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Joseph Howe was a ‘poet frustrate.’ Had he been able to devote himself wholly to verse, there is no doubt that he would have left a considerable body of authentic poetry. The bad in his verse is like the bad in the verse of his superiors, but the best of Howe’s verse is genuine poetry. Yet however high or low individual critics may estimate the aesthetic and artistic qualities of his verse, Joseph Howe has a right to a place in the history of Canadian poetry, and to a distinctive place in the history of Canadian humorous poetry.
As the inaugurator of the Epoch of the Independent Nativistic Prose Literature of Canada, as an authentic creator of Literary Journalism and Literary and Forensic Oratory, and as a significant, though frustrate Poet, Joseph Howe was, as Samuel Johnson said of Goldsmith,—‘a very great man.’
CHAPTER IV
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Thomas Chandler Haliburton
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THE NATIVISTIC LITERATURE OF CANADA—THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON—FIRST SYSTEMATIC HUMORIST OF THE ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLES—CREATOR OF A NEW TYPE OF SATIRIC HUMOR AND COMIC CHARACTERIZATION.