Tracy Ware

Byron’s Influence on Early Canadian Literature

According to William Ruddick, “The direct influence of Byron’s poetry and the example given by his death were immediate and powerful outside of England,” but in contemporary England Byron’s “political principles were either dismissed as irrelevant to the appreciation of his poetry or condemned as shallow and insincere on grounds largely arising from a knowledge of his personal or social situation” (25–26). Such a claim sounds ominous for early Canadian literature, which is sometimes assumed to lag behind international influences by three decades or more (Trehearne 308–11). But Byron’s influence on early Canadian literature was immediate and remarkably political, even with poets who did not fully share his principles, for they were generally more interested in Byron’s work than his life. In Jean Baptiste (1825), Levi Adams suggests the virtues of Byron’s satire in an account of the “bleak Canadian fall, or winter”: They’re very much like Byron’s poetry— …. Now here—now there—now sideways or uphill,— Or in a cahot, if there’s snow d’ye see …. (II. 607, 610–12)