no other portion of the Empire can assert, that

they are governed by a monarch of their own race, who holds her sceptre

242

as the heir of Rollo, the Norman sea-king who first led their ancestors

forth from the forests of the North to the plains of Normandy. (9)

In fact, Haliburton traces Rollo’s (and therefore Queen Victoria’s) lineage back even further, into a mythic past that includes gods and giants: “Rollo claimed to be descended from the Gods of the North, and th[r]ough a Finnish king, from Forntjotr the old Frost

Giant, the father of the wind and of the Ocean; and it is as the heir of the sea king Rollo, that Her Gracious Majesty, the Royal descendant of the Old Frost Giant, now rules over a

Northern race and sways the sceptre of sea” (9). It is this mythic lineage, one that ties the monarchy to the frozen land, to their lived experiences in cold climes, that Haliburton uses to justify British dominion in the world and particularly in Canada.

Because of his certainty of continued Anglo-Saxon dominion, on the one hand it seems perfectly logical that Haliburton would advocate the re-formation of the British race in Canada. On the other hand, it seems quite odd — particularly given his anxieties about reusing elements from other cultures. However, the fact that British society was not dying, but rather at its peak of world power, means that emulating the British is not at all akin to borrowing grave cloths from a dead culture. Yet Haliburton’s insistence on organic development still seems to apply:

Here in the New World, we, who are sprung from these men of the North,

are about to form a New Dominion in this Northern land, a worthy home

for the old Frost Giant, and a proud domain for his royal descendant. We

have here strangely united together all the original elements of the British

race. We have the Celt, with his traditions of “good king Arthur,” from

whom, through her ancient British ancestors, Her Gracious Majesty may

243

claim descent; we have the Saxon or Teutonic element, and in Quebec we

have a race that have come from Normandy and Brittany, the one the land

of the Northmen or Normans, and the other inhabited by a Celtic race,

cherishing the ancient British traditions of King Arthur and his twelve

companions. (9)

Haliburton’s plan is thus not to copy modern British society, but rather to repeat from its medieval beginnings an experiment that has already proven successful. His plan involves taking the original building blocks of the British race (or as close to them as can be found, centuries later) and creating a new social structure — a “New Dominion in this

Northern land” — out of familiar, trustworthy pieces. (Conversely, then, he must have deemed any racial groups not involved in forging the British race to be untested and therefore untrustworthy.) Haliburton’s ideal Canadian race would naturally be closely related to the British, but it would be a form perfectly suited to the Canadian landscape, a form that looks to the medieval beginnings of British society to set itself on a successful path — but after it sets off, it looks to the rigours of the northern landscape to forge the best possible version of its national character. Haliburton’s Canada would thus repeat

Britain’s medieval process, but in a way suited to the geography of the land, in order to develop a new society with the greatness of Britain but the distinctiveness of Canada.

It is perhaps ironic that, twenty years after an angry mob torched Parliament

House to protest what they saw as “French domination,” that an Anglo-Saxon supremacist like Haliburton would declare French Canadians to be an essential component of the new — and superior — Canadian Britishness; however, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Haliburton’s formula is based on the idea that

244 these Norman and Breton French Canadian cultures will dissolve into the ethnic mixture, strengthening the resulting Britishness but not retaining any visible signs of their French history. Indeed, Haliburton has already elided their Frenchness, treating it as a temporary state between medieval Norse origins and a future Canadian Britishness. It is perhaps in a similar spirit that Canadian authors were able to accept Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s views of Irish culture (and indeed that they were so prone to praise it after his assassination): they could welcome its contribution to Canadian national identity, so long as the rest of it could then disappear, in the name of patriotism. Despite John Henry Walker’s insistence on characterizing Canadian culture as being anything but American, these first models of

Canadian ethnicity at the time of Canadian Confederation bear much more in common with the American philosophy of the melting pot than they do with modern Canada’s professed love of the cultural mosaic. The only indisputable difference is that Canada is indeed a more northern nation; this bare truth led Haliburton’s vision of northern superiority to dominate the Canadian cultural imagination for decades to come.

245

Conclusion

In 1882, the French historian and philosopher Ernest Renan delivered an address at the Sorbonne in Paris about the popularity of contemporary projects of race- and nation-making across the Western world. In this address, he argued for a rethinking of the ethnographic elements that had become so popular in nationalist discourses in recent decades:

La considération ethnographique n’a donc été pour rien dans la

constitution des nations modernes . . . . La vérité est qu’il n’y a pas de race

pure et que faire reposer la politique sur l’analyse ethnographique, c’est la

faire porter sur une chimère. Les plus nobles pays, l’Angleterre, la France,

l’Italie, sont ceux où le sang est plus mêlé. (15)54

Renan objects to theorizations of national identity that rely on race as their foundation; there is no such thing as a discrete race, he argues, so such theories would make discrete nations impossible. However, even as he attempts to discredit race-based national theory,

Renan still argues for the primacy of ancestry in building a nation: “Le culte des ancêtres est de tous le plus légitime; les ancêtres nous on faits ce que nous sommes. Un passé héroïque, des grands hommes, de la gloire (j’entends de la véritable), voilà le capital social sur lequel on assied une idée nationale” (26).55 By ancestry, Renan does not mean simply one’s genetic progenitors; indeed, such a definition would blur into the

54 “Ethnographic considerations have therefore played no part in the constitution of modern nations . . . . The truth is that there is no pure race and that to make politics depend upon ethnographic analysis is to surrender it to a chimera. The noblest countries, England, France, and Italy, are those where the blood is the most mixed” (trans. Martin Thom, 14). 55 “Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (by which I understand genuine glory), this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea” (Thom 19).

246 ethnographic distinctions he wishes to avoid. Yet, if this ancestry is not racial or genetic, it must (at least to some degree) be able to be acquired and lost. Renan emphasizes the legendary elements of ancestry, the heroic deeds and figures of the past — in other words, a shared national myth — as the best foundation for a nation. “Un riche legs de souvenirs” (26)56 is, to Renan, one of the essential components of this ancestry. In

Canada likewise, the legacy of cultural memory was certainly an integral part of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nationalist discourses.

Renan urged his French and European colleagues in the late nineteenth century to reformulate their nations’ approaches to historiography, but English Canadian literature had already been grappling with this very issue for the past century. As I have argued,

Canada was at the forefront of this international conversation about what metaphysically constitutes a nation, because for the past century, it had had no simple territorial, racial, linguistic, or cultural borders, nor did it have a singular history around which to define itself. Instead, Canadian authors wrote a new medieval past for their nation in order to help define not only its present, but also its future.

This historical, medievalist approach to nationalism is intimately connected with the development of literary production in Canada. The international reprint culture common in the early years of Canadian periodicals positioned Canadian literature from its inception as part of an international literary culture. Moreover, the nineteenth century saw Canada’s literary publishing industry embrace an ever-wider diversity of forms and genres. In terms of genre, the predominance of prose non-fiction in the eighteenth century gave way in later decades to a more equalized distribution with creative forms such as

56 “A rich legacy of memories” (Thom 19).

247 verse and prose fiction. The establishment of more and superior printing presses, particularly in the Canadas, made publishing monographs locally much more feasible, and by mid-century, improved technologies, along with a greater availability of artisans, led to increasing incorporation of images in literary texts. The emergence of cartoons attested to Canadians’ appetites for both satire and images. This diversity in what was being published in Canada fuelled — and was in turn fuelled by — increased interest in more diverse cultural sources. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Canada’s authors began to explore and incorporate Celtic medieval traditions into their own national narratives; in the years leading up to Confederation, this interest in the medieval

Celtic world expanded the definitions of Canadian Britishness to include previously

Othered racial groups such as the Irish. By the time the Irish began to be incorporated into mainstream anglophone narratives of Canadianness, there was a significant population of Irish living in the Canadas. Other racial groups — mainly those from

Scandinavian nations — also benefited from this new English Canadian diversity of cultural interests. Even though there were very few settlers of Scandinavian descent living in Canada by the time of Confederation, English Canadian literature courted them and their medieval history as desirable influences on the new Canadian identity. A

Christianized, tempered version of the medieval European north became a prominent model for the new Canadian identity.

However, this expanding interest in discourses of racial inclusion coincided with discourses of exclusion. As English Canadian literature sought to define what its nation should be, it also sought to define what it was not: medieval cultural inheritances were rallied as proof that Canada was not southern, not American, and for many decades also

248 not French. The opposition between the political and cultural models of Britain and the

United States framed a significant portion of the debates about Canadian socio-political identity. The French and American Revolutions in the late eighteenth century galvanized opposition in British North America to revolutionary republicanism, but at the same time, the British North American literary presses had little desire to import wholesale the

English model of aristocratic governance. Canadians of the mid-nineteenth century faced a similar division between American and British societies: the United States faced another period of upheaval with its Civil War, but English Canadian society — growing ever more distinct from that of Britain — sought new ways to define its individual role in the British Empire. This dissatisfaction with the social models presented by both the

United States and Britain manifested itself in how English Canadians wrote about these nations’ relationships with the medieval past. On the one hand, they saw American society as having broken from medieval tradition, a rupture that left it dangerously acultural; on the other hand, Britain’s society sometimes appeared too invested in tradition, particularly in terms of its aristocratic hierarchies. Instead, English Canadian authors advocated a middle path that would apply the spirit of medieval traditions to the exigencies of modern life in the New World.

Even as the literary community in Canada debated their relationship to the medieval past, they also sought to determine who had control over that relationship. In particular, the shifting political relationship between France and Britain likewise influenced the ways in which English Canadian authors constructed Canada’s medieval cultural inheritance. In the immediate context of the Napoleonic Wars, English Canadian authors both suppressed French history and disenfranchised the French from the

249 processes of historiography; controlling the narratives of the past became a way to control narratives of the present. In the period of relative cooperation between France and

Britain that followed the Napoleonic era, English Canadian authors no longer silenced

French medieval history in Canada; nonetheless, they still controlled the historical narrative, in large part as a way of coping with the lingering tensions caused by the 1837-

1838 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada. They constructed France — like the United

States — as having fatally ruptured its relationship with medieval tradition; they wrote about French Canadian society, on the other hand, as having progressed minimally since the Middle Ages. By controlling historiography in this way, anglophone authors sought to control the racial and political narratives of the emerging Canadian nation.

Canada’s literary and cultural history is not like those of European nations.

Canada has no medieval past, at least not in the sense that its eighteenth- and nineteenth- century inhabitants of European origin would have understood the term. This absence of the medieval was not for early Canadians a mark of shame, but rather it was a blank slate, an opportunity to construct for themselves a unique relationship to the past. Early

Canadian authors thus strove to create a historical legacy for themselves and for their nation. In the twenty-first century, now that Canada as a political entity has several centuries of history connected to the land, it is easy to overlook early Canadian conceptions of a past unconnected to place. Early Canadian authors felt the apparent lack of local history quite pointedly; their response was to fill that void with a literary history of their own creation. Anticipating Renan, they did not construct a past for themselves based solely on genetics, nor did they mythologize racial purity (even though racial theory constituted a significant element of discourses of Canadianness). Rather, they

250 turned to the medieval era for its heroes and legends as well as for the lessons in its histories; they claimed as their own the people and stories that inspired their visions for a new nation, and they ignored or even actively rejected those that did not. The literatures of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Canada form the most immediate cultural inheritance of modern Canada, but the medievalist legacy they created is also part of the modern national narrative. The past that early Canadian authors chose to construct reveals what they wanted Canada to become.

251

Works Cited and Consulted

A.R. “Acquaintance with the Great.” Literary Garland June 1839: 318-320. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_7.

---. “Intelligence Not the Test of Virtue.” Literary Garland Sept. 1839: 467-471. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_10.

[Adam, Graeme Mercer?] “Reviews. A Popular History of Ireland from the Earliest

Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics.” British American Magazine Nov.

1863: 84-88; Dec. 1863: 197-200. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

CIHM no. 8_06696_7-8.

“Alfred ‘the Great.’” History of the Monarchy. Official Website of the British Monarchy.

n.d. Web. 7 May 2013.

Alston, Sandra. “The Prospectus of the Quebec Gazette/La Gazette de Québec.”

Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing. Web. 14 July 2012.

Amodio, Mark C. Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics and Literate Culture in

Medieval England. Notre Dame: U. of Notre Dame P., 2004. Print.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991. Print.

“Andrea Doria.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2013. Web. 7 May 2013.

Andrès, Bernard. “Quebec Literature and Printed Materials: From Birth to Rebirth.”

Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 383-392.

