CANADA. A DESCRIPTIVE POEM
BY CORNWALL BAYLEY

Edited by D.M.R. Bentley

EXPLANATORY NOTES

The primary purpose of these Explanatory Notes is twofold:  to explain or identify words and phrases that might be obscure to modern readers of Canada, and to call attention to words, phrases, and passages that allude to or, as the case may be, derive from the works of other writers.  In this latter category, the notes are intended to complement the Introduction, where emphasis is placed less on local verbal and phrasal echoes than on the large patterns and assumptions that link Canada both with the writers and ideas of Bayley’s own time or earlier with later developments in the Canadian literary continuity.  Quotations from Cowper, Goldsmith, Milton, Pope, and Thomson—the poets most frequently echoed in the diction, tone, and poetic texture of Canada—are from the Globe edition of The Poetical Works of William Cowper, edited by William Benham (London: Macmillan, 1889), Arthur Friedman’s edition of The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), Merritt Y. Hughes’ edition of John Milton’s Complete Poems and Major Prose (New York: Odyssey Press, 1957), the Twickenham edition of Alexander Pope’s Pastoral Poetry and an Essay on Criticism, edited by E. Audra and Aubrey Williams (London: Methuen; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), and James Sambrook’s edition of James Thomson’s The Seasons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). Quotations from Charlevoix’s Journal and Weld’s Travels—the travel writings upon which Bayley makes large levies—are from the following editions: P. de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North-America. Undertaken by Order of the French King.  Containing The Geographical Description and Natural History of Canada.  Together with An Account of the Customs, Characters, Religion, Manners and Traditions of the Original Inhabitants.  In a Series of Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, 2 vols. (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761), and Isaac Weld, Travels through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, 4th ed., intro. Martin Roth, Series in American Studies (1807; rpt. New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968).  Quotations from the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin (1801) are taken from the enlarged third edition, Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin: Comprising the Celebrated Political and Satirical Poems . . . , ed. Charles [Page 33] Edmonds (1852; rpt. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1890).  Numerous references are also made in the notes to D.M.R. Bentley’s editions of Thomas Cary’s Abram’s Plains: A Poem and J. Mackay’s Quebec Hill; or, Canadian Scenery. A Poem.  In Two Parts that were published by the Canadian Poetry Press in, respectively, 1986 and 1988.  Quotations and translations from Horace’s Odes are taken from the Loeb Classical Library edition of Horace, The Odes and Epodes, with an English translation by C. E. Bennett.  Other quotations in the notes are taken, where possible, from first, standard, or definitive editions.
    In compiling these notes, extensive use has been made of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Gage Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, The Columbia Encylopedia, 3rd. ed., and the Historical Atlas of Canada:  From the Beginnings to 1800, ed. R. Cole Harris, as well as of numerous, specialized works on English, American and Canadian literature, and history, and Amerindian anthropology.

Title

Canada. A Descriptive Poem, Written at Quebec, 1805.  In Bayley’s time, the word Canada referred to the two provinces into which Quebec was divided by the Constitutional Act of 1791: Lower Canada (corresponding roughly to present-day Quebec) and Upper Canada (corresponding roughly to present-day Ontario).  For a discussion of the biographical circumstances of the poem’s composition “at Quebec, 1805,” see the Introduction, pp. xi- xvi.

Epigraph

“Pro Caris Amicis.”—Hor. Ode.  The epigraph is taken from Ode IV, ix, 51 by the Roman poet and essayist Horace (65-8 B.C.).  Translated by C.E. Bennett as “for cherished friends,” it occurs at the conclusion of the Ode in a statement about the nature of happiness: “Not him who possesses much, would one rightly call the happy man; he more fitly gains that name who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonour worse than death, not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.” [Page 34]

Dedication

        For a discussion of Bayley’s dedication of Canada to his future wife, Helen Eliza Jones, see the Introduction, p. xv. ORNAMENT    A person who adorns or adds beauty to his or her place or time.

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3     “Bagatelles”  Trifles; things of no value or importance; light verses.
3-4    press . . . circle of . . . acquaintance  See the Introduction, pp. xiii-xvi for a discussion of the printing of Bayley’s poems.
5      candid  “Free from malice; not desirous to find faults”                     (Johnson).                          
5-6     Youth . . . School-boy  Bayley was 21 years old when he wrote Canada         and this Advertisement to his volume.
7      errors in his Poem on Canada . . .   See the list of Editorial Emendations         that follows the poem in the present edition.

Plan of the Poem.

       The general and particular debts of Canada to Weld’s Travels are                      discussed in the Introduction, pp. xiii, xix, and xxxiv-xxxv and presented in        detail below (see, for 355 describes Cape Diamond (so named by Jacques        Cartier for the mica, quartz, and feldspar that he mistook for diamonds and        gold) as “situated one thousand feet above the level of the river, and the               loftiest part of the rock [on the north shore of the St. Lawrence] on which the        city [of Quebec] is built . . . .” Bayley’s reference in his Plan to the “Civil and        Religious liberties” of the “Canadians” (that is, the French-Canadians) is an        echo of Weld, Travels, I, 356-357: “ . . . if a country as fruitful as it is                      picturesque, a genial and healthy climate, and a tolerable share of civil and        religious liberty, can make people happy, none ought to appear more so               than the Canadians . . . .”  Panegyric: a formal speech or poem in praise of        a person or place. [Page 35]


Poem

1-28  Bayley’s description of the view from Cape Diamond combines elements from Weld’s Travels, I, 354—356 (and see also the quotation at 13, below) and Shakespeare’s King Lear, IV, vi, 11-24 (Edgar’s putative account of the view from Dover Cliffs).  Weld writes: “I must not conclude this letter without making mention of the scenery that is exhibited to the view, from various parts of the upper town of Quebec, which, for its grandeur, its beauty, and its diversity, surpasses all that I have hitherto seen in America, or indeed in any other part of the globe. In the variegated expanse that is laid open before you, stupendous rocks, immense rivers, trackless forests and cultivated plains, mountains, lakes, towns, and villages, in turn strike the attention, and the senses are almost bewildered in contemplating the vastness of the scene.  Nature is here seen on the grandest scale and it is scarcely possible for the imagination to paint to itself any thing more sublime than the several prospects presented to the sight of the delighted spectator.  From Cape Diamond . . . [a] greater extent of country opens upon you, and the eye is . . . enabled to take in more at once, than at any other place; but to me it appears, that the view from the cape is by no means so fine as that, for instance, from the battery; for in surveying the different objects below you from such a stupendous height, their magnitude is in a great measure lost, and it seems as if you were looking at a draft of the country more than at the country itself.  It is the upper battery that I allude to, facing the bason, and is about three hundred feet above the level of the water.  Here, if you stand but a few yards from the edge of the precipice, you may look down at once upon the river, the vessels upon which, as they sail up to the wharfs before the lower town, appear as if they were coming under your very feet.  The river itself, which is between five and six miles wide, and visible as far as the distant end of the island of Orleans [about six kilometers downstream from Quebec], where it loses itself amidst the mountains that bound it on each side, is one of the most beautiful objects in nature, and on a fine still summer’s evening it often wears the appearance of a vast mirror, where the varied rich tints of the sky, as well as the images of the different objects of the banks, are seen reflected with inconceivable lustre. The southern bank of the river, indented fancifully with bays and promontories, remains nearly in a state of nature, cloathed with lofty trees; but the opposite [Page 36] shore is thickly covered with houses, extending . . . in one uninterrupted village, seemingly, as far as the eye can reach.  On this side the prospect is terminated by an extensive range of mountains, the flat lands situated between them and the villages on the banks not being visible to a spectator at Quebec, it seems as if the mountains rose directly out of the water, and the houses were built on their steep and rugged sides.” Edgar’s speech runs as follows:
   
                                                How fearful
         And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
                          The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
                          Show scarce so gross as beetles.  Halfway down
                          Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
                          Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
                          The fishermen that walk upon the beach
                          Appear like mice, and yond tall anchoring bark
                          Diminsh’d to her cock—her cock, a buoy
                          Almost too small for sight.  The murmuring surge,
                That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes
                          Cannot be heard so high.  I’ll look no more,
                          Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
                 Topple down headlong.

