^^Jr--^/-<-^-'v SIDNEY LANIER BY EDWIN MIMS ILL0STBATBD BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (Clie fiitetsiae press, Cambtibge 1905 COPYRIGHT 1905 BY EDWIN MIMS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November^ SECOND IMPRESSION PREFACE THE present volume is a biography of Lanier rather than a critical study of his work. So far as possible, I have told the story in his own words, or in the words of those who knew him most intimately. If I have erred in placing un due emphasis on the early part of his career, it was intentional, for that is the part of his life about which least is known. I have intention ally emphasized his relation to the South, in order to avoid a misconception that he was a detached figure. The bibliographies prepared by Mr. Wills for the " Southern History Association " and by Mr. Callaway for his " Select Poems of Lanier " make one unnecessary for this volume. Of previously published material, I have been greatly indebted to the Memorial by Mr. "William Hayes Ward, the fuller sketch by the late Pro fessor W. M. Baskervill, and the volume of let ters published by Messrs. Charles Scribners Sons. For new material, I am indebted, first of all, to Mrs. Sidney Lanier, who has put me vi PREFACE in possession, not of the most intimate corre spondence of the poet, but of many letters writ ten by him to his father and friends, as well as unpublished fragments and essays. She has done all in her power to make this volume accurate and trustworthy. Her sons, Mr. Charles Day Lanier and Mr. Henry W. Lanier, have put me under special obligations, the latter especially, by reading the proof of a large part of the vol ume. Mr. Clifford Lanier, the poets brother, put at my disposal a valuable series of letters, and otherwise aided me. I am indebted to Dr. Daniel Coit Gilman, Mrs. Edwin C. Cushman, Judge Logan E. Bleckley, Mr. Dudley Buck. Mr. Charles Scribner, Mrs. Isabel L. Dobbin, Mr. George Gary Eggleston, Miss Effie Johnston, Mr. Sidney Lanier Gibson, and Miss Sophie Kirk, for placing in my hands unpublished letters of Lanier. The following have written reminiscences which have proved especially help ful: Dr. James Woodrow, Professor Gildersleeve, Chancellor Walter B. Hill, Professor Waldo S. PVatt, Mrs. Arthur W. Machen, Mrs. Sophie Bledsoe Herrick, Mr. F. H. Gottlieb, and Mr. Charles Heber Clarke. I desire to thank Messrs. Charles Scribners Sons and Mrs. Lanier PREFACE vii for permission to quote from the letters and collected writings of Lanier; Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. for permission to quote from Laniers " Shakspere and his Forerunners," and the editor of " Lippincotts Magazine," for the quotations from the letters to Mr. Milton H., Northrup. For various reasons I am under obli gations to Miss Susan Hayes Ward, Mrs. W. M. Baskervill, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, Mr. George S. Wills, Mr. J. P. Breedlove of the Trinity College Library, Mr. T. J. Kiernan of the Harvard College Library, Mr. Philip E. Uhler of the Peabody Institute, Mr. J. H. Southgate, Mr. F. A. Ogburn, Mr. Milton H. Northrup, Mr. J. A Bivins, Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, and to my colleagues, Dr. W. P. Few and Dr. W. H. Glasson. TBINITY COLLEGE, DDBHAM, N. C., August 12, 1905. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION . . . . . . 1 I. ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD ... 9 II. COLLEGE DAYS ...... 26 III. A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER ... 42 IV. SEEKING A VOCATION .... 63 V. LAWYER AND TRAVELER ... 99 VI. A MUSICIAN IN BALTIMORE . . . 129 VII. THE BEGINNING OP A LITERARY CAREER 152 VIII. STUDENT AND TEACHER OP ENGLISH LITERATURE ..... 198 IX. LECTURER AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 231 X. THE NEW SOUTH ..... 264 XI. CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS . . 300 XII. THE LAST YEAR . . . . .320 XIII. THE ACHIEVEMENT IN CRITICISM AND IN, POETRY . . . . . . 340 INDEX ....... 377 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS SIDNEY LANIEB IK 1870. (Photogravure.) Frontispiece SIDNEY LANIER AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN, IN 1857. . 26 SIDNEY LANJEB IN 1866, FBOM A " CABTB DE VISITE " PHOTOGBAPH IN POSSESSION OF MB. MlLTON H. NOBTHTJUP, OP SYBAOUSE, N. Y. ........ 54 MABY DAY LAMIEB TN 1873 ... ...... 98 FACSIMILE OF ONE OF LANIEBS EABLIEST EXISTING M0SICAL SOOBES, WBITTEN AT THE AGE OF 19 . . . 134 FACSIMILE OF LETTEB TO CBABLOTTE CITSHMAN . . . 190 BBONZB BDST OF SIDNEY LANIEB BY EPHBAIM KBYSEB 262 SIDNEY LANIER INTRODUCTION THE author of the introduction to the first com plete edition of Sidney Laniers poems pub lished three years after the poets death pre dicted with confidence that Lanier would " take his final rank with the first princes of American song." Anticipating the appearance of this vol ume, one of the best of recent lyric poets, who had been Laniers fellow prisoner during the Civil War, prophesied that "his name to the ends of the earth would go." Indeed, there was a sense of surprise to those who had read only the 1877 edition of Laniers poems, when his poems were collected in an adequate and worthy edition. Since that time the space devoted to him in his tories of American literature has increased from ten or twelve lines to as many pages an indi cation at once of popular interest and of an in creasing number of scholars and critics who have recognized the value of his work. His growing fame found a notable expression when his picture 2 SIDNEY LANIER appeared in the frontispiece of the standard American Anthology, along with those of Poe, Walt Whitman, and the five recognized New England poets. It cannot be said, however, that Laniers rank as a poet even in American, to say nothing of English literature is yet fixed. He is a very uneven writer, and his defects are glaring. Some of the best American critics men who have a right to speak with authority shake their heads in disapproval at what they call the Lanier cult. Abroad he has had no vogue, as have Emerson and Poe and Walt Whitman. The enthusiastic praise of the " Spectator" has been more than bal anced by the indifference of some English critics and the sarcasm of others. Mme. Blancs article in the " Revue des Deux Mondes," setting forth the charm of his personality and the excellence of his poetry, met with little response in France. In view of this divergence of opinion among critics, it may be doubted if the time has yet come for anything approaching a final valuation of Laniers work. In the later pages of this book an attempt will be made to give a reasonably balanced and critical study of his actual achieve ment in poetry and criticism. Certainly those who. have at heart the interest of American poetry cannot but wage a feud with death for taking away one who had just begun INTEODUCTION 3 his career. The words of the great English threnodies over the premature death of men of genius come involuntarily to one who realizes what the death of Lanier meant. It is true that he lived fourteen years longer than Keats and ten years longer than Shelley, and that he was as old as Poe when he died ; but it must be re membered that, so far as his artistic work was concerned, the period from 1861 to 1873 was largely one of arrested development. He is one of the inheritors of unfulfilled renown, not sim ply because he died young, but because what he had done and what he had planned to do gave promise of a much better and more endur ing work. Such men as he and Keats must be judged, to be sure, by their actual achievement; but there will always attach to their names the glory of the unfulfilled life, a fame out of all proportion to the work accomplished. Poe had completed his work: limited in its range, it is all but perfect. Lanier, with his reverence for science, his appreciation of scholarship, his fine feeling for music, and withal his love of nature and of man, had laid broad the foundation for a great poets career. The man who, at so early an age and in the face of such great obstacles, wrote the " Marshes of Glynn " and the " Science of English Verse," and who in addition thereto gave evidence of constant growth and of self- 4 SIDNEY LANIER criticism, would undoubtedly have achieved much worthier things in the future. Of one thing there can be no doubt, that his personality is one of the rarest and finest we have yet had in America, and that his life was one of the most heroic recorded in the annals of men. The time has passed for emphasizing unduly the pathos of Laniers life. He was not a sorrowful man, nor was his life a sad one. His untimely and all but tragic death following a life of suffer ing and poverty, the appeals made by admirers in behalf of the poets family, a few letters writ ten to friends explaining his seeming negligence, and a fragment or two found in his papers after death, have been sometimes treated without their proper perspective. A complete reading of his letters published and unpublished and of his writings, combined with the reminiscences of his friends in Baltimore, Macon, and elsewhere, will convince any one" of the essential vigor and buoy ancy of his nature. He would have resented the expression " poor Lanier," with as much empha sis as did Lamb the condescending epithet used by Coleridge. He was ever a fighter, and he won many triumphs. He had the power of meeting all oppositions and managing them, emerging into " a large blue heaven of moral width and delight." He was a sufferer from disease, but even in INTRODUCTION 5 the midst of its grip upon him he maintained his composure, cheerfulness, and unfailing good hu mor. He had remarkable powers of recuperation. Writing to his father from San Antonio in 1872, he said : " I feel to-day as if I had been a dry leathery carcass of a man into whom some one had pumped strong currents of fresh blood, of abounding life, and of vigorous strength. I cannot remember when I have felt so crisp, so springy, and so gloriously unconscious of lungs." During these intervals of good health he was mentally alert, a prodigious worker, feeling " an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fibre " in the strings of his heart. There was something more than the cheerfulness that attends the disease to which he was subject. There was an ardor, an exuberance that comes only from " a lordly, large compass of soul." As to his pov erty, it must be said that few poets were ever so girt about with sympathetic relatives and friends, and few men ever knew how to meet poverty so bravely. He fretted at times over the irresponsiveness of the public to his work, but not so much as did his friends, to whom he was con stantly speaking or writing words of encourage ment and hope. Criticism taught him " to lift his heart absolutely above all expectation save that which finds its fulfillment in the large con sciousness of faithful devotion to the highest 6 SIDNEY LANIER ideals in art." " This enables me," he said, " to work in tranquillity." He knew that he was fighting the battle which every artist of his type had had to fight since time began. In his in tellectual life he passed through a period of storm and stress, when he felt " the twist and cross of life," but he emerged into a state where belief overmasters doubt and he knew that he knew. He was cheerful in the presence of death, which he held off for eight years by sheer force of will; at last, when he had wrested from time enough to show what manner of man he was, he drank down the stirrup-cup " right smilingly." Looked at from every possible standpoint, it may be seen that none of these obstacles could subdue his hopeful and buoyant spirit. " He was the most cheerful man I ever knew," said Richard Malcolm Johnston. Ex-President Gilman expressed the feeling of those who knew the poet intimately when he said, " I have heard a lady say that if he took his place in a crowded horse-car, an exhilarating atmosphere seemed to be introduced by his breezy ways. . . . He al ways preserved his sweetness of disposition, his cheerfulness, his courtesy, his industry, his hope, his ambition. . . . Like a true knight errant, never disheartened by difficulty, never despondent in the face of dangers, always brave, full of re sources, confident of ultimate triumph." The stu- INTRODUCTION 7 dent at Johns Hopkins University who knew him best said: " No strain of physical wear or suffer ing, no pressure of worldly fret, no amount of dealing with what are called the hard facts of ex perience, could stiffen or dampen or deaden the inborn exuberance of his nature, which escaped incessantly into a realm of beauty, of wonder, of joy, and of hope." Certainly the great bulk of his published lectures and his poems bear out this impression. His brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier, says that he would not publish some of his early poems because they were not hale and hearty, " breathing of sanity, hope, betterment, aspiration." " Those are the best poets," said Lanier himself, "^who keep down these cloudy sorrow songs and wait until some light comes to gild them with comfort." And this he did. Lanier, whose career has been here briefly suggested, makes his appeal to various types of men and women. Enjoying the use of the Peabody Library and living in the atmosphere of a newly created university, he gave evidence of the modern scholars zest for original re search ; and in addition thereto displayed a spir itual attitude to literature that is rare. The professional musician sees in him one of the ad vance guard of native-born Americans who have achieved success in some one field of musical endeavor, while a constantly increasing public, 8 SIDNEY LANIER intent upon musical culture, finds in his letters and essays an expression of the deeper meaning of music and penetrative interpretations of the modern orchestra. Lanier influenced to some extent the minor poets of his era: who knows but that in some era of creative art which let us hope is not far off his subtle investigations and experiments in the domain where music and verse converge may prove the starting point of some greater poets work ? To the South, with which he was identified by birth and tempera ment, and in whose tremendous upheaval he bore a heroic part, the cosmopolitanism and modernness of his mind should be a constant protest against those things that have hindered her in the past and an incentive in that brilliant fu ture to which she now so steadfastly and surely moves. To all men everywhere who care for whatsoever things are excellent and lovely and of good report his life is a priceless heritage. 1 CHAPTER I ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD SIDNEY LANIEB was born in Maeon, Ga., Feb ruary 3, 1842. His parents, Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary J. Andersen, were at that time living in a small cottage on High street, the father a struggling young lawyer, and the mother a woman of much thrift and piety. There were on both sides traditions of gentility which went back to the older States of Virginia and North Carolina, and in the case of the Laniers to southern France and England. Lanier became very much interested in the study of his genealogy. He was convinced by evidence gath ered from the many widely scattered branches of the family that a single family of Laniers originally lived in France, and that the fact of the name alone might with perfect security be taken as a proof of kinship. On account of their nomadic habits, due to their continual move ment from place to place during two hundred years, he found it difficult to make out a com plete family history. He was not, nor have his relatives and later investigators been, able to 10 SIDNEY LANIEK find material for the study of the Laniers in their original home. At one time he expressed a wish that President Hayes would appoint him consul to southern France. Certainly he was at home there in imagination and spirit from the time when as a boy he felt the fascination of Froissarts " Chronicles." One of the keenest pleasures he had in later life was to discover in the Peabody Library at Baltimore a full record of the Lanier family in England. In investigating the state of art in Elizabeths time he came across in Walpoles " Anecdotes of Painting " references to Jerome and Nicholas Lanier, whose careers he followed with his accustomed zeal and industry through the first-hand sources which the library afforded. There is no more characteristic letter of La niers than that written in 1879 to Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, giving the result of this investigation. He there tells the story of ten Laniers who en joyed the personal favor of four consecutive English monarchs. Jerome Lanier, he believed, had on account of religious persecution fled from France to England during the last quarter of the sixteenth century and " availed himself of his accomplishments in music to secure a place in Queen Elizabeths household." His son Nicholas Lanier "musician, painter, engraver" was patronized successively by James I, ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 11 Charles I, and Charles II, wrote music for the masks of Ben Jonson and Campion and for the lyrics of Herrick, and was the first marshal of a society of musicians organized by Charles I in 1626. He also wrote a cantata called " Hero and Leander." He was the friend of Van Dyck, who painted a portrait of Lanier which attracted the attention of Charles I and eventually led to that painters accession to the court. He was sent by King Charles to Italy to make purchases for the royal gallery. He and other members of his family lived at Greenwich and were known as amateur artists as well as musicians. After the Restoration five Laniers Nicholas, Je rome, Clement, Andrewe, and John were char ter members of an organization of musicians established by the king " to exert their author ity for the improvement of the science and the interest of its professors." It was a great plea sure to Sidney Lanier to find in the diary of Pepys many passages telling of his associations with these music-loving Laniers. " Here the best company for musique I ever was in my life," says the quaint old annalist, " and I wish I could live and die in it. ... I spent the night in an exstasy almost; and having invited them to my house a day or two hence, we broke up." The study of these distant relatives enjoying 12 SIDNEY LANIER the favor of successive English kings must have suggested the contrast of his own life; but he was pleased with the fancy that their musical genius had come to him through heredity, for it confirmed his opinion that " if a man made him self an expert in any particular branch of human activity there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants." Another Lanier in whom he was interested was Sir John Lanier, the story of whose bravery at the battle of the Boyne, in 1690, he first read in Macaulays " History of England." Laniers hope and belief that the family would some day be able to fill the intervals satisfactorily connecting Sir John Lanier with the musicians of the court have not been realized, nor has any satisfactory study been made of the coming of the Laniers to America. The best evidence of the connection between the two families is found in a deed recorded in Prince County, Va., May 14, 1728, from Nicholas Lanier to Holmes Boisseau the name Nicholas being significant. It is certain that Thomas Lanier, along with a large number of other Huguenots, settled in Virginia in the early years of the eighteenth cen tury at Manakin-town, some twenty miles from Richmond. Some of these Huguenots, notably the Moncures, the Maurys, the Latanes, and the ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 13 Flournoys, became connected with historic fam ilies of Virginia. There was a tradition in the Lanier family as well as in the Washington fam ily, that Thomas Lanier married an aunt of George Washington, but this has been proved to be untrue.1 The Laniers were related by mar riage to the Washingtons of Surry County. They established themselves in the middle of the eigh teenth century in Brunswick and Lunenburg counties of Virginia, as prosperous planters; they did not, however, rank either in dignity or in wealth with the older gentry of Virginia. In a letter written in 1877 Lanier gives in full the various branches of the Lanier family as they separated from this point and went into aU parts of the United States. One branch joined the pioneers who went up through Tennessee into Kentucky and thence to Indiana. The most fa mous of these was Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, who played a prominent part in the development of the rail road system of the West, and at the time of the Civil War had become one of the leading bank ers in New York city. He was a financial ad viser of President Lincoln, and represented the government abroad in some important trans actions. He was of genuine help to Sidney Lanier 1 William and Mary Quarterly, iii, 71-74, 1895 (article by Horace Edwin Hayden) ; iii, 137-139, October, 1894 (by Moneure D. Conway, with editorial comment) ; iv, 35-36, July, 1895 (by the editor, Lyon G. Tyler). 14 SIDNEY LANIER at critical times in the latters life. His son, Mr. Charles Lanier, noW a banker of New York, was a close frienj)L-efxth.e poet, and after his death presented .Musts of him to Johns Hopkins University and tjie public library of Macon. i The branch of the Lanier family with which Sidney was connected, moved from Virginia into Rockingham County, N. C. Sampson La nier was a well-to-do farmer a country gen tleman, " fond of good horses and fox hounds." Several of his sons went to the newer States of Georgia and Alabama. Of these was Sterling Lanier, the grandfather of the poet, who lived for a while in Athens, Ga., and was afterwards a .hotel-keeper in Macon and Montgomery. By the time of the Civil War he had amassed a con siderable fortune. In a letter written in 1844 from Macon we learn that he was an ardent Methodist. His daughters were being educated in the Wesleyan Female College in that city, his son Sidney had sailed recently from Charleston to France, and expected to travel through Sicily, Italy, and other parts of Europe on account of / his health. He was giving his younger sons the best education then attainable in Georgia. His son Robert Sampson Lanier had four years before returned from Randolph-Macon College, Virginia, and was at the time the letter was written beginning the practice of law. He ANCESTBY AND BOYHOOD 15 never became a lawyer of the first rank, but he was universally esteemed for his " fine presence," his " social gentleness," and his " persistent habit of methodical industry." " During all of his long and active professional life," says the late Wash ington Dessau, "he never allowed anything to interfere with his devotion to his calling as a lawyer. No desire for office attracted him; no other business of profit or honor ever diminished for a moment his devotion for his professional duties. In the year 1850 he was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of Georgia, and from that period down to the time of his death the name of his firm appears in nearly every volume of the reports, indicating the wide extent of his business. . . . As a lawyer, while not aspiring to be a brilliant advocate, he was a most pro found and able reasoner, thoroughly versed and grounded in the knowledge of the common law, well prepared with a knowledge of current deci sions and in the learning that grows out of them. ... In his social intercourse he was a gentleman of the purest and most refined type. . . . At his own home, at the homes of others, in casual meetings, in travel, everywhere, he always ex hibited toward those who met him an unbroken front of courtesy, gentleness, and refinement." 1 1 Report of the llth Annual Meeting of the Georgia Bar As sociation, Atlanta, 1894. 16 SIDNEY LANIER He was just such a lawyer as Lanier would have become had he remained in that profes sion ; indeed, son and father were very much alike. The father was a man of " considerable literary acquirements and exquisite taste." He was fond of Shakspere, Addison, and Sir Wal ter Scott, having the literary taste of the gen tlemen of the old South. The letters written to his son show decided cultivation. They show also that he was in thorough sympathy with his sons intellectual life. The letter written \>y Lanier to his father from Baltimore in 1873 may lead one to think otherwise. Mr. Lanier was opposed, as were most of the men of his section, to a young mans entering upon a mu sical or poetic career, but more than two hun dred letters written by son to father and many from father to son prove that their relations during the entire career of the poet were unusu ally close and sympathetic. In the earlier years, Lanier sent his poems to his father, and valued highly his criticism, and in later years he re_ceived from him financial aid and counsel. While Robert Sampson Lanier was at college in Virginia he met Mary Jane Anderson, the daughter of Hezekiah Anderson, a Virginia planter who attained success in the political life of that State. They were married in 1840, and Sidney was their first-born. The poet thus in- ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 17 herited on his mothers side Scotch-Irish blood, an element in Southern life which has been often underestimated. SJ^ejproyed to be a hard-work ing woman, caring little for social life, but thor oughly Interested in the religious training of her children. Her husband, although "nominally a Methodist, was not actively identified with the church, but willingly acquiesced in the somewhat rigid Presbyterian discipline that prevailed in the home. The children Sidney, Clifford, and Gertrude were__taught the strictest tenets of the Calvinistic creed. When~L"anier" after wards, in Baltimore, lived a somewhat more liberal life both as to creed and conduct lie wrote: " If the constituents and guardians of my childhood those good Presbyterians who believed me a model for the Sunday-school children of all times could have witnessed my acts and doings this day, I know not what groans of sorrowful regret would arise in my behalf." The seriousness of this life was broken, how ever, on week days. Southern Puritanism dif fered from the early New England Puritanism in a certain affectionateness and sociability. The mother could play well on the piano, and fre quently sang with the children hymns and popu lar melodies. Betw-een-the-two-JbtcQihers there was from the first the most beautiful-relation, as throughout the rest of their lives: comrades in 18 SIDNEY LANIER boyhood,! comrades during the War; comrades in their first literary work, and to tiie end. On Saturdays they went to " the boys hunting fields happy hunting grounds, redolent of hickory nuts, scaly barks, and rose-blushing, luscious, haw apples. ... Into these woods, across yon marsh, we plunged every permissible Saturday for a day among doves, blackbirds, robins, plov ers, snipes, or rabbits."* Sometimes they en joyed fishing in the near-by brook or the larger river. The two brothers_were devoted to their sister Gertrude, to whom Sidney referred in later years as his " vestal sister, who had, more per fectly than all the men or women of the earth, nay, more perfectly than any star or any drearer,^ represented to him " the simple majesty and the serene purity of the Winged Folk up Yonder." The beauty of this simple home life cannot well be overestimated in its influence on Laniers later life. He had nothing of the Bohemian in his nature. He was throughout his life fully alive to all human ties, fulfilling every relationship, whether of son, brother, father, husband, or friend. His other relatives uncles, aunts, and cousins, filled a large place in his early life, especially his mothers brother, Judge Clifford Auderson, who was the law partner of Laniers father and afterwards Attorney-General of Georgia; and 1 Clifford Lanier, The Chautauquan, July, 1895. ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 19 his fathers sister, Mrs. Watt, who from much ""travel and by association witlrleading men and women of the South brought into Laniers life the atmosphere of a larger social world than that in which he was born. Nor did Lanier live apart from the life in Macon. Although in later .years he felt strongly the contrast between himself and his environment, he always spoke of his native place with the greatest affection, and it was among Macon people that he found some of his best friends in his adopted city. Its natural beauty appealed to him from the beginning the river Ocmulgee, the large forests of oak-trees stretching in every direction, the hills above the city, for which he often yearned, from the plains of Texas, or the flats of Florida, or the crowded streets of Bal timore. The climate was agreeable. Describing this section, Lanier said: " Surely, along that ample stretch of generous soil, where the Appa lachian ruggednesses calm themselves into pleas ant hills before dying quite away in the seaboard levels, a man can find such temperances of heaven and earth enough of struggle with nature to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle that a more exquisite co-adaptation of all blessed circumstances for mans life need not be sought." x 1 Music and Poetry, p. 134. 20 SIDNEY LANIEK Macon was the capital of Middle Georgia, the centre of trade for sixty miles around. There was among the citizens an aggressive public spirit, which made it the rival in commercial life of the older cities, Savannah and Augusta; before the War it was a more important city than Atlanta. It was one of the first towns to push the building of railroads; it became "the keystone of the roads grappling with the ocean at the east and with the waters beyond the mountains at the west." The richer planters and merchants lived on the hills above the city in their costly man sions with luxuriant flower gardens while the professional men and the middle classes lived in the lower part of the city. Social lines were not, however, so sharply drawn here as in cities like Richmond or Charleston. Middle Georgia was perhaps the most democratic section of the South. It was a democracy, it is true, working within the limitations of slavery,1 and greatly tempered with the feudal ideas of the older States, but it was a life which gave room for the development of well-marked individual types. There were many Georgia " Crackers " in the surrounding country; they were even recognized more than in 1 In Macon a great many citizens had no slaves at all, and even those who had them had only a few. In 1850 the white population was 3323, while there were only 2352 slaves. In 1859, when the population had grown to 8000, the proportion was maintained. ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 21 other States as part of the social structure. While still a young boy Lanier was delivery clerk in the Macon post-office, and entertained the family at nights by " mimicry of their funny speech." In later life he wrote dialect poems, setting forth the humor of these people, and drew upon their speech for illustrations of philological changes in lan guage. In Macon hospitality was regarded as an in dispensable, even sacred duty. Cordiality and kindness in all the ordinary relations of men and women made up for whatever deficiencies there were in art and literature. Professor Le Conte, who lived in Macon during the boyhood of La nier, speaking of some weeks he spent there dur ing a college vacation, says, " Oh, the boundless hospitality of those times a continual round of entertainments, musicales, and evening par ties, . . . horseback rides and boat rides during the day and piano-playing, singing, fluting, and impromptu cotillions and Virginia reels in the evening! " J The Lanier House, a hotel owned by Sterling Lanier from 1844 to 1854, was the centre of this social life. Here many distinguished l%,._.men were entertained and many receptions were held. The proprietor was a typical " mine host," endeavoring to throw around his guests some of the atmosphere of the finer Southern homes. 