As the quintessential Canadian Victorian intellectual, William Dawson LeSueur introduced the spirit of modern criticism into Canadian life, combining a long and remarkable career as a man of letters with that of an Ottawa civil servant. Lauded by Goldwin Smith in a 17 August 1885 letter to Matthew Arnold as "the best critic Canada has," he was a distinguished essayist, persuasive journalist, historian, scientific writer, classical scholar, and positivist philosopher. Devoted as he was to truth and free, responsible thought, the rigor of LeSueur's intellect matched the spirit of Arnold, Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve, Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Stuart Mill, and Auguste Comte, representing a synthesis of thoughts and values common to Anglo-American-Canadian Victorian society. Throughout his life LeSueur sought a foundation for morality based on the intellect, feeling that a purely intellectual life was also a moral life.

Born 19 February 1840 in Quebec, he was of French and English...