“The Anglo-Saxon Dooms.” Medieval Sourcebook. Internet History Sourcebooks

Project. Fordham U.: 1998. Web. 7 May 2013.

252

Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. 2 vols. Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1977. Print.

Ayers, Peter. “Learning to Curse in Accurate Iambics: Shakespeare in Newfoundland.”

Shakespeare in Canada: ‘A World Elsewhere’?. Ed. Diana Brydon and Irena

Makaryk. Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 2002. Print.

B—n. “Adelaide Belmore.— A Tale.” Amaranth May 1841: 136-140. Early Canadiana

Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_5.

Badke, David. “Goat.” The Medieval Bestiary. 15 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 July 2012.

[Baldwin, Robert.] “Memorandum.” n.d. MS. Toronto Reference Library.

---. Poems. By Robert Baldwin & Others. Collected by James Samson Hunter. Vol. 1st.

1820. MS. Toronto Reference Library.

Ballstadt, Carl. “Chisholme, David.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000.

Web. 7 May 2013.

---. “Moodie, John Wedderburn Dunbar.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 9. U.

of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 30 April 2014.

Ballstadt, Carl, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael Peterman, eds. Susanna Moodie: Letters

of a Lifetime. Toronto: U. Toronto P., 1985. Print.

Barber, Malcolm. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple.

Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1994. Print.

Barber, Malcolm C. “Medieval Crusades.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 13 Aug 2008.

Web. 26 Nov 2012.

Barber, Richard. King Arthur: Hero and Legend. 3rd rev. ed. 1986. Suffolk: Boydell P.,

2004. Print.

253

Barber, Richard W. The Penguin Guide to Medieval Europe. 1984. Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1986. Print.

Barbour, Noel Robert. Those Amazing People! The Story of the Canadian Magazine

Industry, 1778-1967. Toronto: Crucible, 1982.

Barrington, Candace. American Chaucers. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. Print.

Barrow, G.W.S. “Robert I (1274–1329).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Oxford U. P., 2004. Web. 6 May 2014.

Baucom, Ian. Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity.

Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1999. Print.

Beasley, David. The Canadian Don Quixote: The Life and Works of Major John

Richardson. 2nd ed. Simcoe: Davus, 2004. Print.

Beck, J. Murray. “Howe, John.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. Web.

14 July 2012.

Beckman, Margaret, Moshie Dahms and Lorne Bruce. “Libraries.” Canadian

Encyclopedia. Web. 14 July 2012.

Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, from the Coming of Julius Cæsar

Into this Island, in the 60th Year Before the Incarnation of Christ, till the Year of

our Lord 731. Trans. John Stevens. London, 1723. Print.

Bédier, Joseph, ed. and trans. La Chanson de Roland: Publiée d’après le manuscrit

d’Oxford. L’édition d’art H. Piazza: Paris, 1960. Print.

Bentley, D.M.R. Introduction. The Charivari. By George Longmore. Canadian Poetry.

Web. 7 May 2013.

254

Berington, [Joseph]. “Life of Arnold of Brescia. [From Berington’s History of the Lives

of Abeillard and Heloisa.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine Oct. 1789: 265-268. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_4.

The Bible: Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha. Eds. Robert Carroll and

Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1998. Web.

Blais, Christian. “Marc Lescarbot’s Les Muses de la Nouvelle France (1609).” Fleming,

Gallichan and Lamonde 31-33.

Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Orlando Innamorato. Trans. Charles Stanley Ross. Berkeley: U.

California P., 1989. Print.

Breakenridge, John. The Crusades, and Other Poems. Kingston: John Rowlands, 1846.

Print.

“Breakenridge, John.” Past Member Database, Law Society of Upper Canada Archives,

2011.

Mr. Breckanridge [Breakenridge, John]. “Crusaders’ Hymn Before Jerusalem.” Literary

Garland June 1846: 280. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM

no. 8_06178_90.

Bryce, James. The Holy Roman Empire. New ed. London, 1866. Print.

---. The Holy Roman Empire. New ed. London: MacMillan, 1911. Print.

Buckner, P.A. and Richard Foot. “Rebellions of 1837.” Canadian Encyclopedia.

Historica Dominion Institute, 2012. Web. 3 Sept. 2013.

Bumsted, J.M. “Alline, Henry.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. Web.

14 July 2012.

255

Burke, John Bernard. A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and

Baronetage of the British Empire. 14th ed. London: Colburn and Co., 1852. Print.

Burns, Robin B. “McGee, Thomas D’Arcy.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 9,

U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 7 April 2014.

Butler, Caroline H. “The Cave of Eigg – A Legend of the Hebrides.” Anglo-American

Magazine Oct. 1854: 361-370. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

CIHM no. 8_04640_28.

Campbell, James. “The Lost Centuries: 400-600.” The Anglo-Saxons. Ed. James

Campbell. London: Penguin, 1982. 20-44. Print.

Carey, G.M.W. “Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s History of Ireland.” Stewart’s Literary

Quarterly Magazine Oct. 1868: 164-171. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug.

2014. CIHM no. 8_04804_7.

Cartier, Gwenaël. “City of Québec 1608-2008: 400 years of censuses.” Statistics Canada,

21 Nov. 2008. Web. 29 Sept 2012.

Cawdell, James M. The Canadian Conservative. Toronto, 1839. Print.

[---.] The Roseharp: For Beauty, Loyalty, and Song. Toronto, 1835. Print.

“Charlemagne.” Amaranth Jan. 1841: 14-15. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug.

2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_1.

Chinnici, J.P. “Berington, Joseph.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford

University Press. 2008. Web. 15 July 2012.

Clara. “A Tale of the Fifteenth Century.” Amaranth Feb. 1842: 52-54. Early Canadiana

Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_14.

256

Clark, Willene B. A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary:

Commentary, Art, Text and Translation. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006. Print.

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: U.

Toronto P., 2006. Print.

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale U. P.,

2009. Print.

“The Condemned of Lucerne.” Amaranth Feb. 1841: 33-39. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_2.

Condorcet, [Nicolas de.] Bibliotheque de l’homme public; ou analyse raisonnée des

principaux ouvrages françois et étranger, Sur la Polituque en général, la

Législation, les Finances, la Police, l’Agriculture et le Commerce en particulier,

et sur le Droit naturel et public. Par M. Condorcet, Secrétaire perpétuel de

l’Académie des Sciences, l’un des Quarante de l’Académie Françoise, et autres

Gens de Lettres. Seconde Année. Tome Cinquieme. Paris: Buisson, 1791. Print.

“Constitution du corps helvétique, extrait du Guide du voyageur en Suisse.” Quebec

Magazine / Magasin de Québec Feb. 1793: 6-9; Mar. 1793: 75-77; Apr. 1793:

133-138 [143-148]; May 1793: 202-205; June 1793: 262-264; July 1793: 326-

329. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_7-12.

[Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock.] “The Cross on the Snow Mountains. A Scandinavian

Tale.” Literary Garland July 1850: 306-316; Aug. 1850: 347-355. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_139-140.

Cross, Michael S. A Biography of Robert Baldwin: The Morning Star of Memory. Don

Mills: Oxford U. P., 2012. Print.

257

Cross, Michael S. and Robert L. Fraser. “ ‘The waste that lies before me’: The Public and

Private Worlds of Robert Baldwin.” Canadian Historical Association: Historical

Papers (1983): 164-183. Erudit. Web. 11 Jan. 2013.

Cruikshank, E., Lieut.-Col., F.R.S.C., ed. The Documentary History of the Campaign

upon the Niagara Frontier In the Year 1813. Part IV (1813). Lundy’s Lane

Historical Society. Tribune Office: Welland, 1907. Print.

[Cushing, Eliza Lanesford.] “Bourbon: An Historical Tale.” Literary Garland Jan. 1842:

79-92. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_38.

---. “Francis I. and the Chevalier Bayard.” Literary Garland May 1840: 267-268. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_18.

---. “The Knight of Navarre: A Tale of the Fourteenth Century.” Literary Garland Mar.

1843: 97-115. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06178_51.

---. Saratoga; A Tale of the Revolution. 2 vols. Boston, 1824. Print.

---. Yorktown: An Historical Romance. 2 vols. Boston, 1826. Print.

D.C. “The Battle of the Plains of Abram.” Literary Garland Feb. 1839: 105. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_3.

D’Arcens, Louise. Old Songs in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature

1840-1910. Making the Middle Ages, Vol. 10. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Print.

Davies, Gwendolyn. “Literary Cultures in the Maritime Provinces.” Fleming, Gallichan

and Lamonde 368-383.

Defoe, Daniel. The Political History of the Devil. 6th ed. Birmingham: C. Earl, 1772.

Print.

258

“Description of a Druids Temple, Found in the Island of Jersey, illustrated by an elegant

and correct representation, taken upon the spot by a Gentleman at present in this

City.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 205-206. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_4.

“Description d’un Temple de Druides. Trouvé dans l’Isle de Jersey, enrichie d’une

élégante et correcte représentation, prise sur les lieux par un Gentilhomme à

present en cette ville.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 206-

207. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_4.

Dillon, Emma. The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330. Oxford:

Oxford U. P., 2012. Print.

E. “Sketches of Paris.” Literary Garland Feb. 1839: 135-137. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_3.

---. “Sketches of Paris: The ‘Combats des Animaux.’” Literary Garland May 1839: 257-

258. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_6.

Eaton, Arthur Wentworth. The Church of England in Nova Scotia and the Tory Clergy of

the Revolution. New York, 1891. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

Edwards, Justin D. Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature.

Edmonton: U. Alberta P., 2005. Print.

Embury, Emma C. “The Abbot of La Trappe.” Amaranth Mar. 1841: 88-93. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_3.

Fernandez, Gilbert G. “Agustina de Aragón (née Agustina Zaragoza y Domenech) (1786-

1857).” Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the

259

Present. Ed. Bernard E. Cook. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006. 4-6. Web. 14

Aug. 2014.

“[The first troubadour.]” Amaranth Feb. 1841: 48. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15

Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_2.

Fleming, Patricia Lockhart. “First Printers and the Spread of the Press.” Fleming,

Gallichan and Lamonde 61-69.

Fleming, Patricia Lockhart, Gilles Gallichan, and Yvan Lamonde. History of the Book in

Canada: Volume One: Beginnings to 1840. Toronto: U. Toronto P., 2004. Print.

“La Fontaine.” Literary Garland Aug. 1839: 390. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15

Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_9.

F[oster,] T.D. “Sketches of the Italian Poets. No. 1. Petrarch.” Literary Garland Sept.

1841: 449-454. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06178_34.

---. “Sketches of the Italian Poets, No. II. Boccacio [sic].” Literary Garland Nov. 1841:

555-561. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_36.

Francis, R. Douglas, Richard Jones, and Donald B. Smith, eds. Origins: Canadian

History to Confederation. 6th ed. Toronto: Nelson Ed., 2009. Print.

Franklin, Michael J. “Jones, Sir William (1746-1794).” Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography. Oxford University Press. 2011. Web. 21 July 2012.

Frantzen, Allen J. Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the

Tradition. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. Print.

Fraser, Robert L. “Cawdell, James Martin.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.

2000. Web. 7 May 2013.

260

Freedman, Paul and Gabrielle M. Spiegel. “Medievalisms Old and New: The

Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies.” American

Historical Review 103.3 (1998): 677-704. Web. 28 June 2014.

Gagan, David. “Foster, William Alexander.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol.

11. U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 30 April 2014.

Galarneau, Claude. “Mesplet, Fleury.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000.

Web. 15 July 2012.

Gallichan, Giles. “Official Publications.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 309-320.

---. “Political Censorship.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 320-330.

Gerson, Carole. “English Literary Culture in Lower Canada.” Fleming, Gallichan and

Lamonde 392-395.

---. A Purer Taste: The Writing and Reading of Fiction in English in Nineteenth-Century

Canada. Toronto: U. Toronto P., 1989. Print.

Gervais, Jean-Francis (in collaboration). “Brown, William.” Dictionary of Canadian

Biography Online. 2000. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.

Gervais, Jean-Francis. “Gilmore, Thomas.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.

2000. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.

Gibbon, Edward. “Character of Charlemagne, from the 5th Vol. of the Decline and Fall

of the Roman Empire, by Mr. Gibbon, Lately Published.” Nova-Scotia Magazine

July 1789: 20. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06254_1.

261

---. “Character of Mahomet [from the 5th Vol. of the Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire, by Mr. Gibbon, Lately Published.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine July 1789:

18-19. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_1.

---. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 12 vols. London: 1788.

Print.