1 The Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte. 22 SIDNEY LANIER In 1851 President Fillmore and his Secretary of the Navy, John P. Kennedy, visited Macon and were entertained at this hotel. Macon was not with out its cultivated people. Young ladies studied music in New York and brought into the private life of the city an atmosphere of musical cul ture. Now and then students were sent to the universities of the East. A group of professional and business men E. A. Nisbet, Washington Poe, Charles Day, Colonel Whittle, L. Q. C. Lamar (in his earlier days) had the refine ment and cordiality characteristic of the old regime. The religious spirit ran high in Macon. While the Presbyterian church had a better educated clergy and proportionately a greater number of educated personages among the laity, the Meth odist and Baptist churches dominated the life of the community. Revivals that recall the Great Awakening in New England in the time of Jona than Edwards were frequent. The most popular preacher in Macon George F. Pierce, after wards bishop in the Southern Methodist church is said to have preached the terrors of the law so plainly that the editor of a long extinct Universalist paper said he could smell fire and brimstone half a mile from the church. The type of religion that prevailed was emotional, but in an earlier stage of society it was a great ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 23 barrier against immorality. The clergy did not raise the question of the ethics of slavery, on the other hand they defended it on biblical grounds, but they did enjoin upon masters the duty of kindness to slaves. Many of them were not cultivated men, but they laid the foun dation for a better civilization in a stern and righteous social life which flowered in the next generation. " The only burning issues were sprin kling versus immersion, freewill versus predesti nation," and over these questions the churches fought with energy. Divided though they were on many points, they agreed in resisting the forces of modern thought that were making for a more liberal theology. , Although the people of Macon were thoroughly alive to the commercial, social, and religious wel fare of the community, they provided no adequate school system. Lanier was schooled " in small private one - roomed establishments, taught by a Mrs. Anderson, a Mr. Hancock, or by that dear old eccentric dominie, Jake Danforth. One of these schools stood in a grove of oak and hickory-nut trees and was called the Cademy. Sidney was bright in studies, but while parsing, reading, writing, and figuring, he was also chuck ing nuts from the tops of the tall trees, sym pathizing with the dainty half-angel, half-ani mal flying squirrels, and drinking deep draughts 24 SIDNEY LANIER of the love of nature from the cool, solacing oaks." J / | Lanier was undoubtedly influenced by the life urMacpn ; positively-influenced in that much of this life became a part of his own, and negatively in that he reacted against many conditions and ideals that prevailed there. \ All the time there was developing in him his own genius. -lie did not remember a time when he could not play upon almost any musical instrument..., i When he was seven years old he made his first effort at music upon an improvised reed cut ifrom^the neighboring river bank, with cork stopping the ends and a mouth hole and six finger holes ex temporized at the side. With this he sought the woods to emulate the trills and cadences of the song birds." Santa Clauss gift one year took the form of a small, yellow, one-keyed flute, on which simple instrument he would " practice with the passion of a virtuoso." Like Schumann, \ he organized an orchestra among his friends and young playmates. Simultaneously he was re ceiving his first initiation into the joy of litera ture. He would frequently retire from playing with his brother and other companions to the library of his father, where he followed with ab sorbing interest the stories of Sir Walter Scott, 1 Article by Clifford Lanier, in Gulf States Historical Maga zine, July, 1903. ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD 25 the romances of Froissart, the adventures of Gil Bias, and other stories that his boyish mind delighted in. He was already producing among his playmates a sense of the distinction of his personality, that caused them to reverence him as one above them. CHAPTER II COLLEGE DAYS I JANUARY 6,1857, Lanier entered the sophomore class in Oglethorpe University, situated at Mid way, Ga. two miles from Milledgeville, which was then the capital of the State. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the sleepy town of Milledgeville and progressive Macon, or between Oglethorpe and the better colleges of the South at the present time. The essentially primitive life of the col lege is seen in an act which was passed by the legislature making it unlawful for any person to " establish, keep, or maintain any store or shop of any description for Tending any species of. merchandise, groceries or confectioneries within a mile and a half of the University." It was a denominational college established by the Pres byterian Church, and belonged to the synods of South Carolina and Georgia. Like many other denominational colleges throughout the South, it arose in response to a demand that attention should be given in education to the cultiva tion of a strong religious faith in the minds SIDNEY LANIER AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN From an ambrotype in the possession of the family COLLEGE DAYS 27 of students. The older State universities were supposed to be dominated by the aristocratic class and by political parties, and there was a tendency in them towards a more liberal view of religion than comported with an orthodox faith. The origin of the denominational colleges was similar to that of Princeton and the smaller colleges of New England. Many of them, with small endowments and a small number of men in the faculty, did much to foster intellectual as well as spiritual growth; their place in the his tory of Southern life has not been fully appre ciated. Before the public-school system of later . days was established, they did much to educate the masses of the people. Oglethorpe, at the time when Lanier became a student, was presided over by Rev. Samuel K. Talmage, originally of New Jersey, a gradu ate of Princeton and a tutor there for three years. He was a warm personal friend of Alex ander H. Stephens, and was known throughout Georgia as a preacher of much power, " fore most in the councils of his church." Another member of the small faculty was Charles W. Lane, of the department of mathematics, of whom one of his friends wrote that he was " the sunniest, sweetest Calvinist that ever nestled close to the heart of Arminians and all else who loved the Masters image when they saw it. His 28 SIDNEY LANIER cottage at Midway was a Bethel; it was Gods house and heavens gate." The piety of such men confirmed in Lanier a natural religious fervor. But the man who was destined to have a really formative influence over him was James ,W.oodrow, of the department of science. A native of England and during his younger days a citizen of Pennsylvania, he had studied at Lawrence Scientific School under Agassiz, and had just returned from two years study in Germany when Lanier came under his influence. Circumstances were such that he never became an investigator in his special line of work, but he was a thorough scholar who kept abreast with the knowledge of his subject. He afterwards became professor of science in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C., and later the president of the University of South Carolina. In 1873 and 1874 he was the champion of science against those who called the church " to rise in arms against Physical Science as the mortal enemy of all the Christian holds dear, and to take no rest until this infidel and atheistic foe has been utterly destroyed." a Dr. Woodrow maintained that the science of theology, as a science, is equally human and un inspired with the science of geology. He cited 1 An Examination of Certain Recent Assaults on Physical Science. By James Woodrow. Columbia, 1873. COLLEGE DAYS 29 illustrations from the long warfare of science and theology to show that the church would make a great mistake if it attempted to shut off the human intellect from the search of truth as rev erent investigators in the realms of geology and biology might find it. Comparing scientific truth to a great ocean, he speaks of an opponent of science as " brandishing his mop against each suc ceeding wave, pushing it back with all his might, but the ocean rolls on, and never minds him; science is utterly unconscious of his opposition." This point of view, maintained even to the point of accepting the theory of evolution, led eventu ally to his trial and condemnation by the South ern Presbyterian Church. Throughout the whole controversy he maintained a calm and moderate temper and never abated in the least his accept ance of the fundamental ideas of the Christian religion. Such a man, coming into the life of Lanier at a formative period, influenced him profoundly. He set his mind going in the direc tion which he afterwards followed with great zest, the value of science in modern life and its relation to poetry and religion. He also revealed to him the meaning of genuine scholarship. Teacher and pupil became intimate friends. In a letter addressed to the writer, Professor Woodrow says : " When he graduated I caused him to be appointed tutor in the University, so 30 SIDNEY LANIER that I became better acquainted with him, and liked him better and better. I was professor of natural science, and often took him to ramble with me, observing and studying whatever we saw, but also talking about everything either of us cared for. About the same time I was licensed to preach, and spent my Saturdays and Sundays in preaching to feeble churches and in schoolhouses, court houses, and private houses, within forty or more miles of the college; trying to make my Sunday night services come within twenty-five miles of home, so that I could drive to the college in time for my Monday morning sunrise lecture. Every now and then I would invite Lanier to go with me. During such drives we were constantly engaged without interruption in our conversation. In these ways, and in listen ing frequently to his marvelous flute-playing, we were much together. We were both young and fond of study." The first letter written by Lanier to his father from college announces his admission to the sophomore class : " I have just done studying to-night my first lesson, to wit, forty-five lines of Horace, which I did in about fifteen minutes." Other letters show that he was a very hard stu dent and intensely conscientious. At one time having violated one of his fathers regulations, that he was not under any circumstances to COLLEGE DAYS 31 borrow money rom_ his college mates, he wrote: " My father, I have sinned. With what intensity of thought, with what deep and earnest reflec tion have I contemplated this lately! My heart throbs with the intensity of its anguish. . . .If by hard study and good conduct I can atone for that, God in heaven knows that I shall not be found wanting. . . . Not a night passes but what the supplication, God bless my parents, as cends to the great mercy seat." At another time lie writes for the following books: Olmsteds Philosophy, Blairs Rhetoric, Cicero de Oratore, and an Analytical Geometry. He already has some Greek tragedies which he is to study. Con templating his junior year, he writes: " I feel quite enthusiastic on the subject of studying. . . . The very name of Junior has something of study-inspiring and energy-exciting to me." Lanier pursued the limited curriculum of the college with zeal and with mastery. From his letters it is seen that he read such of the Greek and Latin classics as were generally studied in American colleges at that time. He mastered mathematics beyond any man of his class, and became interested in philosophy and science. His alert mind and energy enabled him to take at once a position of leadership in the college. He joined a secret literary society, of which he wrote to his father: "I have derived more 32 SIDNEY LANIER benefit from that, than any one of my collegiate studies. We meet together in a nice room, read compositions, declaim, and debate upon interest ing subjects." His contact with these specially intimate friends was a thoroughly healthy one. He took part in their sports and mischief-making as well as in their more serious pastimes. " I shall never for get," says one of his companions, " those moon light nights at old Oglethorpe, when, after study hours, we would crash up the stairway and get out on the cupola, making the night merry with music, song, and laughter. (Sid would play upon his flute like one inspired, while the rest of us would listen in solemn silence."N Besides being a faithful student, Lanier was an omnivorous reader in the-wide fields of Eng lish literature, sharing his tastes with some of his companions who with him lived in " an at mosphere of ardent and loyal friendship." "I can recall," says Mr. T. F. Newell, his class mate and room-mate,1 " those Attic nights, for they are among the dearest and tenderest recol lections of my life, when with a few chosen com panions we would read from some treasured volume, it may have been Tennyson or Carlyle or Christopher Norths Noctes Ambrosianae, or we would make the hours vocal with music and 1 Quoted from Baskervills Southern Writers, p. 149. COLLEGE DAYS 33 song ; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods. ... On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence; expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony. Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play4x0.,any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned walk-round and negro breakdown, in which all would participate, would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments, we would sally forth into the night and neath moon and stars and under Bonny Bell window panes ah, those serenades ! were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again ? when the velvet flute notes of Lanier would fall pleasantly upon the night." Speaking further of his reading and of the way in which he shared his delight with others, the same writer says: "I recall how he de lighted in the quaint and curious of our old 34 SIDNEY LANIER literature. I remember that it was he who intro duced me to that rare old book, Burtons Ana tomy of Melancholy, whose name and size had frightened me as I first saw it on the shelves, but which I found to be wholly different from what its title would indicate; and old Jeremy Taylor, the poet-preacher; and Keatss Endymion, and Chatterton, the marvelous boy who perished in his pride. Yes, I first learned the story of the Monk Eowley and his wonderful poems with Lanier. And Shelley and Coleridge and Christopher North, and that strange, weird poem of The Ettrick Shepherd of How Kilmeny Came Hame, and a whole sweet host and noble company, rare and complete. Yes, Tennyson, with his Locksley Hall and his In Memoriam and his Maud, which last we almost knew by heart. And then old Carlyle, with his Sartor Eesartus, Hero-Worship, Past and Present, and his wonderful book of essays, es pecially the ones on Burns and Jean Paul, The Only. Without a doubt it was Carlyle who first enkindled in Lanier a love of German literature and a desire to know more of the language." His flute-playing and extensive reading did not prevent Lanier from graduating at the head of his class in July, I860.1 His oration was on 1 He was out of college the year 1858-9, being clerk in the Macon post-offiee. The college records show that he received COLLEGE DAYS 35 the ambitious subject, " The Philosophy of His tory." One-oiLthe mostjmportant events in his early life was the vacation following his gradua tion. His grandfather had bought in-the moun tains of East Tennessee, at Montvale Springs, a large estate, on which had been built a beau tiful hotel. During the summer his children and grandchildren some twenty-five in all visited him. Here they enjoyed the pleasures of hunt ing, fishing, and social life. There were many visitors from the Southern States to this " Sara toga of the South." " What an assemblage of facilities for enjoyment," Lanier writes, " I have up here in the mountains, kinsfolk, men friends, women friends, books, music, wine, hunting, fishing, billiards, tenpins, chess, eating, mosquitoless sleeping, mountain scenery, and a month of idleness." This experience, somewhat idealized, is the basis of the first part of " Tiger Lilies." Here Lanier had the opportunity of see ing at its best the life of the old South just before it vanished in the cataclysm of the Civil War. Of that life he afterwards wrote: " No thing can be more pitiable than that at the time when this amiable outcome of the old Southern civilization became known to the world at large, it became so through being laid bare by the the highest marks in his senior year, but shared the honors of graduation with one whose record for the entire course was equal to his. 36 SIDNEY LANIER sharp spasm of civil war. There was a time when all our eyes and faces were distorted with passion; none of us either saw or showed true. Thrice pitiable, one says again, that the fairer aspects of a social state, which though neither per fect as its violent friends preached, nor satanic as * its violent enemies denounced, yet gave rise to so many beautiful relations of honor and fidelity, should have now gone to the past, to remain il luminated only by the unfavorable glare of acci dentally associated emotions in which no man can see clearly." 1 But while Lanier was thoroughly identified with this life, he was at the time dreaming of a career which was not fostered by it a career in which music and poetry should be the domi nating figures. The scene in the first book of " Tiger Lilies " of a band of friends gathered on the balcony of John Sterlings house a palace of art reared by Laniers imagination in the mountains of East Tennessee is strictly auto biographical. As they watch the sunset over the valley, the rich notes of violin, flute, and piano blend with the beauty of nature; the future of music is the theme and poetry the "comment. The various characters of that imma ture romance quote from Emerson, Carlyle, and Eichter. As they talk upon the theme so dear 1 Florida: Its Scenery,Climate, and History, p. 232. COLLEGE DAYS 37 to their imagination twilight comes. " And so the last note floated out over the rock, over the river, over the twilight to the west." With something of the power of Charles Egbert Craddock, Lanier writes in the same book of the mountain scenery of. that region : " Here grow the strong sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins hearts. Here wave the ferns, and cling the mosses and clamber the reckless vines. Here, ones soul may climb as upon Pisgah, and see ones land of peace, seeing Christ who made all these beautiful things." Again, it is "the trees that ever lifted their arms toward heaven, obeying the injunction of the Apostle, praying always, -- the great uncomplaining trees, whose life is surely the finest of all lives, since it is nothing but a continual growing and being beau tiful." He describes a moonlight^ night on the mountains: " All this time the grace of moon light lay tenderly upon the rugged majesty of the mountains, as if Desdemona placed a dainty white hand upon Othellos brow. All this time the old priestly oaks lifted yearning arms to ward the stars, and a mighty company of leafchapleted followers, with silent reverence, joined this most pathetic prayer of these dumb minis ters of the hills." After this enchanting and inspiring expe rience, he returned~to Oglethorpe as tutor: it 38 SIDNEY LANIER was to be a year of hard work, especially in Greek. He described himself at this period as " a spare-built boy, of average height and under weight, mostly addicted to hard study, long reveries, and exhausting smokes with a German pipe." He did much miscellaneous reading and was busy with " hints and fragments of a poetical, musical conception, a sort of musical drama of the peasant uprising in France, called the Jacquerie," which continued tointerest him dur ing the remainder of his life, but which re mained unfinished at his death. If he wrote any poetry, it has not been preserved. His brother is of the opinion that his earliest efforts were Byronesque, if not Wertheresque. " I have his first attempt at poetry," he says ; " it is characteristic, it is not suggestive of swallow flights of song, but of an eaglet peering up toward the empy rean." His mind at this time turned more espe cially in the direction of music. He jots down in one of his ngte-books.: ".The, point which I / wish to settle is merely by what method shall I ascertain what I am fit for as preliminary to ascertaining Gods will with reference to me; or what my inclinations are, as preliminary to ascer taining what my capacities are that is, what I am fit for. I am more than all perplexed by this fact: that the prime inclination that is, natu ral bent (which I have checked, though) of my COLLEGE DAYS 39 nature is to music, and for that I have the great est talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it _niej_I have an extraordinary musical talent, end feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any-composer. But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, be cause it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: What is the province of music in the economy of the world ? " But the really practical plan that formed it self in Laniers mind was that of study in a German university, as preliminary to a profes sorship in an American college, which might in turn give opportunity for creative work. Young Southerners from the University of Virginia such as Basil Gildersleeve and Thomas E. Price had already begun their pilgrimages to the German universities. The situation in Laniers case is an exact parallel to that of Longfellow at Bowdoin College, and one cannot but wonder what would have been Laniers future if circum stances had allowed him to follow out the career here indicated. The best account given of him at this time is that of a young Northerner who was teaching in an academy at Midway: " It was during the four months immediately preceding the outbreak of the war that a kind Fate brought me into contact and companion- 40 SIDNEY LANIER ship with Sidney Lanier. We occupied adjoining rooms at Ike Shermans boarding-house and ate at the same table. Myself a young fellow just out of a Northern college, boasting the same num ber of years, conducting a boys academy in the shadow of Oglethorpe, there was between us a bond of sympathy which led to a friendship inter rupted only by the Civil,. War and broken only by his untimely death. (Many a stroll and talk we had together among the moaning pines, be guiled by the song of the mocking-bird^ To gether we called on the young ladies of Midway, as this little college community was known, together joined in serenades, in which his flute or guitar had the place of honor, played chess to gether, and together dreamed day-dreams which were never to be realized. Contemporary testi mony to my joy in his companionship is borne in frequent references thereto in my private corre spondence of those days. Several students, says a New Years letter to a Northern friend, room in the hotel, as well as a young and very intel lectual tutor, right back of me, which makes it very pleasant. In a later letter : The tutor is a brick. I am much pleased with him and antici pate much pleasure in his company. As to his plans for the future: The tutor Lanier is studying for a professorship; is going to re main here about two years, then go to Heidel- COLLEGE DAYS 41 berg, Germany, remain about two years, come back, and take a professorship somewhere. It is needless to add that the destroying angel of war wrecked ruthlessly all these beautiful ambi tions. -..... " Laniers passion for music asserted itself at every opportunity. His flute and guitar furnished recreation for himself and pleasant entertainment for the friends dropping in. upon Mm. As a master of the flute lie was said to be, even at eighteen, without an equal in Georgia. Tutor .,Lanier, I find myself recording at the time, is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw. It is perfectly splendid his playing. He is far famed for it. His flute cost fifty dollars, and he runs the notes as easily as any one on the piano. De scription is inadequate. " l Before he was twenty years old, then, the master passions of Laniers soul scholarship, music, and to a less degree poetry had as serted themselves. He had a right to look for ward to a brilliant future. 1 "Recollections and Letters of Sidney Lanier," by Milton H. Northrup. Lippincott's Magazine, March, 1905. CHAPTEE III A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER FROM Ms dreams of music and poetry and from the ideal he had formed of study at Heidel berg, Lanier was awakened by the guns of Fort Sumter and by the agitation everywhere in Georgia. At Milledgeville he heard some of the great speeches made for and against seces sion, for, from November to January, the con flict throughout the State and especially in the capital was a severe one. He himself, like his father, hoped that the Union might be preserved, but the forces of discord could not be stayed. The people of Macon, on November 8, 1860, passed a declaration of independence, setting forth their grievances against the North. When secession was declared in Charleston on Decem ber 1, a hundred guns were fired amidst the ringing of bells and the shouts of the people. At night there was a procession of fifteen hundred people with banners and transparencies.1 When on January 16 the Georgia convention voted to secede from the Union, Milledgeville was in 1 Butlers History of Macon. A CONFEDEEATE SOLDIER 43 " rapturous commotion." " Tears of joy fell from many eyes, and words of congratulation were uttered by every tongue. The artillery from the capitol square thundered forth the glad tidings, and the bells of the city pealed forth the joyous welcome to the new-born Kepublic." Lanier afterwards, in " Tiger Lilies," described tlie war fever as it swept over the South. " An afflatus of war was breathed upon us. Like a great wind it drew on, and blew upon men, women, and children. Its sound mingled with the serenity of the church organs and arose with the earnest words of preachers praying for guid ance in the matter. It sighed in the half-breathed words of sweethearts, conditioning impatient lov ers with war services. It thundered splendidly in the impassioned appeals of orators to the people. It whistled through the streets, it stole into the firesides, it clinked glasses in bar-rooms, it lifted the gray hairs of our wise men in conven tions, it thrilled through the lectures in college halls, it rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms. This wind blew upon all vanes of all the churches of the country and turned them one way,^toward war. It blew, and shook out as if by magic a flag whose device was un known to soldier or sailor before, but whose every flap and flutter made the blood bound in our veins. ... It arrayed the sanctity of a 44 SIDNEY LANIER righteous cause in the brilliant trappings of mil itary display. ... It offered tests to all alle giances and loyalties, of church, of state; of private loves, of public devotion; of personal consanguinity, of social ties." l It does not fall within the province of this book to discuss the issues that led to the Civil War, the questions of secession and slavery. In 1861 they had ceased to be debated in the halls of Congress; all the Southern people were being merged into a unit. Ardent opponents of secession, like Alexander H. Stephens, threw in their lot with the new Confederacy; States like Virginia, which hesitated to disrupt a Union with which they had had so much to do, were as enthusiastic as the more ardent Southern States ; old men vied with young men in their military ardor. Scotch-Irish opponents of slavery marched side by side with the Cavaliers, to whom slavery was the very corner-stone of a feudal aristocracy. The fact is, the whole South was animated by a passion for war. To young men like Lanier the Southern cause was one of liberty, of resistance to despotism and fanaticism, of the protection of homes. He who would understand their point of view must read such war lyrics as " Maryland, My Maryland" and Timrods "Ethnogenesis," or enter sympathetically into the lives of that youthful band of Confederate soldiers all of 1 Tiger Lilies, p. 119. A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 45 whom were afterwards to become distinguished in the field of letters, Timrod, Hayne, Cable, Maurice Thompson, and Lanier. It was not given to many men on either side to divine the true issues of the war. Lanier af terwards rejoiced in the overthrow- of- -slavery, and knew that it was the belief in the soundness and greatness of the American Union among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest which really conquered the South. "As soon as we invaded the North," he said, "and arrayed this sentiment against us, our swift destruction followed." In a note-book of 1867 he pointed out with touches of humor the folly of many of the ideas formerly held by him self and other Southerners. He is writing an essay on the Devils Bombs, " some half-dozen of which were exploded between the years 1861 and 1865 over the Southern portion of North Amer ica with widespread and somewhat sad results: namely, a million of men slain and maimed; a million of widows and orphans created; several billions of money destroyed; several hundred thousand of ignorant schoolboys who could not study on account of the noise made by the shells; and a large miscellaneous mass of poverty, starvation, recklessness, and ruin precipitated so suddenly upon the country that many were buried beneath it beyond hope of being extricated." 46 SIDNEY LANIEE This universal tragedy he attributes in part to the conceit of the Southern people. He himself became " convinced of his ability to whip at least five Yankees. The author does not know now and did not then, by what course of reasoning he arrived at this said conviction ; in the best of the authors judgment he did not reason it out at all, rather absorbed it, from the press of surround ing similar convictions. The author, however, was also confident, not only that he personally could whip five Yankees, but any Southern boy could do it. The whole South was satisfied it could whip five Norths. The newspapers said we could do it; the preachers pronounced ana themas against the man that did nt believe we could do it; our old men said at the street cor ners, if they were young they could do it, and by the Eternal, they believed they could do it any how (whereat great applause and Hurrah for ole Harris!) ; the young men said they d be blanked if they could nt do it, and the young ladies said they would nt marry a man who could nt do it. This arrogant perpetual invita tion to draw and come on, this idea which pos sessed the whole section, which originated no one knows when, grew no one knows how, was a devils own bombshell, the fuse of which spar kled when Mr. Brooks struck Mr. Suinner upon the head with a cane. A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 47 " Of course we laugh at it now, laugh in the hope that our neighbors will attribute the red ness of our cheeks to that and not to our shame. . . . The conceit of an individual is ridiculous because it is powerless. . . . The conceit of a whole people is terrible, it is a devils bomb shell, surcharged with death, plethoric with all foul despairs and disasters." So Lanier spoke in the sober maturity of his manhood of the great tragedy through which he with his section passed. But during the war there was but one idea in his mind, and that was that he might take part in the establishment of a Confederacy. He dreamed with his people of a nation that might be the embodiment of all that was fine in government and in society, that the " new Confederacy was to enter upon an era of prosperity such as no other nation, ancient or modern, had ever enjoyed, and that the city of Macon, his birthplace and home, was to become a great art centre." In this hope, soon after finishing the years work at Oglethorpe,1 he vol unteered for servica.and went to Virginia to join the Macon Volunteers, who Kad-left Georgia early '-'" in April the first company that went out of the 1 The faculty and students almost to a man enlisted in the army; and the college buildings were afterwards used for bar racks and hospitals. President Talmage lost his mind by rea son of the conflict between his affection for his native and for His adopted section. 48 SIDNEY LANIER State to Virginia. It was an old company that had won distinction in the Mexican War, and was the special pride of the city of Macon. The company was stationed for several months near Norfolk, where Lanier experienced some of the joys of city life in those-early days when war was largely a picnic a holiday time it was " the gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the James River." In the main, however, they played "MarshDivers and Meadow-Crakes," their principal duties being to picket the beach, and their " plea sures and sweet rewards-of-toil consisting in agues which played dice with our bones, and bluemass pills that played the deuce with our livers." 1 The company was sent in 1862 to Wilmington, N. C., where they experienced a pleasant change in the style of fever, "indulging for two or three months," continues Lanier, " in what are called the dry shakes of the sand hills, a sort of bril liant, tremolo movement, brilliantly executed upon that pan-pipe, man, by an invisible butvery powerful performer." From here, where they were engaged in building Fort Fisher, they were called to Drewrys Bluff; and from there to the Chickahominy, participating in the seven days 1 The account of Laniers war experiences is based on the poets letters to Northrup, the reminiscences of Clifford Lanier, Lauiers unpublished letters to his father, Tiger Lilies, and the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 49 fighting around Richmond. Just before the battle of Malvern Hill they marched all night through -~- _ ~~ v. ,- ..