         As discussed in the Introduction, pp. xix-xx these passages were joined by a third in Bayley’s mind—Johnson’s note on Edgar’s speech that is quoted at 1n., below.
1        steep th’ascent  Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 172: “th’ascent of that steep   savage Hill . . . .”
1        brow  The “Projecting” (2) edge of the hill, above the “‘Precipice’” (1n.) and   “gulf below” (2).  Cf. Luke 4.29: “ . . . and [they] led him unto the brow of the   hill whereon the city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.”
1n.     Bayley’s note is taken from Johnson’s comment on the opening lines of   Edgar’s speech (quoted at 1, above) in his 1765 edition of The Plays of           William Shakespeare: “This description has been much admired since   the time of Addison, who has remarked, with a poor attempt at pleasantry,   that ‘he who can read it without being giddy has a very good head or a   very bad one’.  The description is certainly not mean, but I am far from   thinking it wrought to the utmost excellence of poetry.  He that [Page 37]   looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by one great and dreadful   image of irresistible destruction. But this overwhelming idea is dissipated   and enfeebled from the instant that the mind can restore itself to the     observation of particulars and diffuse its attention to distinct objects.  The   enumeration of the choughs and crows, the samphire-man, and the     fishers, counteracts the great effect of the prospect, as it peoples the     desert of intermediate vacuity and stops the mind in the rapidity of its   descent through emptiness and horror.”
3        falt’ring  Trembling, quivering.
3        strand  Land bordering the river.
9        Reason’s laws  See Pope, Satires, V, 117: “ . . . all reason’s laws . . . ” and   Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 654: “ . . . our Reason is our Law . . . ”
10      transient  Temporary; momentary; brief.
11      A thousand charms  See Pope, Essay on Criticism, 339: “In the bright   Muse tho’ thousand charms conspire . . . .”
11       raptur’d  Enraptured, ecstatic.  See Pope, Odyssey, I, 558: “In his     raptured soul the vision glows . . . .”
13       glittering spire  See Milton, Paradise Regained, IV, 54: “ . . . Turrets and   Terraces, and glittering Spires . . . ”; Pope, Windsor-Forest, 377-378:    “Augusta’s glitt’ring Spires increase, / And Temples rise . . . ”; and Weld,   Travels, I, 316 (describing the view from Mount Royal): “A prodigious   expanse of country is laid open to the eye . . . . On the left below you,     appears the town of Montreal, with its churches, monasteries, glittering   spires, and the shipping under its old walls . . . .” Weld, Travels, I,  336   describes the churches of Lower Canada in glowing terms: “ . . . most of   them have spires, covered, according to the custom of the country, with tin   that . . . never becomes rusty.  It is pleasing beyond description to     behold . . . the spires of the churches sparkling through the groves with   which they are encircled . . . .”
13      the rampart’s massy tower  At this time, there were six bastions     (“tower[s]”) on the fortified western wall (“rampart”) of Quebec (see the   map in Weld, Travels, I, facing 342).  “Massy” is a word frequently used by   Milton; see, for example, Paradise Lost, I, 285.
14      cannon frowning on opposing power  Weld, Travels, I, 343-344 describes   the armaments in Quebec as follows: “There are several . . . batteries   here.... The principal battery . . . points towards the bason . . . . this battery   is flanked by another . . . that commands the passes from the lower town.”    frowning: looking threateningly.
18      in pigmy semblance  Seeming very small. [Page 38]
20      checquer’d scene  A view characterized by alternate light and shade; a   variegated landscape.  See Pope, Windsor-Forest, 17-18: “Here waving   Groves a checquer’d Scene display, / And part admit and part exclude the   Day . . . .”
21-24    Although Bayley’s metaphor is strained in these lines, his meaning   seems clear enough: the countryside around Quebec is a beautiful     manifestation of the world created by God and here personified as a regal   and munificent Creation.
22      vales  Chiefly a poeticism in Bayley’s day (though less so in North     America): fairly extensive tracts of lowland between ridges of hills; valleys.
22      garniture of fields   See Beattie, The Minstrel, I, ix: “The pomp of groves,   and garniture of fields.” The third stanza of Bayley’s “Ode on the death of           JAMES BEATTIE, L.L.D. Author of the Minstrel . . . Written in imitation of           and chiefly collected from that Poem” (pp. 23-24) reads: “The warbling   groves—the garniture of fields . . . .” garniture: ornaments of the land-   scape.
23      Beauport  One of the oldest settlements in Canada and, in Bayley’s day, a   bustling market town.
23      Orlean’s charms  The attraction of the Île d’Orleans (see the quotation   from Weld’s Travels at 1-28, above) were frequently remarked by     emigrants and visitors to Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth     centuries.  See Cary, Abram’s Plains, 430-433, Mackay, Quebec Hill, I,   265-286, and the notes to the latter lines in the Canadian Poetry Press   edition of the poem.
25      primæval  Belonging to the first ages of the world.
26      vesture  Clothing.  See, in conjunction with the “wood primæval” as     “nature’s child” (25), John Dyer, Grongar Hill, 99: “Thus is nature’s vesture   wrought . . . .”
27-28    whilst Alps on Alps arise, / And bound the prospect to our wearied     eyes. See Pope, Essay on Criticism, 231-232: “Th’ increasing Prospect     tires our wandering Eyes, / Hills peep o’er Hills, and Alps on Alpsarise!”     Pope is describing the ascent of “the Heights of arts.”
29-34    For a discussion of these important lines, see the Introduction, pp.xviii-   xxii.
35      no classic wreaths await  This is an odd turn of phrase, but its gist seems   to be that no historical or literary signs of distinction are discernible in the   relatively new (as opposed to “ancient”) “state” (36) of Canada.  Inspired   by Peter Kalm’s Travels into North America, [Page 39] Mackay reasons   upon lines parallel to Bayley in the early part of Quebec Hill; see, I, 41-44:   “The Antiquarian here may search in vain / For walls erected in Severus’   reign; / Or lofty tow’rs that their declension show, / Or cities built some   thousand years ago . . . .”
36      annals  Historical records.  Charlevoix, Journal, II, 232 comments that the   Indians have “no annals.”  See also the quotation from Edward Stillingfleet   under “Note Referred to in the Poem on Canada, 95n.” below.
37-38    night . . . / . . . Chaos  Night and Chaos are several times linked by   Milton in Paradise Lost, as for example, in II, 894-895 (“ . . . Night / And   Chaos, Ancestors of Nature . . . ”) and III, 18 (“ . . . I sung of Chaos and   Eternal Night . . . ”).  Pope is also fond of the pairing, as in The Dunciad I,   12 and IV, 2 (“ . . . Chaos and eternal Night . . . ”).
38      oozy bed  See Pope, Windsor-Forest, 329: “Oozy Bed.” And cf. Cary,   Abram’s Plains, 105: “oozy bottom.”
38n.   Genesis 1.2: “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was   upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of   the waters.”
39-42    Cf. Cary, Abram’s Plains, 48-75.
40      animates  Gives life to.  Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 150-151: “ . . . Male      and Female Light, / Which two great sexes animate the World . . . .”
43      gale  “A wind not tempestuous, but stronger than a breeze” (Johnson).
44      stately Pines  Cf. Mackay, Quebec Hill, I, 314: “ . . . stately pines . . . .”
44      dale  Valley.
45      Weld, Travels, I, 381-389 gives a quite detailed account of the “sugar   maple” and its economic potential, as does Charlevoix, Journal, I, 191-   194. Cf.  Mackay, Quebec Hill, I, 283-284: “The maple-trees their liquid   treasure pour, / And, by imparting, but increase their store . . . .”
46      spontaneous Produced naturally, without cultivation or labour.
47      lengthen’d  Made longer, presumably by a recession of water (after the   Flood?).
48      dull  Stupid or slow, or—on the basis of an apparent parallel with “sleek”   (49) and“shaggy” (50)—flat and unappealing.
48      Bear  Charlevoix, Journal, I, 182-187 describes bears and the Indians’   methods of hunting them at some length.
49      Elk  See Charlevoix, Journal, I, 197-202 for a parallel account of the elk   and the Indian method of hunting it.
50      Buffaloe  Either the North-American bison or the musk-ox, both of [Page           40] which are described in detail by Charlevoix, Journal, I, 203-206.
51-54    Mammoth  See the Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv for a discussion of the   relation between Bayley’s description of this large elephant-like pre-            historic creature and Thomas Jefferson’s account of it in Query VI;     “Productions Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal” in his Notes on the State of           Virginia: “Of [our quadrupeds] the Mammoth, or big buffalo, as called by   the Indians, must certainly have been the largest.  Their tradition is, that he   was carniverous, and still exists in the northern parts of America.”      Jefferson then recounts an Indian legend of “the animal whose bones were   found at the Saltlicks, on the Ohio [River]” that includes the destruction by a   herd of Mammoths of “‘the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals,   which had had been created for the use of the Indians’” and ends with the   last surviving Mammoth “‘bound[ing] over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the   Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is living to this day.’”  “It is   well known,” remarks Jefferson as a prelude to his speculations on the   dimensions, distribution, and nature of the Mammoth, “that on the Ohio,   and in many parts of Amerian further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons   of unparalleled magnitude, are found in great numbers . . . .”  In a letter   discussion of the relative sizes of American and European animals     Jefferson adds: “The bones of the Mammoth which have been found in   America, are as large as those found in the old world.  It may be asked,   why I insert the Mammoth, as if it still existed?  I ask in return, why I should   omit it, as if it did not exist?  Such is the œconomy of nature, that no     instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her   animals to become extinct; or her having formed any link in her great work   so weak as to be broken.  To add to this, the traditionary testimony of the   Indians, that this animal still exists in the northern and western parts of   America, would be adding the light of taper to that of the meridian sun.    Those parts still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and     undisturbed by us, or by others for us.”  In his  Memoirs of Mammoth, and           Various Other Extraordinary and Stupendous Bones, of Incognita, or           Non-Descript Animals Found in the Vicinity of the Ohio, Wabash,             Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Osage, and Red Rivers, a work published   in 1806 following the deposit of the bones of its title in the Liverpool     Museum, Thomas Ashe records that a Mr. Peale has long-since set up in   Philadelphia a skeleton that he “dignified . . . with the name mammoth”   (“Memoir I,” p. 6).  Bayley’s description of the Mammoth combines     elements of the accounts of Leviathan and [Page 41] Behemoth (a     creature frequently linked with the elephant) in Job 40. 20 and 23 (“Surely   the mountains bring him forth food . . . .Behold, he drinketh up a river, and   hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.”) and   Paradise Lost, VII, 412-416 and 470-472 (“ . . . there Leviathan, / Hugest   of Living Creatures . . . seems a moving Land, and at his Gills / Draws in,   and at his Trunk spouts out a Sea . . . ”; “ . . . scarce from his mould /     Behemoth biggest born of Earth upheav’d / His vastness . . . .”
51      brutal train  Animal class.
55-56    and n.  No source has yet been found for Bayley’s description of the   rattle-snake as suicidal, but his use of the words “crested” and “folds” has   a distinctly Miltonic resonance; see, for instance, Paradise Lost, IX, 496-   498 (part of the description of Satan in the guise of the Serpent): “ . . . on   his rear, / Circular base of rising folds, that tow’r’d / Fold above fold a   surging Maze, his Head / Crested aloft . . . ”  crested: characterized by a   crest or raised ridge.
56      brake  A clump of bushes.
57      provident  Foreseeing.  The intelligence of the beaver was almost     proverbial (cf. Cary, Abram’s Plains, 25: “ . . . learned beavers . . . ”) but   Bayley may have had in mind Charlevoix, Journal, Letter V (“Of the     Beaver’s of Canada”), where the creature is praised for, among other   things, its “foresight” (I, 158).  See also Milton, Paradise Lost, VII, 485-   486: “ . . . The Parsimonious Emmet, provident / Of future . . . .”
57      lot  Destiny; condition.
58      gran’ries stow’d  Filled his storehouse.  Bayley’s suggestion that the     beaver fills its storehouse with grain is  misleading; see Charlevoix,     Journal, I, 161: “ . . . wood of a soft texture . . . . These they lay up in piles .   . . .”
58      cot  Small house or shelter: lodge.
59      The murd’rous Wolf  See Charlevoix, Journal, I, 206-207 for an account   of the “wolves in Canada.”
59      whelms  Covers completely.
60      limpid flood  Clear water.
61      The Fox that lurks in ambush for his prey  In his Journal, I, 207-208,   Charlevoix describes the foxes of Canada as hunting “water-fowl after a   very ingenious manner”—in effect, “lurk[ing] in ambush” for them.
62      Squirrels  See Charlevoix, Journal, I, 209 for the “three different sorts” of   squirrel to be found in North America.
62      pilfering  Stealing (in small quantities). [Page 42]
63      innumerous  Countless, innumerable. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, VII, 453-   455: “The Earth . . . teem’d at a Birth / Innumerous living creatures . . . .”
64      tyrants  Cruel, violent or wicked rulers.
65      ancient Lords  Masters or rulers in time long past or early in the world’s   history.
66      told  Possibly a misprint; certainly an unusual usage: disclosed, made   known.
66      savage  Uncivilized, with connotations in this context of ferocity.
66      hordes  Specifically, groups of the “roving Tartars” who, in his Note             Referred to in the Poem on Canada, 95n.,  Bayley gives as the     “probable” origin of the “native Americans”; more generally, the word can   refer to groups of any nomadic tribe.
67      Of sex regardless  Indifferent to distinctions between males and females,   and see Introduction, p.1, n.54.
68      brethren clans  Tribal groups claiming descent from a common ancestor.    Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 901: “ . . . several Clans . . . .”
68      to wage eternal war  Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 121 (Satan is speaking):   “ . . . To wage by force or guile eternal War . . . .”
71      wild . . . undomestic  Uncivilized (by European standards, but not, note,   relative to the “savage hordes” of 66-68), and unattached to a fixed home   and settled home life.
72      In form superior and in reason great!  A resonantly Miltonic line; cf.     Paradise Lost, I, 591-592 (“ . . . his form had yet not lost / All her Original   brightness . . . ”); VII, 508-509 (“ . . . Sanctity of Reason, . . . erect /     . . . Stature . . . ”); and IX, 1130-1131 (“ . . . Sovran Reason claim’d /     Superior sway . . . ”). Weld, Travels, II, 227-228 and 248-260 has many   positive things to say about the physical appearance and mental qualities   of the Indians, particularly the males.
