Dr. Louis Frechette is a worthy successor of Cremazie and has won the distinction of having his best work crowned by the French Academy.  French Canadian poetry, however, has been often purely imitative of French models like Musset and Gautier, both in style and sentiment, and consequently lacks strength and originality.  Frechette has all the finish of the French poets and, while it cannot be said that he has yet originated fresh thoughts, which are likely to live among even the people whom he has so often instructed and delighted, yet he has given us poems like that on the discovery of the Mississippi which prove that he is capable of even better things if he would seek inspiration from the sources of the deeply interesting history of his own country, or enter into the inner mysteries and social relations of his picturesque compatriots.

The life of the French Canadian habitant has been admirably described in verse by Dr. Drummond, who has always lived among that class of the Canadian people and been a close observer of their national and personal characteristics.  He is the only writer who has succeeded in giving a striking portraiture of life in the cabin, in the “shanty” (chantier), and on the river, where the French habitant, forester, and canoe-man can be seen to best advantage.

But if Canada can point to some creditable achievements of recent years in history, poetry and essays, there is one department in which Canadians never won any marked success until recently, and that is in the novel or romance.  Even Mr. Kirby’s Le Chien d’Or which recalls the closing days of the French regime—­the days of the infamous Intendant Bigot who fattened on Canadian misery—­does not show the finished art of the skilled novelist, though it has a certain crude vigour of its own, which has enabled it to live while so many other Canadian books have died.  French Canada is even weaker in this particular, and this is the more surprising because there is abundance of material for the novelist or the writer of romance in her peculiar society and institutions.  But this reproach has been removed by Mr. Gilbert Parker, now a resident in London, but a Canadian by birth, education and sympathies, who is animated by a laudable ambition of giving form and vitality to the abundant materials that exist in the Dominion for the true story-teller.  His works show great skill in the use of historic matter, more than ordinary power in the construction of a plot, and, above all, a literary finish which is not equalled by any Canadian writer in the same field of effort.  Other meritorious Canadian workers in romance are Mr. William McLennan, Mrs. Coates (Sarah Jeannette Duncan), and Miss Dougall, whose names are familiar to English readers.