-*} O O drenching rain, over torn and swampy roads. These were the only important battles in which Lanier took part. Soon afterwards he was in a little gunboat fight or two on the south bank of the James River. On August 26 they were sent to Petersburg to rest. While there he enjoyed the use of the city library. He and his brother and two friends were transferred to the signal corps, which was considered at that time the most efficient in the Southern army, and, becoming soon proficient in the system, attracted the atten tion of the commanding officer, who formed them into a mounted field squad and attached them to the staff of Major-General French. "Often Lanier and a friend," says the latter officer, " would come to my quarters and pass the even ings with us, where the alarums of war were lost in the soft notes of their flutes, for Lanier was an excellent musician." 1 Lanier tells in a letter written to his father at that time of four Georgia privates with one general, six captains, and one lieutenant, serenading the city. One of the most precious memoriesof Laniers war-career was that of General Lee attending religious services in Petersburg. The height of every Confederate soldiers ambition was to get a 1 A History of Two Wars, by Samuel G. French. 50 SIDNEY LANIEE glimpse of the beloved general, who was the idol of his soldiers. Lanier reverenced him as one of the greatest of men. In later years he gave his ideal of what a great musician ought to be. " A great artist," he said, " should have the sensibil ity and expressive genius of Schumann, the calm grandeur of Lee, and the human breadth of Shakespeare, all in one." In his "Confederate Memorial Address " he speaks of Lee as " stately in victory, stately in defeat; stately among the cannon, stately among the books; stately in soli tude, stately in society; stately in form, in soul, in character, and in action." Fortunately he had the chance to see him under specially in teresting circumstances. He afterwards related the incident to the Confederate veterans in Macon: " The last time that I saw with mor tal eyes for, with spiritual eyes, many, many times have I contemplated him since the scene was so beautiful, the surroundings were so rare, nay, time and circumstance did so fitly frame him, as it were, that I think the picture should not be lost. ... It was at fateful Petersburg, on one glorious Sunday morning, whilst the armies of Grant and Butler were investing our last stronghold there. It had been announced, to those who happened to be stationed in the neighborhood of General Lees headquarters, that religious services would be conducted on A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 51 that morning by Major-General Pendleton. At the appointed time I strolled over to Dunns Hill, where General Lees tent was pitched, and found General Pendleton ensconced under a magnificent tree, and a small party of soldiers, with a few ladies from the dwelling near by, col lected about him. In a few moments, General Lee appeared with Ms camp chair, and sat down. The services began. That terrible battery, Num ber Five, was firing, very slowly, each report of the great guns making the otherwise profound silence still more profound. I sat down on the grass and gazed, with such reverence as I had never given to mortal man before, upon the grand face of General Lee. He had been greatly fatigued by loss of sleep. " As the sermon progressed, and the immortal words of Christian doctrine came to our hearts and comforted us, sweet influences born of the liberal sunlight which lay warm upon the grass, of the moving leaves and trembling flowers, seemed to steal over the Generals soul. Presently his eyelids gradually closed, and he fell gently asleep. Not a muscle of him stirred, not a nerve of his grand countenance twitched; there was no drooping of the head, nor bowing of the figure. . . . As he slumbered so, sitting erect, with arms folded upon his chest, in an attitude of majestic repose, such as I never saw assumed by mortal 52 SIDNEY LANIEE man before; as the large and comfortable word fell from the preachers lips; as the lazy cannon of the enemy anon hurled a screaming shell to within a few hundred yards of where we sat, as finally a bird flew into a tree overhead and sat and piped small blissful notes in unearthly con trast with the roar of the war engines; it seemed to me as if the present earth floated off through the sunlight, and the antique earth returned out of the past, and some majestic god sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a terrible yet sublime contest of human passion." A pleasant interlude in Laniers soldier life was a two weeks visit to Macon in the spring of 1863. The city had not yet felt any of the calam ities of war, although high prices prevailed. Mrs. Clay, wife of Senator Clement C. Clay, was a visitor in the city at that time, waiting for a sum mons to join her husband in Richmond. She writes, in recalling those days : " Spring was in its precious beauty. Gardens glowed with bril liant blossoms. Thousands of fragrant odors mingled in the air, the voices of myriad birds . sang about the foliaged avenues." 1 It was then that Lanier met Miss Mary Day, at the home ^ of their friend, Miss Lamar. Her father was a prominent business man in Macon. She had lived for the first few years of her life in Macon, but 1 A Belle of the Fifties, p. 194. A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 53 had been since 1851 studying music in New York, and living with, cultivated people at Saratoga and West Point. In an atmosphere of romance, music, and love Lanier spent his vacation. On their return to the Virginia battlefields the two brothers were accompanied by Mrs. Clay and her sister-in-law. Mrs. Clay had been a popular belle in Washington in the fifties, and was well acquainted with leading men and women through out the country. She had heard and met in social circles Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, Thack eray, Lord Napier, and other notabilities. Lanier, eager always to hear of the larger world outside of his own limited life, was much attracted by her reminiscences of well-known men and women. Eeturning to Suffolk, Va., Clifford Lanier wrote to her: " What a transition is this from the spring and peace of Macon to this muddy and war-distracted country! Going to sleep in the moonlight and soft air of Italy, I seem to have waked embedded in Lapland snow." Sidney wrote: " Have you ever wandered, in an all nights dream, through exquisite flowery mosses, through labyrinthine grottoes, full of all spark ling and sparry loveliness, over mountains of unknown height, by abysses of unfathomable depth, all beneath skies of an infinite brightness caused by no sun ; strangest of all, wandered about in wonder, as.if you had lived an eternity 54 SIDNEY LANIER in the familiar contemplation of such things ? If you have dreamed, thought, and felt so, you can realize the imbecile stare with which I gaze on all of this life which goes on around me here. Macon was my two weeks* dream." 1 During 1863 and a large part of 1864 the two brothers served as scouts in Milligans Corps along the James River. The duties were unusu ally dangerous and onerous, from the fact that their movements had to be concealed, and that they were in constant danger of being captured. In this work of hard riding (Lanier displayed a cool and collected courage; he was untiring in his energy, prudent and cautious. Notwith standing the dangers and hardships, he looked upon the period of life at Fort Boykin on Burwells Bay their headquarters as " the most delicious period of his life in many respects." Writing of it later he said: " Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . . Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beauti ful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwells Bay, and the 1 A Belle of the Fifties, p. 200. SIDNEY JLANIER IN I860 From, a " carte de visite " photograph o\vned by Milton H. Northrup A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 55 spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy." l This is the period of his life which he de scribes in the second part of " Tiger Lilies." His brother Clifford also made it the basis of his novel, " Thorn-Fruit." The effect produced by the young poet and musician on the people who lived in the stately mansions along the James River has been told by one who knew him well at this time : " The two brothers were in separable ; slender, gray-eyed youths, full of en thusiasm, Clifford grave and quiet, Sidney, the elder, playful with a dainty mirthfulness. . . . How often did we sit on the moonlight nights enthralled by the entranced melodies of his flute! Always the longing for the very highest pervaded his life, and child though I was, in listening to him as he paced the long galleries of my old home, or as we rode in the sweet green wood, I felt even then that we sat in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars. " 2 This period of his army life is important also "from the fact that here at Fort Boykin he defi nitely began to contemplate a literary life as his probable vocation. He was studying hard, read ing English poetry, and writing to his father to " seize at any price" editions of the German 1 Letter to Northrup, June 11, 1866. 2 Southern Bivouac, May, 1887. 56 SIDNEY LANIER poets, Uhland, Lessing, Schelling, and Tieck. Thus at a time when other Southerners were, as Professor Gildersleeve has said, getting out their classics to reread them, Lanier was voyaging into strange fields of thought alone. Once, when the little camp was captured, he lost several of his choicest treasures, a volume containing the poems of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, a German glossary, Heines poems, and "Aurora Leigh." In a letter to his father, January 18, 1864, he says: ^Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into this business of writ ing, and especially of writing poetry. I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation.^, He sends his father a number of poems, that they may be criticised. He has a sense of his own deficiencies as a writer, defi ciencies which he never fully overcame, for he writes : " I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style ; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a meta phor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk." The tendency is seen in a poem written at Boykins Bluff on, perhaps, his twenty-first birth- A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 57 day. Notable also is the sense of the dawn of manhood: So Boyhood sets: comes Youth, A painful night of mists and dreams, That broods till Loves exquisite truth, The star of a morn-clear manhood, beams. In this dawn of his manhood not yet mornclear, however, he began " Tiger Lilies," writ ing those parts having to do with his experience in the mountains, some passages of which have already been quoted. But Laniers literary career was not to be beguiTas soon as he hoped. He was, in August, 1864, transferred to .Wilmington, N. C., where he became a signal officer on the blockade-runners. Wilmington was the port which, late in the war, was the scene of the most brilliant successes of these swift vessels and the most strenuous efforts of the blockaders. " Long after every other port was closed, desperate, but wary sea pigeons would evade the big and surly watchers on the coast . . . and ho! for the open sea." This was a service of keen excitement and constant danger, demanding a clear head and iron nerves. In the latter part of 1864 it became more and more difficult for the blockade-runners to make their way to Bermuda. On November 2, a stormy night, Lanier was a signal officer on the Lucy, which made its way out of the harbor, but four- 58 SIDNEY LANIER teen hours later was captured in the Gulf Stream by the Federal cruiser Santiago-de-Cuba. He was taken to Point Lookout prison, where he spent four months of dreary and distressing life. To this prison life Lanier always attributed his breakdown in health. In " Tiger Lilies " he af terwards attempted to give a description of the prison and the life led by prisoners, but turned with disgust from the harrowing memories. The few pages he did write serve as a counterpart to Walt Whitmans strictures on Southern prisons in his " Specimen Days in America." And yet, under these loathsome conditions he read German poetry, translating Heines " The Palm and the Pine" and Herders " Spring Greeting." Here, too, he found comfort for himself and his companions in the flute which he had carried with him during the entire war. One of his comrades gives the following ac count of Laniers playing: ^ Late one evening I heard from our tent the clear sweet notes of a flute in the distance, and I was told that the player was a young man from Georgia who had just come among us. I forthwith hastened to find him out, and from that hour the flute of Sidney Lanier was our daily delight. It was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer and console us. Well I remember his improvisations, and how the young artist stood there in the twilight. A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 59 (It was his custom to stand while he played.) Many a stern eye moistened to hear him, many a homesick heart for a time forgot its captivity. The night sky, clear as a dewdrop above us, the waters of the Chesapeake far to the east, the long gray beach and the distant pines, seemed all to have found an interpreter in him. " In all those dreary months of imprisonment, under the keenest privations of life, exposed to the daily manifestations of want and depravity, sickness and death, his was the clear-hearted, hopeful voice that sang what he uttered in after years."3 The ^p_u^_r.it*y*- o*f- Lanie-r- s-. soul was never better attested than in a letter written by a fellowprisoner, Mr. John B. Tabb, to Charles Day Lanier, the oldest son of the poet, trying to im press upon his mind the character of his father as exhibited in this prison life at Point Lookout: " To realize what our surroundings were, one must have lived in a prison camp. There was no room for pretense or disguise. Men appeared what they really were, noble or low-minded, pure or depraved; and there did one trait of your fathers character single him out. In all our intercourse J__ i 3T Vw^^ , "olfl-e.---- ( /w^^nr<_ X^^-^v. CS^-u^^- ~ ~ " <^sw^ Q ^ T-V ] ^-v - a ' ' i^v^--- (LAj-*^^. *k_^o yv-X^v^_ AA- 'Mv-4- ----. (\ S^,. ,^----------O /(r---- C> BA^'*- - O^i J A-* ---- ~t$------V A-^i$LX^,n ^A ^^vx^t- ^^^^.atj^ / Aj~ *- t-Wwj^ "A>o *^\/*f^"-- T O^^- *-v^x C*-- 'AXA^v~- >^ir O 0,0^^- A~+_^ A^^ u_-S-<_- A^O---- ^v" a-cw^*- a-^- ^ Q___ ' A^^^, /X^__o_-v/V- j /l^, jj^^o A^-^SL^. b~!L<-*s D fl A-rw^ 0 /4/Wx*jZ^_ ~x. /%" v,,v_ tX^i^A -v---^ VV^O^^I-^-MA- T^ 0 o q/v-i^ctj Ar'<~_ yLji^v 'OUjK^x. A^~^v "Cw^-oAv J^-^c , >- r fl^-^-TXt< I tf A-t^^-oA-"^ 6 t^tvx^^- vj cv-v^*. Jix) u.^r L - c'^^-- - ^ ^M^^ vrj-'Vx^ - Xj^.cM^a BEGINNING A LITEEARY CAEEER 191 Lanier returned from Boston and on New Year's day sent a greeting to Miss Cushman. It is quoted as an illustration of Lanier's con siderate regard for his friends, which expressed itself in many delicate ways, especially on anni versaries and special seasons of the year. It is an Elizabethan sonnet in prose : -- If this New Year that approaches you (more happy than I, who cannot) did but know you as well as I (more happy than he, who does not) lie would strew his days about you even as white apple-blossoms and his nights as blue-black heart's-ease; for then he should be your true faithful-serving lover -- as am I -- and should desire -- as I do -- that the general pelting of time might become to you only a tender rain of such flowers as foretell fruit and of such as make tranquil beds. But though I cannot teach this same New Year to be the servant of my fair wishes, I can persuade him to be the bearer of them; and I trust he and these words will come to you to gether ; giving you such report, and so freshly from my heart, as shall confirm to you that my message, though greatly briefer than my love, is yet greatly longer than I would the interval were, which stands betwixt you and your often- longing, S. L. 192 SIDNEY LANIER Another friend that Mr. Peacock interested in Lanier was Bayard Taylor, who was the means of bringing the poet into the world of letters, and became one of the most inspiring influences in his life. Taylor had been a very prominent figure in the literary world for over twenty-five years, as author, translator, traveller, diplomatist, and lecturer. To meet him was like the fulfillment of a dream to a man who had lived all his life outside of literary circles, and Taylor's encour aging words to Lanier were " as inspiriting as those from a strong swimmer whom one perceives far ahead, advancing calmly and swiftly." Taylor, on the other hand, was glad to extend the young poet's acquaintance among those whom he had a right to know. Through him Lanier attended the Goethe celebration, August 28, 1875, and was admitted to the Century Club, of which Bryant was at that time president, and where Taylor, Stoddard, Stedman, and "many other good fellows " frequently met. What this meant to Lanier is shown in the following quo tation : -- " As to pen and ink, and all toil, I Ve been almost suppressed by continued illness. I can't tell you how much I sigh for some quiet evenings at the Century, where I might hear some of you talk about the matters I love, or merely sit and think in the atmosphere of the thinkers. I fancy BEGINNING A LITEEARY CAREER 193 one can almost come to know the dead thinkers too well: a certain mournfulness of longing sjems sometimes to peer out from behind one's joy in one's Shakespeare and one's Chaucer, -- a sort of physical protest and yearning of the living eye for its like. Perhaps one's friendship with the dead poets comes indeed to acquire something of the quality of worship, through the very mystery which withdraws them from us and which allows no more messages from them, cry how we will, after that sudden and perilous Stoppage. I hope those are not illegitimate moods in which one sometimes desires to sur round one's self with a companionship less awful, and would rather have a friend than a god." l Mr. Stedman has recorded his impression of Lanier as he met him at Bayard Taylor's: " I saw him more than once in the study of our lamented Deucalion, -- the host so buoyant and sympathetic, the Southerner nervous and eager, with dark hair and silken beard, features deli cately moulded, pallid complexion, and hands of the slender, white, artistic type." The friendship between Lanier and Taylor was no less cherished by the older poet. He rejoiced to recognize in Lanier "a new, true poet -- such a poet as I believe you to be -- the genuine poetic nature, temperament, and morale." He was heartily glad 1 Letters, p. 171. 194 SIDNEY LANIEE to welcome Mm into the fellowship of authors. He gave him some valuable criticism as to the details of his work, and encouraged him by show ing him that the struggle through which he was passing was identical with his own. He, too, had to resort to pot-boiling and hack work of all kinds, and he had also been severely criticised by the same men who now criticised Lanier. So he closed many of his letters with the inspiriting words: " Be of good cheer! On! be bold! " The friend ship which began as a literary friendship soon developed on Taylor's part, as well as Lanier's, into one of deep personal regard. Taylor recog nized, as did every other man who came in per sonal touch with Lanier, the charm and the fineness of his personality. By the summer of 1876 Lanier had thus es tablished himself as a promising man of letters. He had not only written poetry that had at tracted attention, but he had found a place among a group of artists who recognized the value of his work and the charm of his personality. When Charlotte Cushman died, he had the promise that he would be employed by her family to write her life. Upon the basis of this promise he brought his family North, and they settled down at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania. Soon afterwards, however, he received the disappointing news that Miss Stebbins, on account of ill health, could BEGINNING A LITERARY CAREER 195 not fulfill her part of the contract, namely, to go over the correspondence of Miss Cushman. This was a severe blow to him, and probably had something to do with his breakdown in health. He spent several weeks at Mr. Peacock's in Philadelphia, attended by the best physicians in the city. He was planning to go back to Balti more to resume his place in the orchestra, when he was told that he must go at once to Florida if he wished to save his life. He went, attended by his wife, and they'spent the winter there and the spring in Brunswick and Macon. The letters written by him to Mr. Peacock and Bayard Taylor are among the best he ever wrote, full as they are of sunshine and hope. A few ex tracts are given : J -- " I have found a shaggy gray mare upon whose back I thrid the great pine forests daily, much to my delight. Nothing seems so restora tive to me as a good gallop." " What would I not give to transport you from your frozen sorrows instantly into the midst of the green leaves, the gold oranges, the glitter of great and tranquil waters, the liberal friendship of the sun, the heavenly conversation of robins and mocking-birds and larks, which fill my days with delight! " " In truth I ' bubble song' continually during 1 Letters passim. 196 SIDNEY LANIER these heavenly days, and it is as hard to keep me from the pen as a toper from his tipple." " I have at command a springy rnare, with ankles like a Spanish girl, upon whose back I go darting through the green overgrown woodpaths, like a thrasher about his thicket. The whole air feels full of fecundity: as I ride I am like one of those insects that are fertilized on the wing, -- every leaf that I brush against breeds a poem. God help the world when this now-hatching brood of my Ephemerae shall take flight and darken the air." " I long to be steadily writing again. I am taken with a poem pretty nearly every day, and have to content myself with making a note of its train of thought on the back of whatever letter is in my coat-pocket. I don't write it out, be cause I find my poetry now wholly unsatisfactory in consequence of a certain haunting impatience which has its root in the straining uncertainty of my daily affairs; and I am trying with all my might to put off composition of all sorts until some approach to the certainty of next week's dinner shall remove this remnant of haste, and leave me that repose which ought to fill the' artist's firmament while he is creating.'^) They returned to the North in June and spent another summer at Chadd's Ford, -- a place of great natural beauty. "As for me," says BEGINNING A LITERARY CAREER 197 Lanier, " all this loveliness of wood, earth, and water makes me feel as if I could do the whole Universe into poetry; but I don't want to write anything large for a year or so. And thus I content myself with throwing off a sort of spray of little songs, whereof the magazines now have several." Notwithstanding his illness, then, the year ending with September, 1877, was one of marked productivity. He wrote " Waving of the Corn," "Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut," "From the Flats," "The Mocking-Bird," "Tampa Robins," " The Bee," " A Florida Sunday," " The StirrupCup," "To Beethoven," "The Dove," "The Song of the Chattahooche," and " An Evening Song." He was in a fair way to realize his am bition with regard to poetry. Again, however, he was to be deflected from his course, but at the same time to find " fresh woods and pastures new." CHAPTEE VIII STUDENT AND TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE WHEN Lanier returned from Florida he tried to get various positions which might enable him to secure a livelihood. A lectureship at Johns Hopkins University, -- about which President Gilman had talked with him in 1876 -- a libra rian's position in the Peabody Library, and a 'place in some of the departments of the govern ment in Washington, -- all these were sought for in vain. One of the saddest commentaries on the condition of political life in the seventies is that Lanier was not able to secure even a clerk ship in any department. The days of civil service reform and the time when a commissioner of civil service would urge the application for gov ernment positions by Southern men had not yet come. " Inasmuch," Lanier says in a letter to Mr. Gibson Peacock, June 13, 1877, "as I had never been a party man of any sort, I did not see with what grace I could ask any ap pointment ; and furthermore I could not see it to be delicate, on general principles, for me to TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 199 make personal application for any particular office. . . . My name has been mentioned to Mr. Sherman (and to Mr. Evarts, I believe) by quite cordially disposed persons. But I do not think any formal application lias been entered, -- though I do not know. I hope not; for then the reporters will get hold of it, and I scarcely know what I should do if I could see my name figuring alongside of Jack Brown's and Foster Blodgett's and the others of my native State." 1 It was the same year in which Bayard Taylor was nominated as minister to Germany and Lowell as minister to Spain, but Lanier could not obtain a consulate to France or even the humblest posi tion, " seventy-five dollars a month and the like," in any department in Washington. Under these circumstances he wrote what are perhaps the most pathetic words in all his letters. " Altogether," he says, " it seems as if there was n't any place for me in this world, and if it were not for May I should certainly quit it, in mortification at being so useless." 2 He did not remain in this mood long, however. He settled in Baltimore with his family in November, 1877, in four rooms arranged somewhat as a French flat, and a little later in a cottage, about which he writes enthusiastically to his friends. There is no better illustration of his playfulness and 1 Letters, p. 43. 2 Letters, p. 46. 200 SIDNEY LANIER his ability to get the most out of everything than his letter to Gibson Peacock: -- 33 DENMEAD ST., BALTIMORE, MD., January 6, 1878. The painters, the whitewashes, the plumbers, the locksmiths, the carpenters, the gas-fitters, the stove-put-up-ers, the carmen, the piano-movers, the carpet-layers, -- all these have I seen, bar gained with, reproached for bad jobs, and finally paid off: I have also coaxed my landlord into all manner of outlays for damp walls, cold bath rooms, and other like matters: I have further more bought at least three hundred and twentyseven household utensils which suddenly came to be absolutely necessary to our existence: I have moreover hired a colored gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be gener ally useful: I have also moved my family into our new home, have had a Xmas tree for the youngsters, have looked up a cheap school for Hari-y and Sidney, have discharged my daily duties as first flute of the Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have accom plished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous necessary nothings, -- and have not, in conse quence of the aforesaid, sent to you and my dear TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 201 Maria the loving greetings whereof my heart has been full during the whole season. Maria's cards were duly distributed, and we were all touched with her charming little remembrances. With how much pleasure do I look forward to the time when I may kiss her hand in my own house ! We are in a state of supreme content with our new home: it really seems to me as incredible that myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore as to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great many other couples have had similar prodigies. It is simply too delightful. Good heavens, how I wish that the whole world had a Home! I confess I am a little nervous about the gasbills, which must come in, in the course of time; and there are the water-rates, and several sorts of imposts and taxes : but then, the dignity of being liable for such things (!) is a very supporting consideration. No man is a Bohemian who has to pay water-rates and a street-tax. Every day when I sit down in my dining-room -- my diningroom ! -- I find the wish growing stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, could come and dine with me. How I would carve out the merry thoughts for the old hags ! How I would stuff the big wall-eyed rascals till their rags ripped again ! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle 202 SIDNEY LANIER across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through: there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day, in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might do as he did.1 He was soon to find another joy in the study of Old and Middle English literature, which he entered upon with unbounded zest and energy. As has been seen in previous chapters, Lanier had been all his life a reader of the best books. Before he came to Baltimore to live he had impressed Paul Hamilton Hayne with his un usually thorough knowledge of Chaucer and the Elizabethan poets. He was also familiar with modern English literature. Now, however, he was to begin the study of literature in a syste matic and more scholarly way. A distinct ad vance in his intellectual life must, therefore, be dated from the winter of 1877--78, when he began to study English with the aid of the Peabody Library. For purposes of research this library was, during Lanier's lifetime, one of the best in America. Mr. Peabody indicated its character when he said, in his announcement of the gift, that it was to be " well furnished in every de- 1 Letters, p. 49. TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 203 partment of knowledge, to be for the free use of all persons who may desire to consult it, to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordi narily obtainable in the private libraries of the country." It was modeled on the plan of the British Museum, and he was anxious to " engraft in Baltimore the offshoots of the highest culture obtainable in the great capitals of Europe." In accordance with his idea, the provost, Dr. Morison, had in the selection of the library consulted specialists in the leading universities of the coun try. Besides containing the scientific journals in the various departments of human learning, it was especially rich in the publications of the Early English Text Society, the Chaucer Society, the Percy Society, and in the reprints of Eliza bethan literature made by Alexander B. Grosart and other English scholars. There had been some complaint on the part of the citizens of Baltimore that the library could not be of more general use. To meet this Dr. Morison said in 1871 : " We cannot create scholars or readers to use our library, but we can make a collection pf books which all scholars will appreciate, when they shall appear among us as they surely will some day." This prophecy was fulfilled when Johns Hopkins University was established in 1876. In addition to the excellent collection of 204 SIDNEY LANIER books there was a carefully prepared catalogue, which made the investigator's task much easier. To the Peabody thus furnished and arranged, Lanier came with an eagerness of mind that few men have had. Writing to J. F. Kirk, August 24, 1878, he said, speaking of an edition of Elizabethan sonnets which he was preparing: " I have found the Peabody Library here a rich mine in the collection of material for my book, especially as affording sources for the presenta tion of the anonymous poems in the early col lections which are very interesting." He always expressed himself as grateful that he could find his working material so easily accessible. Of his habits of study one of the assistant librarians says : " He usually came in the morn ing, occupying the same seat at the end of the table, where he worked until lunch time, so ab sorbed with his studies that he scarcely ever raised his eyes to notice anything around him. During the winters that he was a member of the Peabody Orchestra he came back in the afternoons when the rehearsals were held, bringing his flute with him, and continued his studies until it was time to go into the rehearsal. He continued in this way until his increasing weakness prevented him from leaving home, when he would write notes to the desk attendants asking them to verify some reference, or copy some extract for him, and fre- TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 205 quently his wife would come to the library to do the copying for him." ls This library was Lanier's university. While other Southerners were finding their way to Ger man universities, he was training himself in the methods and ideals of the modern scholar. The dream of his college days was being fulfilledHe lacked the patient and careful training of men who have a lifetime to devote to some special field of work. He could not in the short time at his disposal explore the fields of learningwhich he entered. Into those two or three years of study and research, however, were crowded results and attainments that many less gifted men, working with less prodigious zest and power, do not reach in a decade. Writing .to Bayard Taylor, October 20, 1878, he said: " Indeed, I have been so buried in study for the past six months that I know not news nor gossip of any kind. Such days and nights of glory as I have had! I have been studying Early English, Middle English, and Elizabethan poetry, from Beowulf to Ben Jonson: and the world seems twice as large." 