73-74    Weld, Travels, II, 259-260 comments favourably on the designs and   colours with which the Indians decorate their utensils, weapons, and     clothes. “The embroidery upon their moccasins and other garments shows   that the females are not less ingenious in their way than the men,” he     writes, and “[t]heir porcupine quill work would command attention in any   country in Europe.”  And, he adds, “Trinkets or ornaments for dress . . .   they despise, unless somewhat similar . . . to what they themselves are   accustomed to wear, and fashioned exactly to their own taste . . . ” (See   also II, 231-238, and the quotation at 76, below.) [Page 43]
75      snow-sandals  Snowshoes.
76      See Weld, Travels II, 231: “They [the Indian men] ornament this solitary   lock of hair with beads, silver trinkets, etc. and on grand occasions with   feathers.”
77-84    Weld, Travels, II, 264-265 and 276-279 depicts the Indians as far from   the “cold and phlegmatic” beings that they first appear and, rather, as   people who are sensitive to a wide spectrum of feelings, including those of   “Revenge” and “Rage” that Bayley emphasizes.  “[A] word in the slightest   degree insulting will kindle a flame in their breasts, that can only be     extinguished by the blood of the offending party; and they will traverse   forests for hundreds of miles . . . to gratify their revenge,” he says,     remarking later: “I fear . . . that in the opinion of many people, all the good   qualities which they possess, would but ill atone for their revengeful     disposition, and for the cruelties which, it is well known, they sometimes   inflict upon the prisoners who have fallen into their power in battle.”  Weld   gives instances of the killing and “torturing . . . [of] prisoners” by Indians,   and twice refers to their practice of scalping their victims (II, 230-231 and   276).  See also Introduction, pp. xxvii and li n. 65.
77-78    passions . . . alternate power  See Goldsmith, The Traveller, 55: “ . . .   Thus to my breast alternate passions rise . . . ” and Pope An Essay on           Criticism, 375: “ . . . Alternate passions fall and rise!”
83 and n.    “Jealousy, the injur’d lover’s hell,”  Milton, Paradise Lost, V, 448-   450: “ . . . but in those hearts [of Adam and Eve before the Fall] / Love   unlibidinous reign’d, nor jealousy / Was understood, the injur’d Lover’s   Hell.”
84      dark distrust  Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 6-7 “ . . . foul distrust, and     breach / Disloyal on the part of Man [after the Fall] . . . .”
84      vacant blasts  Empty curses, with a possible allusion to the recriminations   of Adam and Eve after the Fall in Paradise Lost.
85      humanity  Humaneness: compassion, benevolence, kindness.
85      trace  Discern; make out.
86      stamps Distinguishing marks or qualities.
87      patriot virtues Cf. Goldsmith, The Traveller, 200: “. . . patriot passion . . . .”
87-88    Bayley appears to be suggesting that the qualities given in 89 are the   products both of the Indians’ devotion to their country (“patriot”) and of their   own inner resources (“self-born”).  Weld, Travels, II, 264-265 attributes the   apparent “indifference” of the Indians to “any thing [Page 44] terrible,”   including extreme physical pain, to the “astonishing command . . . they   acquire over themselves” as a result of ideals “forcibly inculcated on them   from their earliest youth . . . .”  See Robertson, The History of America, II,   234-235 for the Indians’ “love of their country” and Jefferson, Notes, Query   VI for their “bravery,” “honour,” and stoicism.
90      ease  Absence of pain, painful effort, or the burden of hard work.
90      too lofty for controul  Too dignified or high in its aspirations to be     dominated.  Robertson, The History of America, II, 233 lists among the   virtues of the Indians a “spirit of independence” that is “Incapable of     controul.”  “[D]isdaining to acknowledge any superior,” Robertson writes,   the Indian’s “mind . . . acquires such elevation by the consciousness of its   own freedom that he acts on some occasions with astonishing force, and   perseverance, and dignity.”
91-94    ripened by refinement’s hand . . .   Brought towards a mature perfection   both culturally and spiritually (see 92-94) by a process of cleansing     (“refinement”) that would presumably remove the defects of character   described at 77-84.
95-124    See Introduction, pp. xxvi-xxviii and 95n., below for Bayley’s views on   the origins and history of the Indians.
95      Perchance  Perhaps.
95n.   See below for the annotation to the Note Referred to in the Poem on           Canada, 95n.
95      ere  Before.
96      science  Knowledge.  See the “Sun of Science” in 115.
97      vagrant hordes  Roving tribes (see the note to 66, above).  See Weld,   Travels, II, 25 for the aversion of the Indians “to a settled life, and to regular   habits of industry” and their fondness for “roving about, and procuring   sustenance by hunting rather than by cultivating the Earth . . . .”
98      civil  Settled and civilized as opposed to roving and barbaric.
99      expell’d  Cast out (from “civil life”).
101    offspring  Progeny; descendants; children.
102    Genius . . . Glory  The quasi-mythological gods of natural ability and high  
  achievement.
103    superstition  Irrational religious belief.
105-106 and n.   The spirit . . . dread . . .   Weld, Travels, II, 285-286 comments   only briefly on the religious beliefs of the Indians: “The [Page 45] Indians . .   . seem almost universally to believe in the existence of one supreme,     beneficent, all-wise, and all-powerful spirit, and likewise in the existence of   subordinate spirits, both good and bad.  The former having the good of   mankind at heart, they think it needless to pay homage to them, and it is   only to the evil ones, of whom they have an innate dread, that they pay their   devotions, in order to avert their ill intentions . . . . Each individual repeats   a prayer, or makes an offering to the evil spirit, when his fears and     apprehensions suggest the necessity of him so doing.”  Charlevoix,     Journal, II, 144 also writes of the Indians’ belief in good and evil spirits (or   “genii”), and comments as follows on their views of thunder: “These people   are equally ignorant of the nature of thunder; some taking it to be the voice   of a particular species of men, who fly in the air, while others imagine the   noise proceeds from certain unknown birds.  According to the       Montagnais, it is the effort of a certain genius, in order to vomit up a     serpent he has swallowed . . . .” The “ancients” to whom Bayley refers in   his note could be the Manicheans (followers of Manes, c. 216-276) who   perceived the world as a scene of perpetual conflict between the “two   principles” of good and evil, light and darkness.
107-108 and n.   . . . after death  Weld, Travels, II, 286 writes that “The belief of   a future state, in which they are to enjoy the same pleasures as they do in   this world . . . seems to be very general amongst [the Indians].”        Charlevoix, Journal, II, 153-155 describes the Indians’ “country of souls”   as an “imaginary Elysium” (in Greek mythology, the place where those   favoured by the gods go after death to enjoy a pleasant life), and explains   that in order to get to it “They have . . . vast difficulties to surmount, and are   exposed to prodigious dangers by the way.  They above all things talk   much of a river they have to pass, and on which many have been     shipwrecked . . . .”
107    impending  Overhanging.
109    phantoms of a purer creed  Ghosts of a former—and better—system of   religious belief.
111    meridian  Noon, mid-day.
112    beam’d around  A curious usage: shone forth; turned its light.
113f.  nature’s course, and time’s declining date . . .   It was a widely-held belief   in Bayley’s day (see, for example, C.F. Volney’s The Ruins; or, a Survey   of the Revolutions of the Empires [1795; original French version, 1791],   passim and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” sonnet), that,     throughout the world and history, civilizations had prospered and [Page           46] declined according to “natural” laws of growth and decay or—to put   the matter differently—according to the laws of “fate” (114) that lay beyond   the control of man.  Bayley may have been thinking specifically of     Charlevoix, Journal, I, 53, 57: “Who can seriously believe that Noah and   his immediate descendants [the ancestors of the Indians, as of everyone   else in Christian view] knew less than we do [about navigation] . . . ”?    “Why then should we be surprised that the Americans, so long unknown to   the rest of the world, should have become barbarous and savages . . . ”?    See also the discussion under Note Referred to in the Poem on Canada,           95n., below.
113    declining date  Period of sinking or falling off towards an end.
115    Sun of Science  See the notes to 96 and 111, above.
116    glory  Light, but see also the note to 102, above.
117    wherefore . . . ?  For what cause or reason? on what account? why?
118    Canadia  Poeticism: Canada.
118-120 and n.   The Quebec Gazette for Thursday, October 20, 1785 records   two “darken’d Sabbath[s],” the first on October 9 of that year and the     second (following a dark Saturday) on October 16 (not 17 as stated by   Bayley). The latter is described as follows: “Sunday morning the 16th was   quite calm and foggy till about 10 o’clock, when there arose some wind   from the Eastward which partly expell’d the fog; in about half an hour after   it became so dark that ordinary print could not be read within doors; this   was followed by a squall of wind and rain when it brighten’d up again.    From 5 till about 10 minutes after 12, the darkness was so great that the   Ministers in the English and Presbyterian Churches were obliged to stop   till they got candles.  From two o’clock till about 10 minutes after, it was as   dark as at midnight when there is no moon-light.  From 43 till about 50   minutes after three o’clock, it was total darkness; and from 35 til 45     minutes after four, it was very dark.  The people in this city dined by candle   light, and spent a part of the afternoon in lighting up and extinguishing   them . . . .  As these wonderful Phenomena have been the subject of much   conversation, and given rise to various conjectures, we flatter ourselves   some of the curious, skill’d in meteorological observations, will furnish us   with their opinions thereupon for our next.”  The next issue of The Quebec           Gazette (October 27) contains a similar report from Montreal dated     October 28.  It concludes with the speculation of a Dr. Serre of Montreal   that “ . . . the only cause of this phenomenon was the inflammation of some   neighbouring mines, whose thick smoke being [Page 47] condensed in   the air was driven by the wind over this region.”
120    transported  ‘Carried away’ by excitement or intense emotion.
122    bewilder’d  Confused, tangled.
125-126   Cf. Cowper, The Task, VI (“Winter Walk at Noon”) 6-7: “How soft the   music of those village bells / Falling at intervals upon the ear . . . .”
125    hamlet  Small village; cluster of houses in the country.
127    erst  Earlier; formerly.
128    desert  Uncultivated and relatively unpopulated.
129-130  Here and in the lines that follow, Bayley is generally indebted for his   account of “The colonization of Canada by the French Missionaries” (Plan   of the Poem) to the Histoire et déscription générale de la Nouvelle             France (1744) by Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761),   whom he mentions in his note to 142.  A Jesuit historian, Charlevoix spent   four years (1705-1709) in Quebec and returned to North America in 1720-   1722 to undertake the journey through New France and parts of what     would become the United States that he records in his Journal d’un             voyage fait par l’order du Roi dans l’Amérique Septentrionale, published   as the third volume of his Histoire . . . de la Nouvelle France.  Although   the Histoire was not translated into English until well into the nineteenth   century (John Gilmary Shea’s translation appeared in 1868-1870 and has   since between twice reprinted), the Journal was published in a number of   English translations beginning in the 1760s.  For “Charlevoix’s account of   the sufferings of the Missionaries” (142n.), see especially (in Shea’s     translation; rpt. [1962]): I, 76, 124-125; II, 114-121 and  ff.; 158-173     (particularly 172-173, Father Bressani’s sufferings); 183-184; 195-196   (the killing of Father Jogues by tomahawk); 210-213 (the death of Father   Daniel); and 219-225 (the torturing and death of Fathers Brébeuf and   Lallemant).  See also the remainder of Volume II and parts of Volumes III   and IV in Shea’s translation.
131    How chang’d the scene!  Thomson, “Summer,” 784: “How chang’d the   scene!”
131    mutual love  Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 726-727: “ . . . happy in our mutual   help / And mutual love . . . .”
133    The darted tomahawk, no longer known  The word “darted” can mean   either thrown or pierced.  See Weld, Travels, II, 244-245: “The expertness   of the Indians in throwing the tomahawk is well known . . . . The common   tomahawk is nothing more than a light hatchet, but the [Page 48] most   approved sort has on the back part of the hatchet, and connected with it in   one piece, the bowl of a pipe, so that when the handle is perforated, the   tomahawk answers every purpope [sic] of a pipe . . . . That formerly given   to the Indians by the French traders . . . had a large spike on the back of   the hatchet; very few of these instruments are now to [be] found amongst   them . . . .”
133-136 and n.   Isaiah 2. 4: “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall   rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,   and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against   nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Cf. Cary, Abram’s Plains,   60-61: “Bid tomahawks to ploughshares yield the sway, / And skalping-   knives to pruning-hooks give way . . . .”
135    the slave’s sad throes   Some of the Indian tribes, including the Huron,   owned slaves.
137    Gallia Poeticism: France
139-140 and n.   Neither John (d. c. 1498) nor Sabastian (fl. c. 1485-1557)     Cabot seems to have come up the St. Lawrence as far as Quebec. Nor   does it seem likely that, being Italian, either of them would have exclaimed   “Quel Bec” (‘What a Beak’).  According to Charlevoix, Histoire (trans.   Shea), I, 50 and Journal, I, 100 and Weld, Travels, I, 342, Quebec derives   its name from “the word . . . which signifies in the Algonquin tongue, a   sudden contraction of the river” (Weld).  Bayley is presenting a garbled   version of the legend that, in the words of John Lambert (who was in     Lower Canada in the winter of 1806-1807), “The name of Quebec . . .   originated from the Norman language, and that one of the persons who   accompanied M. de Champlain on his expedition up river [in September,   1535], on his arriving in sight of the peninsula, formed by the rivers of St.   Lawrence and St. Charles, exclaimed ‘Quel bec!’ ‘what a point!’” (Travels           through Lower Canada and the United States of North America in the           Years 1806, 1807, and 1808 [1810], I, 32). Point Levi is “the point     situated opposite to that on which Quebec stands . . . ” (Weld, I, 346).
141    forfeit breath  Breath (that is, life) lost or given up as a consequence of   premature death.
142    new-invented  Miltonic: see, for example, Paradise Lost, III, 89 (“new   created World”) and VII, 617 (“new-made World”). Bayley is presumably   referring to the imaginative methods devised by the Indians for torturing   and killing the French missionaries.
143    hallow’d  Blessed; dedicated. [Page 49]
143 and n.   Bayley’s allusion is not to The Task (1785) by the intensely religious   English poet William Cowper (1731-1800), but to the same writer’s     “Hope,” 459-464:
                                       
