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In 1868, for instance, Charles Mair, a native-born Canadian, published his Dreamland and Other Poems; and in 1870 John Reade, an Irishman long resident in Canada, published a volume of verse, The Prophecy of Merlin and Other Poems: but while Mair’s poems contained Canadian sentiment and color they were the sentiment and color of objective Nature in Canada; and while John Reade’s volume was written in Canada and though the poet really felt and was in sympathy with all the political, social, and spiritual aspirations of Canada, Reade’s poems themselves were based chiefly upon Arthurian legend and were written in a derivative English romantic manner of form, music, and color.

Mair and Reade and others were having an influence, however, in holding up the ideal of authentic literary creation in Canada while during that decade and the following decade a group of young native-born Canadians were growing into manhood, and were having engendered in their hearts and imagination a distinct innate sentiment of Canadian nationality and were to become the first native-born group of systematic poets and prose writers in Canada. Their work, in poetry and prose, may fairly be signalized as the First Renaissance in Canadian Literature.