2 No sooner had he begun this work than he desired to communicate to others his own pleasure in English literature. In March, 1878, he began a series of lectures at the residence of Mrs. Edgworth Bird, who had 1 Letter of Mr. John Park to the author. 2 Letters, p. 214. 206 SIDNEY LANIER welcomed him to her home when he first came to Baltimore. These lectures on Elizabethan poetry were attended by many of the most promi nent men and women of the city. The following winter Lanier arranged for a series of lectures at the Peabody Institute. " In the spring of 1878," says one of his friends, " I was speaking of the desultory study which women so often do and of how much better it would be if all this energy could be directed to some definite end. He said: ' That is just what I am purposing. Next winter I am going to have a Shakespearean revival for women,' and he then proceeded to tell me of the prospective lectures." He had become imbued with the idea that much might be done in the way of establishing " Schools for Grown People " in all the leading cities of America. He writes to Gibson Peacock : -- 180 ST. PAUL ST., BALTIMORE, MD., November 5, 1878. I have been " allowing " -- as the Southern ne groes say -- that I would write you, for the last two weeks; but I had a good deal to say, and have n't had time to say it. During my studies for the last six or eight months a thought which was at first vague has slowly crystallized into a purpose, of quite de cisive aim. The lectures which I was invited to TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 207 deliver last winter before a private class met with, such an enthusiastic reception as to set me thinking very seriously of the evident delight with which grown people found themselves re ceiving systematic instruction in a definite study. This again put me upon reviewing the whole business of Lecturing which has risen to such proportions in our country, but which, every one must feel, has now reached its climax and must soon give way -- like all things -- to something better. The fault of the lecture system as at present conducted -- a fault which must finally prove fatal to it -- is that it is too fragmentary, and presents too fragmentary a mass ---indigenta moles -- of facts before the hearers. Now if, instead of such a series as that of the popular Star Course (for instance) in Philadelphia, a scheme of lectures should be arranged which would amount to the systematic presentation of a given subject, then the audience would receive a substantial benefit, and would carry away some genuine possession at the end of the course. The subject thus systematically presented might be either scientific (as Botany, for example, or Bi ology popularized, and the like) or domestic (as detailed in the accompanying printed extract under the " Household " School) or artistic or literary. This stage of the investigation put me to 208 SIDNEY LANIER thinking of schools for grown people. Men and women leave college nowadays just at the time when they are really prepared to study with effect. There is indeed a vague notion of this abroad, but it remains vague. Any intelligent grown man or woman readily admits that it would be well -- indeed, many whom I have met sincerely desire -- to pursue some regular course of thought; but there is no guidance, no organ ized means of any sort, by which people engaged in ordinary avocations can accomplish such an aim. Here, then, seems to be, first, a universal ad mission of the usefulness of organized intellectual pursuit for business people ; secondly, an under lying desire for it by many of the people them selves ; and thirdly, an existing institution (the lecture system) which, if the idea were once started, would quickly adapt itself to the new conditions. In short, the present miscellaneous lecture courses ought to die and be born again as Schools for Grown People. It was with the hope of effecting at least the beginning of a beginning of such a movement that I got up the " Shakespeare Course " in Bal timore. I wished to show, to such a class as I could assemble, how much more genuine profit there would be in studying at first hand, under the guidance of an enthusiastic interpreter, the TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 209 writers and conditions of a particular epoch, (for instance) than in reading any amount of commen tary or in hearing any number of miscellaneous lectures on subjects which range from Palestine to Pottery in the course of a week. With this view I arranged my own part of the Shakespeare course so as to include a quite thorough presen tation of the whole science of poetry as prepara tory to a serious and profitable study of some of the greatest singers in our language.1 In accordance with this idea he drew up a scheme for four independent series of class lec tures, directed particularly to the systematic guidance of persons -- especially ladies -- who wished to extend the scope of their culture. There were to be schools of (1) English Liter ature, (2) the Household, (3) Natural Science, and (4) Art. Thirty lectures were to be given in each school, he to give those on English Lit erature. He hoped that he would be able to arrange for such series in Washington, Phila delphia, and Southern cities. This scheme is a striking anticipation of popular lectures that have been given in New York city during the past few years, as well as of the University Ex tension lectures since established at the Univer sity of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and other American universities. 1 Letters, p. 53. 210 SIDNEY LANIER The only part of the scheme that took shape was the Shakespeare course planned for the Peabody Institute. In addition to twenty-four lec tures by Lanier, two lectures were to be given by Prof. B. L. Gildersleeve, --" one on the Timon of Lucian, compared with Timon of Shakespeare, and one on Macbeth and Agamemnon; two on the State of Natural Science in Shakespeare's Time, by Prof. Ira Remsen; two on Religion in Shakespeare's Time, by Dr. H. B. Adams ; two readings from Marlowe's Faust and three lec tures on the Mystery Plays as illustrated by the Oberammergau Passion Play, by Prof. E. G. Daves; and three lectures on the Early English Comedy as illustrated by Gammer Gurton's Needle and Ralph Royster Doyster, by Col. Richard M. Johnston." Of these only Lanier's lectures were given, and they did not prove to be a financial success, although they accomplished much good in Bal timore. Published as they have been recently,1 they are among the most valuable aids in the' study of Lanier's personality and of his attitude to literature. It must be borne in mind that they were not written for publication, nor for an academic audience, and that the only proper way to estimate them is to compare them with 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 211 lectures of a similar kind, -- Lowell's Lowell Institute lectures, for instance. Viewed from this standpoint, one cannot tut marvel at the carefulness with which Lanier prepared his lec tures, and the vital interest he took in work which has been disagreeable to men of similar temperament. Any one who expects to find in them contributions to present day knowledge of the subjects touched upon will be disappointed; hut no one can read them without enjoying the poet's naive enthusiasm and his clear insight into things that many a plodder never sees, nor can he fail to be impressed with the modernness of his mind. He must have been a successful teacher, -- he uses every effort to fix the attention of his hearers, he summarizes frequently, illustrates, vitalizes his subject. There is evident throughout these lectures the most enthusiastic appreciation of literature and of its place in the life of the world. Few men ever enjoyed reading more than Lanier. He knew something of Stevenson's joy of being " rapt clean out of himself by a book," -- the process was " absorbing and voluptuous." And this enthusiasm he shared with all his hearers. After much criticism of the scientific type by followers of Arnold and Brunetiere, after many class-room lectures and recitations, in which the spiritual value of literature has been lost sight 212 SIDNEY LANIER of, it is altogether refreshing to read the almost childlike expressions of Lanier. One feels often that the worship of what he calls his " sweet masters" is overdone, and that he praises far too highly some obscure sonneteer ; but there is in his work the spirit of the romantic critic -- the zest of Charles Lamb and Hazlitt for the old masters. Lowell, speaking of a period in his own life when he was delivering his early lec tures at Lowell Institute, said: " Then I was at the period in life when thoughts rose in covies, ... a period of life when it does 'n't seem as if everything has been said ; when a man overesti mates the value of what specially interests him self, . . . when he conceives himself a mission ary, and is persuaded that he is saving his fellows from the perdition of their souls if he convert them from belief in some aesthetic heresy. That is the mood of mind in which one may read lectures with some assurance of success. . . . This is the pleasant peril of enthusiasm." There could not be a better description of Lanier's lec tures. Longfellow, referring to some lectures on Dante which he had repeated often, said: "It is become an old story to me. I am tired." Lanier knew nothing of this ennui. He fretted at times over the fact that he had to give to work of this kind the time he might have given to his poetry, but there is not in his lectures a TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 213 single note of weariness; there is always the freshness and exuberance of youth, the joy of discovery, of interpretation, of illuminating com ment. He had the power of making even the older English literature vital to a popular audience. An Anglo-Saxon poem was not to him primarily material for the study of philology, although he now and then tried to interest his hearers in the etymology of words -- it was a revelation of the life of a race in its childhood. While he lost in technical precision, 'he gave the listener a real grip on some old poem by which he could always remember it and relate it to other things. A few pages on " Beowulf," for instance, present ing some specially striking scenes therefrom in a translation that in rhythm and substance pre serves the spirit of the original, would incite the members of his audience to at least a literary study of the Anglo-Saxon epic. By contrasting " The Address of the Soul to the Dead Body" with " Hamlet," he gave his hearers some clue to its interpretation -- he related it to an elementary religious mood. Is not this passage calculated to make one realize the real meaning of " Beowulf," -- espe cially when accompanied by admirable transla tions ? " To our old ancestors there were many times 214 SIDNEY LANIER when Nature must have seemed a true Grendel's mother, a veritable hag, mindful of mischief; and these monsters are not silly inventions,-- they are true types, ideals, removed very far, if you please, yet born of the old struggle of man against the wild beast for his meat, against the stern earth .for his bread, against the cold that cracks his skin and wracks his bones, against the wind that whirls his ship over in the sea, the wave that drowns him, the lightning that con sumes him. ... " And so, as I said, there is to me an inde scribable pathos in these sombre pictures of Nature in our old Beowulf here, -- these drear marshes, these monster-haunted meres, that boil with blood and foam with tempests, these fastrooted, joyless woods that overlean the waters, these enormous, nameless beasts that lie along on promontories all day and wreak vengeance on ships at night -- have you not seen them, headlands running out into the sea like great beasts with their forepaws extended? And is it not a huge Gothic picture of the wind rushing down the windy nesse ... in the evening, and whelming the frail ships of the old Dane, the old Jute and Frisian and Saxon, in the sea? All these, I say, are mere outcroppings of the rude war which was not yet ended against Na ture, traces of a time when Nature was still a TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 215 savage Mother of Grendel, tearing and devour ing the sons of men." J Lanier believed strongly that the early Eng lish poems ought to be taught in schools and col leges. The following passage does not sound as revolutionary now as it did in 1879 : -- " Surely it is time our popular culture were cited into the presence of the Fathers. That we have forgotten their works is in itself matter of mere impiety which many practical persons would consider themselves entitled to dismiss as a purely sentimental crime; but ignorance of their ways goes to the very root of growth. " I count it a circumstance so wonderful as to merit some preliminary setting forth here, that with regard to the first seven hundred years of our poetry we English-speaking people appear never to have confirmed ourselves unto ourselves. While we often please our vanity with remark ing the outcrop of Anglo-Saxon blood in our modern physical achievements, there is certainly little in our present art of words to show a liter ary lineage running back to the same ancestry. Of course it is always admitted that there was an English poetry as old to Chaucer as Chaucer is to us; but it is admitted with a certain in clusive and amateur vagueness removing it out of the rank of facts which involve grave and im- 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, vol. i, p. 55. 216 SIDNEY LANIEE portant duties. We can neither deny the fact nor the strangeness of it, that the English poetry written between the time of Aldhelm and Csedmon in the seventh century and that of Chaucer in the fourteenth century has never yet taken its place by the hearths and in the hearts of the people whose strongest prayers are couched in its idioms. It is not found in the tatters of use, on the floors of our children's playrooms; there are no illuminated boy's editions of it; it is not on the booksellers' counters at Christmas; it is not studied in our common schools; it is not printed by our publishers; it does not lie even in the dusty corners of our bookcases; nay, the pious English scholar must actually send to Germany for Grrein's Bibliothek in order to get a compact reproduction of the body of Old Eng lish poetry. " One will go into few moderately appointed houses in this country without finding a Homer in some form or other; but it is probably far within the truth to say that there are not fifty copies of Beowulf in the United States. Or again, every boy, though far less learned than that erudite young person of Macaulay's, can give some account of the death of Hector; but how many boys -- or, not to mince matters, how many men -- in America could do more than TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 217 stare if asked to relate the death of Byrhtnoth ? Yet Byrhtnoth was a hero of our own England in the tenth century, whose manful fall is re corded in English words that ring on the soul like arrows on armor. Wliy do we not draw in this poem -- and its like -- with our mother's milk ? Why have we no nursery songs of Beo wulf and the Grendel? Why does not the seri ous education of every English-speaking boy commence, as a matter of course, with the AngloSaxon grammar? '' l There would come from such study a strength ening of English prose and a deepening of cul ture. He continues :-- "For the absence of this primal Anglicism from our modern system goes -- as was said -- to the very root of culture. The eternal and im measurable significance of that individuality in thought which flows into idiom in speech becomes notably less recognized among us. We do not bring with us out of our childhood the fibre of idiomatic English which our fathers bequeathed to us. A boy's English is diluted before it has be come strong enough for him to make up his mind clearly as to the true taste of it. Our literature needs Anglo-Saxon iron, -- there is no ruddiness 1 Music and Poetry, p. 136. This quotation is an expansion of one iu the lectures now under consideration. He evidently overstates hia point, but the passage suggests what the study of old English meant to Lanier himself. 218 SIDNEY LANIER in its cheeks, and everywhere a clear lack of the red corpuscles." Lanier was more thoroughly at home in the Elizabethan age, however. He reveled in its myriad-mindedness -- its adventures and exploits, its chivalry and romance. The sonnets especially appealed to him, for they abounded in conceits. One of the striking characteristics that he noted in the leading men of that age was the union of strength and tenderness. " All this love-making was manly," he says. " It was then as it is now, that the bravest are the tenderest. . . . Stout and fine Walter Raleigh pushes over to America, quite as ready to sigh a sonnet as to plant a col ony. Valorous Philip Sidney, who can write as dainty a sonnet as any lover of them all, can at the same time dazzle the stern eyes of warriors with deeds of manhood before Ziitphen and touch their hearts to pity and admiration as he offers the cup of water -- himself being grievously wounded and in a rage of thirst -- to the dying soldier whose necessity is greater than his. Men's minds in this time were employed with big ques tions ; the old theory of the universe is just losing its long hold upon the intellect, and people are busy with all space, trying to apprehend the re lation of their globe to the solar system. To all this ferment the desperate conflict of the Catho lic religion with the new form of faith now com- TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 219 ing in adds an element of stern strength; men are pondering not only the physical relation of the earth to the heavens, but the spiritual rela tion of the soul to heaven and hell. This is no dandy period." l " And if any one should say there is not time to read these poets," he says in a strain of ex cessive admiration, " I reply with vehemence that in any wise distribution of your moments, after you have read the Bible and Shakspere, you have no time to read anything until you have read these . . . old artists. They are so noble, so manful, so earnest; they have put into such perfect music that protective tenderness of the rugged man for the delicate woman which throbs all down the muscles of the man's life and' turns every deed of strength into a deed of love; they have set the woman, as woman, upon such ador able heights of worship, and by that act have so immeasurably uplifted the whole plane upon which society moves ; they have given to all ear nest men and strong lovers such a dear ritual and litany of chivalric devotion ; they have sung us such a high mass of constancy for our love; they have enlightened us with such celestial revelation of the possible Eden which the modern Adam and Eve may win back for themselves by faith ful and generous affection; that -- I speak it 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, vol. j, p. 168. 220 SIDNEY LANIER with reverence -- they have made another re ligion of loyal love and have given us a second Bible of womanhood." l Following his study of the sonnet-writers of the Elizabethan age, comes a somewhat technical study of the pronunciation of Shakespeare's time -- a restatement of Ellis's monumental work on that subject. His discussion of music in Shake speare's time has already been noticed. He next tried to reproduce for his class the domestic life of the age, commenting in full on the sermons, the plays, the customs of the time. In order to give unity to this study, he sketches in a some what fanciful way the boyhood of Shakespeare in Stratford and his early manhood in London. The most important part of the lectures, how ever, is his discussion of the growth of Shake speare's mind and art, a study made possible by recent publications of the New Shakespeare So ciety. Lanier never wrote any more vigorous or eloquent prose than these chapters, although it must be said that he makes too much of the dramatist's personality as revealed in his plays. Two passages are quoted to indicate in the first place the standpoint from which he studied the plays, and in the second place to show his concep tion of the moral height attained by Shakespeare as compared with contemporary dramatists : -- 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, vol. i. p. 7. TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 221 " The keenest scholarship, the freest discus sion, the widest search for external evidence, the most careful checking of conclusions by the Metrical Tests one after another, have all been applied to establish this general succession in time of these three plays ; 1 and it is not in the least necessary to commit ourselves to the exact years here given in order to feel sure that these three plays represent three perfectly distinct epochs, separated from each other by several years, in Shakspere's spiritual existence. . . . "In short, the young eye already sees the twist and cross of life, but sees it as in a dream : and those of you who are old enough to look hack upon your own young dream of life will recognize instantly that the dream is the only term which represents that unspeakable seeing of things, without in the least realizing them, which brings about that the youth admits all we tell -- we older ones -- about life and the future, and, admitting it fully, nevertheless goes on right in the face of it to act just as if he knew no thing of it. In short, he sees as in a dream. It is the Dream Period. But here suddenly the dream is done, the real pinches the young dreamer and he awakes. This, too, is typical. Every man re members the time in his own life, somewhere from near thirty to forty, when the actual oppo- 1 The Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and The Tempest. 222 SIDNEY LANIER sitions of life came out before Mm and refused to be danced over and stared him grimly in the face : God or no God, faith or no faith, death or no death, honesty or policy, men good or men evil, the Church holy or the Church a frand, life worth living or life not worth living, -- this, I say, is the shock of the real, this is the Hamlet period in every man's life. " And finally, -- to finish, this outline, -- just as the man settles all these questions shocked upon him by the real, will be his Ideal Period. If he finds that the proper management of these grim oppositions of life is by goodness, by humil ity, by love, by the fatherly care of a Prospero for his daughter Miranda, by the human tender ness of a Prospero finding all his enemies in his power and forgiving their bitter injuries and practicing his art to right the wrongs of men and to bring all evil beginnings to happy issues, then his Ideal Period is fitly represented by this heavenly play, in which, as you recall its plot, you recognize all these elements. Shakspere has unquestionably emerged from the cold, paralyz ing doubts of Hamlet into the human tenderness and perfect love and faith of The Tempest, a faith which can look clearly upon all the wretched crimes and follies of the crew of time, and still be tender and loving and faithful. In short, he has learned to manage the Hamlet antagonisms, TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 223 to adjust the moral oppositions, with the same artistic sense of proportion with which we saw him managing and adjusting the verse-oppositions and the figure-oppositions." l " Surely the genius which in the heat and struggle of ideal creation has the enormous con trol and temperance to arrange and adjust in harmonious proportions all these aesthetic an tagonisms of verse, surely that is the same genius which in the heat and battle of life will arrange the moral antagonisms with similar self-control and temperance. Surely there is a point of technic to which the merely clever artist may reach, hut beyond which he may never go, for lack of moral insight; surely your Robert Greene, your Kit Marlowe, your Tom Nash, clever poets all, may write clever verses and arrange clever dramas; but if we look at their own flippant lives and pitiful deaths and their small ideals in their dramas, and compare them, technic for technic, life for life, morality for morality, with this majestic Shakspere, who starts in a dream, who presently encounters the real, who after a while conquers it to its proper place (for Shak spere, mind you, does not forget the real; he will not be a beggar nor a starveling; we have docu ments which show how he made money, how he bought land at Stratford; we have Richard 1 Shakspere and Sis Forerunners, vol. ii, p. 260. 224 SIDNEY LANIER Quincy's letter to 'my loweinge good frend and contreyman Mr. Wm. Shakspere, deliver thees,' asking the loan of thirty pounds ' uppon Mr. Bushells and my securytee,' showing that Shakspere had money to lend), and finally turns it into the ideal in The Tempest; if we compare, I say, Greene, Marlowe, Nash, with Shakspere, surely the latter is a whole heaven above them in the music of his verse, as well as in the temperance and prudence of his life, as well also as in the superb height of his later moral ideals. Surely, in fine, there is a point of mere technic in art beyond which nothing but moral greatness can attain, because it is at this point that the moral range, the religious fervor, the true seership and prophethood of the poet, come in and lift him to higher views of all things." l Lanier frequently indulged in little homilies, -- " preachments " Thackeray would call them. They were lectures on life as well as on literature in its more technical sense. Two passages in dicate a poet's feeling for nature, especially his love of trees : -- " But besides the phase of Nature-communion which we call physical science, there is the other, artistic phase. Day by day we find that the mys tic influence of Nature on our human personality 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, vol. ii, j>. 324. TEACHEE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 225 grows more intense and individual. Who can walk alone in your beautiful Druid Hill Park, among those dear and companionable oaks, with out a certain sense of being in the midst of a sweet and noble company of friends ? Who has not shivered, wandering among these trees, with a certain sense that the awful mysteries which the mother earth has brought with her out of the primal time? are being sucked up through those tree-roots and poured upon us out of branch and leaf in vague showers of suggestions that Lave no words in any language 1 Who, in some day when life has seemed too bitter, when man has seemed too vile, when the world has seemed all old leather and brass, when some new twist of life has seemed to wrench the soul beyond all straightening, -- who has not flown, at such a time, to the deep woods, and leaned against a tree, and felt his big arms outspread like the arms of the preacher that teaches and blesses, and slowly absorbed his large influences, and so recovered one's self as to one's fellow-men, and gained repose from the ministrations of the Oak and the Pine?" 1 " In the sweet old stories of ascetics who by living pure and simple lives in the woods came to understand the secrets of Nature, the con versation of trees, the talk of birds, do we not 'ere and His Forerunners, vol. i, p. 72. 226 SIDNEY LANIER find but the shadows of this modern communion with Nature to keep ourselves simple and pure, to cultivate our moral sense up to that point of insight that we see all Nature alive with energy, that we hear the whole earth singing like a flock of birds, yet so that we remember Death with Mr. Darwin, so that nothing is any more com monplace, so that death has its place and life its place, so that even a hasty business walk along the street to pay a bill is a walk in fairyland amidst unutterable wonders as long as the sky is above and the trees in sight, -- in other words, o " ' to be natural . . . natural in our art, natural in our dress, natural in our behavior, natural in our affections, -- is not that a modern consumma tion of culture ? For to him who rightly under stands Nature she is even more than Ariel and Ceres to Prospero; she is more than a servant conquered like Caliban, to fetch wood for us: she is a friend and comforter; and to that man the cares of the world are but a fabulous Mid summer NigJifs Dream, to smile at -- he is ever in sight of the morning and in hand-reach of God." i The lectures close, as they began, with an estimate of the value of the poet to the world and with a word of greeting to his audience: -- " Just as our little spheres of activity in life * Shdkspere and His Forerunners, vol. i, p. 73. TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 227 surely combine into some greater form or pur pose which none of us dream of, and which no one can see save some unearthly spectator that stands afar off in space and looks upon the whole of things, -- I was impressed anew with the fact that it is the poet who must get up to this point and stand off in thought at the great distance of the ideal, look upon the complex swarm of pur poses as upon these dancing gnats, and find out for man the final form and purpose of man's life. In short, -- and here I am ending this course with the idea with which I began it, -- in short, it is the poet who must sit at the centre of things here, as surely as some great One sits at the centre of things Yonder, and who must teach us how to control, with temperance and perfect art and unforgetfulness of detail, all our oppositions, so that we may come to say with Aristotle, at last, that poetry is more philosophical than philo sophy and more historical than history. " Permit me to thank you earnestly for the patience with which you have listened to many details that must have been dry to you; and let me sincerely hope that, whatever may be your oppositions in life, whether of the verse kind or the moral kind, you may pass, like Shakspere, through these planes of the Dream Period and the Real Period, until you have reached the ideal plane from which you clearly see that wherever 228 SIDNEY LANIER Prospero's art and Prospero's love and Prospero's forgiveness of injuries rule in behavior, there a blue sky and a quiet heaven full of sun and stars are shining over every tempest." 1 One of the things which enabled Lanier to produce the effect that he did in teaching liter ature was the fact that he was an excellent reader. He had a singularly clear and resonant voice and a power to enter so into the spirit of a work of art that he had no trouble in keeping a large audience thoroughly interested. The fol lowing account by one of his hearers, written a short time after his death, gives the effect pro duced by his readings: -- " Mr. Lanier did not lay claim to any extra ordinary power as a reader; indeed, he once, when first requested to instruct a class of ladies in poetic lore, modestly demurred, on the ground of his inability to read aloud. ' I cannot read,' he said simply; ' I have never tried.' All, how ever, who afterwards heard him read such scenes from Shakespeare as he selected to illustrate his lectures were thrilled by his vivid realization of that great dramatist. His voice, though distinct, was never elevated above a moderate tone; he rarely made use of a gesture; certainly, there 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, vol. ii, p. 328. I have quoted freely from these lectures because they are in a form not easily accessible to the general reader, and because, more than any other of his prose works, they reveal the inner man. TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 229 was no approach to action or to the adaptation of his voice to the varied characters of the play; yet many scenes which I have heard him read, I can hardly believe that I have never seen produced on the stage, so truly and vividly did he succeed in presenting them to my imagination. At the time I used to wonder in what element lay the charm. Partly, of course, in his own profound apprecia tion of the author's meaning, partly also in his clear and correct emphasis, but most of all in the wonderful word-painting with which, by a few masterly strokes, he placed the whole scene be fore the mental vision. In theatrical representa tion, a man with a bush of thorn and lantern must ' present moonshine' and another, with a bit of plaster, the wall which divides Pyramus from his Thisbe ; but in Mr. Lanier's readings, a poet's quick imagination brought forth in full perfection all the accessories of the play. When he read, in the Johns Hopkins lecture hall, that scene from ' Pericles' in which Cerimon restores Thaisa's apparently lifeless body to animation, a large audience listened with breathless atten tion. His graphic comments caused the whole rapidly moving scene to engrave itself on the memory." x Such readings and lectures are treasured in the minds of those who heard them. In addition 1 Letter of Mrs. Arthur W. Machen to the author. 