Page "Robert Hayman" Paragraph 5

As Newfoundland's first poet in English, Hayman is remembered for his writings extolling the island, its climate and its early English pioneers.

In his leisure hours as Governor in Harbour Grace he composed a work later published in England as Quodlibets.

Quodlibets (" What you will ") was the first book in the English language written in what would become Canada.

Some of it consisted of original short poems by Hayman, and some of translations, both of Latin poems by John Owen ( epigrammatist ) and of French prose by Rabelais.

It was published in London in 1628, presumably as part of Hayman's attempts to raise interest in the colony.