                                                      See Germany send forth
                            Her sons to pour it [Salvation] on the farthest north:
                            Fired with a zeal peculiar, they defy
                            And plant successfully sweet Sharon’s Rose
                            On icy plains, and in eternal snows.
   
  As a note by Cowper makes explicit, these lines refer to “The Moravian
  missionaries in Greenland . . . .”
144    yet-untempted   Thereto untried by missionaries.
146    Britannia   Poeticism: Britain.
147    laurel wreath  Emblem of military victory.
148    consecrate  Dedicate.
148    olive   Emblem of peace.
150    deplore   Lament; regret deeply.
153    vanquish’d clime   Conquered region.
154-158 See Cary, Abram’s Plains, 434-451 for a similar conviction that the   French Canadians were better off after the British conquest of New     France (New France, specifically Quebec, “open’d [her] gate” to the     “Victors” in 1759) than they have been under French rule.
157    Albion   Poeticism: England.
159    trump   Trumpet.
161    ovation’s pomp   A procession, display, or celebration (“pomp”) accorded   to a military leader whose achievements are not of the highest caliber (an   “ovation” being, in Roman times, a lesser thing than a “triumph” proper).
162    bedews   Dampens.
162    sable-vested bier   Black-covered carriage for bearing the dead to the   grave. 165-176 and ns.  Wolfe . . . The reference is, of course, to General   James Wolfe (1727-1759) who died on the Plains of Abraham outside   Quebec after being assured of the victory of his forces over those of the   French General, Montcalm.  The Battle of the Plains of Abraham was     fought on September 12, 1759 after Wolfe and his men had used the   cover of [Page 50] darkness (see Weld, Travels, I, 346) to sail up the St.   Lawrence past Quebec and ascend the pathway leading to the plains, thus   thwarting both the city’s natural defenses (“the mountain’s height / The   barrier rocks . . . ”) and its man-made ones (“Nature and art . . . beheld in   vain . . . ”).   The “carnage” on both sides was extensive: two hundred and   seventy British killed and twelve hundred wounded, with French casualties   estimated at over a thousand killed or wounded.  Bayley’s description of   Wolfe’s conduct during the Battle is oblique but accurate: he led his     soldiers on foot rather than on horseback (“The aid of pride he scorn’d . . .   ”) and he did by all accounts succumb to death only after hearing of the   retreat of the French through the “they fly—they fly” of a messenger.  See   Cary, Abram’s Plains, 300-331 for a parallel account of the Battle of the   Plains of Abraham and the Death of Wolfe that might have been known to   Bayley. 
172    clangor  Loud noise.
173-174    “Hope awhile bade England’s name farewell,” / And Valour             shudder’d as her warrior fell Cf. Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of           Hope, I, 381-382: “Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell, / And   Freedom shriek’d—as Kosciusko fell!”
175    reclin’d in Victr’y’s bosom died  Cf. Cowper, The Task, II (“The Time-            Piece”), 242-243: “ . . . Wolfe upon the lap / Of smiling Victory that moment   won . . . .”
177-178    See Weld, Travels, I, 346: “The spot where the illustrious hero [Wolfe]   breathed his last is marked with a large stone, on which a true meridional   line is drawn.”  It was not until 1832 that a monument commemorating   Wolfe’s victory and death was erected on the Plains of Abraham.
180    standard   Banner, flag.
181-188   The Plan of the Poem makes clear that these lines refer to “The     repulse of the American army under [General Richard] Montgomery [1738-   1775]” in 1775-1776.  The rout of the Americans was achieved by a     combination of the Canadian winter and British forces under Major-            General Sir Guy Carleton, later Lord Dorchester.  Montgomery was killed   during the invasion.
181-182   recreant hurl’d / An host from hence (the rebels of the world)              Miltonic: Paradise Regained, III, 138 (“ . . . Turn’d recreant to God . . . ”;   “recreant”: unfaithful, false); Paradise Lost, I, 44-45 (“Him [Satan] the     Almighty Power / Hurl’d headlong . . . from th’Ethereal Sky . . . ”); and     Paradise Lost, I, 37-38 (“ . . . cast him out from Heav’n, [Page 51] with all   his Host / Of Rebel Angels . . . ”).
183    serpent fangs of jealous strife   In the Miltonic context of the foregoing,   this phrase carries strong suggestions of Satan in his rôles as jealous   rebel and destructive serpent in Paradise Lost.
185    maddn’ing  Causing uncontrollable anger.
185    tribe  Race (contemptuous)
186    Shunn’d  Avoided from fear. Cf., in conjunction with the surrounding lines,
  Cowper, “Charity,” 236-239: “I was a bondman on my native plain, / Sin   forged, and ignorance made fast, the chain; / Thy lips [Charity] . . . / Taught   me what path to shun, and what pursue . . . .”
186    fancied . . . romantic  Deceptive; illusory; fictitious; unreal.
187-188 and ff.   See Introduction, pp. xxix-xxx for a discussion of Bayley’s     attitude to the American political experiment.
189    sequester’d  Sheltered; secluded.
190    Hudson . . . Potomac  The Hudson and Potomac rivers, both of which are   in the eastern United States (and both of which are described by Weld in   the first volume of his Travels), are so steeped in American history and   legend as to be almost synonymous with the nation through which they   flow; certainly, they carry this weight in these lines.
190    lave  Bathe; wash.
191    Columbia’s genius  America’s spirit
191    sway   Power of rule or command; authority; dominion.
193    Eagle   A bird associated with war and violence, and an emblem of the   United States.
196    paricidal   Directed towards the murder of a father, parent, or ruler.
200    spurn   Reject with contempt.
200    filial duty   The duty of a son or daughter towards his or her parents(s). Cf.   Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv, 14: “Filial ingratitude!”  See also     Cordelia’s speech on filial duty in I, i, 97-106.
202    abjur’d  Renounced; repudiated; rejected.
204, 204n. and f.    Ferments arise; imprison’d factions roar . . .   The United   States was rife with political unrest and division in the late eighteenth and   early nineteenth centuries, when, among other things, fears of revolution   and violence of the sort experience in France during the so-called Reign of   Terror (1793-1794) led to the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws   (1798) under which many Americans were prosecuted and imprisoned.    The accession of Thomas Jefferson (see the note to 214 and n., below) to   the Presidency in 1801 began a new era of democracy in American     politics, one seen by Jefferson’s detractors [Page 52] (Bayley included)   as predicated on a tyranny of the masses or “despot rabbles” (206).  See   the Introduction, pp. xxixf. for Bayley’s adherence to an essentially     conservative position that emphasized order, authority, religion, and the   rule of the upper classes over anarchy, liberty, atheism, and the rule of the   people (“Democracy”).  Bayley’s line is taken from The Traveller, or a           Prospect of Society (1794) a poem by Oliver Goldsmith (c. 1730-1774)   which compares various European countries in terms of their political,   economic, and social conditions (The Traveller, 306: “ . . . Ferments     arise, imprison’d factions roar . . . ”).
205-206   despot  Despotic: tyrannical; arbitrary.
207    career   Course.
208    the weak republic   The United States
209 and n.   fragil bark  Fragile boat.  The ancient and common metaphor and   topos of the ship of state is central to Horace’s Ode I, xiv, the third and   fourth stanzas of which are invoked by Bayley’s note: “Thy canvas [O ship]   is no longer whole, nor hast thou gods to call upon when again beset by   trouble.  Though thou be built of Pontic pine, a child of far-famed forests,   and though thou boast thy stock and useless name [“genus et nomen     inutile”], yet the timid sailor puts no faith in gaudy sterns.  Beware lest thou   become the wild gale’s sport!” (Bennett’s translation).
209    main   Ocean.
211    blasts  Strong, gusting winds.
214 and n.  nature’s second night  Death; the death of civilization (see “Sun of   Science” at 115, and the note to 96, above). Cf. Shakespeare, Macbeth,   II, ii, 39: “ . . . great nature’s second course [sleep] . . . .” Bayley’s view of   the species of democracy advanced by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826),   President of the United States from 1801 to 1809, is, of course, highly   biased.  In the terms of his own day, a Republican rather than a Federalist   (the party with which Bayley’s views align him), Jefferson is now regarded   as one of the greatest of American presidents whose democratic     philosophy set the course of his country’s history.
217 and f.  Gallia’s blood-stain’d coast  The coast of France, stained with the   blood of the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror (see the note to 204   and f., above) and the Napoleonic Wars.  In October, 1805 the British fleet   under Nelson defeated the French at the Battle of Trafalgar. See George   Canning and others, “New Morality,” 306 in Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, p.   283: “ . . . Where at the blood-stain’d board expert [Page 53] [Talleyran]   plies . . . ”
218    her former boast  Presumably the call to Freedom, equality, and fraternity   at the time of the French Revolution (1789).
219    Lo!  Behold; see; look.
219    “the men without a God”  See Canning, “New Morality,” 317-318, Poetry           of the Anti-Jacobin, p. 283: “ . . . LEPAUX;—whom atheists worship; at   whose nod / Bow their meek heads the Men without a God.”  The footnote   to these lines reads:“The Men without a God—one of the new sects     [spawned by the French Revolution].  Their religion is intended to consist   in the adoration of a Great Book, in which all the virtuous actions of the   society are to be entered and registered. ‘In times of civil commotion they   are to come forward to exhort the citizens to unanimity, and to read them a   chapter out of the Great Book.  When oppressed or proscribed, they are   to retire to a burying-ground, to wrap themselves up in their great-coats,   and wait the approach of death,’ &c.”
220    unerring  Certain, sure.
221-222  and n.  Voltaire  The French author and philosopher François Mari   Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) is most likely to be remembered today for   his political romance Candide (1759), though he also wrote several plays   and many other works of a literary, historical, scientific, sociological, and   philosophical nature. Educated in Paris at the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-   Grand (where he was indeed tutored by Louis Le Jay, whose remark     Bayley probably quotes from an anonymous translation; see 234 and n.,   below), Voltaire spent much of his life fighting for the rights of the victims of   political and religious persecution. At least residually a Christian, he     nevertheless advocated a form of Deism (see the note to 228 and n.,   below), for the ruling élite of society and, in the end, refused to sign the full   recantation of certain of his works that would have secured him a Christian   burial. His famous statement “Écrasez l’infame!” (‘Crush the infamous   thing!’ [see again the note to 234 and n., below]) may have been directed   against either the Roman Catholic Church in particular or against the     French ancien régime in general; certainly it did not endear him to the   proponents of established order.  Among his friends were Lord     Bolingbroke (see the note to 228 and n., below) whom he met while exiled   in England in the seventeen twenties, and Frederick II of Prussia (see the   note to 223 and n., below), whose court he attended in the seventeen   forties and early seventeen fifties.  At Kell’s Analyses et critiques des           ouvrages de M. de Voltair avec plusieurs anecdotes intéressantes . . .   was published [Page 54] in 1789.
223-224 and n.   Fredrick of Prussia  A friend and patron of Voltaire (see the   preceding note), Frederick II or Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-   1786; King, 1740-1786) was a talented military leader, a gifted writer, an   “enlightened despot,” and an atheist.  During the Seven Years War (1756-   1763) he was allied with Britain against France, Austria, and others, and   incurred various victories and defeats.  Among his writings on politics,   history, tactics, and philosophy is a refutation of Machiavelli.  To an extent   liberal and progressive, he was tolerant in matters of religion and instituted   a number of reforms and improvements in his own country.  He bettered   the lot of the serfs on his own estates, albeit not in Prussia as a whole.  His   court at Sans Souci (French: ‘without care’) was renowned for its French   flavour and for its free thinkers.
223    Sophist   Specious reasoner. Cf., in conjunction with the surrounding   lines, Beattie, The Minstrel, I, xli: “Hence! ye, who snare and stupefy the   mind, / Sophists, of beauty, virtue, joy, the bane! . . . Who spread your filthy   nets in Truth’s fair fane, / And ever ply your venom’d fangs amain!”
225    unhallow’d   See the note to 143, above.  
226    “To crush the wretch”   Bayley’s rendition of Voltaire’s “Écrasez l’infame!”   (see the note to 221-222 and n., above).
226    savior’s  Christ’s.
227    Le-Paux   Louis Marie de la Révelliève-Lépeaux (1753-1824) was the   president of the French revolutionary Directory between 1795 and his   forced resignation in 1799.  He was bitterly hostile to Christianity, which he   proposed to supplant as a civilizing agent by a new religion called     Theophilanthropy, the invention of the English Deist David Williams.      Canning’s “New Morality,” 314-355, Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, pp.283-   285 contains a lengthy rant against “LEPAUX” (see the notes to 219,   above and 227 and 232, below), ending with an invitation to Thomas     Hobbes’ Leviathan (“Hugest of living things that sleep and swim”) to     “praise LEPAUX” with “puffing” and “spouting,” and a suggestion that the   reader “fill up the blanks” (“With_____, _______, and _______, in thy   train”) with the names of“creeping creatures” of his own choosing, a     suggestion taken up by Bayley in this portion of Canada.
227    Paine   A “serpent” indeed from Bayley’s perspective, the American     thinker and writer Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was a supporter of the   [Page 55] American Revolution (The American Crisis [1776-1783]), a   defender of the French Revolution (The Rights of Man [1791-1792]), and   a deistic critic of the Bible (The Age of Reason [1794-1795]). See     Canning, “New Morality,” 344-345, Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, p.285: “All   creeping creatures, venomous and low, / PAINE, WILLIAMS [see the note   to 227, above], GODWIN, HOLCROFT, praise LEPAUX!”
228 and n.    Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671-1713), the third Earl of Shaftesbury,   is the English politician and heterodox philosopher who first used the term   “moral sense” to describe what he saw as man’s innate capacity for     benevolence, by which a harmony is achieved between the individual and   society. His Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, first   published in 1711, was frequently reprinted in the eighteenth century and   later.  Henry St. John (1678-1751), Viscount Bolingbroke, another English   politician and philosopher, was, as already noted (221-222 and n., above)   a friend of Voltaire.  His political activities included temporary support of   the Jacobites against George I and among his published works is the Idea           of a Patriot King (1749), an argument in favour of a kind of “Tory     democracy.”  Both Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke are discussed at length in   A View of the Principal Deistical Writers that Have Appeared in England           in the Last and Present Century . . . (1754-1756; 4th. ed. 1764) by the   English Theologian John Leland (1691-1766). The deists (a term nearly   synonymous with freethinkers) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries   regarded formal religion and the revealed truth of the Bible as superfluous,   holding that reason and the evidence of nature sufficiently demonstrate the   existence of God.
230    blast  Curse; blight; destroy.
230    with   Along with.
232 and n.   This line is taken from the following passage in Canning’s “New   Morality,” 328-333, Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, p. 284:

                       ‘Couriers and Stars, Sedition’s evening host,
               Though Morning Chronicle and Morning Post,
               Whether ye make the Rights of Man your theme,
               Your country libel, and your God blaspheme,
               Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw,
               Still, blasphemous or blackguard, praise LEPAUX!” [Page 56]
           