230 SIDNEY LANIER to Ms work at the Peabody Institute Lanier taught in various schools, and so extended his influence. It is easy to overstate the good he accomplished, but it is within bounds to say that his efforts to develop the culture life of the city bore fruit, and that he has his place among those who have contributed to the new Balti more. He shared in all the advantages made pos sible by the philanthropy of George Peabody and Johns Hopkins, and in such aesthetic influ ences as the Allston Art Association and the Walters collection of French and Spanish pic tures. In turn he promoted a love of music and poetry. The successive invasions of Baltimore by people from New England, Virginia, and Georgia had added a cosmopolitan and cultured society. By a wide circle Lanier was much heloved. His admiration for the city and his ideals for its future are well expressed in his " Ode to the Johns Hopkins University: " -- And here, O finer Pallas, long remain, -- Sit on these Maryland hills, and fix thy reign, And frame a fairer Athens than of yore In these blest bounds of Baltimore. . . . Yea, make all ages native to our time, Till thou the freedom of the city grant To each most antique habitant Of Fame,-- . . . And many peoples call from shore to shore, The world has bloomed again at Baltimore ! CHAPTER IX LECTURER AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY THE Peabody lectures led to the appointment of Lanier as lecturer in English literature at Johns Hopkins University. As early as the fall of 1876, he had written to President Gilman, asking for a catalogue of the institution. In answer to his first letter of inquiry, President Gilman, who had followed with interest his Centennial poem, and had been from the first an admirer of his poetry, requested an interview for the purpose of discussing with him the possibility of identify ing him with the University. Lanier had then talked with him about the advisability of estab lishing a chair of music and poetry, a plan which appealed to Dr. Oilman. In a letter to his brother he writes of this interview: " He invited me to tea and gave up his whole evening to discussing ways and means for connecting me officially with the University." He had been delayed in sug gesting the matter to him before by his " igno rance as to whether I had pursued any special course of study in life." Dr. Gilman recom mended to the trustees that Lanier be appointed 232 SIDNEY LANIER to such a chair, and the latter looked forward to a " speedy termination of his wandering and a pleasant settlement for a long time." For some reason, however, the plan did not matei'ialize, and we find Lanier a year later writing a letter applying for a fellowship : -- WASHINGTON, D. C., Sept. 26, 1877. DEAR ME. GILMAN, -- From a published re port of your very interesting address I learn that there is now a vacant Fellowship. Would I be able to discharge the duties of such a position ? My course of study would be : first, constant research in the physics of musical tone ; second, several years' devotion to the acquirement of a thoroughly scientific general view of Mineral ogy, Botany, and Comparative Anatomy ; third, French and German Literature. I fear this may seem a nondescript and even flighty process; but it makes straight towards the final result of all my present thought, and I am tempted, by your great kindness, to believe that you would have confidence enough in me to await whatever devel opment should come of it. Sincerely yours, SIDNEY LANIER. Siicli a plan of study did not fit in with the scheme of graduate courses, and so he was not AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 233 awarded it. President Oilman had, however, heard with much satisfaction Lanier's lectures at Mrs. Bird's, and had cooperated with him in the series of lectures at the Peabody Institute. Fi nally, the trustees, convinced of Lanier's scholar ship, and conscious of his growing influence in Baltimore, agreed to his appointment as lecturer in English literature, and Dr. Gilman had the rare pleasure of announcing the fact on the poet's thirty-seventh birthday -- February 3, 1879. Lanier responded in a letter, indicative at once of the spirit in which he received the appoint ment and of his high personal regard for the president of the University. No story of Lanier's life would be adequate that did not pay tribute to the uniform kindness and thoughtful consid eration of the poet's welfare manifested by Dr. Gilman. He has his place in that inner circle of Lanier's friends who meant much to him in open ing up new fields of endeavor, and who after his death zealously promoted his fame. Lanier occupies a place in the history of Johns Hopkins University that has perhaps not been fully appreciated. His appointment was not a merely nominal one, for he threw himself with zeal and energy into the life of the University. He breathed its atmosphere. He was a personal friend of the president, of nearly every member of the faculty, and of the university officers. He 234 SIDNEY LANIER caught its spirit and grew with it into a real sense of the ideals of University work. While his poem written on the fourth anniversary of the opening of the University, is not one of his best, it indi cates the great love that he had for the institu tion : -- How tall among her sisters, and how fair, -- How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair As dawn! . . . Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame. What the University meant to Lanier can be realized only by those who have noted the eager spirit with which he responded to every great in fluence brought into his life, and who realize what " those early days of unbounded enthusiasm and unfettered ideality," characteristic of the newly founded University, meant to the Ameri can educational system. Her sister institutions have in later days gone far beyond Johns Hopkins in equipment and in opportunities for re search, but students of American education can never forget the pioneer work of the University in the line of graduate study. Fortunately its benefactor had left a board of trustees absolutely untrammeled by any condition or reservation, political, religious, or literary. A body of un usually strong men, they were fortunate in secur ing the services of Daniel Coit Oilman, whose AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 235 experience in educational matters had commended itself to the judgment of the four leading uni versity presidents of the country to such an ex tent that each of them without consulting with the others advised his election. The newly elected president and the trustees were accessible to ideas, and finally decided that the wisest thing that could be done was to make possible what had been previously wanting in American univer sities, a graduate school with high standards. American professors had studied in German uni versities and distinguished European scholars had been called to chairs in American univer sities, but neither had succeeded in essentially modifying the type of higher education. Dr. Gilman himself had tried in vain to secure the opportunity for graduate work in this country. Now, without any traditions to bind them, the organizers of the University had the opportunity " which marked the entrance of the higher edu cation in America upon a new phase in its devel opment." " The great work of Hopkins," said President Eliot at the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation, " is the creation of a school of graduate studies, which not only has been in itself a strong and potent school, but which has lifted every other university in the country in its departments of arts and sciences." The trustees were very wise in choosing as 236 SIDNEY LANIEB the first faculty men who had the training and the aspiration to make this work possible: the " soaring-genius'd Sylvester," -- That, earlier, loosed the knot great Newton tied, And flung the door of Fame's locked temple wide; Gildersleeve, who combined the best classical traditions of the old South with recent methods of German scholarship; Morris, who came from Oxford, "devout, learned, enthusiastic;" accom plished Martin, who " brought to this country new methods of physiological inquiry;" Row land, " honored in every land, peer of the greatest physicists of our day;" and Adams, "suggestive, industrious, inspiring, ductile, beneficent," who, though at first holding a subordinate position, built up a department of history and economics which has had a potent influence throughout the South, and indeed throughout the country.1 These men did much original work themselves, and put before the public in popular articles and scien tific journals the ideals of their several depart ments. It is noteworthy that for every department a special scientific journal was established. The library, though small, was composed of special working collections and of foreign periodicals, which, when supplemented by the Peabody Li- 1 The account of the first faculty is based largely on exPresident Gilman's article, " The Launching' of a University," in Scribner's Magazine, March, 1902. AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 237 brary, gave an opportunity for the most diligent research. The students, who came from all parts of the country, were shown " how to discover the limits of tbe known ; how to extend, even by mi nute accictions, the realm of knowledge ; how to cooperate with other men in the prosecution of inquiry." Reviewing1 the work done by the fac ulty and students of the University, the leading scientific journal of England said, July 12,1883: " We should like to see such an account of ori ginal work done and to be done issuing each year from the laboratories of Oxford and Cambridge." In addition to the regular courses offered by members of the faculty, the University provided for series of lectures to be given by distinguished scholars from both American and European uni versities. These lectures, suggested by those given at tbe College de France, appealed at once to the University community and to the citizens of Baltimore. In the course of the first five years they had the chance to hear Lord Kelvin, Free man, Bryce, Von Hoist, Edmund Gosse, Wil liam James, Hiram Corson, and shorter series of lectures by Phillips Brooks, Dean Stanley, and others. The most notable of all were delivered in 1877 by Lowell and Child, while at the same time Charles Eliot Norton was lecturing at the Peabody Institute, --" the three wise men of the East." 238 SIDNEY LANIER From far the sages saw, from far they came And ministered to her. Lowell lectured on Romance poetry, with Dante as the central theme, while Child had " a four weeks' triumph " in Chaucer, producing a cor ner on that poet's works in all the bookstores of the city. Readers of Lowell's letters will remember the joy that he had in renewing his association with Child and in forming new ac quaintances in the circles of Johns Hopkins and Baltimore. Unfortunately, Lanier was at that time in Florida, seeking the restoration of his health, and so missed the opportunity which he would have coveted, of hearing, and of being closely associated with, these eminent scholars. To what degree was Lanier a scholar, worthy to be named in connection with such men ? There are some who would deny him such a rank; and indeed, when one finds in his books inaccuracies, conceits, and hasty generalizations, one is apt to grow impatient with him. But there are points which connect him with the modern English scholar. In the first place, he was a very hard and systematic student. He had none of the slipshod methods of many men of his type. He had respect for the most recent investiga tions in his special line of work, -- he knew the value of scholarship. The Peabody Library en abled him to have at hand the most recent AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 239 publications of the learned societies, and there is no question that he steadfastly endeavored to keep in touch, with the authorities in any special field of investigation in which he happened to be interested. The footnotes in the " Science of English Vers^ " and in the Shakespeare lectures indicate that he had a knowledge of the bibli ography of any subject he touched. Further more, he consulted with men who were living in Baltimore and had the special information that he desired. While writing the " Science of English Verse," he often talked with Professor Gildersleeve as to Greek metrics. " We never became intimate," says the latter, " and yet we were good friends and there was much commoii ground. Our talks usually turned on matters of literary form. He-was eager, receptive, reaching out to all the knowable, transmuting all that he learned. He would have me read Greek poetry aloud to him for the sake of the rhythm and the musical effect." a When the book was fin ished, he wrote to Mr. Scribner : " I have had no opportunity whatever to submit this book to any expert friend and have often wished that I might do so before it goes finally forth, in order that I might avail myself of any suggestions which would be likely to occur to another mind, approaching the book from another direction^ 1 Letter to the author. 240 SIDNEY LANIER This being impossible, it has occurred to me that perhaps you have sent the manuscript to be read by some specialist in these matters, and that possibly some such suggestions might be of fered by him. Pray let me know if you think this worthwhile." On questions of Anglo-Saxon he conferred with Professor A. S. Cook, at that time instructor in the University, and on matters of scientific interest, such as he pursued in his investigation into the physics of sound, he sought advice from the scientists of the University, even taking courses with them. For Child, Furnivall, Hales, Grosart, and other workers in the field of English literature he had the greatest reverence. In his preface to the " Boy's Percy," in commenting on the accu racy of modern scholarship, he speaks of the " clear advance in men's conscience as to literary relations of this sort . . . the perfect delicacy which is now the rule among men of letters, the scrupulous fidelity of the editor to his text. . . . I think there can be no doubt that we owe this in estimable uplifting of exact statement and pure truth in men's esteem to the same vigorous growth in the general spirit of man which has flowed forth, among other directions, into the wondrous modern development of physical sci ence. Here the minutest accuracy in observing and the utmost faithfulness in reporting have AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 241 been found in the outset to be absolutely essen tial, have created habits and requirements of conscience which extend themselves into all other relations." It may be seen from such quotations that Lanier had respect for the most minute investigations ; he had no tirades to make against the peeping and botanizing spirit that many men cf his type have found in the modern scholar. Speaking of the. monumental work of Ellis on the pronunciation of English in the time of Shakespeare, he pays tribute to his " wonder ful skill, patience, industry, keenness, fairness, and learning." Furthermore, Lanier himself had the spirit of research and original work which we have seen was characteristic of Johns Hopkins University. He not only had the desire to investigate, but he also gave form and shape to his investigations. In this he was in striking contrast with many Southern scholars. Joseph Le Conte, in his re cent autobiography, tells of a friend of his who had the making of a great scientist. He met him at Flat Eock in 1858, and heard him talk most intelligently on the origin of species. At that early date this South Carolina planter had Darwin's idea. " Why did n't he publish it ? " asks Le Conte, the answer to which question leads him to comment on the lack of productive scholars in the South. " Nothing could be more 242 SIDNEY LANIBE remarkable than the wide reading, the deep re flection, the refined culture, and the originality of thought and observation characteristic of them, and yet the idea of publication never even enters their minds. What right has any one to publish unless it is something of the greatest importance, something that would revolutionize thought ? " Now Lanier was filled with the spirit of making contributions, however insignificant, to the de velopment of scholarship in some one direction. He restates, for instance, with remarkable insight and conciseness, the investigations of Fleay, Ed ward Dowden, and other members of the New Shakespeare Society, as to the metrical develop ment seen in Shakespeare's plays. But he adds to their investigations a suggestion as to the greater freedom with which Shakespeare shifted the ac cent in his later plays : " Several reasons may be urged for the belief that this might prove one of the most valuable of all metrical tests. In fact, when we consider that the matter of rhythmic accent is one which affects every bar of each line, while the four tests just now applied affect only the last bar of each line; and when we consider further that the real result of this freedom in using the rhythmic accent is to vary the mono tonous regularity of the regular system with the charm of those subtle rhythms which we employ in familiar discourse, so that the habit AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 243 of such freedom might grow with the greatest uniformity upon a poet, and might thus pre sent us with a test of such uniform development as to he reliable for nicer discrimination than any of the more regular tests can be pushed to, -- it would seem fair to expect confirmation of great importance from a properly constructed Table of Abnormal Rhythmic Accents in Shakspere." Lanier not only made these investigations him self, but incited his students to do so, especially those in the smaller classes of the University. A good illustration is in the suggestion he made to a class that they might together work out some interesting etymological and dialectical points. " Why should not some of the intelligent ladies of this class," he asks, "go to work and arrange the facts -- as I have called them -- so that scholars might have before them a comprehen sive view of all the word-changes which have occurred since the earliest Anglo-Saxon works were written ? The other day a yo ung lady -- one of the very brightest young women I have ever met -- asked me to give her a vocation. She said she had studied a good many things, of one sort or another ; that she was merely going over ground which thousands of others had trodden ; that she wanted some original work, some method by which she could contribute substantially to 244 SIDNEY LANIER the world's stock of knowledge: having this kind of outlet she felt sure she had a genuine desire, a working desire, to go forward. Well, of the numerous plans which I can imagine for women to pursue, I have suggested to you one which would combine pleasure with profitable work in a most charming manner. Suppose that some lady -- or better a club of ladies -- should set out to note down the changes in spelling -- and if possible in pronunciation -- which have oc curred in every word now remaining to us from the Anglo-Saxon tongue. The task would not be a difficult one. All that would be required would be to portion out to each member of the club a specific set of books to be read, each set consisting of some books in Anglo-Saxon, some in Middle English, and some in Modern English. Each member would take her books and fall to reading. As she would come to each word she would write it down; and whenever she would happen on the same word in a book of a later century she would write it down under the first one ; if she came upon the same word in a book of a still later century she would write it down under the other two, and so on. As each member of the club would rapidly accumulate material, the whole body might meet once a month to collate and arrange the results. In this way a pursuit which would soon become perfectly fascinating AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 245 would in no long time collect material for a thor ough and systematic view of the growth of Eng lish words for the last thousand years. The most interesting questions concerning the wonderful and subtle laws of word-change might then be solved." 1 In his zeal for publishing and editing books he conceived of a rather quixotic plan for start ing a publishing house. In a letter written June 8, 1879, to his brother, Lanier urges him to come to Baltimore and go into the publishing business with him. They can then both become writers, and thus resume the plan of working to gether that they had formed just after the war. Lanier himself expects to send forth at least two books a year for the next ten years. " These are to be works, not of one season, but -- if pop ular at all -- increasing in value with each year. Besides these works on language and literature and the science of verse, -- which I hope will be standard ones, -- my poems are to be printed. ... If you would only be my publisher! In deed, if we could be a firm together! I have many times thought that ' Lanier Brothers, Pub lishers,' might be a strong house, particularly as to the Southern States." He then outlines his scheme in detail: they would need only an office, a clerk and a porter, as they could have their 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, vol. i, p. 134. 246 SIDNEY LAMER printing done elsewhere. He closes with a strong appeal to him to leave the South, inasmuch as political conditions at that time seemed to render the future of that section extremely doubtful. A still more noteworthy characteristic of Lanier's scholarship is the modernness of his work. It is a striking fact that every subject he wrote about has more and more engaged the attention of scholars since his time. One may not agree with any of his ideas, and may be convinced of the superficiality of his treatment of litera ture, but there is no question of the insight manifested by him in seizing upon those subjects that have been of notable interest to recent scholars. When he lectured about Shakespeare, for instance, he did not indulge in any of the moralizing that had been characteristic of Ger man commentators. On the other hand, he put himself in thorough accord with the work outlined by Dr. Furnivall and his fellow workers in their efforts to study and interpret Shakespeare as a whole. " The first necessity," said Dr. Furnivall in the introduction to the Leopold Shakespeare (1877), " is to regard Shakespeare as a whole, his works as a living organism, each a member of one created unity, the whole a tree of healing and of comfort to the nations, a growth from small beginnings to mighty ends." And again: " As the growth is more and more closely watched and AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 247 discerned, we shall' more and more clearly see that his metre, his words, his grammar and syn tax, move but with the deeper changes of mind and soul of which, they are outward signs, and that all the faculties of the man went onward together. . . . This subject of the growth, the oneness of Shakespeare ... is the special busi ness of the present, the second school of Victo rian students . . . as antiquarian illustration, emendation, ard verbal criticism were of the first school. The work of the first school we have to carry on, not to leave undone; the work of our own second school we have to do." Into this study, thus outlined by the founder of the New Shakespeare Society, Lanier threw himself with unabated zeal. The fact is all the more remarkable when we compare his writing on Shakespeare with Swin burne's book published during the same year. Swinburne has only words of contempt for the investigations of the New Shakespeare Society, whom he characterizes as " learned and laborious men who could hear only with their fingers. They will pluck out the heart, not of Hamlet's, but of Shakespeare's mystery by the means of a metrical test; and this test is to be applied by a purely arithmetical process. . . . Every man, woman, and child born with five fingers on each hand was henceforward better qualified as a critic 248 SIDNEY LANIER than any poet or scholar of time past." He calls them " metre-mongers " and the " bastard brood of scribblers." Lanier, however, while carefully avoiding the methods and principles of a mere dry-as-dust, spiritualizes all their facts, and works out in passages of remarkable beauty and elo quence the growth of Shakespeare's mind and art. To Lanier a metrical test or a date is no insig nificant thing. " Many a man," he says, " may feel inclined to say, Why potter about your dates and chronologies ? . . . But it so happens that here a whole view of the greatest mind the hu man race has yet evolved hangs essentially upon dates." Lanier's reverence for exact scholarship and his application of seemingly technical stand ards do not interfere at all with his deeper appreciation of Shakespeare's plays. While he overstated the autobiographical value of a chro nological study of the plays, -- reading into this study meanings that are not warranted by the facts, -- it must be said that it is difficult to find in the writings of Americans on Shakespeare more significant passages than chapters xx--xxiv of " Shakspere and His Forerunners." Other illustrations of the modernness of La nier's scholarly work are easy to cite. His plan for the publication of a book of Elizabethan son nets, while not realized by him, has been carried out during the past year in a far more extensive AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 249 and scholarly way" than he could have done it by Mr. Sidney Lee. In the light of the recent scholar's investigation, many of Lanier's ideas with regard to the autobiographical value of the sonnets vanish, but his insight into the need of the study of the Elizabethan sonnets is none the less notable. He was the first American to indicate the necessity for the study of the novel as a form of literature that was worthy of serious thought. Lecture courses and books on the novel have multiplied at a rapid rate during the past decade. Whatever may be one's idea of the permanent value of the " Science of English Verse," it is evident that it was a pioneer book in a field which has been much cultivated within recent years. The thesis of the book will be discussed in a later chapter ; here it needs to be said that it is one of the best pieces of original work yet produced .by an English scholar in America, -- in it are seen at their best the qualities that have been noted as distinctive in the author's work. All these very essential characteristics of a scholar Lanier had. He had not the time to secure results from the plans that he clearly saw. He was moving in the right direction. No scholar should ever speak of him but with reverent lips. Without the training, or the equipment, or the time, of more fortunate scholars of our own day, he should be an inspiration to all men who have 250 SIDNEY LANIER scholarly ideals. If not a great scholar himself, he wanted to be one, and he had the finest ap preciation of all who were. And besides, did he not have something which is often lacking in scholars ? There is more science, more criticism now in American universities, but it would be well to keep in view the ideals of men who saw the spiritual significance of scholarship. Pre sident Gihnan realized this when he wrote to Lanier: " I think your scheme (of winter lec tures) may be admirably worked in, not only with our major and minor courses in English, but with all our literary courses, French and German, Latin and Greek. The teachers of these sub. jects pursue chiefly language courses. We need among us some one like you, loving literature and poetry, and treating it in such a way as to enlist and inspire many students. ... I think your amis and your preparation admirable." Dr. Gilman refers here to a scheme for a course in English literature outlined by the poet in the summer of 1879. Lanier indicated three distinct courses of study which would tend to give to students (1) a vocabulary of idiomatic Eng lish words and phrases, (2) a stock of illustra tive ideas, (3) acquaintance with modern literary forms. To secure the first point, he suggests that students should read with a view to gathering strong and homely English words and phrases AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 251 from a study of autHors ranging from the Scotch poets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to Swift and Emerson. To secure ideas, the student should study systems of thought, ancient and modern. " The expansion of mental range, as well as special facilities in expression, attainable by such a course, cannot be too highly estimated." Under the third head he suggests the study of various forms of writing,--an idea which has been carried out in recent years. The ultimate end of all this study, however, is " the spiritual consola tion and refreshment of literature when the day's work is over, the delight of sitting with a favor ite poet or essayist at evening, the enlargement of sympathy, derivable from powerful individual presentations such as Shakespeare's or George Eliot's; the gentle influences of Sir Thomas Browne or Burton or Lamb or Hood, the re pose of Wordsworth, the beauty of Keats, the charm of Tennyson should be brought out so as to initiate friendships between special students and particular authors, which may be carried on through life." * In another letter he wrote still further of his plans, clearly distinguishing between the popular lectures and the more technical work of the Uni versity class-room. It is a long letter, but gives so well Lanier's idea of his work in the Univer- 1 The Independent, March 18, 1886. 252 SIDNEY LANIER sity and his plans for the future that it serves better than much comment: -- 180 ST. PATO STKEET, BALTIMORE, MD., July 13, 1870. MY DEAR MB. GILMAN, -- I see, from your letter, that I did not clearly explain my scheme of lectures. The course marked " Class Lectures " is meant for advanced students, and involves the hardest kind of University work on their part. Perhaps you will best understand the scope of the tasks which this course will set before the student by reading the inclosed theses which I should dis tribute among the members of the class as soon as I should have discovered their mental leanings and capacities sufficiently, and which I should require to be worked out by the end of the scho lastic year. I beg you to read these with some care: I send only seven of them, but they will be sufficient to show you the nature of the work which I propose to do with the University stu dent. I should like my main efforts to take that direction ; I wish to get some Americans at hard work in pure literature; and will be glad if the public lectures in Hopkins Hall shall be merely accessory to my main course. With this view, as you look over the accompanying theses, please observe : -- 1. That each of these involves original research AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 253 and will -- if properly carried out -- constitute a genuine contribution to modern literary scholar ship ; 2. That they are so arranged as to fall in with various other studies and extend their range, -- for example, the first one being suitable to a student of philosophy who is pursuing AngloSaxon, the second to one who is studying the Transition Period of English, the sixth to one who is studying Elizabethan English, and so on ; 3. That each one necessitates diligent study of some great English work, not as a philological collection of words, but as pure literature; and 4. That they keep steadily in view, as their ultimate object, that strengthening of manhood, that enlarging of sympathy, that glorifying of moral purpose, which the student unconsciously gains, not from any direct didacticism, but from this constant association with our finest ideals and loftiest souls. Thus JOTI see that while the course of " Class Lectures " submitted to you nominally centres about the three plays of Shakspere 1 therein named, it really takes these for texts, and in volves, in the way of commentary and of thesis, the whole range of English poetry. In fact I have designed it as a thorough preparation for the serious study of the poetic art in its whole 1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and The Tempest. 