---. “The Life and Pontificate of Gregory I. [From Gibbon’s History of the Decline and

Fall of the Roman Empire.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine Apr. 1790: 257-259. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_10.

---. “Numbers and Spirit of the First Adventurers in the Crusade.” Nova-Scotia Magazine

Aug. 1789: 102. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06254_2.

---. “Origin of Knighthood. [From Gibbon’s History of the Roman Empire.]” Nova-

Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 100-102. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug.

2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_2.

---. “Peter the Hermit. From History of the Roman Empire.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug.

1789: 102. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_2.

[Gibson, John.] “To Our Readers.” Literary Garland Dec. 1838: 3-4. Early Canadiana

Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_1.

[Gray, Thomas.] “The Descent of Odin. An Ode from the Norse Tongue, in Bartholinus.”

Nova-Scotia Magazine Nov. 1789: 386-387. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15

Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_5.

Grout, James. “The Medieval Bestiary.” Encyclopaedia Romana. 11 Feb 2012. Web. 14

July 2012.

262

H.C.H. “Editor’s Shanty: [Letter.]” Anglo-American Magazine May 1854: 535-537.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04640_23.

Halcro, Claud [John Breakenridge]. “The Crusaders’ Hymn Before Jerusalem.” The

Church 29 Feb. 1840: 137. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM

no. 8_06496_141.

Haliburton, Robert Grant. The Men of the North and Their Place in History. A Lecture

Delivered Before the Montreal Literary Club, March 31st, 1869. Montreal: John

Lovell, 1869. Print.

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler. The Clockmaker; or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel

Slick, of Slickville. Joseph Howe: Halifax, 1836. Print.

Hardy, Dominic. “The Illustrated Satiric Press.” Lamonde, Fleming and Black 310-314.

Hare, John E. “Neilson, Samuel.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. Web.

15 July 2012.

Hare, John and Jean-Pierre Wallot. “The Business of Printing and Publishing.” Fleming,

Gallichan and Lamonde 71-78.

“Harp.” The Encyclopædia Britannica: or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and

Miscellaneous Literature; Enlarged and Improved. 6th ed. Vol. X. Edinburgh:

Archibald Constable, 1823. 275-277. Print.

Harris, Jennifer. “Unmasking The Literary Garland’s T.D. Foster.” Canadian Literature

213 (2012): 84-98. Web. 23 Sept. 2013.

Harvey, Sally. “The Knight and the Knight’s Fee in England.” Past & Present 49 (Nov.

1970): 3-43. Web. 31 July 2013.

Hébert, Pierre. “Religious Censorship.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 331-336.

263

Henderson, Jennifer. Settler Feminism and Race Making in Canada. Toronto: U. Toronto

P., 2003. Print.

“Henry V.” History of the Monarchy. Official Website of the British Monarchy. n.d.

Web. 22 Sept. 2013.

[Herbert, H.W.] “A True Tale of the Crusades.” Amaranth Sept. 1843: 257-264. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_33.

Hertzberg, le comte de. “Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les revolutions de Etats, lu dans

l’Assemblée publique de l’Académie des sciences de Berlin, le 6 Octobre 1791,

pour célébrer le jour de la naissance de Fredéric-Guillaume II, Roi de Prusse, par

le comte de Hertzberg, Ministre-d’Etat, curateur et membre de l’Académie.”

Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Aug. 1792: 10-13. Early Canadiana

Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_1.

Hipkins, A.J. “Harp.” The Encyclopedia Britannica, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and

General Literature. 9th ed. New York: Samuel L. Hall, 1880. 488-490. Print.

Hoffmeister, Gerhart. “Francesco Petrarch.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 6 July 2004.

Web. 14 Sept. 2013.

Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge

U. P., 2005. Print.

Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-

Saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981. Print.

“Humours American.” Punch in Canada 26 Jan. 1850: 18. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06160_32.

264

Huskins, Bonnie. “Haliburton, Robert Grant.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol.

13. U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 30 April 2014.

Iby, Elfriede. “Napoleon at Schönbrunn Palace.” The World of the Hapsburgs. Schloss

Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betreibsges, 2008. Web. 21 Sept. 2013.

James, C.C. A Bibliography of Canadian Poetry (English). Victoria University Library

Publication No. I. Toronto: William Briggs, 1899. Print.

Jameson, Anna Brownell. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. 1838.

Toronto: New Canadian Library, 2008. Print.

“Jardine Clan History.” ScotClans. n.d. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

Jones, Ffion M. “Harp, Welsh.” Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. John T.

Koch. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005. Web. 31 July 2013.

Jones, William. “On the History of the Hindu’s [sic].” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de

Québec Sept. 1792: 91-97. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM

no. 8_06245_2.

---. “On the History of the Arabs.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Oct. 1792:

154-160. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_3.

---. “On the History of the Tartars. [From Sir William Jones’s Fifth Anniversary

Discourse.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 207-214. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_4.

---. “On the History of the Ancient Persians. (From Sir William Jones’s Sixth

Anniversary Discourse.)” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Dec. 1792:

168-175; Jan. 1793: 339-345. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

CIHM no. 8_06245_5-6.

265

[---.] “Solima: An Eclogue.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1879: 133-134. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_2.

Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. From the 8th Day of

September to the 12th Day of October, in the Year of Our Lord 1842, and in the

Sixth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria. Being the Second

Session of the First Provincial Parliament of Canada. Kingston, 1842. Print.

Kesteman, Jean-Pierre. “Galt, Sir Alexander Tilloch.” Dictionary of Canadian

Biography. Vol. 12. U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 2 April 2014.

Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in

Colonial America. New Haven: Yale U.P., 2007. Print.

Klinck, Carl F. “John Norton.” Recovering Canada’s First Novelist: Proceedings from

the John Richardson Conference. Ed. Catherine Sheldrick Ross. Erin: Porcupine’s

Quill, 1984. 15-22. Print.

---. “Norton, John.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Vol. 6. U. of Toronto/U.

Laval, 2003. Web. 7 July 2014.

Lambert, James H. “Spark, Alexander.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 5. U.

Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 31 July 2014.

Lamonde, Yvan, Patricia Lockhart Fleming, and Fiona A. Black. History of the Book in

Canada: Volune Two: 1840-1918. Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 2005. Print.

Laurence, Gérard. “Gosselin, Léon.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. U.

Toronto/U. Laval, 1988. Web. 5 Sept 2013.

---. “The Newspaper Press in Quebec and Lower Canada.” Fleming, Gallichan and

Lamonde 233-238.

266

Lee, David. “Cox, Nicholas.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. Web. 7

May 2013.

Lewis, Ceri W. “Bardic order, the [2] in Wales.” Celtic Culture: A Historical

Encyclopedia. Ed. John T. Koch. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005. Web. 31 July

2013.

“Lines Addressed to the Celebrated Earl of ‘Dignified Neutrality.’” Punch in Canada 30

Aug. 1849: 127. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06160_17.

Little, Lester K. “Calvin’s Appreciation of Gregory the Great.” Harvard Theological

Review 56.2 (April 1963) 145-157. Web. 14 Sept. 2012.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie. Boston: Ticknor, 1847.

Print.

Longmore, George. The Charivari. 1824. Ed. D.M.R. Bentley. Canadian Poetry. Web. 7

May 2013.

---. “The Fall of Constantinople.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository Dec.

1823: 497-505; Jan. 1824: 25-33. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

CIHM no. 8_06234_6-7.

---. Mathilde: or the Crusaders, An Historical Drama in Five Acts. London: 1827. Print.

[---.] “Tecumthe.” Canadian Review and Literary and Historical Journal Dec. 1824:

396-432. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04968_2.

---. The War of the Isles, A Poem, in Ten Cantos: With Notes. London: 1826. Print.

“Lords of the Manor of the North Pole.” Canadian Illustrated News 8 Aug. 1863: 153.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06635_39.

267

“Louisiana Purchase, 1803.” Milestones. U.S. Department of State Office of the

Historian. n.d. Web. 7 May 2013.

Lupack, Allan and Barbara Tepa Lupack, eds. The Camelot Project. Robbins Library, U.

Rochester. Web. 12 July 2014.

MacDonald, Mary Lu. “The Foster Sisters of Montreal.” Unitarian Universalist

Women’s Heritage Society Archives, 2002. Web. 12 Sept 2013.

---. “Further Light on a Life: George Longmore in Cape Colony.” Canadian Poetry 24

(Spring/Summer 1989). Web. 31 July 2013.

---. “George Longmore: A New Literary Ancestor.” Dalhousie Review 59.2 (Summer

1979): 265-285. Print.

---. Literature and Society in the Canadas 1817-1850. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1992.

Print.

Macpherson, James. Morison's edition of the Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal.

Translated by James Macpherson, Esq; carefully corrected, and greatly

improved. With a sett [sic] of elegant engravings, from original drawings, by

Stothard and Allan. Vol. 1. Perth, 1795. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Web. 18 May 2013.

Maddicott, J.R. The Origins of the English Parliament 924-1327. Oxford: Oxford U.P.,

2010. Web.

Mandler, Peter. The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund

Burke to Tony Blair. New Haven: Yale U. P., 2006. Print.

Mankin, Robert. “Edward Gibbon.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 March 2005. Web. 4

July 2012.

268

Marsh, James. “Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France.” The Canadian

Encyclopedia / The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. 2 Feb. 2006. Web. 29 Sept

2012.

McDougall, Robert L. “Adam, Graeme Mercer.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Vol. 14. U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 18 April 2014.

McGee, Thomas D’Arcy. A Popular History of Ireland: From the Earliest Period to the

Emancipation of the Catholics. 2 vols. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1864. Print.

McKenna, Catherine. “Bard [2] comparison of the professional poet in early Wales and

Ireland.” Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. Web. 31 July 2013.

McMullen, John. The History of Canada, From Its First Discovery to the Present Time.

Brockville: M. M’Mullen, 1855. Print.

McMullen, Lorraine and Sandra Campbell. Pioneering Women: Short Stories by

Canadian Women, Beginnings to 1880. Ed. John Moss. Ottawa: U. Ottawa P.,

1993. Print. Canadian Short Story Library, Ser. 2.

Melançon, François. “The Book in New France.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 45-

55.

[Millingen, John Gideon.] “Duelling Anecdotes.” Literary Garland Aug. 1841: 423-

425. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_33.

Mills, David. “Château Clique.” Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Dominion Institute.

2012. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.

---. “Council of Twelve.” Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Dominion Institute. 2012.

Web. 1 Sept. 2013.

269

---. “Family Compact.” Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Dominion Institute. 2012.

Web. 1 Sept. 2013.

---. “Rebellion Losses Bill.” Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Dominion Institute. 7

Feb. 2006. Web. 24 Dec. 2013.

Mitchell, Bruce and Fred C. Robinson. A Guide to Old English. 6th ed. Oxford:

Blackwell, 2001. Print.

Monmouth, Geoffrey of. The History of the Kings of Britain. Ed. Michael D. Reeve.

Trans. Neil Wright. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007. Print.

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de. The spirit of laws. Translated from the

French of M. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. With corrections and additions

communicated by the author. Trans. Thomas Nugent. Vol. 1 of 2. London: J.

Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1750. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Web. 16

Aug. 2014.

Moodie, J.W. Dunbar. “Brodir’s Fleet in Clontarf Bay.” Victoria Magazine Dec. 1847:

73-77. Vancouver: UBC Library, 1968. Print.

---. “Iarl Sigurd, A Ballad from the Norse.” Victoria Magazine Oct. 1847: 25-26.

Vancouver: UBC Library, 1968. Print.

Moodie, Susan[na]. “The Banner of England. A Loyal Song.” Amaranth May 1841: 151.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_5.

Moodie, Susanna. “The Banner of England. A Loyal Song.” Literary Garland Mar.

1841: 188. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_28.

Moore, Dafydd. “Ossian.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 6 Oct. 2004. Web. 7 May 2013.

270

Morgan, Prys. “From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic

Period.” The Invention of Tradition. Eds. Eric Hogsbawm and Terence Ranger.

Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1983. 43-100. Print.

Murray, Allan V. “People’s Crusade: 1096.” The Crusades: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Allan

V. Murray. 939-941. Web. 14 Sept. 2012.

Murray, Heather. “‘And every Lawyer’s Clerk writes rhyme’: Robert Baldwin as Poet,

York, 1819-20.” Canadian Literature 188 (Spring 2006): 63-84, 203. ProQuest.

Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

---. Come Bright Improvement!: The Literary Societies of Nineteenth-Century Ontario.

Toronto: U. Toronto P., 2002. Print.

