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Heavysege was thirty-seven years of age when he arrived in Canada. The accident of his having remained in Canada and of having published at Montreal his Saul, which, as a matter of fact, had been conceived in England, does not give him as much right, if any at all, to be considered a Canadian émigré poet as attaches to Kidd or Mrs. Moodie.

Saul was published in 1857. As a poetic drama there is no other poem which was written in Canada that is so much in the grand manner. Its theme is Biblical, and it is really treated with epic grandeur and romantic intensity. But with all its excellences, it had no influence, by way of example, on subsequent Canadian poetic dramatists, such as Charles Mair, Wilfred Campbell, or Robert Norwood. The first Canadian poetic dramatist, native-born, was Charles Mair. Though the theme of his Tecumseh is not so sublimated as Heavysege’s Saul, it is Canadian; and though its style is not so altiloquent as that of Saul, Mair’s Tecumseh is an original and notable contribution to the ‘nativistic’ literature of Canada.