254 SIDNEY LANIEE outcome, hoping that, if I should carry it out successfully, the Trustees might find it wise next year to create either a Chair of Poetry or a per manent lectureship covering the field above indi cated. It is my fervent belief that to take classes of young men and to preach them the gospel according-to-Poetry is to fill the most serious gap in our system of higher education; I think one can already perceive a certain narrowing of sym pathy and -- what is even worse -- an unsymmetric development of faculty, both intellectual and moral, from a too exclusive devotion to Science which Science itself would be the first to condemn. As to the first six class lectures on " The Phys ics and Metaphysics of Poetry:" they unfold my system of English Prosody, in which I should thoroughly drill every student until he should be able to note down, in musical signs, the rhythm of any English poem. This drilling would con tinue through the whole course, inasmuch as I regard a mastery of the principles set forth in those lectures as vitally important to all syste matic progress in the understanding and enjoy ment of poetry. I should have added, apropos of this class course, that there ought to be one examination each week, to every two lectures. In the first interview we had, after my appoint- AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVEBSITY 255 ment, it was your intention to place this study among those required by the University for a degree. I hope sincerely you have not abandoned this idea; and the course outlined in " Class lectures'' forwarded to you the other day, and in the theses of which I send the first seven here with, seems to me the best to begin with. If it should be made a part of the " Major Course in English " (where it seems properly to belong), I could easily arrange a simpler and less arduous modification of it for the corresponding " Minor Course." I am so deeply interested in this matter -- of making a finer fibre for all our young American manhood by leading, our youth in proper rela tions with English poetry -- that at the risk of consuming your whole vacation with reading this long and unconscionable letter I will mention that I have nearly completed three works which are addressed to the practical accomplishment of the object named, by supplying a wholly differ ent method of study from that mischievous one which has generally arisen from a wholly mis taken use of the numerous " Manuals " of Eng lish literature. These works are my three text books : (1) " The Science of English Verse," in which the student's path is cleared of a thousand errors and confusions which have obstructed this study for a long time, by a very simple system 256 SIDNEY LANIER founded upon the physical relations of sound; (2) " From Csedmon to Chaucer," in which I pre sent all the most interesting Anglo-Saxon poems remaining to us, in a form which renders their literary quality appreciable 'by all students, whether specially pursuing Old English or not, thus placing these poems where they ought always to have stood, as a sort of grand and simple vestibule through which the later mass of Eng lish poetry is to be approached; and (3) my " Chaucer," which I render immediately enjoy able, without preliminary preparation, by an inter lined glossarial explanation of the original text, and an indication (with hyphens) of those terminal syllables affecting the rhythm which have decayed out of the modern tongue. I am going to print these books and sell them myself, on the cheap plan which has been so successfully adopted by Edward Arber, lecturer on English literature in University College, London. I have been work ing on them for two months; in two more they will be finished; and by the middle of Novem ber I hope to have them ready for use as text books. If they succeed, I shall complete the series next year with (4) a " Spenser " on the same plan with the " Chaucer," (5) " The Minor Elizar bethan Song-Writers," and (6) " The Minor Elizabethan Dramatists ;" the steady aim of the whole being to furnish a wdrking set of books AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 257 which will familiarize the student with the actual works of English poets, rather than with their names and biographers. Pray forgive this merciless letter. I could not resist the temptation to unfold to you all my hopes and plans connected with my University work among your young men which I so eagerly anticipate. I will trouble you to return these notes of theses when you have examined them at leisure. Faithfully yours, SIDNEY He endeavored to make his courses fit in with other courses of the curriculum in Greek, Latin, and modern literatures : -- MY DEAR SIR, -- I had been meditating, as a second course of public lectures during next term, if you should want them, -- twelve studies on " The English Satirists ; " and on my visit to the University to-day I observed from the bulletin that Mr. Rabillon is now lecturing on "The French Satirists." It occurs to me, there fore, that perhaps some additional interest in the subject might be excited if my course on the English satirists should follow the completion of Mr. Eabillon's -- which I suppose will not be be- 1 Published in South Atlantic Quarterly, April, 1905. 258 SIDNEY LANIEK fore the holidays -- and should be given in Janu ary and February, instead of the course men tioned in my note to you this morning. I may add that if some other gentleman would offer courses on the Greek and Latin satirists, we might make a cyclus of it. Faithfully yours, SIDNEY LANIEK. 435 NOBTH CALVEBT STKEET, Saturday evening. Lanier's public lectures were largely attended. What has been said of the Peabody lectures ap plies to the University lectures. Of the effect produced by him in his smaller University classes, one of his students writes: -- "I think that it was in the winter of 187980 that I heard that Mr. Lanier was to conduct a class in English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University, where I was then a Fellow. My field of work was ./Esthetics and the History of Art, and as I was eagerly searching for chances to broaden and deepen my ideas, I enrolled my self in the class. We were not many, and I have no recollection of individuals in the group. Neither can I distinctly recall either the topics taken up or the method followed, except that most of the hours consisted of extended readings by Mr. Lanier with all sorts of interjected re marks, often setting aside the reading altogether. AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 259 That the course was a real source of intellectual profit to me I cannot doubt, but not in the form of definite information or systemized opinion. The benefit lay in a subtle expansion of the power of appreciation and an undefmable exalta tion of the instincts of taste that I have since learned were more precious than any precise in crements of cold knowledge. " What I dc remember vividly is the fact that often, almost regularly, I used to wait for Mr. Lanier after the class (which was held in the evening) and walk home with him a mile or so, sometimes walking up and down for a long time. On these occasions we doubtless talked of all manner of things. I was only a student trying to ' find himself ' in reference to the vast areas of thought. I was eager for sympathy and for in spiration. My life-work was still unchosen, but I was conscious of an intense drawing toward artistic topics -- not much with the creative im pulse of the artist, but rather with the analytic and rational desire of the student. I was begin ning to have a profound sense of the interrela tions of the fine arts with each other and of all of them with the movement of history. I wanted a chance to talk out what I was thinking and to get new lights and promptings. So in our slow strolls homeward I presume that I often babbled freely of my studies in architecture and music, 260 SIDNEY LANIER and my inconsequent remarks often led Mr. Lanier to speak somewhat freely, too, of his speculations and fancies. I now recall with won der how he put me on such a footing of equality that I often quite forgot the difference in age and experience between us and almost felt him to be a companion student. I now see that this was the sign of two notable traits, -- the extreme na tive Southern courtesy that clothed him always in all his dealings with every one, and the essen tial youthfulness of his mind when moving among his favorite subjects. His was surely one of the finest of sympathies, delicate, sensitive, elastic, vital to the highest degree, the like of which is all too rare among men, though hardly described by the term ' feminine.' In it breathed a genu ine capacity for love in the most noble sense, for he was ready to identify himself with the interests of another, to etherealize and dignify what he thought he saw in them, and thus absolutely to transform them by the alchemy of his touch. ULnd, the more I think of it, the more I recognize that his soul was incapable of aging. . . . This abso lute freshness of heart and spirit seems to me to have been one of the highest notes of Mr. Lanier's genius. Here he was clearly allied to many a more famous poet or painter or musician." J 1 Letter to the author from Professor Waldo S. Pratt, now of Hartford Theological Seminary. AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 261 Among American poets Lanier has the same place with regard to the teaching of English that Lowell and Longfellow have in the study of modern languages. There were, to be sure, some greater English scholars in this country during the seventies than Lanier was, just as there were more scientific students of modern languages in the time of Longfellow and Lowell. Professors Child of Harvard, Lounsbury of Yale, March of Lafayette, Corson of Cornell, and Price of Randolph-Macon College -- afterwards of Columbia University -- have a commanding place in the development of English teaching which has be come such a marked feature of educational pro gress since, say, 1870. Throughout schools and colleges and universities English is now firmly established as perhaps the most important branch of study. It is to the credit of Lanier that before much had been done in this direction he saw the great need of such work. Indeed, as early as 1868, while examining the catalogue of a South ern university, he jotted down in his note-book a suggestion that the most serious defect in the curriculum was the lack of any English training. It is true that there had been from time imme morial chairs of belles lettres in institutions of learning, but the department had rather to do with things in general. Even where English was studied there was a tendency to use manuals of 262 SIDNEY LANIER literature rather than the works of authors them selves ; and there is now a tendency to use liter ature as the basis for philological work. Lanier's ideas strike one as singularly balanced and sane, suggesting a compromise between the warring camps of recent years. By reason of Lanier's sympathy with the ideals of the University, and his influence over some few students, he has a permanent place in the history of Johns Hopkins. Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote to President Gilman: " It is a fine thing that such an institution as your University should have its shrines -- and among them that of its own poet, in a certain sense canonized, and with his most ideal memory a lasting part of its associa tions." The University has, indeed, kept the fame and the personality of Lanier fresh in its memory. As one enters McCoy Hall and notices the lifesize portraits of the first president and the first members of the faculty, he misses the face of Lanier; but on entering Donavan Hall, just at the end of the main hallway, he finds himself in a room dedicated to the highest uses of poetry. There are pictures of men who have delivered lectures on the Percy Turnbull and Donavan foundations, manuscript letters of distinguished American poets and critics, and the bust of Lanier, whose spirit seems to dominate the sur- BRONZE BUST OF SIDNEY LANIEB By Kpliraim Keyser. at Johns Hopkins University AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 263 roundings. It is the best of the likenesses of the poet, and is the source of admiration to all visitors, as well as an inspiration to all who labor at Johns Hopkins. Those who were never thrilled by the lustre of his dark eyes or never heard the tones of his voice as he interpreted passages of great poetry, may find some satis faction in such, an image. CHAPTER X THE NEW SOUTH WHILE Lanier was finding his place in the larger spheres of scholarship, of music, and of poetry, he constantly returned in thought and imagina tion to the South. Even after 1877, when he and his family became residents of Baltimore, his correspondence with his father and brother kept him in touch with that section. He continued to read Southern newspapers and to follow with in terest Southern development. In his desk he kept a regular drawer for matters pertaining to the South. Both from his experience, which enabled him to enter with unusual sympathy into the life of the South, and from the larger point of view gained from his life in other sections, his observa tions on Southern life and literature are of spe cial value. They show that he was not such a detached figure as has been frequently thought. He was of the South, and took delight in every evidence of her progress. He sometimes de spaired of her future -- so much so that he urged his brother to come to Baltimore in 1879. He had little patience with the prevailing type of THE. NEW SOUTH 265 political leader at the time when the Silver Bill was passed, so he wrote, June 8,1879, to Clifford Lanier: -- " I cannot contemplate with any patience your stay in the South. In my soberest moments I can perceive no oixtlook for that land. Our re presentatives in Congress have acted with such consummate unwisdom that one may say we have BO future there. Mr. ------ and Mr. ------ (as precious a pair of rascals as ever wrought upon the ignorance of a country) have disgusted all thoughtful men of whatever party; while the shuffling of our better men on the question of public honesty, their folly in allowing such people as Blaine and Conkling to taunt them into cheap hurlings back of defiance (as the silly Southern newspapers term it), their inconceivable mistake in permitting the stalwart Republicans to arrange all the issues of the campaign and to bring on the battle, not only whenever they want it, but on whatever ground they choose, instead of manfully holding before the people the real issues of the time, -- the tariff, the prodigious abuses clustered about the capitol at Washington, the restriction of granting powers in Congress, the non-inter ference theory of government, -- all these things have completely obscured the admitted good in tentions of Morgan and Lamar and their fellows, and have entirely alienated the feelings of men 266 SIDNEY LANIEE who at first were quite won over to them. The present extra session has been from the beginning a piece of absurdity such as the world probably never saw before. Our men are such mere poli ticians, that they have never yet discovered -- what the least thoughtful statesmanship ought to have perceived at the close of our war -- that the belief in the sacredness and greatness of the American Union among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest is really the principle which conquered us. As soon as we invaded the North and arrayed this sentiment in arms against us, our swift destruction followed. But how soon they have forgcrtten Gettysburg! That the pre sence of United States troops at the polls is an abuse no sober man will deny; but to attempt to remedy it at this time, when the war is so lately over, when the North is naturally sensitive as to securing the hard-won results of it, when, con sequently, every squeak of a penny whistle is easily interpreted into a rebel yell by the artful devices of Mr. Blaine and his crew, -- this was simply to invade the North again as we did in '64. And we have met precisely another Gettys burg. The whole community is uneasy as to the silver bill and the illimitable folly of the greenbackers ; business men anxiously await the ad journment of Congress, that they may be able to lay their plans with some sense of security against THE NEW SOUTH 267 a complete reversal of monetary conditions by some silly legislation; and I do not believe that there is a quiet man in the Republic to whom the whole political caucus at Washington is not a shame and a sorrow. " And thus, as I said, it really seems as if any prosperity at the South must come long after your time and mine. Our people have failed to perceive the deeper movements under-running the times; they lie -wholly off, out of the stream of thought, and whirl their poor old dead leaves of recollection round and round, in a piteous eddy that has all the wear and tear of motion without any of the rewards of progress. By the best in formation I can get, the country is substantially poorer now than when the war closed, and South ern securities have become simply a catchword. The looseness of thought among our people, the unspeakable rascality of corporations like M------ -- how long is it going to take us to remedy these things ? Whatever is to be done, you and I can do our part of it far better here than there. Come away." The very next year, however, he wrote his essay on the New South, showing a far more hopeful view. After reading for two years the newspapers of Georgia, with a view to under standing the changed conditions in his native State, Lanier published in October, 1880, an 268 SIDNEY LANIER article on that subject in " Scribner's Maga zine." l To one who reads it with the expecta tion of getting an idea of the forces that have made the New South, it is sadly disappointing; for he is told at once that the New South means small farming, and the article deals largely with the increase in the number of small farms and a consequent diversity of products. Insignificant as such a study may seem, it is noteworthy as showing Lanier's interest in practical affairs. It has been seen that ever since the war he had been interested in the redemption of the agri cultural life of the South, that this was the subject of his first important poem. Since the writing of " Corn" and of the earlier dialect poems, he had frequently commented on the future of the South as to be determined largely by an improved agricultural system. To him the best evidence of the enduring character of the new civilization was a democracy, growing out of a vital revolution in the farming economy of the South. " The great rise of the small farmer in the Southern States during the last twenty years," he says, " becomes the notable circum stance of the period, in comparison with which noisier events signify nothing." The hero of the sketch is a small farmer " who commenced work after the war with his own hands, not a dollar * Retrospects and Prospects, pp. 104-135. V THE NEW SOUTH 269 in his pocket, and now owns his plantation, has it well stocked, no mortgage or debt of any kind on it, and a little money to lend." Lanier clips from his newspaper files passages indicating the constantly increasing diversity of crops. The reader is carried into the country fairs and along the roads and through plantations by a man who had a realistic sense of what was going on in the whole State of Georgia. " The last few years," he says, " have witnessed a very decided improve ment in Georgia farming: moon-planting and other vulgar superstitions are exploding, the in telligent farmer is deriving more assistance from the philosopher, the naturalist, and the chemist, and he who is succeeding best is he who has thirty or forty cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry of his own raising, together with good-sized barns and meat-houses, filled from his own fields, in stead of from the West." Lanier saw that out of this growth in small farming -- this agricultural prosperity -- would come changes of profound significance. He saw an intimate relation between politics, social life, morality, art, on the one hand, and the breadgiver earth on the other. " One has only to re member, particularly here in America, whatever crop we hope to reap in the future, -- whether it be a crop of poems, of paintings, of symphonies, of constitutional safeguards, of virtuous behav- 270 SIDNEY LANIER iors, of religious exaltation, -- we have got to bring it out of the ground with palpable plows and with plain farmer's forethought, in order to see that a vital revolution in the farming econ omy of the South, if it is actually occurring, is necessarily carrying with it all future Southern politics and Southern relations and Southern art, and that, therefore, such an agricultural change is the one substantial fact upon which any really new South can be predicated." It has been seen that Lanier underrated the development of the manufacturing interests in the South; and yet who does not see that with all the industrial prosperity of this section during the last twenty years, the most crying need now is the rehabili tation of the South's agricultural life ? The pre sent aggressive movement in the direction of the improvement of the rural schools is a confirma tion of Lanier's vision of " the village library, the neighborhood farmers'-club, the amateur Thespian Society, the improvement of the public schools, the village orchestra, all manner of bet terments and gentilities and openings out into the universe." He saw, too, the effect on the negro of his becoming a landowner, and the con sequent obliteration of the color line in politics. He cites from his newspaper clippings evidences of the increasing prosperity of the negro race, -- for instance, how " at the Atlanta University for THE NEW SOUTH 271 colored people, which is endowed by the State, the progress of the pupils, the clearness of their recitation, their excellent behavior, and the re markable neatness of their schoolrooms, alto gether convince ' your committee that the colored race are capable of receiving the education usu ally given at such institutions.'" He sees in the appearance of the negro as a small farmer a transition to the point in which " his interests, his hopes, and consequently his politics become identical with those of all other small farmers, whether white or black." Much as has been accomplished, however, he looks forward with expectancy to a still greater future: " Everywhere the huge and gentle slopes kneel and pray for vineyards, for cornfields, for cottages, for spires to rise up from beyond the oak-groves. It is a land where there is never a day of summer or of winter when a man cannot do a full day's work in the open field; all the products meet there, as at nature's own agricul tural fair. ... It is because these blissful ranges are still clamorous for human friendship; it is because many of them are actually virgin to plow, pillar, axe, or mill-wheel, while others have known only the insulting and mean cultivation of the early immigrants who scratched the sur face for cotton a year or two, then carelessly abandoned all to sedge and sassafras, and saun- 272 SIDNEY LANIEE tered on toward Texas: it is thus that these lands are with sadder significance than that of small farming, also a New South." In order to understand the development of the New South, here briefly indicated, and in order to appreciate what Lanier really accom plished, two types of Southerners must be clearly distinguished. After the war the conservative Southerner -- ranging all the way from the fiery Bourbon to the strong and worthy protagonist of the old order -- failed to understand the meaning of defeat. He interpreted the conflict ' as the triumph of brute force, -- sheer material prosperity, -- and comforted himself with the thought that many of the noblest causes had gone down in defeat. He threshed over the arguments of Calhoun with regard to the Con stitution of 1787. He quoted Scripture in de fense of slavery, or tried to continue slavery -- in spirit, if not in name. He saw no hope for the negro, and looked for his speedy deteriora tion under freedom. Compelled by force of cir cumstances to acknowledge the supremacy of the Federal government, he was still dominated by the ideas of separation. He saw no future for the nation. " This once fair temple of liberty," one of them said, -- " rent from the bottom, desecrated by the orgies of a half-mad crew at fanatics and fools, knaves, negroes, and Jacob- THE NEW SOUTH 273 ins, abandoned wholly by its original worshipers -- stands as Babel did of old, a melancholy monu ment of the frustrate hopes and heaven-aspiring ' ambition of its builders." With him the passing away of the age of chivalry was as serious a matter as it was to Burke. He magnified the life before the war as the most glorious in the history of the world. He saw none of its defects; he resented criticism, either by Northerners or by his own people. He opposed the public school system, as " Yankeeish and infidel," stoutly championing the sys tem of education which had prevailed under the old order. He recognized no standards. " We fearlessly assert," said one of them, speaking of the most distinguished of Southern universities, " that in this university, the standard is higher, the education more thorough, and the work done by both teachers and students is far greater, than in Princeton, or Yale, or Harvard, or in any other Northern college or university." If he ventured into the field of literary criticism, he maintained that the Did South had a liter ature equal to that of New England ; if he had doubts upon that subject, he looked forward to a time not far off when the Southern cause would find monumental expression in a commanding literature. If he thought on theological or philo sophical subjects, he thought in terms of the 274 SIDNEY LANIER seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The watch words of modern life were so many red flags to him, -- science the enemy of religion, German philosophy a denial of the depravity of man, democracy the product of French infidelity and of false humanitarianism, industrial prosperity the inveterate foe of the graces of life. To use Lanier's words, he " failed to perceive the deeper movements underrunning the times." Defeated in a long war and inheriting the provincialism and sensitiveness of a feudal order, he remained proud in his isolation. He went to work with a, stubborn and unconquered spirit, with the idea that sometime in the future all the principles for which he had stood would triumph. Into the hands of such men the reconstruc tion governments played. Worse even than the effect of excessive taxation, misgovernment, and despair produced in the minds of the people, was the permanent effect produced on the Southern mind. The prophecies that had been made with regard to the triumph of despotism seemed to he fulfilled; every contention that had been made in 1861 with regard to the dangers of Federal usurpation seemed justified in the acts of the government. The political equality of the negro, guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, and the attempt to give him social equality, were stub born facts which seemed to overthrow the more THE NEW SOUTH 275 liberal ideas of Lincoln and of those Southern leaders who after the war hoped that the mag nanimity of the North would be equal to the great task ahead of the nation. The conservative lead ers were invested with a dignity that recalls the popularity of Burke when his predictions with regard to the French Revolution were realized. During all the years that have intervened since reconstruction days, the conservative has had as a resource for leadership his harking back to those days. The demagogue and the reactionary -- enemies of the children of light -- have always been able to inflame the populace with appeals to the memories and issues of the past. Such men have forgot nothing and learned nothing.1 In striking contrast with the conservative Southerner has been the progressive Southerner, a type ranging all the way from the unwise and unreasonable reformer to the well-balanced and sympathetic worker, who has endeavored to make the transition from the old order to the new a normal and healthy one. If the qualities which have made Lanier's progress possible are recalled, -- his lack of prejudice, his inexhausti ble energy, the alertness and modernness of his mind, his ability to find joy in constructive work, 1 I have here sketched a composite picture ; it is like no one man, bnt the type is recognizable. It is the result of a study of the magazines, newspapers, and biographies of the period from 1S65 to 1880. The type is not extinct. 