---. “Readers and Society.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 172-182.

New, W.H. A History of Canadian Literature. 2nd ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-

Queen’s U.P., 2003. Print.

“The Northmen’s Discovery of America.” New Dominion Monthly Nov. 1867: 86-88.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06581_3.

“Official Symbols of Canada.” Canadian Heritage. 5 May 2011. Web. 7 May 2013.

O’Malley, John W. A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present. Plymouth: Sheed

& Ward, 2010. Print.

Orne, Mrs. Caroline. “The Captive Prince.” Amaranth Feb. 1842: 56-60. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_14.

“Our Table. [Book notice:] The Crusaders’ Hymn Before Jerusalem.” Literary Garland

June 1846: 288. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06178_90.

271

Owen, Prince of Powis. “Hirlas: A Poem.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Mar. 1792: 184-185.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_33.

Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French

Revolution. 3rd ed. Vol. 1 of 2. Boston: 1791. Print.

Panofsky, Ruth. “Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s The Clockmaker.” Fleming, Gallichan

and Lamonde 352-354.

Papio, Michael. "Giovanni Boccaccio". The Literary Encyclopedia. 13 Jan. 2006. Web.

14 Sept. 2013.

Parker, George L. “Courting Local and International Markets.” Fleming, Gallichan and

Lamonde 339-351.

---. “Joseph Howe and the Freedom of the Press.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 330-

331.

---. “Lovell, John.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. U. Toronto/U. Laval,

1990. Web. 4 May 2012.

Parkinson, Roger. The Peninsular War. 1973. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 2000. Print.

“Parti canadien.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. 2012. Web. 7 May 2013.

[Paterson, A.D.] “The Last Days of Princes.” Amaranth Feb 1843: 33-38; May 1843:

139-147; June 1843: 161-165. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

CIHM no. 8_04643_26/29-30.

“Pauline Rosier.” Amaranth Mar. 1841: 75-80. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug.

2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_3.

Peterman, Michael. “Literary Cultures and Popular Reading in Upper Canada.” Fleming,

Gallichan and Lamonde 395-408.

272

Petrarch, Francis. “An Epistle of Francis Petrarch.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de

Québec Mar. 1793: 61-66. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM

no. 8_06245_8.

---. “Laura: an Elegy.” Trans. Sir William Jones. Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 131-

132. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_2.

“Picciola — or Captivity Captive [Review].” Literary Garland Mar. 1839: 191-192.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06178_4.

Prestwich, Michael. Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience.

New Haven: Yale U.P., 1996. Print.

“PUNCH IN CANADA’S LETTERS. To the People of Canada, on the Position of the

Government.” Punch in Canada 23 Mar. 1850: 62. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 9_06160_40.

Radcliffe, David Hill. “Sir William Jones. Solima: An Eclogue, Written in the Year

1768.” English Poetry 1579-1830: Spenser And The Tradition. Web. 21 July

2012.

“A Rarity.—An Honest Review.” Grinchuckle 20 Jan. 1870: 129. Early Canadiana

Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06186_16.

Ray, Arthur J., and Sasha Yusufali. “Hudson’s Bay Company.” The Canadian

Encyclopedia. 2 Apr. 2009. Web. 8 Aug. 2014.

“Reflections on the Age of Chivalry.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Apr. 1791: 222-225. Early

Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_22.

Renan, Ernest. Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?: Conférence faite en Sorbonne, le 11 mars

1882. 2e éd. Paris : Calmann Lévy, 1882. Print.

273

---. “What is a Nation?” Trans. Martin Thom. Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi K.

Bhabha. London: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Reynier, Jean Louis Antoine. Le guide des voyageurs en Suisse, précédé d’un discours

sur l’état politique du pays. Paris: 1791. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

Rice, Richard. “Shives, Robert.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. U.

Toronto/U. Laval, 1972. Web. 4 Sept 2013

“Richard I.” History of the Monarchy. Official Website of the British Monarchy. n.d.

Web. 22 Sept. 2013.

[Richardson, John.] Wacousta; or, The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas. 3 vols. London:

T. Cadell, 1832. Print.

Rosenwein, Barbara H. A Short History of the Middle Ages. 3rd ed. Toronto: U. Toronto

P., 2009. Print.

Rousseau, Karine and Christian Vachon. “Cartoons (1850-1900).” Thematic Tours.

McCord Museum. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.

Roy, Fernande. “Patriotes.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. 2012. Web. 7 May 2013.

Sangster, Charles. “A Northern Rune.” British Canadian Review Feb. 1863: 103-104.

Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06554_3.

Savard, Pierre and Paul Wyczynski. “Garneau, François-Xavier.” Dictionary of Canadian

Biography. Vol. 9. U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 6 May 2014.

Schwartz, Debora. “Translatio Studii et Imperii.” California Polytechnic S. U. 6 Jan

2002. Web. 7 May 2013.

Scott, Thomas. [Untitled letter, n.d.]. Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott. Ed. David

Douglas. Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894. 345-346. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

274

Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe. London: A. Constable, 1820. Print.

Shippey, Tom. [Introduction.] International Society for the Study of Medievalism. 2005-

2014. Web. 7 July 2014.

[Shives, Robert.] [Editorial.] The Amaranth May 1841: 159. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_5.

“A Sign of the Times.” Punch in Canada 23 Feb. 1850: 39. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06160_36.

Simmons, Clare A. “Introduction.” Medievalism and the Quest for the “Real” Middle

Ages. Ed. Clare A. Simmons. Oxon: Frank Cass and Co., 2001. Print.

---. Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in Nineteenth Century British Literature.

New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. Print.

Smith, John Howard. The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of

Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 2008. Print.

Smith, Karen. “Community Libraries.” Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 144-151.

Smith, W.H. Canada: Past, Present and Future, being a Historical, Geographical,

Geological and Statistical Account of Canada West. Vol. 2. Toronto, 1851. Print.

[Somerville, Alexander.] “M’Gee’s History of Ireland.” Canadian Illustrated News

(Hamilton) 1 Aug. 1863: 140. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

CIHM no. 8_06635_38.

Spencer, David R. Drawing Borders: The American-Canadian Relationship during the

Gilded Age. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.

275

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A.C. Hamilton. Rev. 2nd ed. Harlow:

Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.

Squire, G.H. “The Northmen in America.” Canadian Quarterly Review and Family

Magazine Jan. 1864: 80. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_04230_2.

Ste. Croix, Lorne. “Ferres, James Moir.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 9. U.

of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 4 April 2014.

Sugars, Cynthia. Canadian Gothic: Literature, History, and the Spectre of Self-Invention.

Cardiff: U. of Wales P., 2014. Print.

Sylvain, Philippe. “Rambau, Alfred-Xavier.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.

U. Toronto/U. Laval, 1985. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.

Tamarkin, Elisa. “Revolution and Nostalgia: American Elegies for the British Empire.”

Modern Language Quarterly 67.2 (2006): 171-211. Print.

“The Treacherous Duke.” Amaranth Dec. 1841: 357-361. Early Canadiana Online.

Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_04643_12.

“The Treaty of Paris (1763) and North America.” Site for Language Management in

Canada. U. Ottawa. n.d. Web. 12 Aug. 2014.

Tremaine, Marie. A Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 1751-1800. Toronto: U. Toronto

P., 1952. Print.

Trofimenkoff, Susan Mann. “Foster, Eliza Lanesford (Cushing).” Dictionary of

Canadian Biography Online. U. Toronto/U. Laval, 1982. Web. 4 May 2012.

Tunis, Barbara. “Longmore, George.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000.

Web. 7 May 2013.

276

Turner, Sharon. The History of the Anglo-Saxons: Comprising the History of England

from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest. 3rd ed. 3 vols. London: 1820.

Print.

Turner, Wes. “Napoleonic Wars.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. 2012. Web. 7 May 2013.

[Uggla, Carl Hillebransson.] “Histoire Générale du Sénat de Suede.” Quebec Magazine /

Magasin de Québec Oct. 1793: 150-152. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug.

2014. CIHM no. 8_06245_15.

“The Vegtams Quitha, or as it is called by Mr. Grey, who imitated it in rhyme, the

Descent of Odin.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 134-136. Early Canadiana

Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no. 8_06254_2.

“View of a Druids Temple in the Isle of Jersey.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec

Nov. 1792: [i]. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 15 Aug. 2014. CIHM no.

8_06245_4.

Vincent, Thomas B. Index to Pre 1900 English Language Canadian Cultural and

Literary Magazines. Kingston: Royal Military College, 1993. CD-ROM.

Vincent, Thomas Brewer, Sandra Alston, and Eli MacLaren. “Magazines in English.”

Fleming, Gallichan and Lamonde 240-249.

Walker, Frank Norman. “Shanly, Charles Dawson.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Vol. 10. U. of Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 6 May 2014.

Warren, Michelle R. “Medievalism and the Making of Nations.” Medievalism in the

Postcolonial World: The Idea of “the Middle Ages” Outside Europe. Eds.

Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 2009. 286-

298. Print.

277

Waterston, Elizabeth. Rapt in Plaid: Canadian Literature and Scottish Tradition.

Toronto: U. Toronto P., 2003. Web. 31 July 2013.

---. “Somerville, Alexander.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 11. U. of

Toronto/U. Laval, 2003. Web. 21 April 2014.

Williamson, Mary F. “Illustrated Books, Periodicals and Commercial Print.” Lamonde,

Fleming and Black 384-394.

Willis, Alexander J. “Shifting Boundaries: Newspapers and the Confederation Debate.”

Lamonde, Fleming and Black 306-310.

Wise, S.F. “Gourlay, Robert Fleming.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000.

Web. 7 May 2013.

Womersley, David. “Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794).” Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography. Oxford University Press. 2006. Web. 30 June 2012.

Wright, C.P. “Cochran, William.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. Web.

15 July 2012.

[Wulfstan.] Sermo Lupi ad Anglos. Ed. Dorothy Whitelock. Second ed. London:

Methuen, 1952. Print.

278

Appendix

Bibliography of Canadian Medievalism, 1789-1870

A.A. “The Fairies.” Literary Garland Mar. 1840: 176.

A.P.J. “Designe for Ye Decoratione of ye Dominione Councile Chambere.” Diogenes 26

Mar. 1869: 211.

A.P.J. “Ye Famous Battell Betweene Robin Hood and Ye Curtal Fryer.” Diogenes 22

Jan. 1869: 107.

A.S.W. “Death Song of King Reyner Lodbrog.” Canadian Illustrated News 13 Feb.

1864: 171.

“The Abbess; A Romance.” Montreal Museum Aug. 1833: 540-547.

“The Actual Position of the Government.” Punch in Canada 23 Mar. 1850: 63.

[Adam, Graeme Mercer?] “Reviews. A Popular History of Ireland from the Earliest

Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics.” British American Magazine Nov.

1863: 84-88; Dec. 1863: 197-200.

Adams, Levi. Jean Baptiste, A Poetic Olio in II Cantos. Montreal: 1825.

Prince Albert. “The Toy of the Giant’s Child. From the German.” Anglo-American

Magazine Nov. 1855: 487.

An American Lady. “Summer Excursions from London: Tintern Abbey.” Amaranth

Aug. 1843: 247-251.

“The Amphibious City.” Anglo-American Magazine Apr. 1853: 379-383.

“Ancient Druids.” Canadian Casket 19 May 1832: 100.

“Anecdote of Alphonso.” Acadian Magazine May 1827: 441.

“Anecdotes: Blondel, the Minstrel.” Acadian Magazine Mar. 1827: 357.

279

“Anecdotes: Richard Coeur de Lion.” Acadian Magazine Mar: 1827: 355.

“Anecdotes: Robert the Norman.” Acadian Magazine Apr. 1827: 398.

“Anecdotes: The Siege of Acre.” Acadian Magazine Mar. 1827: 356-357.

“Anecdotes: The Sultan Saladin.” Acadian Magazine Mar. 1827: 355-356.

Anna Matilda. “Stanzas. Occasioned by the Elegy of Della Crusca, written upon the

plains of Fontancy.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Sept. 1789: 230-231.

Annie, Harriet. “Lord Harold’s Farewell.” Canadian Illustrated News 14 Nov. 1863: 333.

Arion. “The Fairies’ Isle; or, an Imaginary Excursion to Loch Lomond.” Acadian

Magazine July 1827: 6-7.

Arthur. “The Dream.” Amaranth Nov. 1843: 349-350.

Arthur. “The Misanthrope.” Amaranth Oct. 1843: 292.

“The Attack of the Lion.” Literary Garland Feb. 1846: 86-87. With illustration.

