I think it principally owing that I had early so much
weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or
alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when
I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent,
subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in
language: and yet I generally carried my points.

In reality, there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to
subdue as _pride_. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle
it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will
every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it perhaps
often in this history; for even if I could conceive that I had
completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

LOUIS HONORE FRECHETTE

(1839-)

BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

Louis Honore Frechette, the best known of the French-Canadian poets,
was born near the forties, at Levis, a suburb of Quebec. He is
patriotic; his genius is plainly that of New France, while the form of
it is of that older France which produced the too exquisite sonnets of
Voiture; and what counts greatly with the Canadians, he has received
the approbation of the Academy; he is a personage in Paris, where he
spends a great deal of time. From 'Nos Gens de Lettres' (Our Literary
Workers: Montreal, 1873), we learn that the father of M. Frechette was
a man of business, and that he did not encourage his son's poetic
tendencies to the detriment of the practical side of his character.

Levis has traditions which are part of that stirring French-Canadian
history now being made known to us by Mrs. Catherwood and Gilbert
Parker. And the great St. Lawrence spoke to him in

"All those nameless voices, which are
Beating at the heart."

At the age of eight he began to write verses. He was told by his
careful father that poets never become rich; but he still continued
to make verses. He grew to be a philosopher as well as a poet, and a
little later became firmly of Horace's opinion, that a poet to be
happy does not need riches gained by work. His father, who no doubt
felt that a philosopher of this cult was not fit for the world, sent
him to the Seminary at Quebec. At the Seminary he continued to write
verses. The teachers there found merit in the verses. The "nameless
voices" still beat at his heart, though the desks of the preparatory
college had replaced the elms of the St. Lawrence. B