276 SIDNEY LANIER his adoption of the national point of view,-- then the reader may see the elements that have made possible a New South. The same spirit ap plied to industry, to education, to religion, is now seen everywhere. The term "New South," used by Lanier and others, is meant in no way as a reproach to the Old South, -- it is simply the recognition of a changed social life due to one of the greatest catastrophes in history. In the early -"~Neighties it was employed by four Georgians, who had a right to use it, -- Benjamin H. Hill, Atticus G. Haygood, Henry Grady, and Sidney Lanier. Georgia was the Southern State that led in this progressive work. Here the readjustment came sooner, by reason of the fact that a more demo cratic people lived there, and also that the bur dens of reconstruction were less severe. Virginia gave to the nation at the time of the foundation of the republic a groiip of statesmen rarely ex celled in the history of the world. South Carolina statesmen led in the movement towards secession, and her people were the first to make an aggres sive movement in that direction. The leadership of the New South must be found in a group of far-seeing, liberal-minded, aggressive Georgians. The action of the State legislature in repealing the ordinance of secession and accepting the eman cipation of slaves within one minute, was charac teristic of her later work. In 1866, Alexander THE NEW SOUTH 277 H. Stephens and Benjamin H. Hill -- one before the legislature of Georgia and the other before Tammany Hall -- sounded the note of patience, of nationalism, and of hope. " There was a South of slavery and secession," said the latter; " that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom; that South, thank God! is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words became the text of the now celebrated address of another Georgian who twenty years later, before the New England Club of New York, gave nota ble expression to his own ideals and those who had wrought with him in the genuine reconstruc tion of the South. Henry Grady, as editor of the Atlanta " Constitution," was, after 1876, an exponent of the idea that the future of the South lay not primarily in politics, but in an industrial order which should be the basis of a more endur ing civilization. At his advice, as Joel Chandler Harris says, everybody began to take a day off from politics occasionally and devote themselves to the upbuilding of the resources of the State. Another Georgian, the late John B. Gordon, united with Grady and others in saying " a bold and manly word in behalf of the American Union in the ear of the South, and a bold and manly word in behalf of the South in the ear of the North." While recounting the last days of the Confederacy, he awoke in Northern hearts an 278 SIDNEY LANIER admiration for Lee and in Southern hearts an admiration for Grant, and in all an aspiration towards nationalism. Another Georgian, Atticus G. Haygood,--pre sident of Emory College and afterwards bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,-- voiced the sentiment of the liberal South with re gard to the negro, in a book whose title," Our Bro ther in Black," sufficiently indicates the spirit in which it was written. In a Thanksgiving sermon on the New South, delivered in 1881, he criti cised severely the croakers and the demagogues who were endeavoring to mislead the people, and reviewed with sympathy the great progress that had been made since the war. He pleads guilty to the charge of having new light and is glad of it. He points out with keen insight the illit eracy of the masses of the Southern people and the lack of educational facilities. A movement for the development of a public school system in the South was led by J. L. M. Curry, a Confed erate soldier of Georgia stock. He became an evangelist in the crusade for public education, announcing before State legislatures the princi ple upon which a true democratic order might be established. " I am not afraid of the educated masses," he said, in an address before the Georgia legislature; " I would rather trust the masses than king, priest, aristocracy, or established church. THE NEW SOUTH 279 No nation can realize its full possibility unless it builds upon the education of the whole people." By 1885 the forces that have here been briefly sketched were well under way throughout the South. Factories were prospering, farm products were becoming more diversified, more farmers owned their own places, a public school system was firmly established in all the leading cities and towns, colleges and universities -- some of the strongest dating from the period just after the war -- were enabled to increase their endowT ments and to modernize their work, the national spirit was growing, and a more liberal view of religion was being maintained. A day of hope, of freedom, of progress, had dawned. It was _ natural that along with all these changes, and indeed anticipating some of them, there should arise a group of Southern writers. Indeed, immediately after the war there was a marked tendency in the direction of literary work -- "an avalanche of literature in a devastated country." Magazines were started and books were published in abundance. The literary ac tivity was due, no doubt, in the first place, to the poverty of men and women: some who would have looked down upon literature as a profession before the war were now eager to do anything to keep starvation from the door. Furthermore, there was a great desire among some people to 280 SIDNEY LANIEE have the Southern side of the war well repre sented before the civilized world. Hence arose innumerable biographies, histories, and historical novels, and hence the demand for Southern text books. It is clearly impossible to give any adequate sketch of this literary awakening, -- if so it may be called, when contrasted with a later one. Of the magazines which were started, the most important were "Debow's Review," "devoted to the restora tion of the Southern States and the development of the wealth and resources of the country," whose motto was, " Light up the torches of industry;" the " Southern Review," edited by Dr. A. T. Bledsoe and William Hand Browne and dedi cated " to the despised, the disfranchised, and the down-trodden people of the South ; " " The Land We Love," started in Charlotte, N. C., by Gen. D. H. Hill, and devoted to literature, military history, and agriculture; " Scott's Monthly," published in Atlanta, " Southern Field and Fire side," in Raleigh, and " The Crescent Monthly," in New Orleans ; the " New Eclectic Magazine " and its successor, the " Southern Magazine," published by the Turnbull Brothers of Balti more ; and, as if Charleston had not had enough magazines to die before the war, the " Nineteenth Century," in that city. Most of these had but a short career, and none of them survived longer THE NEW SOUTH 281 than 1878. There was in them a continual cry ing out for Southern literature which might worthily represent the Southern people. The re sponse came, too -- so far as quantity was con cerned. One of the editors remarked that he had enough poetry on hand to last seven years and five months. Of these magazines the most important was the "Southern Magazine," published at Baltimore from 1871 to 1875, -- a magazine which came nearest filling the place occupied by the " South ern Literary Messenger " before the war. While it was somewhat eclectic in its character, -- re printing articles from the English magazines, -- it had as contributors a group of promising young scholars and writers. The editor was William Hand Browne, now professor of English literature in Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gildersleeve, then of the University of Virginia, Pro fessor Thomas E. Price, then professor of Eng lish at Randolph-Macon, James Albert Harrison, later the biographer and editor of Poe, and Mar garet J. Preston were regular contributors. Hichard Malcolm Johnston contributed his "Dukesborough Tales " to it. One of the publishers of the magazine, Mr. Lawrence Turnbull, visited Lanier at Macon in 1871 and became much in terested in him. To the magazine Lanier con tributed " Prospects and Eetrospects " (March 282 SIDNEY LANIER and April, 1871), " A Song " and " A Seashore Grave" (July, 1871), "Nature-Metaphors" (February, 1872), "San Antonio de Bexar" (July and August, 1873), and " Peace " (Oc tober, 1874). Of the books published during this period, few have survived. John Esten Cooke's novels and his lives of Stonewall Jackson and Lee, two or three collections of the war poetry of the South, Gayarre's histories, the " War between the States," by Alexander H. Stephens, Craven's " Prison Life of Jefferson Davis," and Dabney's "Defense of Virginia" are perhaps the most sig nificant. J. Wood Davidson's " Living Writers of the South," published in 1869, gives the best general idea of the extent and quality of the postbellum writing. Noteworthy, also, is a series of text-books projected with the idea that the moral and mental training of the sons and daughters of the South should no longer be intrusted to teachers and books imported from abroad. As planned originally, the scheme called for Bledsoe's Mathematics, Maury's Geographies, Holmes's Readers, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, histories of Louisiana and South Carolina by Gayarre and Simms respectively, scientific books by the Le Conte brothers, and English Classics by Richard Malcolm Johnston. So much needs to be said of the character of THE NEW SOUTH 283 the literature immediately succeeding the war, if for no other reason, that it may be contrasted with the literature of, say, the period from 1875 to 1885. With the death of Timrod in 1867, and of Simms, Longstreet, and Prentice in 1870, the old order of Southern writers had passed away. By 1875 a new group of writers had be gun their work, Paul Hamilton Hayne best repre senting the transition from one to the other. The younger writers either had been Confederate sol diers, or had been intimately identified with those who were. They began to write, not out of re sponse to a demand for distinctively Southern literature, but because they had the artistic spirit, the desire to create. They were interested in describing Southern scenery, and in portraying types of character in the social life of their re spective States. Unlike most of the literature of the Old South, the new literature was related directly to the life of the people. Men began to describe Southern scenery, not some fantastic world of dreamland; sentimentalism was super seded by a healthy realism. The writers fell in with contemporary tendencies and followed the lead of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who had begun to write humorous local sketches and inci dents. With them literature was not a diversion, but a business. They were willing to be known as men of letters who made their living by litera- 284 SIDNEY LANIER ture. They stood, too, for the national, rather than the sectional, spirit. " What does it mat ter," said Joel Chandler Harris, " whether I am Northerner or Southerner if I am true to truth, and true to that larger truth, my own true self? My idea is that truth is more important than sectionalism, and that literature that can he labeled Northern, Southern, Western, or East ern, is not worth labeling at all." Again, he said, speaking of the ideal Southern writer: " He must be Southern and yet cosmopolitan ; he must be intensely local in feeling, but utterly unpreju diced and unpartisan as to opinions, tradition, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as well. Only let it be the work of genius, and it will take all sections by storm." And it did take all sections by storm. Con trary to the idea which had prevailed after the war that Northern people would be slow to re cognize Southern genius, it must be said that Northern magazines, Northern publishers, and Northern readers made possible the success of Southern writers. In 1873, " Scribner's Maga zine " sent a special train through the South with the purpose of securing a series of articles on " the great South." While in New Orleans, Mr. Edward King, who had charge of the expedi tion, discovered George W. Cable, whose story, THE NEW SOUTH 285 " 'Sieur George," appeared in " Scribner's Maga zine " in October "of that year. Between that time and 1881 the magazine published, in addi tion to Cable's stories, -- afterwards collected into the volume " Old Creole Days," -- stories and poems by John Esten Cooke, Margaret J. Preston, Maurice Thompson, Mrs. Burnett, Mrs. Harrison, Irwin Russell, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Thomas Nelson Page, and Sidney Lanier. In an editorial of September, 1881, the editor, referring to the fact that no less than seven articles by Southerners had appeared in a recent number of " Scribner's," said: " We are glad to recognize the fact of a permanent productive force in literature in the Southern States. . . . We welcome the new writers to the great repub lic of letters with all heartiness." " The Century Magazine," the successor of " Scribner's," con tinued to be the patron of the new Southern writers. The number for April, 1884, contained Lanier's portrait as a frontispiece, a sketch of Lanier by William Hayes Ward, Thomas Nelson Page's " Marse Chan," an installment of Cable's " Dr. Sevier," Walter B. Hill's article on " Uncle Tom Without a Cabin," and William Preston Johnston's poem, " The Master." "Harper's Magazine," in January, 1874, be gan a series of articles on the New South, by Edwin De Leon, and in the following year pub- 286 SIDNEY LANIEE lished a series of articles by Constance F. Woolson, giving sketches of Florida and western North Carolina. In May, 1887, appeared an ar ticle giving the first complete survey of Southern literature, which, according to the author, had introduced into our national literature " a stream of rich, warm blood." The " Independent," a paper which had seemed to Southerners extremely severe in its criticism of the life of the South, is especially connected with the rising fame of Lanier. The editor recognized his genius while he was still alive, after his death continued to pub lish his poems, and in 1884 wrote the Memo rial for the first complete edition of his poems. Maurice Thompson, another Southern writer, be came its literary editor in 1888. Nor was the " Atlantic Monthly," which had been identified with the New England Renais sance, slow to recognize the value of the new Southern story-writers and poets. In 1873, while Mr. Howells was editor, Maurice Thompson's poem, " At the Window," was hailed by the edi tor and by Longfellow as " the work of a new and original singer, fresh, joyous, and true." The author received encouraging letters from JLowell and Emerson. In the same year and in the following appeared a series of articles entitled " A Rebel's Recollections," by George Gary Eggleston. In May, 1878, appeared Charles Egbert THE NEW SOUTH 287 Craddock's first story of the Tennessee Moun tains, " A Dancing Party at Harrison's Cove." The value of her work was at once recognized by Mr. Howells and his successor, Mr. Aldrich, In a review of 1880, Cable's stories in " Old Creole Days " are characterized " as fresh in matter, as vivacious in treatment, and as full of wit as were the ' Luck of Roaring Camp ' and its audacious fellows, when they came, while they are much more human and delicate in feeling." In Janu ary, 1885, in an article on recent American fiction, appears the following tribute to the work of recent Southern writers : " It is not the sub jects offered by Southern writers which interest us so much as the manifestation which seemed to he dying out of our literature. We welcome the work of Mr. Cable and Mr. [sic] Craddock, be cause it is large, imaginative, and constantly re sponsive to the elemental movements of human nature; and we should not be greatly surprised if the historian of our literature a few generations hence, should take note of an enlargement of American letters at this time through the agency of a new South. . . . The North refines to a keen analysis, the South enriches through a generous imagination..... The breadth which character izes the best Southern writing, the large free handling, the confident imagination, are legiti mate results of the careless yet masterful and 288 SIDNEY LANIEE hospitable life which has pervaded that section. We have had our laugh at the florid, coarse-fla vored literature which has not yet disappeared at the South, but we are witnessing now the rise of a school that shows us the worth of generous nature when it has been schooled and ordered." 1 The effect of this literature on Northern readers was altogether wholesome, and minis tered no doubt to the better understanding both of the Old South and of the New. The stories of Harris, Page, Cable, and Craddock reached the Northern mind to a degree never approached by the logic of Calhoun or the eloquence of impetu ous orators, while the poems of Hayne and Lanier, breathing as they did the atmosphere of the larger modern world, and at the same time char acterized by the warmth and richness of South ern scenery and Southern life, ministered in the same direction. On Southerners the effect was stimulating ; one of the younger scholars of that time, the late Professor Baskervill, recalled " the rapture of glad surprise with which each new Southern writer was hailed as he or she revealed negro, mountaineer, cracker, or Creole life and character to the world. There was joy in behold ing the roses of romance and poetry blossoming above the ashes of defeat and humiliation, and 1 In 1896 Mr. Walter H. Page, a native North Carolinian, became editor of the "Atlantic." THE NEW SOUTH 289 that, too, among a people hitherto more remark able for the masterful deeds of warrior and statesman than for the finer, rarer, and more artistic creations of literary genius." 1 One of thy most significant characteristics of the Southern writers was that they all showed a certain discipline i cheir artistic work. They Lad little patience with much of the criticism that had prevailed in the South. As early as 1871 the editor of the " Southern Magazine," in a re view of " Southland "Writers," said : " We shall not have a literature until we have a criticism which can justify its claims to be deferred to; intelligent enough to explain why a work is good or bad,.... courageous enough to condemn bad art and bad workmanship, no matter whose it be; to say, for instance, to more than half the writers in these volumes: ' Ladies, you may be all that is good, noble, and fair; you may be the pride of society and the lights of your homes; so far as you are Southern women our hearts are at your feet -- but you have neither the genius, the learning, nor the judgment to qualify you for lit erature.' " In the same magazine for June, 1874, Paul Hamilton Hayne condemned severely the provincial literary criticism which had prevailed, 1 Baskervill's Southern Writers is the best study that has been made of the Southern literature of this period. A second volume was prepared by his pupils and friends after his death. 290 SIDNEY LANIER -- " indiscriminate adulations, effervescing com monplace, shallowness and poverty of thought." " No foreign ridicule,'' lie said, " however richly deserved, nothing truly either of logic or of laughter, can stop this growing evil, until our own scholars and thinkers have the manliness and honesty to discourage instead of applauding such manifestations of artistic weakness and artis tic platitudes as have hitherto been foisted upon us by persons uncalled and unchosen of any of the muses. . . . Can a people's mental dignity and sesthetical culture be vindicated by patting incompetency and ignorance and self-sufficiency on the back ? " Lanier himself wrote to Hayne, May 26,1873, commending a criticism that Hayne had passed upon a popular Southern novel: " I have, not read that production; but from all I can hear 't is a most villainous, poor, pitiful piece of work; and so far from endeavoring to serve the South by blindly plastering it with absurd praises, I think all true patriots ought to unite in redeem ing the land from the imputation that such books are regarded as casting honor upon the section. God forbid we should really be brought so low as that we must perforce brag of such works; and God be merciful to that man (he is an Atlanta editor) who boasted that sixteen thou sand of these books had been sold in the South! THE NEW SOUTH 291 This last damning fact ought to have been con cealed at the risk of life, limb, and fortune." Lanier himself saw the futility of such praise of his own work by the Southern people. Refer ring to the defense made of his Centennial poem by Southern newspapers, he wrote from Macon: " People here are so enthusiastic in my favor at present that they are quite prepared to accept blindly anything that comes from me. Of course I understand all this, and any success seems cheap which depends so thoroughly upon local pride as does my present position with the South." And again: " Much of this praise has come from the section in which he was born, and there is reason to suspect that it was based often on sectional pride rather than on any genuine recognition of those artistic theories of which his poem is -- so far as he now knows -- the first embodiment. Any triumph of this sort is cheap, because wrongly based, and to an earnest artist is intolerably painful." Lanier's own standards of criticism did not prevent his recognition of the value of the real artists who lived in the South, nor his encour agement of every young man contemplating an artistic career. He wrote to Judge Bleckley about his son: " I am charmed at finding a Georgia young man who deliberately leaves the worn highways of the law and politics for the 292 SIDNEY LANIEE rocky road of Art, and I wish to do everything in my power to help and encourage him." Writ ing to George Gary Eggleston, December 27, 1876, he said : " I know you very well through your ' Rebel's Recollections,' which I read in book form some months ago with great enter tainment. Our poor South has so few of the guild, that I feel a personal interest in the works of each one." His letters and published writ ings bear out the truth of this statement. It has already been seen that he was intimate with Paul Hamilton Hayne, who had encouraged him to undertake the literary life at a time when all other forces were tending in another direction. Lanier criticised in detail many of Hayne's poems. In a review of his poems published in the "Southern Magazine," 1874, he paid a nota ble tribute to his fellow worker in the realm of letters. He does not fail to call attention to trite similes, worn collocations of sound, and common place sentiments ; and also his diffuseness, prin cipally originating in a lavishness and looseness of adjectives. At the same time he praises the melody of Hayne's poetry, especially of his poem " Fire Pictures," which he compares with Poe's " Bells." In his book on Florida, while giving an account of Southern cities which travelers are apt to pass through in going to and from that State, he has discriminating and sympathetic THE NEW SOUTH 293 passages on Timrod, Randall, Jackson, Hayne, and others Of Timrod he says: "Few more spontaneous or delicate songs have been sung in these later days than one or two of the briefer lyrics. It is thoroughly evident that he never had time- to learn the mere craft of the poet, the technique of verse, and that broader associ ation with other poets, and a little of the wine of success, without which no man ever does the very best he might do." In his lectures at the Peabody Institute he quoted one of Timrod's sonnets, prefacing it with the words: " And as I have just read you a sonnet from one of the earliest of the sonnet-writers, let me now clinch and confirm this last position with a sonnet from one of the latest, -- one who has but recently gone to that Land where, as he wished here, indeed life and love are the same; one who, I devoutly believe, if he had lived in Sir Philip's time, might have been Sir Philip's worthy bro ther, both in poetic sweetness and in honorable knighthood." 1 He was one of the first to recognize the genius of Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus stories he first read in the "Atlanta Constitu tion." He refers in his article on the New South to Uncle Remus as a " famous colored philoso pher of Atlanta, who is a fiction so founded upon 1 Shakspere and His Forerunners, yol. i, p. 170. 294 SIDNEY LANIER fact and so like it as to have passed into true citizenship and authority, along with Bottom and Autolycus. This is all the more worth giving, since it is really negro-talk, and not that suppo sititious negro-minstrel talk which so often goes for the original. It is as nearly perfect as any dialect can well be; and if one had only some system of notation by which to convey the tones of the speaking voice, in which Brer Remus and Brer Ab would say these things, nothing could be at once more fine in humor and pointed in philosophy. Negroes on the corner can be heard any day engaged in talk that at least makes one think of Shakespeare's clowns; but half the point and flavor is in the subtle tone of voice, the gesture, the glance, and these, unfortunately, cannot be read between the lines by any one who has not studied them in the living original." In a letter to his brother, September 24,1880, Lanier said: " Have you read Cable's book,' The Grandissimes' ? It is a work of art, and he has a fervent and rare soul. Do you know him?" In his announcement of the course on the Eng lish Novel at Johns Hopkins University, he in cluded this novel in a list of recent American novels which he intended to discuss. Nor was he contented with recognizing the genius of men who wrote of their own accord. His letters to " Father" Tabb were especially THE NEW SOUTH 295 stimulating. He was the prime cause in induc ing Bichard Malcolm Jolmston to offer first to the magazines, and then to the publishers, his stories of Middle Georgia. Johnston had pub lished the " Dukesborough Tales " in the u South ern Magazine " as early as 1871, but they had made little or no impression on account of the limited circulation of that periodical. In 1877 " Mr. Neelus Peeler's Condition " was sent by Lanier to Mr. Bichard Watson Gilder, then editor of " Scribner's Monthly." He had the rare pleasure of sending Mr. Gilder's letter of acceptance with enclosed check to his friend. The following letter shows how he advised Colo nel Johnston as to one of the stories. 55 LBXINGTON STKEET, BALTIMORE, MD., November 6, 1877. MY DEAR COL. JOHNSTON, -- Mrs. Lanier's illness, on Saturday devolved a great many do mestic duties upon me, and rendered it quite im possible for me to make the preparations neces sary for my visit to you on Sunday. This caused me a great deal of regret; a malign fate seems to have pursued all my recent efforts in your direction. I have attentively examined j^our " Dukesbor ough Tale." I wish very much that I could read it over aloud in your presence, so that I might 296 SIDNEY LANIEE call your attention to many verbal lapses which I find and which, I am sure, will hinder its way with the magazine editors. I will try to see you in a day or two, and do this. Again, ascending from merely verbal criticism to considerations of general treatment, I find that the action of the story does not move quite fast enough during the first twenty-five pages, and the last ten, to suit the impatience of the modern magazine man. Aside from these two points, -- and they can both be easily remedied, -- the story strikes me as exquisitely funny, and your reproduction of the modes of thought and of speech among the rural Georgians is really wonderful. The peculiar turns and odd angles, described by the minds of these people in the course of ratiocination (Good Heavens, what would Sammy Wiggins think of such a sentence as this !), are presented here with a delicacy of art that gives me a great deal of en joyment. The whole picture of old-time Georgia is admirable, and I find myself regretting that its full merit can be appreciated only by that limited number who, from personal experience, can com pare it with the original. Purely with a view to conciliating the editor of the magazine, I strongly advise you to hasten the movement of the beginning and of the cata strophe : that is, from about p. 1 to p. 34, and from p. 57 to p. 67. The middle, i. e., from p. 34 THE NEW SOUTH 297 top. 57, should not be touched: it is good enough for me. I would not dare to make these suggestions if I thought that you would regard them other wise than as pure evidences of my interest in the success of the story. Your friend, SIDNEY L. Br.t Lanier's service to the South and to Southern literature is greater than the recogni tion of any one writer or the encouragement given to any one of them. All of them were cheered in their work by his heroic life; not one but looked to him as a leader. His life, which in a large sense belongs to the nation, be longs in a peculiar sense to the South. He was Southern by birth, temperament, and experience. He knew the South, -- he had traveled from San Antonio to Jacksonville, and from Baltimore to Mobile Bay. Its scenery was the background of his poetry, -- the marsh, the mountain, the sea shore, the forest, the birds and flowers of the South stirred his imagination. He knew person ally many of the leaders of the Confederacy, as well as the men who made possible the New South. He was heir to all the life of the past. His chivalry, his fine grace of manners, his gen erosity and his enthusiasm were all Southern 298 SIDNEY LANIER traits; and the work that he has left is in a peculiar sense the product of a genius influenced by that civilization. All these things render him singularly precious to Southerners of the present generation. He had qualities of rnind and ideals of life, however, which have been too rare in his native section. He was a severe critic of some phases of its life. From this standpoint his career and his personality should never lose their influence in the South. There had been men and women who had loved music; but Lanier was the first Southerner to appreciate adequately its signifi cance in the modern world, and to feel the in spiration of the most recent composers. There had been some fine things done in literature; but he'was the first to realize the transcendent dignity and worth of the poet and his work. Literature had been a pastime, a source of re creation for men ; to him the study of it was a passion, and the creation of it the highest voca tion of man. Compared with other writers of the New South, Lanier was a man of broader culture and of finer scholarship. He did not have the power to create character as some of the writers of fiction, but he was a far better representative of the man of letters. The key to his intellectual life may be found in the fact that he read Words worth and Keats rather than Scott, George Eliot THE NEW SOUTH 299 rather than Thackeray, German literature as well as French. He was national rather than provincial, open-minded not prejudiced, modern and not mediasval. His characteristics -- to be still further noted in the succeeding chapter -- are all in direct contrast with those of the con servative Southerner. There have been other Southerners -- far more than some men have thought -- who have had his spirit, and have worked with heroism towards the accomplish ment of enduring results. There have been none, however, who have wrought out in their lives and expressed in their writings higher ideals. He therefore makes his appeal to every man who is to-day working for the betterment of industrial, educational, and literary conditions in the South. There will never be a time when such men will not look to him as the man of letters who, after the war, struck out along lines which meant most in the intellectual awakening of this section. He was a pioneer worker in building up what he liked to speak of as the New South: -- The South whose gaze is cast No more upon the past, But whose bright eyes the skies of promise sweep, Whose feet in paths of progress swiftly leap; And whose fresh thoughts, like cheerful rivers, run Through odorous ways to meet the morning sun! CHAPTER XI CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS PERHAPS the Tbest single description of Lanier is that by Ms friend H. Clay Wysham : " His eye, of bluish gray, was more spiritual than dreamy -- except when he was suddenly aroused, and then it assumed a hawk-like fierceness. The trans parent delicacy of his skin and complexion pleased the eye, and his fine-textured hair, which was soft and almost straight and of a light-brown color, was combed behind the ear in Southern style. His long beard, which was wavy and pointed, had .even at an early age begun to show signs of turn ing gray. His nose was aquiline, his bearing was distinguished, and his manners were stamped with a high breeding that befitted the ' Cavalier' lineage. His hands were delicate and white, by no means thin, and the fingers tapering. His gestures were not many, but swift, graceful, and expressive ; the tone of his voice was low; his fig ure was willowy and lithe; and in stature he seemed tall, but in reality he was a little below six feet -- withal there was a native knightly grace which marked his every movement." l If to this 3 Independent, November 18, 1397. CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 301 be added the words of Dr. Gilman as to the im pression lie produced on people, the picture may be complete: " The appearance of Lanier was striking. There was nothing eccentric or odd about him, but his words, manners, ways of speech, were distinguished. I have heard a lady say that if he took his place in a crowded horse-car, an exhilarating atmosphere seemed to be introduced by his breezy ways." * '--He was mindful of the conventionalities of life. He had nothing of the Bohemian in his looks, his manners, or his temperament. Poor though he was, fee was scrupulous with regard to dress. He was a hard worker, but when his health per mitted, he was thoroughly mindful of duties that devolved upon him as a member of society. He wrote to Charlotte Cushman: " For I am surely ' going to find you, at one place or t' other, -- pro vided heaven shall send me so much fortune in the selling of a poem or two as will make the price of a new dress coat. , Alas, with what unspeakable tender care I would have brushed this present garment of mine in days gone by, if I had dreamed that the time would come when so great a thing as a visit to you might hang upon the little length of its nap! Behold, it is not only in man's breast that pathos lies, and the very coat lapel that cov ers it may be a tragedy." Professor Gildersleeve 1 South Atlantic Quarterly, April, 1905. 302 SIDNEY LANIER gives a characteristic incident: " I remember he came to a dinner given in his honor, fresh from a lecture at the Peabody, in a morning suit and with chalk on his fingers. Came thus, not because he was unmindful of conventionalities. He was as mindful of them as Browning, -- came thus because he had to come thus. There was no time to dress. The poor chalk-fingered poet was mis erable the whole evening, hardly roused himself when the talk fell on Blake, and when we took a walk together the next day he made his moan to me about it. A seraph with chalk on his fin gers. Somehow, that little incident seems to me an epitome of his life, though I have mentioned it only to show how busy he was." 1 He was a welcome guest in many homes. " He had the most gentle, refined, sweet, lovely man ners, I think I may say, of any man I ever met,"' says Charles Heber Clarke. v A letter from the daughter of the late John Foster Kirk, former editor of " Lippincott's Magazine," gives an im pression of Lanier in the homes of his friends : -- " My first sight of Lanier was when he came into the room with my father at dusk one even ing (they had been walking through the .Wissahickon woods and came back to tea), and his presence seemed something beautiful in the room, even more from his manner than from his appear- 1 Letter to the author. CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 303 ance, gracious and fine as that was. ^He always seemed to me to stand for chivalry as well as poetry, and his goodness was something you felt at once and never forgot. He was at our house one O day with his flute. He and my father were going to Mr. Robert P. Morion's, in Grermantown, to play together. We happened to speak of the fact that my sister, then a little girl, though abso lutely without ear for music, had a curious de light in listening to it. Mr. Lanier said he would like to play to her; we called her in from the yard where she was playing, and he played some of his own music, explaining to her first what he thought of when he wrote it, describing to her the brook in its course, and other things in na ture. He could easily have found a more appre ciative listener, but not a happier one. " I remember his eagerness about all forms of knowledge and expression. We went with him to the Centennial, where we were full of excite ment about pictures, though none of us knew much about them. I remember the pleasure Mr. Lanier had in the sense of color and splen dor given him by the big Hans Makart (' Cate- rina Cornaro') and discussions of that and the English and Spanish pictures. Intellectually he seemed to me not so much to have arrived as to be on the way, -- with a beautiful fervor and eagerness about things, as if he had never had 304 SIDNEY LANIER all that he longed for in books and study and thought." : '* Lanier had remarkable power for making and keeping friends. This has already been seen in his relations to the Peacocks, Charlotte Cushman, and Bayard Taylor. In the large circle of friends among whom he moved in Baltimore may be seen further attestation of this point. People did not pity him, nor did they dole out charity to him. They did not reverence him merely because he was a poet, a teacher, or a musician of note; they were drawn to him by strong personal ties -- he had magnetism. The little informal notes that he wrote to them, or the longer letters he wrote in absence, or the conversations that he had with them, sometimes till far into the night, are cher ished as among the most sacred memories of their lives. He knew how to endure human weakness and to inspire human efforts. One of the friends who knew him best has recorded in a tender poem what Lanier meant to those who were in timate with him: -- That love of man for man, That joyed in all sweet possibilities : that faith Which hallowed love and life. . . . So he, Heaven-taught in his large-heartedness, Smiled with his spirit's eyes athwart the veil That human loves too oft beep closely drawn. . . . So hearts leaped up to breathe his freer atmosphere, 1 Letter to the author. CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 305 And eyes smiled truer for his radiance clear, And souls grew loftier wherefhis teachings fell, And all gave love. . . . Aye, the patience and the smile Which glossed his pain; the courtesy; The sweet quaint thoughts which gave his poems birth." 