“Auto da Fe.” Diogenes 16 July 1869: 77.

B----N, Mrs. “Romance of Irish History. Story of Deara, Princess Meath.” Amaranth

Mar. 1842: 79-81.

B. “The Italian Literature of the 14th Century.” Literary Garland Feb. 1851: 64-69.

B.G. “Scottish Legendary Tales, No. 1.: Clan Na Geallana, The Maclean Clan, and Niel

Oig, Head of the Campbells of Duntroon.” Canadian Magazine and Literary

Repository Nov. 1823: 406-408.

B.J. “Lord Roderick. A Ballad.” Literary Garland June 1847: 261-262.

Baccalaureus, Johannes. “Lines to a ‘Walian Maid.’” Amaranth Aug. 1841: 254.

A Backwoodsman. “Songs and Ballads: No. V: The Mountain Sheiling.” Anglo-

American Magazine Mar. 1853: 251-252.

280

---. “Songs and Ballads: The Moorland Harp.” Anglo-American Magazine Aug. 1852:

143-145.

---. “Songs and Ballads. No II. Lay of the Scottish Emigrant.” Anglo-American

Magazine Sept. 1852: 207-208.

“The Ballad of Hornbee Hall.” Punch in Canada 19 Jan. 1850: 8.

Barber, Elizabeth G.. “A Deed of Chivalry.” Canadian Review and Literary Supplement

to “Montreal Witness” Feb. 1856: 12.

Bede, Cuthbert. “Old Superstitions.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1855: 566-569.

[“Beds in the Middle Ages”]. Amaranth July 1841: 203.

Berington, [Joseph]. “Life of Arnold of Brescia.” From History of the Lives of Abeillard

and Heloisa. Nova-Scotia Magazine Oct. 1789: 265-268.

“Biographical and Miscellaneous Anecdotes: Siward.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Nov.

1790: 376.

Birch, Samuel. “Fatal Effects of Monastic Seclusion. [From Birch’s Abbey of

Ambresbury.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine Apr. 1790: 319-320.

Blanchard, Laman. “The Double Lesson.” Literary Garland June 1851: 256-257.

“Boar’s Head Carol: From an Ancient Book of Christmas Carols, Printed by Wynkin de

Worde.” Canadian Illustrated News 25 Dec. 1869: 125

“The Bonnie Scot.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1853: 620.

Bone, J.H.A. “The Downfall of the Saxon Gods.” New Dominion Monthly June 1868:

179-183.

Borthwick, J.D. “The Why and Wherefore of Peculiar Names – Manners and Customs

Not Generally Known.” Canadian Illustrated News 6 Aug. 1870: 87.

281

Bowring, J., trans. “Translation of an Ancient Spanish Ballad.” Canadian Magazine and

Literary Repository Oct. 1824: 368.

Bowring, J., trans. “Troubadour Songs.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository

Oct. 1824: 366.

Breakenridge, John. The Crusades, and Other Poems. Kingston: John Rowlands, 1846.

[Mr. Breckanridge of Kingston.] “Crusader’s Hymn Before Jerusalem.” Literary

Garland June 1846: 280.

Brews, Marjory. “Specimens of Love Letters in the Reign of Edward IV.” Nova-Scotia

Magazine Oct. 1789: 264-265.

[Brooke, Frances.] “Song [from the new Opera of Marian.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine

May 1790: 400.

[---.] “Song [from the same (i.e. the new Opera of Marian).]” Nova-Scotia Magazine

May 1790: 400.

“The Bull-Fight.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1849). With

engraving by J. Herbert and H. Cook.

“Bulwarks of Liberty [Magna Charta and Bill of Rights.]” Canadian Illustrated News 8

Aug. 1863: 146.

Burns, R.F. “On Russia.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1854: 562-570.

Bushwackee. “Land of Dreams.” Anglo-American Magazine Dec. 1853: 613-614.

Butler, Caroline H. “The Cave of Eigg – A Legend of the Hebrides.” Anglo-American

Magazine Oct. 1854: 361-370.

C.H.C. “The Fairy Harp.” Canadian Review and Literary and Historical Journal Dec.

1824: 111[343]-345[348].

282

C.M. "The Mermaid and the Mountain Swan." Canadian Garland 27 Oct. 1832: 32.

C.P.T. [Catharine Parr Traill.] “The Doge’s Daughter.” Anglo-American Magazine Dec.

1852: 545-549.

“Calendars and Almanacs.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov./Dec. 1855: 460-466.

Carmichael, J.W. “Dunstanborough Castle.” Literary Garland Feb. 1844: [i].

“Castle Building, or the Modern Alnaschar.” Literary Garland Oct. 1839: 503-506.

“Castle Building; or, the Modern Alnaschar.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1855:

233-238.

“The Castles of Europe and Asia.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir

(1847). With engraving by W.H. Barflett and G.K. Richardson.

“Cat’s Mount.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1853: 268-273.

“The Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary

Souvenir (1848). With drawing by T. Allom, engraved by J.H. LeKeux.

Cawdell, James M. The Canadian Conservative. Toronto: 1839.

---. The Roseharp, for Beauty, Loyalty, and Song. 1 Jan. 1835.

Chateaubriand, [François-René de]. “The Adventures of the Last Abencerrage.” Trans.

M.E.R. Anglo-American Magazine June 1853: 615-620; July 1853: 25-30; Aug.

1853: 195-201.

“Character of the Moors. In Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal, &c.” Nova-

Scotia Magazine Jan. 1790: 36-38.

“Charlemagne.” Amaranth Jan. 1841: 14-15.

“Chaucer.” Anglo-American Magazine Aug. 1852: 126-128.

“Chaucer.” Anglo-American Magazine Aug. 1852: ii.

283

Chaucer, G[eoffrey]. “Selections from Old English Poets: Chaucer.” Anglo-American

Magazine July 1852: 25-26.

Chirp. “The Harp of Erin.” Halifax Monthly Magazine Nov. 1830: 217.

“Chivalry.” Halifax Monthly Magazine Mar. 1831: 391.

Clara. “A Tale of the Fifteenth Century.” Amaranth Feb. 1842: 52-54.

Clark, Daniel. “Norsemen.” Canadian Literary Journal Oct. 1870: 59-61.

--. “The Anglo-Saxon in the English Language.” Stewart’s Quarterly Jan. 1870: 392-

401.

Clarke, Hewson. “Herwald de Wake. (Excerpt).” Canadian Magazine and Literary

Repository Apr. 1824: 337-341.

“The Clepht. A Tale of the Morea.” Canadian Garland 10 Nov. 1832: 36-38.

“The Coliseum.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1847). With

drawing by Col[one]l Cockburn, engraved by W.B. Cooke.

“Comparative Number of Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Other Words in the English

Language.” Canadian Quarterly Review Apr. 1856: 63-64.

Connon, Caroline. “A Legend of Sherwood Forest.” British American Magazine Jan.

1864: 253-256.

“Constitution du corps helvétique, extrait du Guide du voyageur en Suisse.” Quebec

Magazine / Magasin de Québec Feb. 1793: 6-9; Mar. 1793: 75-77; Apr. 1793:

133-138 [143-148]; May 1793: 202-205; June 1793: 262-264; July 1793: 326-

329.

[Cook, Eliza.] “The Horse.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov. 1854: 462.

Coornhert, Dirk. “To My Ladye Love.” Literary Garland June 1845: 260.

284

[Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock.] “The Cross on the Snow Mountains. A Scandinavian

Tale.” Literary Garland July 1850: 306-316; Aug. 1850: 347-355.

[---.] “The Rosicrucian. A German Tale.” Literary Garland Nov. 1846: 501-506.

[---.] “The Rosicrucian. A Tale of Cologne.” Anglo-American Magazine Apr. 1855: 351-

362.

“The Crusader of Bigorre: A Legend of the Pyrenees.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept.

1852: 244-251.

“The Crusader’s Return from Palestine.” Acadian Magazine Dec. 1826: 209.

C[ushing], E[liza] L[anesford]. “Bourbon, An Historical Tale.” Literary Garland Jan.

1842: 79-92.

---. “The Fairies’ Fountain.” Literary Garland July 1844: 311-327.

---. “Francis I and the Chevalier Bayard.” Literary Garland May 1840: 267-268.

---. “The Heart of King Robert Bruce. A Ballad.” Literary Garland Feb. 1844: 89-91.

---. “The Knight of Navarre: A Tale of the Fourteenth Century.” Literary Garland Mar.

1843: 97-115.

---. “A Leaf from an Old Chronicle.” Literary Garland Jan. 1844: 1-14.

---. “Mary of England.” Literary Garland May 1839: 241-253; June 1839: 289-299.

“Customs of the Northmen.” Canadian Casket 7 Apr. 1832: 85-86.

[D.S.] “On the Character of Louis XI.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository

Mar. 1824: 228-233.

“The Damsel of Peru.” Acadian Magazine Mar. 1827: 324-325.

“Death of Joan of Arc.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1853: 278-279.

285

“Description d’un Temple de Druides. Trouvé dans l’Isle de Jersey, enrichie d’une

élégante et correcte représentation, prise sur les lieux par un Gentilhomme à

present en cette ville.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 206-

207.

“Description of a Druids Temple, Found in the Island of Jersey, illustrated by an elegant

and correct representation, taken upon the spot by a Gentleman at present in this

City.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 205-206.

“The Dew-Drop and the Fairy.” Cabinet of Literature Aug. 1839: 320.

[Dick, A.I.] “William Tell Saving Baumgarten.” Literary Garland Apr. 1847: i.

Illustration.

“Diets of Gold and Silver.” Anglo-American Magazine May 1853: 515-518.

“Directions for the Study of English History, in a Letter from a Gentleman of great

Eminence to a Friend.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Oct. 1793: 152-

155.

D’Israeli, J. “The Druidical Institution.” Literary Garland May 1844: 230.

Dobson, [Susannah]. “Account of Some Singular Vows Made by the Knights in the

Times of Chivalry. [From Mrs. Dobson’s Translation of Monsieur de Palaye’s

Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine Nov. 1790: 373-376.

“Domestic Life in the Middle Ages.” Anglo-American Magazine Jan. 1854: 56.

“Dress of a Dandy 400 years ago.” Canadian Garland 16 Mar. 1833: 111.

Duault. “Le Songe de Saadi.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Aug. 1792: 43-45.

“A Duel, and its Awful Ending.” Diogenes 2 Apr. 1869: 233.

“Duelling Anecdotes.” Literary Garland Aug. 1841: 423-425.

286

E. “Lines Written After Reading ‘The Scottish Chiefs.’” Literary Garland Mar. 1846:

110.

E.M.M. “The Ruins of Hohenstein: Retribution.” Literary Garland Jan. 1840: 63-74;

Feb. 1840: 97-111.

E.T.F. “Literature of Northern Europe. No. I. Icelandic Poetry.” Literary Garland Nov.

1844: 501-505.

---. “Literature of Northern Europe. No. II. Songs of the Polish Peasantry.” Literary

Garland Dec. 1844: 563-565.

---. “Dante in Exile.” Literary Garland Sept. 1844: 412.

“Earls and Dukes of York.” Acadian Magazine May 1827: 416.

Echo. “The Minstrel’s Bays.” Canadian Casket 29 Oct. 1831: 16.

“Editor’s Shanty: Bonnie Braes.” Anglo-American Magazine Jan. 1855: 101.

“Editor’s Shanty: Christmas Observances [The Wassail Bowl.]” Anglo-American

Magazine Jan. 1854: 98.

“Editor’s Shanty: His Early Dreams.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1855: 239-264.

“Editor’s Shanty: Lady Godiva.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1855: 579-580.

“Editor’s Shanty: Lady Summer.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1855: 574.

“Editor’s Shanty: May Day in Olden Time.” Anglo-American Magazine May 1855: 489-

490.

“Editor’s Shanty: Review: Dinah Craik, A Hero and Other Tales.” Anglo-American

Magazine Apr. 1853: 437-438.

“Editor’s Shanty: Review: [Don Francisco Navarra Villoslada’s] Donna Blanca of

Navarre.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov. 1854: 507-512.

287

“Editor’s Shanty: Review: [Thackeray’s] The Rose and the Ring.” Anglo-American

Magazine Apr. 1855: 392-394.

“Editor’s Shanty: Review: [W.E.L. Martin’s] The Pig.” Anglo-American Magazine Apr.

1855: 390-391.

“Editor’s Shanty: St. David’s Day.” Anglo-American Magazine Mar. 1855: 291-292.