   The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, a compendium of all the poetry printed in   The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner, an aggressively conservative   periodical published in London between November, 1797 and July, 1798   (when it was replaced by The Anit-Jacobin Review and Magazine), made   its first appearance in 1801, and was frequently reprinted thereafter.  The   authors of the poems included (in addition to Canning) John Hookham   Frere, the Marquis of Wellesley, and the Earl of Carlisle.
233    hapless   Unfortunate; unlucky; luckless.
234 and n.  Robespier   One of the leaders of the French Revolution (and of the   Jacobin Club), Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre (1758-1794) was a   member of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety that inaugurated   the Reign of Terror, a phenomenon with which his name is inseparably   connected.  He was guillotined by fellow revolutionaries on July 28, 1794.    The Abbé Barruel mentioned by Bayley in his note was the French author   of a four volume work translated in 1797 as Memoirs Illustrating the             History of Jacobinism.  The first volume of this work contains several   references to Voltaire’s “écrasez l’infame” (which the anonymous     translator renders as “ ‘crush the wretch!’” [I, 27]), as well as the remark by   Le Jay (“‘Unfortunate young man, you will one day come to be the     standard-bearer of Infidelity’” [I, 2] that Bayley remembers at 220n.     Judging by the following passage (Memoirs, I, 41), the “maxim” that     Bayley had in mind was not Robespierre’s but Voltaire’s: “No precept is   oftener repeated by Voltaire than ‘strike but conceal the Hand. . . . [T]he           monster must fall pierced by a hundred invisible hands; yes, let it fall           beneath a thousand repeated blows.’” Proscription: action or decree   condemning someone to death or banishment.
235    murder’d Louis   Louis XVI (1754-1793), King of France from 1774 until   his death at the hands of revolutionaries on January 21, 1793.
236 and f.   A foreign Despot   Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was born in   Corsica the year after the island was ceded to France and, thus, not     technically “foreign,” at least to that country. (A further twist to the question   of Napoleon’s citizenship is provided by Corsica’s union with Britain in   1794.)  He crowned himself Emperor of the French on December 2, 1804   (“Despot”: absolute ruler; tyrant) and in 1805 proclaimed himself King of   Italy (“Italia”).  In the same year he defeated the Austrians at Ulm on the   Danube and the combined Austrians and Russians under Emperor     Francis II and Tsar Alexander I [Page 57] at Austerlitz. Thereafter the   Austrians were forced to submit to the harsh terms of the Treaty of     Pressburg and the Russians, though they continued the war against     Napoleon, had to withdraw all their troops from Austria.  While “Europa’s   empires” thus “totter[ed] on their base,” Britain’s strength was growing,   particularly at sea, where Nelson had defeated Napoleon’s fleet at     Trafalgar in October, 1805 (see the note to 217 and f., above).  In view of   the situation in the winter of 1805-1806 when Canadawas written and   published, Bayley can hardly be faulted for thinking that the task of     defeating Napoleon in the coming years would fall to Britain “alone” (243-   246).
237-238   thro’ the eastern coast / Depopulation leads his murdering host             Presumably, the eastern coast of Italy.  Depopulation: devastation;     pillaging; reduction of population; unpeopling.  Cf. Goldsmith, The             Traveller, 397-402: “Have we not seen . . . opulence, her grandeur to     maintain, / Lead stern depopulation in her train . . . ?”
244    To shake corruption from her Venal throne   Thomson, “Autumn,” 1066-   1069:“ . . . thy pathetic Eloquence!   that . . . Of honest Zeal th’indignant    Lightning throws, / And shakes Corruption on her venal Throne.” Venal :   corruptly mercenary; unprincipled in its dealings.
246 and n.  1 Chronicles 21.22: “Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place   of this threshing-floor, that I may build an altar therein unto the Lord: thou   shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may stayed from the     people.”  See also Psalm 124. 2,4: “If it had not been the Lord who was on   our side . . . .Then the waters had overwhelmed us . . . .” (and, passim, the   account of the food in Genesis 6-9).
249    abjuring  Rejecting; disclaiming.
252    Cf. Thomson, “Spring,” 1163: “ . . . Ease and alternate Labour . . . .”
253-254    Cf. Weld, Travels, I, 338: “Some of the lower classes of the French   Canadians have all the gaiety and vivacity of the people of France; they   dance, they sing, and seem determined not to give way to care . . . .” Cf.   Goldsmith, The Traveller, 243-244: “How often have I led thy sportive   choir [choir: band of dancers, or singers and dancers] / With tuneless pipe,   beside the murmuring Loire.” The Loire River, the longest in France, is   almost synonymous with French culture and history.
255-259   See Weld, Travels, I, 336, 338 on the “custom . . . of the country” and   I, 396 on the sudden transformation from winter to spring at the end of   April or in May: “The snow soon disappears . . . . The scene which     presents itself on the St. Lawrence at this season is most tremendous.   [Page 58] The ice first begins to crack from side to side, with a report as   loud as that of a cannon . . . .  [I]f in going down [the mounds of ice] happen   to strike against any of the rocks along the shore the crash is horrible . . . .”
256    annual vows to pleasure and to May   Spring festivals; May-day     celebrations.
257    icy chain   Cf. Cary, Abram’s Plains, 142-143: “ . . . here dreary winter    reigns, /And bars the liquid way with icy chains . . . .”
258    caverns   Large subaqueous caves.
260-266  Cf. Weld, Travels, I, 397 on the speed and fertility of the Canadian   spring: “The rapid progress of vegetation in Canada, as soon as the     winter is over, is most astonishing . . . .  In a few days the fields are clothed   with the richest verdure, and the trees obtain their foliage. The various   productions of the garden come in after each other in quick succession,   and the grain sown in May affords a rich harvest by the latter end of July.    This part of the year . . . is delightful beyond description; nature . . . puts on   her gayest attire . . . .”
260    Creation   The capitalization indicates that Bayley viewed the renewal of   life in spring as a re-enactment of God’s primal act of creation as     described in Genesis I.
260    vegetates  Develops; nourishes itself.
262    harrow  Plough.
262    inverts the soil  Turns over the earth. See William Shenstone, Elegies,   XIX, i: “Again the lab’ring hind [peasant] inverts the soil . . . .”
264    three-fold harvests  See Weld, Travels, I, 379-380 on the fertile soil and   “plentiful crops” in the St. Lawrence valley.  three-fold: three times as great   or as much.
264    meed  Reward.
265    embryo  Immature, undeveloped.
266    favor’d  Unusually blessed or advantaged.
267-272   See Weld, Travels, I, 397-398 on the “fervor” (intense heat; glowing   condition) of the Canadian summer: “ . . . in July and August the weather   becomes warmer, and a few days often intervene when the heat is     overcoming; during these months the mercury sometimes rises to 96˚   [Fahrenheit].”
269-272 and n.   No source has yet been found for Bayley’s fanciful description   of the humming-bird folding its wings in a flower in response to the intense   heat.
269    plaintive  Sad-sounding; complaining.
270    Sportive  Playful. [Page 59]
270    Zephyr   Wind; breeze. In Greek mythology, Zephyrus or Zephyr was the   personification of the west wind.
271    roseate hue   Coloured like a rose (pink, red, pale crimson)
272    honied dew   Sweet liquid: nectar.
273-276   Cf., in conjunction with 293-294, Thomson, “Winter,” 234-238: “ . . .   ere the languid Sun / Faint from the West emits his Evening Ray, / Earth’s   universal Face, deep-hid, and chill, / Is one wide dazzling Waste, that   buries wide/ The Works of Man.”
275    interminable shade   Endless or boundless darkness. Cf. Thomson,     “Summer,” 691-692: “ . . . interminable Meads / And vast Savannahs . . . .”
276    Depopulation   Devastation (see the note to 237-238, above).
276    sombrous   Sombre: depressingly dark.
277    spoils   Strips.
277    hoary   Grey; grayish white.
278    Fancy . . . Contemplation   Personifications of imagination and thought.
279    luxuriant   Exuberant; abundant; colourful.
280    prospect   View; scene.
280    trace   Discern; describe.
280-282 and n.   Probably William Grant (1744-1805), a prosperous merchant,   seigneur, officer, and politician who owned several properties in Lower   Canada, including “a farm on Île Sainte-Hélène, near Montreal”; but     possibly David Alexander Grant (the son of William’s elder brother David),   who supervised his “uncle’s milling, shipbuilding, and seigneurial interests   in the Montreal region” from the property on the Île Sainte-Hélène (DCB, V,   369-370).  In his Travels, II, 64, Lambert writes that St. Helen’s Island   “belongs [in 1806-1807] to the Baroness de Longueil: this lady married a   gentleman by the name of Grant, and brought him very extensive and     valuable landed property. Since his death, it has been divided between   her and the children.”  That William Grant died after a short illness on     October 5, 1805 may indicate either that Bayley is addressing his nephew   or one of his sons in 280-282 or, as seems more likely, that at least this   portion of the poem was written before Grant’s death. The singling-out of   Grant for praise in Canada may also indicate that Bayley had some, as   yet undiscovered, connection with him.  Bayley’s description of St. Helen’s   Island recalls Cowper, The Task, III (“The Garden”), 628-632: “To deck the   shapely knoll / That . . . appears / A flowery island . . . must be deemed a   labour due / To no mean hand, and asks the touch of taste.” [Page 60]
282    protub’rance   Rounded prominence; hill (and see the quotation at 283-   294, below).
282    assiduous   Constant; unfailing.
283-294  Montrèal’s mountain heighth . . . summits   Weld, Travels, I, 315-317   states that the view from the highest of the “two or three considerable   mountains” (Bayley’s “summits”) on “the island of Montreal” is “grand     beyond description,” but describes it nevertheless, and in terms which   obviously provided Bayley with the basis of his “exhaustless view” (and   see also the quotations at 13, above and 290, below): “A prodigious     expanse of country is laid open to the eye, with the noble river St.     Lawrence winding through it, which may be traced from the remotest part   of the horizon.  The river comes from the right, and flows smoothly on, after   passing down the tremendous rapids above the town, where it is hurried   over huge rocks [Bayley’s “shed” (292)?] . . . .  [S]everal little islands in the   river near the town, partly improved, partly overgrown with wood [see 282],   add greatly to the beauty of the scene . . . .  Such an endless variety and   such a grandeur is there in the view from this part of the mountain, that   even those who are most habituated to the view, always find it a fresh   subject of admiration whenever they contemplate it . . . .”
285-286 and n.  One of the most famous and wealthy figures in the fur-trade,   Simon McTavish (c. 1750-1804) established his office in Montreal in c.   1776 and thereafter played a principal rôle in the North West Company   (see the note to 421 and n., below). In 1793 he married a French-            Canadian woman named Marie-Marguerite Chaboillez and in 1803 began   to build a large house on the slopes of Mount Royal. He did not live to see   his mansion finished, however, for he died unexpectedly on July 6, 1804,   having expressed the wish that he might be buried on his own property.    This request was carried out and, in Bayley’s words, “widow’d       love . . . rais’d  husband’s grave” near the unfinished McTavish Mansion   (now the site of a monument in the fur-trader’s memory).  Lambert,     Travels, II, 68, describes the McTavish house and mausoleum as they   were in 1806-1807: “A large handsome stone building, belonging to the   widow of the late Mr. McTavish . . . stands at the foot of the mountain, in a   very conspicuous situation. Gardens and orchards have been laid out, and   considerable improvements made, which add much to the beauty of the   spot. Mr. McTavish is buried in a tomb a short distance from his house on   the side of the mountain, in the midst of a thick shrubbery. A [Page 61]   monumental pillar is erected over the vault, and may be seen a long way   off.” McTavish’s widow married a Major W. Plenderleath in England in   January, 1808. For further details of McTavish’s life and death, see the   entry on him in DCB, V, 560-567 and Edgar Andrew Collard, “Simon     McTavish’s Burial Place Still Intact on Mountain Slope,” The Gazette     (Montreal), February 21, 1941, p. 10.
287    exhaustless   Inexhaustible.
289    plenteous   Fertile; productive.
289    buzy   Probably a misprint for “busy”, but conceivably a misprint for “buzzy”   (humming).
290    La-Prairie’s spire   See Weld, Travels, I, 317: “La Prairie with its large   church on the distant side of the [St.Lawrence] river . . . .” In different     places (see, for example, I, 288 and 305) Weld spells the name of the   village on the South shore, opposite Montreal “La Prarie” and “La Prairie.”
290    azure   Sky-blue.
292    shed   Ridge of high ground dividing two valleys; divide (and see 283-294, above).
294    beams departing day  Cf. Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country        Churchyard,” 1: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day . . . .”
296    Cf. Thomson, “Summer,” 1700-1701: “ . . . the lambent Lightnings shoot /   Across the sky . . . .”
296    innocuous   Harmless.
299    ungenial   Not favourable, kindly, or pleasant.  The Thomsonian tenor of   the ensuing passage suggests a source for this word in the “ungenial pole”   of “Winter,” 998.  See also the quotation from Weld’s Travels under Plan   of the Poem, above.
300    equinoctial   Occurring at or near the time of the equinox (one of the two   periods of the year, in spring and fall, when the days and nights are equal   in length); said especially of the gales (and rains) prevailing about the time   of autumn equinox (September 22-23).
301-303   These lines are strongly reminiscent of passages in “Winter” where   Thomson ascribes health-giving qualities to the cold air of that season   (see “Winter,” 694-713 and 304, below) and depicts the “various Sport /   And Revelry . . . ” (760f.) that it makes possible.  See also Cary, Abram’s           Plains, 505-511 and 544-546 and, for “Winter in Canada . . . [as] the     season of general amusement . . . [when] every one devotes himself to   pleasure,” Weld, Travels, I, 391-393. Weld also comments (I, 389-390) on   the pure air and healthy climate of Lower [Page 62] Canada.
301    keener air   Cf. Goldsmith, The Traveller, 186: “ . . . Keen air . . . .”      keener: sharper; colder; and Thomson, “Winter”, 223: “Keener       Tempests.”
303    frame   Body; constitution.
303    invigorated   Strengthened; animated; given energy.
304    Brace every nerve and flush in every cheek  Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 700,   709: “ . . . the new-strung Nerves . . . . A stronger Glow sits on the lively   Cheek . . . ”
305    tractless   Trackless: pathless or, in a rarer but perhaps more apposite   sense, featureless.
305    resplendent   Shining; brilliant; splendid.
307-308    . . . Arrested pause . . . Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 723-725: “An icy gale .   . . in its mid Career / Arrests the bickering Stream.”
309    gothic   Resembling medieval, as opposed to classical, architectural   forms: irregular, crude; “romantic” (see the note to 355, below). Cf.     Cowper, The Task, III (“The Garden”), 641: “Without it [elegance], all is   gothic . . . ” and V (“The Winter Morning Walk”), 110-111: “Here [in a     frozen water fall] glittering turrets rise, upbearing high / (Fantastic     misarrangement!) . . . .”
311    vagrant   Moving hither and thither.
313    flaky weight   Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 147: “flaky Clouds.”
315    animation   Vitality; liveliness.
316    color-changing hare   The North-American varying hares, Lepus arcticus   (the Arctic hare) and lepus groenlanicus (the Greenland hare) turn white in   winter.
317    covert   Shelter; cover (such as a thicket). Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 137-   142: “ . . . the plumy Race, / Tenants of the Sky . . . seek the closing Shelter   of the Grove . . . .”
317    man rears his butchering blow  See Weld, Travels, I, 395: “ . . . as soon   as the frost sets in they generally kill cattle and poultry sufficient to last   them till the return of spring.  The carcasses are buried in the ground, and   covered with a heap of snow, and as they are wanted they are dug up;   vegetables are laid up in the same manner . . . .”
319    ought   Aught: anything.
320    whirlwinds   Rotating or whirling winds.  Cf., in conjunction with the “torrent”   of the ensuing line, Goldsmith, The Traveller, 207: “ . . . the loud torrent,   and the whirlwind’s roar . . . ” and Thomson, “Winter,” 269-270: “In this dire   Season, oft the Whirlwind’s Wing / Sweeps up [Page 63] the Burthen of   whole wintry Plains . . . .”
321    torrent   Violent downpour, either in the form of a stream or precipitation.
321    convulsive   With violent physical disturbance.
322    For “hapless,” “cot,” and “whelm,” see respectively the notes to 233, 58,   and 59, above.
323    swain   Peasant.
324-326   market teeming with his gain . . .   See Weld, Travels, I, 395: “The   markets in the towns are always supplied best at this season [winter], and   provisions are then also the cheapest; for the farmers having nothing else   to engage them, and having a quantity of meat on hand [see the quotation   from Weld at 317, above] that is never injured from being sent to market,   flock to the towns in their carioles in great numbers, and always well     supplied.” 325-332   Carrioles   The term carriole or cariole was used to   refer to a wide variety of dog-and horse-drawn sleighs, from market carts   to stage coaches.  Two passages in Weld’s Travels very clearly supplied   Bayley with the basis for his descriptions of carrioles and their practical   and social uses, as well as their effects on “strangers”: “The market of   Quebec is extremely well supplied with provisions of every kind . . . . It is a   matter of curiosity to a stranger to see the number of dogs yoked in little   carts, that brought into this market by the people who attend it. The     Canadian dogs are found extremely useful in drawing burthens . . . . [T]heir   strength is prodigious . . . . People, during the winter season, frequently   perform long journeys on the snow with half a dozen or more of these     animals yoked in a cariole or sledge” (I, 353-354); “By means of their   carioles or sledges, the Canadians  transport themselves over the snow,   from place to place, in the most agreeable manner, and with a degree of   swiftness that appears almost incredible; for with the same horse it is   possible to go eighty miles in a day, so light is the draft of one of these   carriages, and so favourable is the snow to the feet of the horse.  The   Canadian cariole or sledge is calculated to hold two persons and a driver;   it is usually drawn by one horse; if two horses are made use of, they are   put one before the other . . . . The carioles glide over the snow with great   smoothness . . . . The rapidity of the motion, with the sound of . . . bells and   horns appears to be very conducive to cheerfulness, for you seldom see a   dull face in a cariole.  The Canadians always take advantage of winter   seasons to visit their friends who live at a distance, as traveling is then so   very expeditious; and this is [Page 64] another circumstance which     contributes, probably not a little, to render the winter so extremely     agreeable in their eyes” (I, 392-393).
325    burthens   Burdens: loads.
326    lawn   Untilled ground; open space.
328    well-pointed   Well-directed; well-steered.
331    car   Vehicle: cariole.
333-378   See Weld, Travels, I, 391: “The inhabitants meet in convivial parties   at each other’s houses [during the Canadian winter], and pass the day with   music, dancing, card-playing, and every social entertainment that can   beguile the time.” A further passage in Weld, II, 9 may have contributed to   Bayley’s characterization of the elderly “sire” and his audience in this     passage, and, moreover, furnished inspiration for some of its incidents   and details: “a spirit of enterprize is not wanting amongst the Canadians;   they eagerly come forward when called upon, to traverse the immense   lakes of the western regions; they laugh at the dreadful storms on those   prodigious bodies of water; they work with indefatigable perseverance at   the oar and the pole in stemming the rapid currents of the rivers . . . . The   spirit of the Canadian is excited by vanity: he delights in talking to his     friends and relatives of the excursions he has made to those distant     regions; and he glories in the perils which he has encountered . . . .”     Bayley follows Weld, II, 8-9 in emphasizing the French-Canadian love of   home, family, and friends (a quality that Weld finds lacking in the     Americans), but here, as elsewhere (see the note to 403, below)     downplays their supposed “vanity.” See also Thomson, “Winter,” 89-93 for   a “taleful” peasant by an “enlivening blaze” on a winter’s night.
334    draught   Drink.
334    beguile   While away pleasantly.
335    hoary-headed   Grey- or white-haired.
335    sire   Elderly man; person of some note or importance.
336    Allures   Attracts; tempts.
338    abode   House; home. Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 293: “ . . . blest Abode of   Man . . . .”
339-340   Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 297-305 (the famous description of the     “Swain” lost in the “wilderness”): “Then throng the busy shapes into his   Mind, / Of cover’d Pits . . . Of faithless bogs . . . . These check his fearful   steps . . . .”
341    shock   Sudden and violent blow.
342    light canoe   Weld, Travels, II, 18-19 describes the construction of [Page           65] birch-bark canoes, remarking that “A canoe made in this manner is so   light, that two men could easily carry one on their shoulders . . . ”; indeed,   “they are so light,” he says, “that they are apt to be overset by the least   improper movement of the persons in them” (and see also II, 242-243).
343-344 and n.   Like Thomas Moore (see Introduction, p. xiii), Bayley was     perhaps drawn to the “songs” of the “Voyageurs” (the canoe- and boat-   men, usually French Canadian, Métis, or Indian, who crewed the vessels of   the inland fur trade) by Weld, Travels, II, 51: “The French Canadians have   in general a good ear for music, and they sing duets with tolerable     accuracy.  They have one very favourite duet amongst them, called the   ‘rowing duet,’ which as they sing they mark time to, with each stroke of the   oar; indeed when rowing in smooth water, they mark the tune of most of   the airs they sing in the same manner.” Cf. Mackay, Quebec Hill, I, 207-   211.
344    batteaux  French: boats.  See Weld, Travels, I, 331: “A bateau is a     particular kind of boat, very generally used upon the large rivers and lakes   in Canada.  The bottom of it is perfectly flat, and each end is built very   sharp, and exactly alike. The sides are about four feet high, and for the   convenience of the rowers, four or five benches are laid across,     sometimes more, according to the length of the bateau.  It is a very heavy   awkward sort of vessel, either for rowing or sailing . . . .”
345    roving fancies   See Weld, Travels, II, 25 for the fondness of the Indians   and French Canadians for “roving about” (and also the quotation at 333-   378, above).
346    histories   Stories.
347-348   Ontario   Weld, Travels, II, 74-83 describes “the most easterly” of the   Great Lakes at length, noting its “great expanse” and observing that parts   of his voyage on it from Kingston to Niagara “differed in no wise from one   across the ocean . . . .”
348    stream   Water; ocean.
349-350   Weld does not describe the most westerly of the Great Lakes in his   Travels, but he does mention the British “military post” on “the Island of St.   Joseph, in the Straits of St. Mary, between lakes Superior and Huron . . . ”   (II, 107, 105), the possible source of Bayley’s notion of a “British fleet / . . .   on [the] inland ocean’s distant sheet . . . .”  sheet: expanse of water.  Weld   (II, 67-69 and 145) does describe the “King’s ships” on lakes Ontario and   Erie.
351-354   Bayley’s notion of Lake Erie as “wild” may derive from Weld’s [Page           66] accounts of the “dangerous storms” that he experienced on it in     Travels, II, 141-147, 155-161, and 296-308.  In Travels, II, 63, Weld     observes that “On Lake Erie . . . the settlements are increasing with     astonishing rapidity, both on the British and on the opposite side.” See   also Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope, I, 324-331:
               
