ESC: English Studies in Canada

other is a valuable contribution to our understanding of him, as well as a powerful plea on his behalf. NOTES 1 Kathleen Cobum, Inquiring Spirit, revd. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979)3 P- 152 R. W. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” in Lewis Mumford, ed., Essays and Jour­ nals (Garden City, N .Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 38. 3 Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1907), 1, 160. 4 “Preliminary Essay” in Aids to Reflection, ed. James Marsh (Burlington: 1840, rpt. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1971), p. 10. 5 On the opposite principle, the positive value for science of a Coleridgean “suspension of disbelief,” see Gerald Holton, The Scientific Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 71. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. xxviii. 7 Published as The Self Conscious Imagination (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)• a n t h o n y jo h n harding / University of Saskatchewan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume IV, 1771 to 1800, general editor Francess G. Halpenny (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979). lvii, 913. $35.00 “The publication of a dictionary of Canadian biography that would rank with the other great biographical dictionaries of the world” is well on its way to achievement. If we were now faced with the old popular allegation that Canada has no history, we would have ample evidence for refutation in numbers 1 to iv. The record now covers the earliest recoverable biographical information about “Canadian” persons who died before 1800. The history of Canada in this vital form reaches back into the past over more than three centuries, running concurrently with that of the United States, and comple­ menting the records of many centuries of British and French imperial history. If size and weight were the only criteria of achievement, Volume rv would still be impressive. Like numbers 1 to m it is heavy, not suitable for reading in bed: its more than a thousand pages, handsomely bound in red, contain over five hundred biographical articles, lavishly provided with bibliographi­ cal data, appendices, and indexes. Designed to deal only with those men and women who died between 1771 and 1800, this volume, nevertheless, yields numerous facts about their pre-1771 careers, even as early as the first part of the eighteenth century. Cross-reference is inevitable and often enj'oyable. 496 In addition to illuminating the past, Volume iv covers a period of very sig­ nificant transitions: the end of the French régime, the effects of war and settlement in the Maritimes, the introduction of British rule in Quebec, the brief period of an almost continental British North America (until the American War of Independence), the coming of the Loyalists and the loyal Indians, and the political, social, and religious consequences of these changes. Popular, and even educational, misunderstanding of our past is gradually yielding to the pressure of facts. The last three or four decades have seen new forces of intellectual energy. A careful response by writers, publishers, and readers to the evocative question, “Why not in Canada?”, has inspired more than one Canadian scholarly project of national and international significance. A late start among scholars has been turned into an advantage : the editors of this Dictionary have benefited, not only by financial support and by their own initiative and expertise, but also by the knowledge and research of an extraordinary number of historians, biographers, and bibliog­ raphers who have grown up in our new scholarly environment. All but a few dozen of the 255 contributors (French and English) to Volume iv have Canadian addresses, and some of those who work abroad are probably of Canadian origin. We did not know that we had so many experts: we are proud of them, and happy to know where to find them. Brought together by the genius of Francess Halpenny, Marcel Trudel, and their predecessors, they are demonstrating that Canada is now in the main stream, along with Brit­ ish, French, and American scholarship. The scholarly standards are, indeed, high, but the Dictionary is not a reference work only for academics. As a matter of policy, readability is a primary concern. Liveliness in writing has been encouraged, and the excite...