“Editor’s Shanty: St. Swithen’s Day.” Anglo-American Magazine July 1855: 77; Aug.

1855: 152.

“Editor’s Table. [Review:] Moorland Minstrel.—By Thomas McQueen, Mason, Barkip,

near Beath.—Author of the Exile, and Other Poems. Second Edition. Glasgow.”

Victoria Magazine Nov. 1847: 70-72.

Embury, Emma C. “Retribution; or, the Last Lord of Dunraven.” Amaranth Aug. 1841:

232-237.

“Emmeline.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1848). With

engraving by J. Hayter and W.H. Mote.

“English Sovereigns.” Calliopean 10 April 1848: 80.

Erro. “Selections from the Odes of ‘Hafiz,’ the Persian Poet. Rendered into English Verse

by “Erro,” from an Original Translation by his Father, with a Short Preliminary

Sketch.” Anglo-American Magazine Dec. 1852: 507-512.

“The Exile’s Lay – Seventeenth of March.” Halifax Monthly Magazine Apr. 1831: 457-

458.

“Expedition of Douglas to the Holy Land with the Heart of Bruce.” Literary Garland

Dec. 1841: 20.

288

“Extracts from the Journal of M. Narcisse Rossignol dit Le Vert,— a Crusader ‘Contre le

Luxe,’ — Translated and illustrated for Punch.” Punch in Canada 14 Apr. 1849:

52.

“Fairy Faith.” Literary Garland Mar. 1844: 109-110.

“The fairy gift.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1853: 585-587.

“Fairy Land my Fairy Land!” Diogenes 27 Aug. 1869: 128.

“The Fairy’s Appeal.” Literary Garland Nov. 1850: 522.

“The fairy’s burial.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1855: 538-539.

The Fat Contributor. “Self-Made Men of Olden Times.” Canadian Illustrated News 24

Dec. 1870: 375.

Fay, Theodore S. “The St. George.” Literary Garland Apr. 1850: 168.

“Fitzcarey; or the Recluse of Selwood. A Norman Tale.” Nova-Scotia Magazine May

1791: 253-258.

Flagg, Edmund. “Lady Awaken!” Literary Garland June 1844: 266.

Fleming, F.A. “Short Account of St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland. [Extracted from a

Sermon preached Mar 17, 1790, in St. Mary’s Church, Philadelphia, by the Rev.

F.A. Fleming.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine May 1790: 362-365.

“Fortifications at Monklands.— Revival of the Feudal Ages.” Punch in Canada 12 May

1849: 67.

F[oster], T.D. “Ariosto.” Literary Garland July 1847: 322-326.

---. “Durante Alghieri.” Literary Garland Apr. 1847: 149-156.

---. “Olympia Morata; or, Ferrara in the Fifteenth Century.” Literary Garland June 1850:

270-274.

289

---. “Sketches of the Italian Poets, No. II. Boccaccio.” Literary Garland Nov. 1841: 555-

561.

---. “Sketches of the Italian Poets. No. 1. Petrarch.” Literary Garland Sept. 1841: 449-

454.

---. “Torquato Tasso.” Literary Garland July 1847: 407-416.

“Frankfort – The Jews’ Quarter.” Canadian Illustrated News 27 Aug 1870: 130-131,

141.

“The Funeral of Napoleon.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir

(1849). With engraving by Eugene Lami and C. Mottram.

Fuz. “The Minstrel Knight.” Literary Garland Sept. 1845: 414-416.

“The Gallant Host.” Canadian Garland 10 Nov. 1832: 40.

Gibbon, Edward. “Character of Charlemagne, from the 5th Vol. of the Decline and Fall of

the Roman Empire, by Mr. Gibbon, Lately Published.” Nova-Scotia Magazine

July 1789: 20.

---. “Character of Mahmud.” Nova-Scotia Magazine July 1789: 21-22.

---. “Character of Mahomet.” Nova-Scotia Magazine July 1789: 18-19.

---. “The Life and Pontificate of Gregory I.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Apr. 1790: 257-259.

---. “Numbers and Spirit of the First Adventurers in the Crusade.” Nova-Scotia Magazine

Aug. 1789: 102.

---. “On the Learning of the Arabians.” Nova-Scotia Magazine July 1789: 20-21.

---. “Origin of Knighthood.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 100-102.

---. “Peter the Hermit.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 102.

290

“Gibraltar.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1849). With

engraving by C. Bentley and J.C. Armytage.

Gilfillan, Robert. “Ballad.” Ed. and rev. W. Sibbald. Canadian Magazine (York) Jan.

1833: 69-70.

---. “To the Memory of Sir Walter Scott.” Canadian Garland 5 Jan 1833: i.

“Gomerock Castle; or, the Grave of the Unknown.” Anglo-American Magazine May

1853: 518-523.

Gough, Richard. “Account of the Funeral of William the Conqueror. [From Mr. Gough’s

Sepulchral Monuments.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine June 1790: 450-451.

Grant, [James Gregor]. “The Demon’s Isle.” Literary Garland Jan. 1839: 59-60.

[Grattan, T.C.] “The Love-Draught: A Tale of the Barrow-Side.” Anglo-American

Magazine Mar. 1855: 209-215.

[Gray, Thomas.] “The Descent of Odin. An Ode from the Norse Tongue, in Bartholinus.”

Nova-Scotia Magazine Nov. 1789:, 386-387.

Greygauntlet. “The Lay of the ‘Rink.’” Stewart’s Quarterly Apr. 1867: 8.

Grun, Anastatius. “King Stephen’s Oath.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov./Dec. 1855:

398.

H. “The Bard’s Song to His Daughter.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository

July 1823: 79.

H.C.H. “Editor’s Shanty: [Letter.]” Anglo-American Magazine May 1854: 535-537.

H.J.K. “The Sea-Nymph’s Song.” Literary Garland Mar. 1843: 131.

H.L, trans. “The Lay of the Brave. Translated from the German.” [G.A. Bürger.] Anglo-

American Magazine July 1855: 24-25.

291

H.L. “St. Michael’s Mount.” Anglo-American Magazine Oct. 1855: 331.

H.V.C. “The Old Manuscript:; A Mémoire of the Past.” Literary Garland Apr. 1851:

181-187; May 1851: 205-208; June 1851: 263-270; July 1851: 315-321; Aug

1851: 352-359; Sept. 1851: 407-413.

Haliburton, R[obert] G[rant]. The Men of the North and Their Place in History. A Lecture

Delivered Before the Montreal Literary Club, March 31st, 1869. Montreal: John

Lovell, 1869.

Hamilton, Robert. “Allan Mentieth. A Romance.” Amaranth Aug. 1841: 238-242.

Hamilton, Wm. “Conan’s Grave.” New Dominion Monthly Dec. 1867: 154-156.

“Harvest Home.” Literary Garland Mar. 1840: 181.

Hawley, W.F. “The Monks of La Trappe.” Canadian Literary Magazine May 1833: 88.

“Hector Kemp and the Fairies of Corrynashelich.” Literary Garland Nov. 1847: 520-

522.

“Heraldic Tailors.” Diogenes 7 Jan. 1870: 54.

[Herbert, H.W.] “A True Tale of the Crusades.” Amaranth Sept. 1843: 257-264.

Hertzberg, le comte de. “Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les revolutions de Etats, lu dans

l’Assemblée publique de l’Académie des sciences de Berlin, le 6 Octobre 1791,

pour célébrer le jour de la naissance de Fredéric-Guillaume II, Roi de Prusse, par

le comte de Hertzberg, Ministre-d’Etat, curateur et membre de l’Académie.”

Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Aug. 1792: 10-13.

“Histoire Générale du Sénat de Suede.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Oct.

1793: 150-152.

“Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense.” Diogenes 26 Nov. 1869: 14.

292

Hood, Thomas. “A Fairy Tale.” Literary Garland Mar. 1845: 138.

Hugo, Victor. “Chillon.” Literary Garland June 1840: 326.

Hugomont, Edmond. “Notices of New Works. No. X. Motherwell’s Poetical Works.”

Literary Garland July 1847: 376-380.

---. “The Guelphs and Ghibelines in Florence.” Literary Garland Jan. 1844: 33-41.

---, trans. “Marco Visconti: A Story of the Fourteenth Century, Taken from the

Chronicles of the Age, and related by Tommaso Grossi.” Literary Garland Feb.

1843: 49-63; Mar 1843: 116-127; Apr. 1843: 169-178; May 1843: 228-237; June

1843: 263-271; July 1843: 317-327; Aug. 1843: 359-368; Sept. 1843: 419-427;

Oct. 1843: 457-468; Nov. 1843: 501-509.

“The Holy Grail.” Canadian Illustrated News 15 Jan. 1870: 166-167.

“Humours American.” Punch in Canada 26 Jan. 1850: 18.

Hunt, Leigh. “Godiva.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov. 1853: 510.

“Imilda de' Lambertazzi. An Italian Tale.” Acadian Magazine July 1826: 1-4.

“The Iron Shroud; or Italian Vengeance.” Canadian Garland 13 Apr. 1833: 123-125; 27

Apr. 1833: 132-134.

J.A. “The Dying Chief.” Amaranth Sept. 1841: 268.

J.B.P. “To Ghoalan Castle: Island of Kerrara, Argyle.” Literary Garland Dec. 1843: 568.

[J.B.T.] “The Legend of King, the Son of the Cord. Of his Wonderful Painted Nose, And

the disaster which it caused in the city of Royal Mount, in the time of Jim the

Hermit.” Punch in Canada 30 Aug. 1849: 123-124.

J.M. Alfred the Great. New Dominion Monthly 4.4 (July 1869) 15-25.

J.P. “Alfred the Great.” Literary Garland June 1849: 273-280.

293

“Joan of Arc.” Literary Garland Oct. 1847: 467.

Jones, William. “On the History of the Ancient Persians. (From Sir William Jones’s Sixth

Anniversary Discourse.)” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Dec. 1792:

168-175; Jan. 1793: 339-345.

---. “On the History of the Arabs.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Oct. 1792:

154-160.

---. “On the History of the Hindu’s [sic].” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Sept.

1792: 91-97.

---. “On the History of the Tartars. [From Sir William Jones’s Fifth Anniversary

Discourse.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 207-214.

[---.] “Solima: An Ecologue.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 133-134.

“King Olaf of Norway.” Canadian Quarterly Review and Family Magazine Apr. 1864:

186-188.

“The King of the Nor’West.” Grinchuckle 23 Dec. 1869: 97.

“King Rene and the Troubadour.” Anglo-American Magazine Feb. 1855: 163-164.

“King William’s Conquest of Rupert’s Land.” Grinchuckle 13 Jan. 1870: 125.

“The Knights of Calatrava.” Canadian Garland 3 Aug. 1833: 188-191; 17 Aug. 1833:

193-196; 31 Aug. 1833: 202-204.

“The Knights Templars.” Nova Scotia New Monthly Magazine Feb. 1842: 24-28.

L.E.L. "The Funeral Bride. An Italian Legend." Acadian Magazine Sept. 1826: 111-113.

---. “The Crusader.” Acadian Magazine Oct. 1826: 125-126.

“The Ladies of Llangollen Vale.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository July

1823: 66-68.

294

“The Last of the Troubadours.” Anglo-American Magazine Jan. 1853: 55-58.

[Laurence, H.] “Lady Jane’s Merlin. A Tale of Windsor Castle.” Anglo-American

Magazine June 1855: 549-555.

“A Lay for Beyond Sea.” Literary Garland Apr. 1839: 234.

“A Legend of Cardigan Castle.” Canadian Illustrated News 14 Nov. 1863: 335.

“Legend of the Pyrenees.” Maple Leaf (Montreal) Aug. 1853: 53-57; Sept. 1853: 77-83;

Oct. 1853: 123-135; Nov. 1853: 129-135; Dec. 1853: 188-191.

“Legend of the Ring.” Canadian Garland 3 Aug. 1833: 192.

“Legends of Lough Ouel.” Literary Garland Nov. 1849: 499-504.

Lemoine, J.M. “On Some Singular Customs of the Middle Ages: Le Droit de

Grenouillage.” British Canadian Review Dec. 1862: 5-11.

---. “D’Iberville – The Cid of New France – 1642-1706.” New Dominion Monthly June

1868: 155-161.

Lesperance, John. “Barbarossa.” Canadian Illustrated News 17 Dec. 1870: 395.

“Life of Alfred.” Anglo-American Magazine July 1852: 37-41. With illustration.

“Lineal Descendant of William Wallace.” Literary Garland Mar. 1840: 184.