                On Erie’s banks, where tigers steal along,
                And the dread Indian chants a dismal song,
                Where human fiends on midnight errands walk
                And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk;
                There shall the flocks on thymy pasture stray,
                And shepherds dance at Summer’s opening day;
                Each wandering genius of the lonely glen
                Shall start to view the glittering haunts of men . . . .

352    proves   Demonstrates; establishes (though the context suggests that   “proves” may be an abbreviation of “improves” made necessary by the   metre).
352    deserts   Uninhabited and uncultivated tracts of land; wilderness.
353-354 and n.  Cf. Weld, Travels, I, 159-160: “As I passed through this part of           the  country [Virginia], I observed many traces of fires in the woods, which           are frequent, it seems, in the spring of the year.  They usually proceed from the negligence of people who are burning brushwood to clear the lands . . . ” (Weld proceeds to describe in memorable length one such fire).
355-372   Bayley’s description of Niagara Falls combines details from Weld, Travels, II, 108-135 (Letter XXI: “Description of the River and Falls of Niagara . . . ,” for which see the notes below) with words and phrases     taken from Thomson’s description of a waterfall in “Summer,” 590-598 (cf.  especially Bayley’s “shakes the echoing shore” [356], “rolls” [363], “lengthen’d sheet” [365], “hoary white” [366], and “rocks below” [367]):

                        SMOOTH to the shelving Brink a copious Flood
                Rolls fair, and placid; where collected all,
                In one impetuous Torrent, down the Steep
                It thundering shoots, and shakes the Country round.
                At first, an azure Sheet, it rushes broad; [Page 67]
                Then whitening by Degrees, as prone it falls
                And from the loud-resounding Rocks below
                Dash’d in a Cloud of Foam, it sends aloft
                A hoary Mist, and forms a ceaseless Shower.
 