“Lines Addressed to the Celebrated Earl of ‘Dignified Neutrality.’” Punch in Canada 30

Aug. 1849: 127.

“Lines from the Persian of Sadi.” Literary Garland July 1848: 343.

“Literary and Artistic Celebrities. No. 1. W.E. Aytoun.” Anglo-American Magazine Jan.

1855: 1-7.

“Literary and Artistic Celebrities. No. II. John Gibson Lockhart.” Anglo-American

Magazine Feb. 1855: 143-152.

295

“Literary and Artistic Celebrities. No. IV. Thomas Chatterton.” Anglo-American

Magazine Oct. 1855: 271-278; Nov./Dec. 1855: 367-378.

“Literary Forgeries in France.” Canadian Illustrated News 2 Apr. 1870: 343.

“Literary Notices: The Prophecy of Merlin: And Other Poems, By John Reade.”

Canadian Illustrated News 6 Aug. 1870: 86.

“Loch Lomond.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1847). With

engraving by T. Allom and J. Cousen.

Longfellow, Henry W. “King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn.” Literary Garland Nov. 1850:

506.

Longmore, George. The Charivari. Montreal: 1824.

[---. ]“The Fall of Constantinople.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository Dec.

1823: 497-505; Jan. 1824: 25-33.

---. Matilde: or, The Crusaders, an historical drama in five acts. London: 1827.

[---.] Tales of Chivalry and Romance. Edinburgh, 1826.

---. The War of the Isles. London: 1826.

“Lords of the Manor of the North Pole.” Canadian Illustrated News 8 Aug. 1863: 153.

“The Lorimer’s Daugher.” Canadian Illustrated News 19 Dec. 1863: 54; 26 Dec. 1863:

75-76.

Loudon, J.C. “Editor’s Shanty: On Dates of Buildings. From Repton’s Landscape

Gardening and Architecture.” Anglo-American Magazine Apr. 1854: 433-435.

Lowell, James Russell. “The Shepherd of King Admetus.” Anglo-American Magazine

May 1855: 475.

Lyall. “Scotia’s Classic Streams.” Stewart’s Quarterly July 1868: 65-66.

296

---. “To Carrick Castle, Loch-Goil.” Stewart’s Quarterly July 1870: 167.

M.A.S. “Maiden Tower. A Tradition of the Middle Ages.” Literary Garland July 1848:

329-334; Aug. 1848: 382-388; Sept. 1848: 425-432.

“Magnanimity of William Rufus.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Sept. 1790: 205.

“The Maid of Orleans.” Canadian Illustrated News 5 Mar 1870: 281.

“The Maid of the Inn.” Gaspé Magazine Jan. 1850: 81-83.

“The Maid of the Mill.” Canadian Illustrated News 10 Oct. 1863: 258.

Marion. “The Knight to his Lady.” New Dominion Monthly Mar. 1868: 358.

“Marmor Hardicnutianum. An Archaeological Anecdote. [From the St. James’s

Chronicle.]” Nova-Scotia Magazine Mar. 1792: 151-154.

“Mayence – The Cathedral and the Statue of Gutenberg.” Canadian Illustrated News 27

Aug. 1870: 131.

M’Carroll, James. “Finnoala. – From the Irish.” Anglo-American Magazine Mar. 1855:

242.

McColl, Evan. “A Gaelic Translation of Bruce’s Address.” Stewart’s Quarterly Apr.

1870: 87-88.

McGee, Thomas D’Arcy. A Popular History of Ireland: From the Earliest Period to the

Emancipation of the Catholics. 2 vols. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1864.

McMullen, John. The History of Canada, From Its First Discovery to the Present Time.

Brockville: M. M’Mullen, 1855.

“The Minstrel’s Lament.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1849).

“Modern Chivalry.” Literary Garland Dec. 1840: 18.

297

[A Monk of G—— Abbey.] “Border Legends. No. VII. The Batte of Melmerby.”

Literary Garland July 1846: 289-297.

“The Monks of Newhall.” Literary Garland Jan. 1841: 92.

Moodie, J.W. Dunbar. “Brodir’s Fleet in Clontarf Bay.” Victoria Magazine Dec. 1847:

73-77.

---. “Iarl Sigurd, A Ballad from the Norse.” Victoria Magazine Oct. 1847: 25-26.

Moodie, Susan[na]. “The Banner of England. A Loyal Song.” Amaranth May 1841: 151.

---. “The Banner of England. A Loyal Song.” Literary Garland Mar. 1841: 188.

---. “The Fugitive.” Literary Garland Nov. 1839: 566-570.

Motherwell, William. “The Cavalier’s Song.” Literary Garland Mar. 1848: 139.

Musophilus. “The Minstrel’s Serenade.” Literary Garland June 1840: 330.

“My Dream.” Anglo-American Magazine Apr. 1854: 422-425.

“Netley Abbey.” Amaranth July 1841: 202-203.

“Northern View of the Castle of Tyrol.” Canadian Illustrated News 15 Jan. 1870: 162,

169.

“The Northmen’s Discovery of America.” New Dominion Monthly Nov. 1867: 86-88.

Nott, I., trans. “Ode from the Persian of Hafez.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Sept. 1789: 225.

“The Oath of Tell.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository Dec. 1824: 528.

O’Doody. “Ierne; or, One Thousand Facts of the Ancient and Renowned Kingdom of

Hibernia – its Monarchy and Empire.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov. 1853:

482-484.

Offalie, Philander. “Harper’s Festive Song.” Literary Garland June 1845: 254.

---. “Local Legendary Tales of Ireland.” Literary Garland Mar. 1846: 119-124.

298

---. “Local Legendary Tales of Ireland. No. III. The Treasure Seeker.” Literary Garland

Jan. 1847: 23-29; Feb. 1847: 89-92.

---. “Written for a Gentleman’s Album.” Literary Garland Nov. 1844: 506.

“Old English Ballads.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov. 1853: 488-493.

“The Olden Time.” Amaranth Dec. 1841: 356.

“Olimpia.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1847). With engraving

by F. Corbeaux and W.H. Mote.

Olive, Selina. “Songs of the Birds. No III. The Fairy’s Gift.” Literary Garland Nov.

1844: 490.

Orne, Mrs. Caroline. “The Captive Prince.” Amaranth Feb. 1842: 56-60.

“Osmyn a Tale.” Montreal Museum Sept. 1833: 599-609.

Owen, Prince of Powis. “Hirlas: A Poem.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Mar. 1792: 184-185.

“Our Table. [Book notice:] The Crusaders’ Hymn Before Jerusalem.” Literary Garland

June 1846: 288.

“Our Table. [Review:] Lives of the Queens of England, From the Norman Conquest, With

Anecdotes of their Courts, &c. – By Agnes Strickland.” Literary Garland Sept.

1840: 479-48; Feb. 1841: 140-141; May 1842: 291.

“Our Table. [Review:] Agincourt; by G.P.R. James.” Literary Garland Feb. 1845: 96.

“Our Table. [Review:] Annals of the Queens of Spain; by Anati George.” Literary

Garland Mar. 1850: 144.

“Our Table. [Review:] The Crusades, And Other Poems: By John Breakenridge.”

Literary Garland July 1846: 334-336.

299

“Our Table. [Review:] Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings, by Sir Edward Bulwer

Lytton.” Literary Garland July 1848: 346.

“Our Table. [Review:] ‘The Lord and the Vassal.’ ‘Banks and the Royal Society.’”

Literary Garland Nov. 1844: 527.

“Our Table. [Review:] Minstrel Love; a Romance – by Baron de la Motte Fouque”

Literary Garland Aug. 1847: 388.

P. “‘Book-Madness’ in the Middle Ages.” Anglo-American Magazine Mar. 1855: 234-

238.

“Parallel between a Lady of Fashion about Three Hundred Years ago, and a Modern One

of the Same Denomination.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Feb. 1792: 103-105.

Parsons, William. “Translation from Petrarch. ‘Ne la stagion che’l ciel rapido inchina.’”

Nova-Scotia Magazine Dec. 1790: 468-469.

[Paterson, A.D.] “The Last Days of Princes.” Amaranth Feb. 1843: 33-38; May 1843:

139-147; June 1843: 161-165.

Pauline. “Dead.” Literary Garland Aug. 1851: 347.

“Perseverance.” Gaspé Magazine and Instructive Miscellany Aug. 1849: 14.

“Persian Poetry. Togray, the Poet.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1855: 225-226.

Petrarch, Francis. “An Epistle.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Mar. 1793: 61-

66.

Petrarch. “Evils of Life.” Literary Garland Dec. 1841: 41.

---. “Laura: an Elegy.” Trans. Sir William Jones. Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 131-

132.

300

[---.] “The 34th Sonnet of Petrarch.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792:

247.

Picken, Andrew L and Francis Woolcott. “A Romance.” Literary Garland Nov 1847:

530-531.

Picken, Andrew L. “Ballads of the Rhine.” Literary Garland Jan. 1847: 40; Feb. 1847:

63-64; Mar. 1847: 129-130; Apr. 1847: 157-158; May 1847: 206-208; June 1847:

251-253.

“A plea for the fairies.” Grinchuckle 9 Dec. 1869: 82.

“The Poet and the Nightingale.” Acadian Magazine June 1827: 472.

“The Poetry of Anglo-Saxon America.” The Provincial, or, Halifax Monthly Magazine

Apr. 1852: 121-125; May 1852: 164-167.

Pollio. “Odin, A Highland Ballad Versified.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Jan. 1790: 67-70.

Polwhele, [Richard]. “Mona: An Ode. [An original communication for the New Annual

---. “The Story of Foscari. [From the second book of Polwhele’s English Orator.]”

Nova-Scotia Magazine Sept. 1789: 225-227.

“Preface.” Punch in Canada 1 Jan. 1849: [i-ii].

“The Premier’s Fuddle.” Grinchuckle 9 Dec. 1869: 85.

Proctor, J.J. “The Thread of Life.” New Dominion Monthly July 1869: 11.

“Punch in Canada’s Letters. To the People of Canada, on The Position of the

Government.” Punch in Canada 23 Mar. 1850: 62.

A pupil. “Chivalry.” Calliopean 24 Apr. 1848: 81-82.

“The Queen’s Oak. A Dramatic Sketch.” Literary Garland Apr. 1850: 162-167.

301

R.E.M. “The Magic Ring. A Ballad.” Literary Garland Dec. 1849: 569.

R.J.M. “A Glimpse of Fairy Land.” Anglo-American Magazine Feb. 1853: 166-167.

“Rabies – No. 3. 144; or—Le Gros Cavalier.” Diogenes 18 June 1869: 48.

“Raising the Devil, or The Legend of Peter Groome, with a Moral thereto.” Punch in

Canada 13 Sept. 1849: 135, 132; 28 Sept. 1849: 139.

“A Rarity.—An Honest Review.” Grinchuckle 20 Jan. 1870: 129.

“The Rat-Catcher.” Punch in Canada 15 Dec. 1849: 197.

Reade, John. “Albert the Good. Extract from an Unpublished Poem, ‘The Prophecy of

Merlin.’” Canadian Illustrated News 26 Feb. 1870: 266.

---. “Eloise. Written for the Canadian Illustrated News.” Canadian Illustrated News 27

Nov. 1869: 58.

---. The Prophecy of Merlin, and Other Poems. Montreal: 1870.

“Reflections on the Age of Chivalry.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Apr. 1791: 222-225.

“Remarkable Discovery of Valuable Mss on Chess.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept.

1854: 311-312.

“[Review:] Account of Ancient Gaelic Poems Respecting the Race of Fians, Collected in

the Highlands of Scotland in the Year 1784. By M Young, D.D., M.R.I.A.”

Nova-Scotia Magazine Jan. 1790: 23-24.

“[Review:] Grace Aguilar. The Days of Bruce: A Story from Scottish History.]” Anglo-

American Magazine Dec. 1852: 519-521.

“[Review:] The Maid of Elvar, a Poem, in Twelve Parts, by Allan Cunningham.” Halifax

Monthly Magazine Oct. 1832: 210-211.

“[Review:] The Merchant and the Friar.” Literary Garland Oct. 1844: 480.

302

“[Review:] Periodicals. Edinburgh Review.—April, 1856. Art. 5.—The Austrian

Concordat.” Canadian Review and Literary Supplement to “Montreal Witness”

June 1856: 26.

“Reviews – Idylls of the King.” Guardian Jan. 1860: 20-21.

“Reviews – Westminster Review, ‘Bonapartism in Italy.’” Guardian Jan. 1860: 20-21.

Richard III. “King Richard’s Address Against Henry Tudor.” Nova-Scotia Magazine

Dec. 1789: 423-427.

Ridgway, Robert. “Rowe’s Cross. A Tale of the Crusades.” Canadian Literary Journal

Nov. 1870: 76-81.

The Rover. “The Danskin Murders, or the Landlord’s Tale.” Canadian Magazine (York)

Jan. 1833: 61-69.

---. “The Water Wraith: or, Landlord’s Tale.” Canadian Magazine (York) Feb. 1833:

122-134.

“The Royal Conundrum II.” Diogenes 7 Jan. 1870: 53.

“The Ruins of Caithness. A Gothic Tale. [From the Imperial Magazine].” Nova-Scotia

Magazine Sept. 1790: 182-187.

[Saadi.] “Against Persecution. A passage from the Bostan of Sadi, a Persian Poet and

Philosopher, from which Dr. Franklin’s celebrated fable seems to be borrowed.”

Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 227.

“Sadi; or the True Death.” Amaranth Jan. 1843: 31-32.

“Saint Augustine.” Anglo-American Magazine Mar. 1853: 282.

Sangster, Charles. “A Northern Rune.” British Canadian Review Feb. 1863: 103-104.

303

Schiller, [Friedrich]. “William Tell Saving Baumgarten.” Literary Garland Apr. 1847:

193.

A Scotchman. “Mortal Exit of Sir Walter Scott.” Canadian Magazine (York) Jan. 1833:

79-81.

Scott, Walter. “The Crusader’s Triumph. A Passage from Scott’s Talisman.” Amaranth

Nov. 1843: 359-360.

---. “Scottish Legend.” Halifax Monthly Magazine Apr. 1831: 456.

[---.] “Quentin Durward.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository July 1823: 25-32;

Aug. 1823: 121-128; Sept. 1823: 249-256.

---. “Red Gauntlet, by Sir Walter Scott [extract.]” Canadian Magazine and Literary

Repository July 1824: 49-60.

“The Scottish Rivals.” Canadian Literary Magazine May 1833: 97.

“Serenade.” Amaranth Apr. 1843: 128.

[Shanly, Charles Dawson.] “A Laye of Egges. Laid Before Ye Governour in Councille.”

Punch in Canada 19 May 1849: 72.

[---.] “Tully: An Ossianic Fragment.” Punch in Canada 30 June 1849: 96.

[---.] “Ye Borde of Brokeres Doing Ye Bissinesse of 1849.” Punch in Canada 18 June

1849: 89[90].

[---.] “Ye Governour Hys Nyghte-Mare.” Punch in Canada 19 May 1849: 72.

[---.] “Ye Modele Brokere and Ye Mysterious Merchaunts. A Queere Songe and a

Trewe.” Punch in Canada 18 June 1849: 89[90]. With engraving.

Shubart. “Ashaverus, or the Wandering Jew.” Montreal Museum Nov. 1833: 763-765.

Silvester, H, Mrs.. “The Knight and his Ladye-Love.” Literary Garland May 1840: 255.

304

“A Sign of the Times.” Punch in Canada 23 Feb. 1850: 39.

“Sir Gawen: A Tale.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Mar. 1792: 146-151.

“Sir Walter Scott and Wilberforce.” Calliopean 9 June 1848: 107.

“Sir Walter Scott.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository July 1823: 19-24.

“Sir Walter Scott.” Montreal Museum Dec. 1832: 51-56; Jan. 1833: 125-126.

“The Sky-Lark.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1854: 231.

“Spain and the Inquisition.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository Mar. 1824:

222-227.

“A Spanish Ambassador on a Scottish King.” Canadian Illustrated News 31 Jan. 1863:

139.

“The Spanish Ladye’s Love.” Anglo-American Magazine Apr. 1853: 410.

“The Spells.” Anglo-American Magazine Feb. 1853: 172.

Squire, G.H. “The Northmen in America.” Canadian Quarterly Review and Family

Magazine Jan. 1864: 80.

“St. George for Merrie England.” New Dominion Monthly Sept. 1868: 359-361.

St. John, Percy B. “The Lace-Maker of Cormeil.” Anglo-American Magazine June 1853:

626-629.

“A Story of a King.” Canadian Illustrated News 5 Dec. 1863: 23.

“Stray Thoughts and Fancies: National Minstrelsy.” Literary Garland Dec. 1839: 37-40.

Strickland, Agnes. “Catherine of Lancaster or the Tournament of Toledo.” Victoria

Magazine Aug. 1848: 271-278.

---. “Death of Edward, Prince of Wales.” Victoria Magazine April 1848: 169-170.

“Summer Excursions from London: Windsor Castle.” Amaranth June 1843: 170-175.

305

“Swiss Legend of William Tell.” Canadian Garland 6 July 1833: 174.

Sym, W. “Valclusa’s Vale.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Sept. 1790: 230.

T. “The Sea-King’s War Song.” Guardian Apr. 1860: 93.

Taffetas, Hester. “The Recollections of Mrs. Hester Taffetas, Court Milliner and

Fashionable Modiste, During the Reign of George the Third and his Consort

Queen Charlotte.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov./Dec. 1855: 385-397.

Templedon, John. “Almanzor the Moor; or the Fall of Granada. A Tale of the Fifteenth

Century.” Acadian Magazine Mar. 1827: 321-324; Apr. 1827: 378-381; May

1827: 438-441.

---. "The Fate of Leoline. Taken from a Monkish Manuscript." Acadian Magazine Feb.

1827: 285-288.

---. "Fitzauborne. A Border Tale." Acadian Magazine Aug. 1826: 68-71; Sept. 1826: 107-

109; Oct. 1826: 181-184.

Thomson, George. “Sur les causes et les consequences des croisades.” Quebec Magazine

/ Magasin de Québec Nov. 1792: 228-230.

“The Three Damsels.” Anglo-American Magazine Aug. 1852: 129-130.

“The Three Nuns.” Anglo-American Magazine Feb. 1854: 183-186.

“A Thrilling Narrative.” Progress Magazine Feb. 1867: 87-88.

“Tomb of the Lion-Hearted Richard.” Literary Garland Nov. 1839: 556.

[Traill, Catharine Parr.] “Lament for May-Day.” Anglo-American Magazine Sept. 1855:

238.

[---.] “Lament for May-Day.” Literary Garland May 1846: 213.

[---.] “St. Margaret’s Minster.” Literary Garland Jan. 1842: 49-54.

306

[---.] “Thoughts on May-Day. A Fragment from Forest Gleanings.” Literary Garland

May 1846: 212-213.

“Translation from the German: Legends.” Halifax Monthly Magazine Mar. 1831: 389-

390.

Tucker, David. “Our Anglo-Saxon Tongue.” British American Magazine Jan. 1864: 275-

276.

“The Two Foscari.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1849). With

engraving by J.R. Herbert and W.J. Edwards.

“Undine -- An Italian Tradition.” Canadian Garland 16 Mar. 1833: 110.

“The United Provinces.” Monthly Review Jan. 1841: 48-49.

“Val D’Ossola.” Maple Leaf or Canadian Annual: A Literary Souvenir (1847). With

engraving by W.H. Bartlett and J.B. Allen.

“Varieties: Ancient Coin.” Acadian Magazine Dec. 1826: 238.

“Varieties: Origin of Poetry.” Acadian Magazine May 1827: 447.

“The Vegtams Quitha, or as it is called by Mr. Grey, who imitated it in rhyme, the

Descent of Odin.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Aug. 1789: 134-136.

“A Venetian Adventure of Yesterday.” Anglo-American Magazine July 1852: 61-63.

“View of a Druids Temple in the Isle of Jersey.” Quebec Magazine / Magasin de Québec

Nov. 1792: [i].

“A Vision of Past Times.” Anglo-American Magazine Nov./Dec. 1855: 488-496.

“A Vision.” Punch in Canada 9 Mar. 1850: 53.

W. “Osian’s Address to the Sun Paraphrased.” Canadian Magazine and Literary

Repository Mar. 1824: 270.

307

W.H.A. “The Baron’s Bridal.” Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository Feb. 1825:

142-145.

W.M. “From the Scotsman: Lady Martha.” Canadian Magazine (York) Mar. 1833: 206-

207.

W.R. “This is a View of Fairy Land; This is a Portrait of the Fairy.” Diogenes 27 Aug.

1869: 131.

“The Warrior's Steed.” Canadian Garland 15 Sept. 1832: 8.

“The Watcher of the Dead. From the German.” Anglo-American Magazine Aug. 1855:

141-152; Sept. 1855: 191-194.

Welch, J. “Clown Loquiter.” Punch in Canada 29 Nov. 1849: 189.

White, James. “Conway Castle.” Nova-Scotia Magazine Jan. 1790: 67.

Wilson, J.M. “Death of the Chevalier de le Beaute.” Cabinet of Literature Aug. 1839:

308-311.

---. “The Order of the Garter: A Story of Wark Castle.” Cabinet of Literature Jan. 1839:

80-88.

---. “The Prince of Scotland; or, The Rivalship of March and Douglas.” Cabinet of

Literature Sept. 1839: 368-380.

“Windsor Castle.” Canadian Casket 11 Feb. 1832: 60.

“Woman's Heroism.” Canadian Garland 5 Jan. 1833: 66-67.

Y. “A Young (Scotch) Officer’s Address to his Maiden Sword.” Barker’s Canadian

Magazine June 1846: 102.

“Ye Famous Battell Betweene Robin Hood and Ye Curtal Fryer.” Diogenes 22 Jan.

1869: 106.

308

“Ye Gouverneur Remonstrates.” Grinchuckle 20 Jan. 1870: 129.

Z. “The O’Donoghue. A Fragment.” Barker’s Canadian Magazine Jan. 1847: 491.

309

VITA

ELANA LAUREL AISLINN RYAN

PLACE OF BIRTH Pembroke, Ontario, Canada

DATE OF BIRTH 8 December 1985

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION AND DEGREES:

2007 Master of Arts – English University of Western Ontario Independent Research Project: “Constructing ‘Home’: Eros, Thanatos, and Migration in the Novels of Anita Rau Badami.” Supervisor: Nandi Bhatia Second Reader: Pauline Wakeham

2006 Bachelor of Science (Honors) – Chemistry and English University of Western Ontario

HONOURS AND AWARDS

2013 Digital Humanities Summer Institute Tuition Scholarship

2012-2013 University of Toronto Doctoral Completion Award

2012 NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) Affiliate Scholarship

2011 University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Research Travel Grant

2008-2011 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) (CGS-D)

2008-2009 Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) – declined in favour of SSHRC CGS-D

2007-2008 Dr. Ranbir Singh Khanna / Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) in Canadian Studies

Kathleen Coburn Graduate Admission Award at the University of Toronto

SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship – awarded but not funded

310

2006-2007 SSHRC – Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master’s) (CGS-M)

Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Master’s) – declined in favour of SSHRC CGS-M

2006 University of Western Ontario Gold Medal

2005 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA)

2004 NSERC USRA

2002-2006 Richard and Jean Ivey Family President’s Entrance Scholarship

RELATED WORK EXPERIENCE Research Experience

2010-2011 Research Assistant to Prof. Nick Mount

Research Assistant to Prof. Colin Hill

2009-2010 Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE), Research Assistant

Teaching Experience – Instructor

University of Toronto 2014 Advanced Seminar: Race-Making and Nation-Building in Early Canada (English 428H1F)

University of Alabama at Birmingham 2010 Pre-1800 British and Irish Literature (EH 221)

Teaching Experience – Teaching Assistant / Tutor

University of Toronto 2011 The Short Story Collection (English 214H1F), Teaching Assistant

2009-2010 Twentieth Century Canadian Fiction (English 353Y1Y), Teaching Assistant

2008-2009 Canadian Literature (English 252Y1Y), Teaching Assistant

2007-2008 Introduction to Narrative (English 110Y5Y), Teaching Assistant

University of Western Ontario 2006-2007 Children’s Literature (English 133E), Teaching Assistant and Tutorial Leader

311

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

2008 “Constructing ‘Home’: Eros, Thanatos, and Migration in the Novels of Anita Rau Badami.” South Asian Review 29.1 (2008): 156-174. Print.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

2012 “Wayson Choy.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 April 2012. Web.

2007 “‘Courting Aphasia’: The Silences Between Words and Between Worlds in ‘The Management of Grief' of the Air India Tragedy.” Narratives of Citizenship. Eds. Aloys Fleischmann and Nancy van Styvendale. 1 Sept. 2007. Web.