  Cf. Cary, Abram’s Plains, 29-33 and Mackay, Quebec Hill, I, 97-102.
355    wild romantic   See Thomson, Preface (Appendix B in Sambrook’s edition of The  Seasons), 89-92: “The wild romantic Country was [the] Delight [of ancient and modern poets].” Johnson defines “romantic” as “Fanciful; full of wild feeling,” citing Thomson’s “Spring,” 1027-1028. To the very extent that they are “wild”—that is, untamed and violent (see the note to 351-352, above)—Niagara Falls are “romantic”—emotionally appealing and poetically inspirational according to the theories of the sublime that were current in Bayley’s day.
355-356   roar . . . echoing shore   Weld, Travels, II, 112-113: “ . . . .an hundred times . . . did we stop our carriage in hopes of hearing the . . . thundering sound [of Niagara Falls] . . . . [Y]et it is nevertheless . . . true, that the tremendous noise of the Falls may be distinctly heard, at times, at the distance of forty miles . . . .”
356 and n.   Bayley’s reference is to The Traveller, 411-412: “Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, / And Niagara stuns with thund’ring sound,” where the metre dictates that the principal stress falls on the penultimate syllable—thus, Ní-a-gá-ra. But see Weld, Travels, II, 317-318: “I should have mentioned to you before, that both the Indians and the white Americans pronounce the word Niagara differently from what we [British] do. The former lay the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce the word full and broad as if written Nee-awg-ara. The American likewise lay the accent on the second syllable; but pronounce it short, and give the same [s]ound to the letters I and A as we do.  Niagara, in the language of the neighbouring Indians, signifies a mighty rushing or fall of water.”  See also Notes and Queries, VI (December 11, 1852), 555, VII (January 8, 1853), 50, VII (February 5, 1853), 137, IX (June 17, 1854), 573 and X (December 20, 1854), 533-544 for a debate on the correct pronunciation of Niagara, the conclusion being that it was “Yankee” to pronounce it Niágara and British to pronounce it Niagára (a pronunciation held by two writers, and then denied by another, to be authentically Indian). [Page 68]
357-364    See Weld, Travels, II, 115-116: “For the first few miles from Lake Erie, the breadth of the [Niagara] river is about three hundred yards . . . ;   but the current is so extremely rapid and irregular, and the channel so   intricate, on account of the numberless large rocks in different places   [Bayley’s ‘wat’ry maze’ (357)], that no vessels other than bateaux ever   attempt to pass along it.  As you proceed downward the river widens, no   rocks are to be seen either along the shores or in the channel, and the   waters glide smoothly along, though the current continues very strong. The   river runs thus evenly . . . as far as Fort Chippeway, which is about three   miles above the falls; but here the bed of it again becomes rocky, and the   waters are violently agitated by passing down successive rapids . . . . I   must . . . , however, observe that it is only on each side of the river that the   waters are so much troubled . . . . The river forces it ways amidst the rocks   with redoubled impetuosity, as it approaches towards the falls . . . .” See   also, II, 119 (“Niagara River, between this part of Lake Erie and the falls   receives the waters of several large creeks . . . ”); 125 (“The shore is . . .   found strewed with trees, and large pieces of timber, that have been
  swept away from the saw mills above the falls, and carried down the     precipice . . . ”); and 130 (“ . . . circumstances denote that some great   disruption has taken place along this part of the river [below the Falls] . . .   there are evident marks of the action of water upon the sides of the banks,   and considerably above their present bases”).
360    inundated   Overflowing or flooded with water.
361    massy   Solid; large.
365-372 and n.   See Weld, Travels, II, 116-117: “ . . . at last coming to the brink   of the tremendous precipice, [the water] tumbles headlong to the bottom  without meeting with any interruption from rocks in its descent . . . . [T]he   river does not rush down the precipice in one unbroken sheet, but . . . is   divided by islands into three distinct collateral falls”; and 127-129 “ . . . you   might proceed behind the prodigious sheet of water that comes pouring   down . . . , moreover, caverns of a very considerable size have been     hollowed out of the rocks at the bottom of the precipice, owing to the     violent ebullition of the water . . . . [M]y breath was nearly taken away by the   violent whirlwind that always rages at the bottom of the cataract,     occasioned by the concussion of such a vast body of water against the   rocks . . . . The rocks at bottom are . . . loosened by the constant action of   the water upon them . . . .” For the “watery smoke” of the spray from the   Falls, see II, 113, 127 and [Page 69] for the “rainbow form’d in the spray”   II, 132: “Just as we left the foot of the great fall the sun broke through the   clouds, and one of the most beautiful and perfect rainbows that ever I     beheld was exhibited in the spray that rose from the fall.” Bayley may also   have remembered Weld’s description of the rainbow at Montmorenci   Falls, below Quebec City: “The spray . . . is considerable, and when the   sun happens to shine bright in the middle of the day, the prismatic colours   are exhibited in it in all their variety and lustre.” (I, 358).
373-378 and n.   Weld several times uses the word “stupendous” (a trigger word for the sublime) with reference to Niagara Falls in his Letter XXXI, but see especially Travels, II, 112: “ . . . these stupendous Falls.” Bayley’s description of the response of the “aged sire” to the sublimity of the Falls is clearly based on Weld, II, 128-129: “No words can convey an adequate idea of the awful grandeur of the scene at this place. Your senses are appalled by the sight of the immense body of water that comes pouring down so closely to you from the top of the stupendous precipice, and by the thundering sound of the billows dashing against the rocky sides of the caverns below; you tremble with reverential fear, when you consider that a blast of the whirlwind [see the quotation at 365-372 and n., above] might sweep you from off the slippery rocks on which you stand, and precipitate you into the dreadful gulf beneath, from whence all the power of man could not extricate you; you feel what an insignificant being you are in the creation, and your mind is forcibly impressed with an awful idea of the power of that mighty Being who commanded the waters to flow.” The allusion in 378 is to the final line of the “Hymn” (called “A Hymn on the Seasons” in many editions) that follows The Seasons by the English poet James Thomson (1700-1748): “But I lose / Myself in HIM, in LIGHT INEFFABLE! / Come then, expressive Silence, muse HIS Praise.”
380    bigot   Unreasonably narrow in religious creed, ritual, or opinion.
381-382   See 1 Corinthians 13.13: “And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” and Titus 13:14: “ . . . our Saviour Jesus Christ: Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity . . . .”
383    disdains not   Does not scorn or refuse.
384    simple   One or more of several senses of this word are possible here: honest; plain; humble, either (or both) spiritually or (and) socially.
385-396   In Travels, I, 370-371 and 415 (see Introduction, p. xli, n. 75), Weld writes warmly of the spirit of religious toleration in Canada, but [Page 70] he has mixed comments on the behavior of the country’s “landlord[s]” and on the seigneurial system generally: “The extent of seigniorial rights in Canada . . . seems to be by no means clearly ascertained, so that where   the seignior happens to be a man of rapacious disposition, the vassal is  sometimes compelled to pay fines, which, in strict justice, perhaps, ought not to be demanded” (I, 400-401).
387    griping   Grasping, avaricious.
388    sweet abode   Cf. Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1: “SWEET   AUBURN” (and see the note at 338, above).
389    monopolizing hand  The hand that gains or holds exclusive possession. Cf. Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 37-39: “Amidst the bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen, . . . One only master grasps the whole domain . . . .”
390    crafty famine    Widespread starvation caused by the cunning of the “landlord” and “wretch.”
391-396    Cf. Goldsmith’s depiction of the “poor houseless shivering female” who, “her virtue fled, / Near her betrayer’s door . . . lays her head” in The          Deserted Village, 325-336.
395    brutal   Inhuman.
399    independence   Freedom to enjoy a comfortable life without being subordinate to or working for others.
400    The genial stove   See, Weld, Travels, I, 393: “ . . . by means of stoves   [the Canadians] keep their habitations as warm and comfortable as can   be desired.”
400    cleanly   Habitually kept clean.  Cf., in conjunction with the “genial stove” of 400 and the “faithful wife” and “offspring” (children) of 401, Goldsmith, The Traveller, 192-196: “He . . . / Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys / His childrens looks . . . / While his lov’d partner . . . / Displays her cleanly platter on the board . . . .”
401    stage   Ages.
403-404   His neat Calash . . . not for vain parade   Cf. Weld, Travels, I, 306: “The calash is a carriage very generally used in Lower Canada; there is scarcely a farmer indeed in the country who does not possess one: it is a sort of one horse chaise, capable of holding two people besides the driver . . . . The harness for the horse is always made in the old French taste . . . ; it is studded with brass nails, and to particular parts of it are attached small bells, of no use that could ever discover but to annoy the passenger.” Bayley seems to be at pains to counter Weld’s assertion that French Canadians are given to “vanity” (I, [Page 71] 338; II, 4 and 9) not least in the decoration of their “carioles” (see the note to 325-332, above): “The shape of the carriage is varied according to fancy, and it is a matter of emulation amongst the gentlemen, who shall have the handsomest one.”
405    arpent   French: a measure of length (58.5 metres) or area (.342   hectares). Here the term probably refers to a field or farm.
405-406   See Weld, Travels, I, 395 and II, 3, for the hardiness of the “small . . . but extremely serviceable” “Canadian horses.”
407    press’d  Milked
408    downy flock   A Thomsonian periphrasis: sheep with feathery-soft wool.
408    self-made   Home-made; homespun.
409    babbling brook   Chattering stream.
413-414   the empress of the world . . .   Rome (a Republic until 30 B.C. and an Empire thereafter until its fall) gradually expanded its dominions through military conquest, notably in the last period of the Republic (70-30 B.C.) under Julius Caesar (c. 102-44 B.C.), who brought Rome’s “conqu’ring scourge” (whip; lash) to, among other places, Britain.
415 and n.  Tully’s pillars   Tully is the name by which Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), the great Roman orator and statesman, was known in the eighteenth century.  He is mentioned and discussed frequently in The          Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) by the English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794); see particularly Chapter XLIV (where Gibbon refers to Cicero’s “incomparable genius” and “the portico” —that is, colonnade or porch— from which “the Roman civilians learned to live, to reason, and to die”) and Chapters LXIX-LXXI where “porticoes” are again mentioned, this time in a summary discussion of the “triumph of barbarism and religion” in Rome and the various uses to which certain buildings were put during the process (including “fortress[es],” “monasteries” and places of inquisition).
417-419 and n.   Albion . . . Caesar . . .   See the note to 413-414, above.     Bayley’s citation of Horace’s Ode II, xiv seems to be an error.  The phrase  “inhospitable shores” suggests a reference to Ode III, iv, 33: “visam Brittannos hospitibus feros . . . ” (‘I’ll visit all unscathed the Britons, no     friends to strangers . . . ’), but see also (on the possibility of a compositor’s  substitution of “2” for “4” in the footnote) Ode IV, xiv, 43-44: “te belusos qui remotis / obstrepit Oceanus Britannis . . . ” (‘the Ocean teeming with monsters, that roars around the distant [Page 72] Britons . . . ’). (Odes I,   xxi, 15, xxv, 30, and III, v, 3 also contain references to the conquest of     Britain.) Cf. Cowper, “Boadicea. An Ode,” 32-33: “‘Regions Caesar never   knew / Thy posterity shall sway . . . .’”
419    hemispheres   Halves of the earth.  The Eastern hemisphere (the half   containing Europe, Asia, and Africa) was known to Caesar, but the   Western hemisphere (America) was not.
421    British sons   Cf. Thomson, “Winter,” 681: “BRITANNIA’S sons.”
421 and n.   Weld, Travels, I, 317-330 gives a detailed description of the   activities of the North West Company, the Montreal-based fur-trading   syndicate that was organized between 1775 and 1783 by Simon McTavish   (see the note to 285-286 and n., above) and others (see the note to 427-  430 and n., below), and absorbed by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.
422    polish’d   Cultured; refined; elegant.
423-424 and n. a dreary scene . . . between   Here and in surrounding phrases   (“Europe’s charms” [423] and “then-distant” [426]), Bayley echoes, not   “Goldsmith’s traveller [The Traveller],” but the same poet’s The Deserted   Village, 341-345: “To distant climes, a dreary scene, / Where half the   convex world intrudes between . . . . Far different there from all that charm’d   before . . . .” dreary: gloomy, uninteresting.
426    barrier   Fortified frontier (or, perhaps, merely frontier).
427-430 and n.   Although Weld neither met Alexander Mackenzie (1764-1820)   nor read his “journal” (which was first published in December, 1801 as   Voyages from Montreal on the River St.Lawrence, through the Continent   of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans . . . , he gives an   accurate account based on hearsay of the explorer’s journey “to the Pacific          Ocean” (Travels, I, 321-325). It was on his “second expedition” in 1792-  1793 that Mackenzie, “a partner in the house at Montreal” (the NWC)   between 1795 and his return to Britain in 1799, “came to the Pacific Ocean,   not far from Nootka Sound,” missing Captain James Cooke by a matter of   weeks.
427    exalted   Noble; elevated in character.
428    undescried   Unseen; undiscovered. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 290:   “ . . . to descry new Lands, / Rivers or Mountains . . . .”
431-432   Tiber’s wave . . . wash’d fair Freedom’s grave   See Gibbon, Decline   and Fall, LXXI for an account of the damage done to Rome—including the   destruction of “edifices,” “palaces,” and “temples”—by various floodings of   the Tiber river both before and [Page 73] “after the fall of the Western   empire” (together with its “arts” and “Freedom”). Horace, Ode I, ii, 13-20   also treats of a destructive flooding of the Tiber. See also Pope, Windsor-  Forest, 273: “ . . . what Tears the River shed . . . .”
435    golden reign    Golden age: the first and best age of the world in which,   according to many ancient poets, mankind lived in an ideal state of   innocence, happiness, and prosperity—hence, the period in which a nation         or country is at the highest stage of its achievement and excellence.
436f.  the Poet’s tributary strain . . .   See the Introduction, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii for a
  discussion of the relation between Bayley’s song of praise for the St.   Lawrence and various poems of tribute by Horace. Another context for this   portion of Canada is Pope’s Windsor-Forest, where the word “strain[s]”   appears three times (311, 427, 434) and reference is made to the   “Tributary Urns” (338) of the Thames and to “Albion’s Golden Days” (424;   see Canada, 435).  Pope elevates the Thames above other famous rivers   of history and literature, and offers the following salute to “Peace”:
               
                Hails Sacred Peace! hail long-expected Days,
                That Thames’s Glory to the stars shall raise!
                Tho’ Tyber’s Streams immortal Rome behold,
                Tho’ foaming Hermus swells with Tydes of Gold,
                From Heav’n it self tho’ sev’nfold Nilus flows,
                And Harvests on a hundred Realms bestows;
                These no more shall be the Muse’s Themes,
                Lost in my Fame, as in the Sea their Streams.
                                                                      (355-362)

441    resistless tide   Irresistible current.  Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 630:   “ . . . restless, with a thundering Tyde!” and Thomson, “Winter,” 96-97: “ . . . the   rous’d-up River pours along: / Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it   comes . . . .”
442    craggy   Steep and ragged. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 289 (“craggy   Bay”) and IV, 547 (“craggy cliff”).
444    rich   Plentiful; abundant; abounding in resources.
445    Chaudiere   See, in conjunction with the “romantic” of the preceding line,   Weld’s description of the Chaudière river, which enters the St. [Page 74]   Lawrence above Quebec City: “The banks of the La Chaudiere . . . are   covered with trees of the largest growth, and amidst the piles of broken   rocks, which lie scattered about the place, you have some of the wildest   and most romantic views imaginable . . . . When the river is full, a body of   water comes rushing over the rocks of the precipice [Chaudière Falls] that   astonishes the beholder . . . ” (I, 360).
446    Montmorenci   See Weld, Travels, I, 357-358:  “ . . . the River   Montmorenci . . . runs into the St. Lawrence, about seven miles below   Quebec . . . . [It] runs in a very irregular couse . . . [and] except at the time of          floods, is but scanty . . . . [After the Falls] it flows with a gentle current . . . .”
447    Cartier’s bending woods  Bayley is probably referring to the river named   for the French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491-1557), who wintered at what   is now Quebec city during his second voyage to the New World in 1534-   1535. The (Jacques-) Cartier River flows to the north and west of Quebec,   entering the St. Lawrence some 30 kilometres up River from the city.   bending: inclined.
448    Saguenay   The Saguenay River flows east from Lake St. John to join the   St. Lawrence at Tadoussac, down river from Quebec City.
449    Chamblee   Chambly, a village visited by Weld (Travels, I, 305) “on   account of seeing the old castle [or “fort”] built there by the French,” stands   near the mouth of the “Chambly or Sorell River,” which flows from Lake   Champlain into the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal.
450 and n.   Sorelle   Also called William Henry (after the son of King George III),          “the town of Sorelle” (or Sorel) stands on the south shore of the St.   Lawrence at the mouth of the river of the same name (see previous note);   Weld, Travels, I, 333-334 describes it as “having been laid out about the   year 1787, and on an extensive plan, with very wide streets and a large   square,” and notes that its port “affords good shelter for ships from ice . . . .”
451    Kingston  Weld, Travels, II, 64-72 describes this town, “at the mouth of a deep bay, at the north eastern extremity of Lake Ontario,” in some detail, noting that it contains a “fort . . . of stone . . . consist[ing] of a square with   four bastions” (Fort Frontenac or Cataraqui).
452 and n.   In 1793, Toronto was chosen by Sir John Simcoe as the capital of   Upper  Canada and named York.  It is mentioned under both names by   Weld, who also describes the resentment caused by the “removal of the   seat of government from [Niagara] to Toronto” (Travels, II, 88). [Page 75] 
453-454 and n.   Cape  Cape Diamond, the “most elevated part of the point”   upon which Quebec stands and the location of the British garrison. “The   Cape is strongly fortified,” observes Weld, Travels, I, 349, “and may be   considered as the citadel of Quebec . . . . The evening and morning guns,   and all salutes and signals, are fired from hence.”
453    impending  Literally, overhanging: ‘hanging over one’s head’; near at   hand.
455    gothic  Medieval.
456    Corinthian flowers  Acanthus flowers, the typical embellishment of the   ornate architectural style that takes its name from the infamously wealthy   and profligate ancient Greek city of Corinth.
457    equipage  The trappings of rank, office, or social position.  Cf. Pope,           Essay on Man, II, 44: “ . . . strip off all her equipage of Pride . . . ,” Cowper,           The Task, VI (“The Winter Walk at Noon”), 702: “ . . . The gilded             equipage . . . ,” and Cary, Abram’s Plains, 491 (of Lord Dorchester,             governor of Quebec from 1786 to 1794): “ . . . all the glare of equipage           disdains.”
457    liveried train  Uniformed servants.
459    porter   Gate-keeper; door-keeper.
460    Spurns   Rejects with contempt.
461    riot   A noisy instance of loose living.  See Thomson, “Winter,” 322-325:   “ . . . the gay licentious Proud . . . in giddy Mirth, / And wanton, often cruel,   Riot . . . ” and 632-645: “The Sons of Riot . . . ” and their destructive     activities and ostentatious apparel (“gaming,” “gaudy Robes,” and so on).
463    dissipation   Debauchery; intemperance; vicious, or merely trivial,     amusement.  In conjunction with the preceding lines, see Cowper, The           Task, II (“The Time Piece”), 769-770: “ . . . the united powers / Of fashion,   dissipation, taverns, stews.”      
465    peaceful muse   Cf. Cary, Abram’s Plains, 460 (of the “muse”):     “ . . . peaceful parallels she draws . . . .”
467-468 and n.  See Weld, Travels, I, 352 for a brief and condescending     description of the Jesuit Seminary in Quebec, which was founded in 1663   by François Xavier de Laval, the first bishop of Quebec, and subsequently   became the nucleus of Laval University.
468    science  Knowledge. Cf., with the remainder of the line, Johnson, “The   Vanity of Human Wishes,” 50: “With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth.”
469-484 and n. See Weld, Travels, I, 352: “The nunneries [in Quebec] are     [Page 76] three in number . . . . The largest of them, called L’Hopital     General, stands in the suburbs, outside the walls . . . .” The Hôpital Général   was founded in 1692.
470    vestal robes   Virginal clothes: nuns’ habits. See Cowper, The Task, IV   (“The Winter Evening”), 554: “ . . . a spot upon a vestal’s robe . . . .”
472    cælestial love   Celestial love: heavenly love; love of a divine nature. In   Paradise Lost, Milton frequently uses the word “celestial,” but never in   combination with “love.”
474    standard  Flag, or sculptured image.
477    night  Darkness: ignorance.
478    dawn of intellectual light   See the note to 115, above.
479    amidst   Surrounded by; beneath.
480    reproof   Shame; disgrace.
482    female vot’ries  Women bound by vows to a religious life: nuns.
483    intervening   Between other things.
485-488 and ns.   Weld, Travels, II, 16-17 concludes his account of a visit to the   Ursuline Convent in Trois Rivières on the north shore of the St. Lawrence   between Quebec and Montreal with a description of the artifacts made by   the nuns: “After some time was spent in conversation, a great variety of   fancy works, the fabrication of the sisterhood, was brought down for our   inspection, some of which it is always expected that strangers will     purchase, for the order is but poor.  We selected a few of the articles     which appeared most curious . . . . It is for their very curious bark-work that   the sisters of this convent are particularly distinguished. The bark of the   birch tree is what they use, and with it they make pocket-books, work-   baskets, dressing-boxes, &c. &c. which they embroider with elk hair, died   of the most brilliant colours. They also make models of the Indian canoes,   and various war-like implements used by the Indians.”
487    gauze  Very thin, transparent fabric.
487    imag’d  Imagined.               
488    decks the shrines with many a mimic bower  Decorates the saints’     shrines with imitation arbours.
489-496   Cf. Weld, Travels, II, 13-14: “On ringing a small bell [in the chapel of   the Ursuline Convent in Trois Rivières], a curtain at . . . [a] lattice was     withdrawn . . . . The fair Ursuline, who came to the lattice, seemed to be   one of those unfortunate females that had at last begun to feel all the     horrors of confinement, and to lament the rashness of that vow which had   secluded her for ever from the world, and from the [Page 77] participation   of those innocent pleasures, which, for the best and wisest of purposes,   the beneficent Ruler of the universe meant that his creatures should enjoy.    As she withdrew the curtain, she cast a momentary glance through the   grating . . . then retiring in silence, seated herself on a bench in a distant   part of the coeur [of the chapel]. The melancholy and sorrow pourtrayed in   the features of her lovely countenance, interested the heart in her behalf,   and it was impossible to behold her without partaking of that dejection   which hung over her soul, and without deprecating at the same time the   cruelty of the custom which allows, and the mistaken zeal of a religion that   encourages an artless and inexperienced young creature to renounce a   world, of which she was destined, perhaps, to be a happy and useful     member, for an unprofitable solitude, and unremitted penance for sins   never committed.” Elsewhere Weld observes that in Lower Canada “Both   men and women are sunk in ignorance and superstition, and blindly     devoted to their priests” (I, 339). See also Cary, Abram’s Plains, 372-397   on the life-denying vows of the “vestals” of the Hôpital Général in Quebec   and Lambert, Travels, II, 17-24, for the sequel to Weld’s account of the   “fair Ursuline,” and details of the razing by fire in 1806 and the rebuilding   by 1808 of the Ursuline Convent in Trois Rivières.
494    active virtue   In contrast to contemplative or—to borrow Milton’s phrase   from Areopagitica—“fugitive and cloistered virtue”: moral excellence that   shows itself in outward action or in deeds performed in the ‘real’ world.
499    angel office  Angelic (i.e., pure, innocent) place, with the sense also of   office as divine service of worship.
502    nor limits nor controul  See the note to 90, above.
505-508   See the Introduction, pp. xiv-xv for the probable identity of the woman   whose name is elided here.
510    seraph   Angel.
511    palm   In classical times, a branch of palm was carried as an emblem of   victory or triumph.
512    orient ray   Eastern light: light from that point in the sky in which the sun   rises. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 399; IV, 644: VI, 15 (“orient beam[s]”)   and VII, 254 (“orient light”). [Page 78] 

Note Referred to in the Poem on Canada, 95n.

The works to which Bayley refers in this note are, in the order of their mention (and without comment when Bayley himself summarizes their position): the so-called autobiography of the American frontiersman Daniel Boone (1734-1820), which appeared in John Filson’s The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784; rpt. 1966) and contains an Appendix entitled “An Account of the Indian Nations inhabiting within the Limits of the Thirteen United States, their Manners, Customs, and Reflections on their Origin”; Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia, to Diverse Parts of Asia (1763) by the Scottish traveller and doctor John Bell (1691-1780); A View of Society in Europe, in its Progress from Rudeness to Refinement; or Inquiries Concerning the History of Law, Government, and Manners (1788) by the Scottish historian Gilbert Stuart (1742-1786); De Origine Gentium Americanum (1642; transl. 1884 as On the Origin of the Native Races of America) by the Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), which argues for the descent of the Indians from the Norwegians and Chinese; the Journal d’un voyage fait par l’ordre du Roi dans L’Amerique Septentriole by the French Jesuit Pierre de Charlevoix (see the note to 129-130, above), which was translated as the Journal of a Voyage to North America in 1761 and contains a “Preliminary Discourse on the Origin of the Americans” that discusses the origins theories of most of the early authors mentioned by Bayley from an unquestioningly Christian perspective (see Introduction, pp. xxv-xxix); De Originibus Americanis Libri Quatuor (1652) by the Dutch historian Georg Horn (Georgius Hornius [1620-1670]; called George de Hornn by Charlevoix), which argues that American was populated first by Scythians, then by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Chinese, and finally by Jews and Christians (see Charlevoix, Journal, I, 32-47); L’Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou Description des Indies Occidentales (1625) by another Dutch historian Joannes de Laët (1593-1646), which argues for the origin of the Amerindians in Sythia-Tartary, with possible later migrations from Wales, Polynesia, and Spain; Origines Scaræ; or, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures, and the Matters therein Contained (1662) by the English clergyman Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), which adopts a Christian perspective while arguing that there is not “yet sufficient information” to theorize definitively about “the peopling of [Page 79]  that cast continent of America” (p. 575; and see below); Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802) by the English theologian (and lecturer at Bayley’s college in Cambridge [Christ’s]) William Paley (1743-1805); and Enquiries Touching the diversity of Languages and Religions, through the chiefe parts of the world (1614) by the English astronomer Edward Brerewood (1635-1699), which again adopts a Christian perspective but argues that “the innumerable people of . . . many Nations . . . inhabit[ing] . . . the huge continent of America” are of “the same off-spring” as the “Nations of Asia” who go under the name ”Tartars” (pp. 95-96 [1635 ed.], an argument also summarized in Charlevoix, Journal, I, 15-16). Mentioned by Bayley in the note to line 95 but not in his endnote is the Scottish historian and churchman Willian Robertson (1721-1793), whose History of the Discovery and Settlement of America (1777) was many time reprinted (9th ed., 1800) and contains a lengthy section (Book IV) in the native Americans, including a discussion on their origins that accords with the position found in Canada (and in Charlevoix, Horn, Stillingfleet, and Brerewood): the Indians are descended from the same source as all other peoples in Noah and, behind him, Adam (9th ed. [1800], II, 25-26); they came to North America from Asia by way of the nearest point between “the old an new continents” at their northern extremity (II, 36-45); and they resemble in many ways the Tartars who are “accustomed to roam over [the] extensive plains” of Asia (II, 236; the source, very likely, of the fifth paragraph of Bayley’s endnote).  In its amused tone, Bayley’s endnote echoes Robertson’s skepticism about the proliferation of theories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regarding the origin of the American Indians: “There is hardly any nation from the north to the south pole, to which some antiquary, in the extravagance of conjecture, has not ascribed the honour of peopling America.  The Jews, the Canaanites, the Phoenecians, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Scythians, are supposed to have settled the western world.  The Chinese, the Welsh, the Spaniards are said to have sent colonies thither . . . ” (II, 27-28).  Robertson also observes that the American Indians have no “annals or traditions” (ibid.) of their early history, a view which accords with that of Stillingfleet to which Bayley refers in the sixth paragraph of his endnote: “ . . . in general it appears from the remaining traditions in the Flood  [among the Indians], and many Rites and Customes used among them, that they had the same [Page 80] original with us, and that there can be no argument brought against it from themselves, since some Authors tell us, that the eldest Accounts and Memoirs the have, do not exceed 800. years backward; and therefore their testimony can be of no validity in a matter of so great Antiquity, and the Origine of Nations is”(Origines Sacræ [1662], pp. 577-578).  Stillingfleet proceeds to argue that the “gradual decay of knowledge and increase of Barbarism” among the Indians since the time of the Flood is attributable to three major factors: the “want of certain records to preserve the ancient history”; the “gradual increase of Idolatry”; and the “Confusion of Languages at Babel” (pp. 578-579); see Genesis 11. 1-9).  Brerewood, Enquiries (1635), p. 97 notes that “in their gross ignorance of letters, and of arts, in their idolatry, and the specialties of it, in their uncivility, and many barbarous properties, . . . [the American Indians] resemble the old and rude Tartars, above all the nations on earth,” and later (p. 102) observes that, like the Tartars, the Indians “have no records, nor regard of their ancestors, and lineage.”  Robertson also makes the point that in the environment in which the Indians found themselves in North America their “arts and sciences” (Bayley’s phrase) would decline without being entirely lost, and he makes a great deal (Book IV, passim) of the influence of “climate and local circumstances” in altering “their manner of living, . . . [and] even their bodily appearance” for the worse (see especially), The History of America[1800], II, 238-244). [Page 81]