1 She speaks, too, of "his winning tenderness with souls perplexed ; " " his eagerness for lofty converse; " " his oneness with all mas,ter-minds; " " his thirst for lore; " " his gratitude for that the Lord had made the earth so good! " In the house of this same friend, Mme. Blanc (Th. Bentzon) first realized the dead poet's per sonality ; she there caught something of the after glow of his presence : -- " The morning that I spent with Mrs. Turnbull was almost as interesting as an interview with Sidney Lanier himself would have been, so fully does his memory live in that most aesthetic in terior, where poetry and music are held in per petual honor, and where domestic life has all the heauty of a work of art. The hero of Mrs. Turnbull's novel, 'A Catholic Man,' is none other than Sidney Lanier, and that scrupulously faith ful presentment of a ' universal man' was of the greatest assistance to me. " The beautiful mansion on Park Avenue has almost the character of a temple, where 1 Poem by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, read at the presentation of the Lanier bust to Johns Hopkins University. 306 SIDNEY LANIER nothing profane or vulgar is allowed admission. Passing through the reception rooms, I was in troduced into a private parlor out of which. opened a music-room, from whose threshold I recognized the man whom I had come to seek, -- the poet himself, as he was represented in his latest years, by the German sculptor, Ephraim Keyser. . . . By way of contrast, Mrs. Turnbull exhibits a glorified Lanier, crowned with his ultimate immortality. He appears in a symbolic picture, ordered by this American art patroness, from the Italian painter Gatti, where are grouped all the great geniuses of the past, present, and future, -- the latter emerging vaguely from the mists of the distance, and including a large number of women. This innumerable multitude of the elite of all ages encircles a mountain which is dominated by Jesus Christ; and from this figure of the Christ emanates the light which Mrs. Turnbull has caused to be shed upon the figures of the picture, with more or less brilliancy according to her own preferences. Designating a tall, draped figure who walks in the front rank of the poets, the lady said to me: ' This is Sidney Lanier;' and when I, despite my admira tion for the poet of the marshes, ventured to offer a few modest suggestions, she went on to develop the thesis, that what exalts a man is less what he has done than what he has aspired to do." CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 307 " Mrs. Tumbull had too much tact to multiply her personal anecdotes of Sidney Lanier, but she pictured him to me as he loved to sit by the fire side, where he had always his own special place; coming, of an evening, unannounced, into the room where we then were, rising like a phantom beside her husband and herself, in the hour be tween daylight and dark, and pouring forth those profound, unexpected, and delightful things which seem to belong to him alone, which char acterize his correspondence also, and all his literary remains." l .i-^The quality of affection in Lanier reached its climax in his home life. There he was seen and known at his best. An early aspiration of his was " to show that the artist-life is not necessa rily a Bohemian life, but that it may coincide with and be the home-life." Such poems as "Baby Charley " and " Hard Times in Elfland," and the story of " Bob " reveal the playful and affectionate father, while " My Springs," " In Absence," " Laus Mariae " and many published and unpublished letters are but variations of the oft-recurring theme: -- When life 's all love, 't is life : aught else, 't is naught. 1 Revue des Deux Mondes, 1898. Translated for Littdl's Liv ing Age. May U and May 21, 1898. 308 SIDNEY LANIER A letter written to Ms wife will serve to give the spirit which prevailed in the home: -- January 1,1875. A thousand-fold Happy New Year to thee, and I would that thy whole year may be as full of sweetness as my heart is full of thee. All day I dwell with my dear ones there with, thee. I do so long for one hearty rornp with my boys again! Kiss them most fervently for me, and say over their heads my New Year's prayer, that whether God may color their lives bright or black, they may continually grow in a large and hearty manhood, compounded of strength and love. Let us try and teach them, dear wife, that it is only the small soul that ever cherishes bitter ness ; for the climate of a large and loving heart is too warm for that frigid plant. Let us lead them to love everything in the world, above the world, and under the world adequately; that is the sum and substance of a perfect life. And so God's divine rest be upon every head under the roof that covers thine this night, prayeth thy HUSBAND. V Sweetness of disposition, depth of emotion, and absolute purity of life are frequently re garded as feminine traits. These Lanier had, CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 309 but they were fused with the qualities of a virile and healthy manhood. He attracted strong and intellectual men as well as refined and cultivated women. The bravery manifested during the Civil War and the fortitude that he displayed after the war became elemental qualities in his character,. His admiration of the heroic deeds of the age of chivalry arose from a certain inherent knightliness in his own character. He had the combina tion of tenderness and strength to which he called attention in Sir Philip Sidney. His admiration for old English poetry was due to the "ruddiness in its cheek and the red corpuscles in its veins." There is in his later prose the " send and drive " of a vigorous soul. It was this elemental man hood that attracted him to Whitman, despite all his protests against the latter's carelessness of form and lack of grace. " Reading him," he says, "is like getting the salt sea spray into one's face." He had some of the Southerner's resistance to anything like insult. A story is frequently told in Baltimore of the way in which Lanier re sented the conductor's words to a young lady at a rehearsal of the Peabody Orchestra. *' ------, irritated in his undisciplined musician's nerves, vented that irritation in a rude outburst towards a timid young woman who was playing the piano, either with orchestra or voice or in solo. In an 310 SIDNEY LANIER instant Lanier's tall, straight figure shot up from his seat and, taking the chair he occupied in his hand, he said: ' Mr. ------, you must retract every word you have uttered and apologize to. that young lady before you beat another bar.' There was no mistake of his resoluteness and determi nation, and Mr. ------ retracted and apologized; the orchestra went on only after the same had been done." y-A.noth.er element that contributed to the ad mirable symmetry of Lanier's character was that of humor. One would misjudge him entirely if he took into account only the highly wrought let ters on music or the great majority of his poems. From one standpoint he seems a burning flame. As a matter of fact, however, his enthusiasm for anything that was fine and the ecstatic rapture into which he passed under the spell of great mu sic or nature or poetry, were balanced by humor that was playful and delicate and at times irre sistible. His pranks as a college boy and as a soldier have already been noted. His enjoyment of the negro and of the Georgia " Cracker " may be seen in his dialect poems, " A Florida Ghost," " Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn," " Jones's Private Argument," and others. With his chil- / dren his spirit of fun-making knew no boundsJ^ The point may still further be seen by any one who reads his lectures, and especially those letters CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 311 to his friends in which he constantly indulged in playful conceits and fine humorK'He even laughed at his poverty, and got off many a jest in the very face of death. In this respect, as in others, he was strikingly like Robert Louis Stevenson. '----" Lanier'g modernness of mind has already been illustrated in his attitude to music and to scholar ship. Asked one time what age he preferred, he said, " the Present," and the answer was typical of his whole attitude to things. He did not rail at Ms age. He was a close student of current events. He spoke strongly sometimes, as did Wordsworth and Ruskin, against the materialism of the nine teenth century; he delivered his protest against it in many of his poems; and yet he never lost his faith that all material progress would eventually contribute to the moral and artistic needs of man. V " It is often asserted," he said, " that ours is a materialistic age, and that romance is dead; but this is marvelously untrue, and it may be counterasserted with perfect confidence that there was never an age of the world when art was enthroned by so many hearthstones and intimate in so many common houses as now." He accepted the facts of his time, and sought to make them subservient to the healthy idealism that reigned in his soul. -Furthermore, he was an absolutely openminded man, eager for any new world which he might enter. He had nothing of the provincialism 312 SIDNEY LANIER of the parish or of the period. One of the most striking illustrations of this quality of mind is seen in comparing him with Poe, who was irri table and prejudiced. Poe shared the ante-bellum Southerner's prejudice against New England and all her writers. There is nowhere in Lanier any indication that such a spirit found lodgment in his mind. Emerson -- the transcendentalist -- was one of his " wise masters." Another striking illustration of his breadth of view was his profound reverence for science. That he had this so early was due, as has been already seen, to the influence of Professor Woodrow at college. In " Tiger Lilies " he said, in comment ing on Macaulay's idea of poetry declining as science grows : " How long a time intervened between Humboldt and Goethe; how long be tween Agassiz and Tennyson ? One can scarcely tell whether Humboldt and Agassiz were not as good poets as Goethe and Tennyson were cer tainly good philosophers." " The astonishing effect of the stimulus which has been given to investigation into material nature by the rise of geology and the prosperity of chemistry " is seen in the literary development of the day. " To day's science bears not only fruit, but flowers also! Poems, as well as steam engines, crown its growth in these times." The passage closes with these significant words: " Poetry will never fail, nor CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 313. science, nor the poetry of science." This view remained with him till the end of his life. He hailed the scientific progress of the nineteenth century as one of its greatest achievements, and constantly related it to the rise of landscape painting, modern nature poetry, modern music, and the English novel. His attitude thereto is made all the more notable by the fact that throughout the country, and especially in the South, there prevailed the utmost distrust of scientific investigations and hypotheses. Dur ing the seventies the criticism of the invitation extended to Huxley to deliver the principal ad dress at the opening of Johns Hopkins Univer sity, and the controversy arising out of President White's enunciation of the principles that would dominate the newly created Cornell University, all tended to make the controversy between science and religion especially acute. American poets, notably Poe and Lowell, had expressed their distrust of modern scientific methods and conclusions. But Lanier saw no danger either to religion or to poetry in science. He constantly referred to Tyndall, Huxley, and Darwin, in a way which suggested his familiarity with their writings. I have seen a copy of the " Origin of Species " owned by Lanier, -- the marks and annotations indicating the most careful and thoughtful reading thereof. In his lectures on 314 SIDNEY LANIER the English Novel, in contrasting ancient science with modern science, he says : " In short, I find that early thought everywhere, whether dealing with physical fact or metaphysical problems, is lacking in whatT may call the intellectual con science, -- the conscience which makes Mr. Dar win spend long and patient years in investigating small facts before daring to reason upon them, and which makes him state the facts adverse to his theory with as much care as the facts which make for it." Again he refers to him as " our own grave and patient Charles Darwin." He did not write about science at second-hand, either, -- he studied it. Mrs. Sophie Bledsoe Herrick, Lowell's Baltimore friend, tells of Lanier's interest in microscopicwork : " Mrs.Lanier and family were not with him then, and he was busy writing some articles on the science of com position. Evening after evening he would bring the manuscript of these articles and read them, and talk them over. " I was at that time intensely interested in microscopic work. It was curious and interest ing to see how Mr. Lanier kindled to the subject, so foreign to his ordinary literary interests. I was too busy with editorial work to go on with my microscopic work then, and it was a great pleasure to leave my instrument and books on the subject with him for some months. He plunged CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 315 in with all the ardor of a naturalist, not using the microscope as a mere toy, but doing good hard work with it. I think I can detect in his work after this time, -- as well as in his letters, -- many little touches which show the influence this study of nature had upon his mind." a So he had little patience with " those timor ous souls who believe that science, in explaining everything, -- as they .singularly fancy,--will destroy the possibility of poetry, of the novel, in short of all works of the imagination: the idea seeming to be that the imagination always re quires the hall of life to be darkened before it displays its magic, like the modern spiritualistic seance-givers who can do nothing with the ropetying an,d the guitars unless the lights are put out." 2 And again: " Here are thousands upon thousands of acute and patient men to-day who are devoutly gazing into the great mysteries of Nature and faithfully reporting what they see. These men have not destroyed the fairies: they have preserved them in more truthful and solid shape." But "while he estimated at its proper value the development of modern physical science, he saw it in its proper relation to music, poetry, and religion. " The scientific man," he says in his "Legend of St. Leonor," " is merely the minister 1 Letter to the author. 2 The English Novel, p. 28. 316 SIDNEY LANIEB of poetry. He is cutting down the Western Woods of Time ; presently poetry will come there and make a city and gardens. This is always so. The man of affairs works for the behoof and the use of poetry. Scientific facts have never reached their proper function until they emerge into new poetic relations established between man and man, between man and God, or between man and nature." Lanier's view of the theory of evolution is interesting. " I have been studying science, bi ology, chemistry, evolution, and all," he writes to J. F. Kirk, June 15, 1880. " It pieces on, per fectly, to those dreams which one has when one is a boy and wanders alone by a strong running river, on a day when the wind is high but the sky clear. These enormous modern generaliza tions fill me with such dreams again. " But it is precisely at the beginning of that phenomenon which is the underlying subject of this poem, ' Individuality,' that the largest of such generalizations must begin, and the doc trine of evolution when pushed beyond this point appears to me, after the most careful examination of the evidence, to fail. It is pushed beyond this point in its current application to the genesis of species, and I think Mr. Huxley's last sweeping declaration is clearly parallel to that of an enthu siastic dissecter who, forgetting that his obser- CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 317 vations are upon dead bodies, should build a physiological conclusion upon purely anatomical facts. "For whatever can be proved to have been evolved, evolution seems to me a noble and beau tiful and true theory. But a careful search has not shown me a single instance in which such proof as would stand the first shot of a boy lawyer in a moot court, has been brought forward in support of an actual case of species differentia tion. " A cloud (see the poem) may be evolved ; but not an artist; and I find, in looking over my poem, that it has made itself into, a passionate reaffirmation of the artist's autonomy, threatened alike from the direction of the scientific fanatic and,the pantheistic devotee." !XWith all of Lanier's development -- whether in science and scholarship, or in music and litera ture -- he retained a vital faith in the Christian religion. He reacted against the Calvinism of Ms youth to almost as great a degree as did some of the New England poets. He at times felt keenly the narrowness and bigotry of the church -- the warring of the sects over the unessential points.1 In his thinking he found no place for the rigid and severe creed which dominated his youth. He gave up the forms, not the spirit, of 1 See especially the poem " Remonstrance." 318 SIDNEY LANIER worship. He lived the abundant life, and all of the roads which he traveled led to GodK His faith was as broad as " the liberal marshes of Glynn." In the spirit of St. Francis he said: -- I am one with all the kinsmen things That e'er my Father fathered. Notwithstanding his vivid realization of the evil of dogma and of sect, he maintained through out his life a reverent .faith; he could distin guish, as Browning said Shelley could not, be tween churchdom and Christianity. Not only in the " Crystal" and " A Ballad of Trees and the Master," and in the spirit of nearly all of his poems, is this evident; but throughout his lec tures, essays, and letters he never missed an op portunity to relate knowledge to faith:'" " He was the most Christlike man I ever knew," said one of his intimate friends, and those who have looked upon his bust at Johns Hopkins have involuntarily found the resemblance of physical form. Certainly there has been no tenderer poem written about the Master than the lines written during Lanier's last year: -- Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him : CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS 319 The thorn-tree had a mind to Him When into the woods He came. Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content. Out of the woods my Master eame, Content with death and shame. When Death and Shame would woo Him last} From under the trees they drew Him last: 'Twas on a tree they slew Him -- last When out of the woods He came. CHAPTEE XII THE LAST TEAE ONE of the pieces of advice that Lanier gave to consumptives who went to Florida for their health was, " Set out to get well, with the thorough as surance that consumption is curable." He had literally followed his own advice, and had fought death off for seven years. By the spring of 1880 he had won his fight over every obstacle that had been in his way. He had a position which, sup plemented by literary work, could sustain him and his family. By prodigious work he had over come, to a large extent, his lack of training in both music and scholarship. The years 1878 and 1879 were his most productive. vBy the "Science of English Verse " and the " Marshes of Glynn " he had won the admiration of many who had at first been doubtful about his ability. From an obscure man of the provinces out of touch with artists or musicians,'he had become the idol of a large circle of friends and admirers.} During all these years he had had to fight the disease which he inherited from both sides of his family and which was accentuated by hardships THE LAST YEAR 321 during the war and the habits of a bent student. His flute-playing had helped to mitigate the dis ease. Finally, however, in the summer of 1880, he entered upon the last fight with his old enemy. Lanier had laughed in the face of death, and each new acquisition in the realms of music and poetry had been a challenge to the enemy. s) In 1876 he almost succumbed, but in the meaii time three years of hard work had intervened. .What he had suffered from disease, even when he was at his best, may be divined by one of imagina tion. He once referred to consumptives as " be yond all measure the keenest sufferers of all the stricken of this world," and he knew what he was talking about. ^He wrote to Hayne, November 19, 1880 : " For six months past a ghastly fever has been taking possession of me each day at about twelve M., and holding my head under the sur face of indescribable distress for the next twenty hours, subsiding only enough each morning to let me get on my working-harness, but never inter mitting. A number of tests show it not to be the ' hectic' so well known in consumption ; and to this day it has baffled all the skill I could find in New York, in Philadelphia, and here.,; I have myself been disposed to think it arose purely from the bitterness of having to spend mytime in making academic lectures and boy's books -- pot-boilers all -- when a thousand songs are sing- 322 SIDNEY LANIER ing in my heart that will certainly kill me if I do not utter them soon.J But I don't think this diagnosis has found favor with any practical phy sician ; and meantime I work day after day in such suffering as is piteous to see." l /"With his fever at 104 degrees he wrote " Sunrise," which, though considered by many his best poemj)shows an unmistakable weakness when compared with the " Marshes of Glynn." There is a letting down of the robust imagination. He delivered his lec tures on the English Novel under circumstances too harrowing to describe. His audience did not know whether he could finish any one of them. And yet the story of his life shall not close with a pathetic account of those last sad months. Even during the last year he maintained his cheerfulness, his playfulness, his good humor, and also his buoyancy. In August, a fourth son, Rob ert Sampson Lanier, was born at West Chester, and the father writes letters to his friends, an nouncing his joy thereat. One is to his old friend, Richard Malcolm Johnston. WEST CHESTER, PA., August 28, 1880. MY DEAK AND SWEET RlCHABD, ---- It has just occurred to me that you were obliged to be as sweet as you are, in order to redeem your name; for the other three Richards in history were very 1 Letters, p. 244 THE LAST YEAR 323 far from being satisfactory persons, and some thing had to be done. Richard I, though a man of muscle, was but a loose sort of a swashbuckler after all; and Richard II, though handsome in person, was " redeless," and ministered much occasion to Wat Tyler and his gross following; while Richard III, though a wise man, allowed his wisdom to ferment into cunning and applied the same unto villainy. But now comes Richard IV, to wit, you,--and, by means of gentle loveliness and a story or two, subdues a realm which I foresee will be far more intelligent than that of Richard I, far less turbu lent than that of Richard II, and far more legiti mate than that of Richard III, while it will own more, and more true loving subjects than all of those three put together. I suppose my thoughts have been carried into these details of nomenclature by your reference to my own young Samson, who, I devoutly trust with you, shall yet give many a shrewd buffet and upsetting to the Philistines. Is it not won derful how quickly these young fledgelings im press us with a sense of their individuality? This fellow is two weeks old to-day, and every one of us, from mother to nurse, appears to have a per fectly clear conception of his character. This conception is simply enchanting. In fact, the young man has already made himself absolutely 324 SIDNEY LANIER indispensable to us, and my comrade and I won der how we ever got along with only three boys. I rejoice that the editor of " Harper's " has discrimination enough to see the quality of .your stories, and I long to see these two appear, so that you may quickly follow them with a volume. When that appears, it shall have a review that will draw three souls out of one weaver -- if this pen have not lost her cunning. I 'm sorry I can't send a very satisfactory an swer to your health inquiries, as far as regards myself. The mean, pusillanimous fever which took under-hold of me two months ago is still there, as impregnably fixed as a cockle-burr in a sheep's tail. I have tried idleness, but (naturally) it won't work. I do no labor except works of necessity -- such as kissing Mary, who is a more ravishing angel than ever -- and works of mercy -- such as letting off the world from any more of my poetry for a while. But it's all one to my master the fever. I get up every day and drag around in a pitiful kind of shambling existence. I fancy it has come to be purely a go-as-you-please match between me and the disease, to see which will wear out first, and I think I will manage to take the belt, yet. Give my love to the chestnut trees 1 and all the rest of your family. 1 It is said that he -wrote the Marshes of Glynn under one of these. THE LAST YEAR 325 Your letter gave us great delight. God bless you for it, my best and only Richard, as well as for all your other benefactions to Your faithful friend, S. L. A fev,' days before, he had written a more se rious letter-to his friend, Mrs. Isabelle Dobbin, of Baltimore. The concluding words show his realization of the deeper meaning of childhood. WEST CHESTKK, August 18, 1880. Here is come a young man so lovely in his person, and so gentle and high-born in his man ners, that in the course of some three days he has managed to make himself as necessary to our world as the sun, moon, and stars; at any rate, these would seem quite obscured without him. It just so happens that he is very vividly asso ciated with you; for among the few treasures we allowed ourselves to bring away from home is the photograph you gave us, and this stands in the most honorable coign of vantage in Mary's room. You '11 be glad to know that my dear Com rade is doing well. . . . We have reason to ex pect a speedy sight of our dear invalid moving about her accustomed ways again. If you could see the Boy asleep by her side! The tranquillity 326 SIDNEY LANIER of his slumber, and the shine of his mother's eyes thereover, seem to melt up and mysteriously ab sorb the great debates of the agnostics, and of science and politics, and to dissolve them into, the pellucid Faith long ago reaffirmed by the Son of Man. Looking upon the child, this term seems to acquire a new meaning, as if Christ were in some sort reproduced in every infant. In the fall he was busy again with his books for boys, -- books, it may be said, that had their origin in the stories he told his own boys.1 The spirit in which he worked on these "pot-boilers" is seen in a letter to his publisher, Mr. Charles Scribner: -- 433 N. CALYERT ST., BALTIMORE, MD., November 12, 1880. MY DEAB ME. SCRIBNER, -- You have cer tainly made a beautiful book of the " King Arthur," and I heartily congratulate you on achieving what seems to me a real marvel of bookmaking art. The binding seems even richer than that of the " Froissart;" and the type and printing leave a new impression of graciousness upon the eye with each reading. I suspect there are few books in our language 1 Of these The Soy's Froissart was published in 1878, The Boy's King Arthur in 1880, The Boy's Mabinogion in 1881, and The Boy's Percy in 1882. THE LAST YEAR 327 which lead a reader -- whether young or old -- on from one paragraph to another with such strong and yet quiet seduction as this. Familiar as I am with it after having digested the' whole work before editing it and again reading it in proof -- some parts twice over -- I yet cannot open at any page of your volume without read ing oh for a while ; and I have observed the same effect with other grown persons who have opened the book in my library since your package caine a couple of days ago. It seems difficult to be lieve otherwise than that you have only to make the book well known in order to secure it a great sale, not only for the present year but for several years to come. Perhaps I may be of service in reminding you -- of what the rush of winter busi ness might cause you to overlook -- that it would seem wise to make a much more extensive outlay in the way of special advertisement, here, than was necessary with the "Froissart." It is probably quite safe to say that a thousand persons are fa miliar with at least the name of Froissart to one who ever heard of Malory; and the facts (1) that this book is an English classic written in the fifteenth century; (2) that it is the very first piece of melodious English prose ever written, though melodious English poetry had been common for seven hundred years before,-- a fact which seems astonishing to those who are not familiar with. 328 SIDNEY LANIER the circumstance that all nations appear .to have produced good poetry a long time before good prose, usually a long time before any prose; (3) that it arrays a number of the most splendid ideals of energetic manhood in all literature; and (4) that the stories which it brings together and ar ranges, for the first time, have furnished themes for the thought, the talk, the poems, the operas of the most civilized peoples of the earth during more than seven hundred years, -- ought to be diligen tly circulated. I regretted exceedingly that I could not, with appropriateness to youthful readers, bring out in the introduction the strange melody of Malory's sentences, by reducing their movement to musical notation. No one who has not heard it would believe the effect of some of his passages upon the ear when read by any one who has through sympathetic study learned the rhythm in which he thought his phrases. . . . Sincerely yours, SIDNEY LANIER. In January, he began his lectures at Johns Hopkins. Who would have thought that a dying man could give expression to such vigorous ideas in such rhythmic and virile prose as are some of the passages in the " English Novel"? There is not the intellectual strength in this book that there is in the " Science of English Verse." THE LAST YEAR 329 There is more of a tendency to go off in digres sions, " to talk away across country," and the whole lacks in unity and in scientific precision. But there are passages in it that men will not willingly let die. His discussion of the growth of personality, of the relations of Science, Art, Re ligion, and Life, of Walt Whitman and Zola, and above all, of George Eliot, are worthy of Lanier at his best. These passages and the still more important one on the relation of art to morals are too well known to be quoted; they will be considered in another chapter dealing with Lanier's work as critic. They are mentioned here only to show the range of Lanier's interest and the alertness of his mind when his body was fast failing. 1 Frances E. Willard heard these lectures, and her words descriptive of them indicate that even in those days of intense suffering Lanier impressed her favorably. " It was refreshing," she says, " to listen to a professor of literature who was some thing more than a raconteur and something dif ferent from a bibliophile, who had, indeed, risen to the level of generalization and employed the method of a philosopher. . . , [His] face [was] very pale and delicate, with finely chiseled fea tures, dark, clustering hair, parted in the middle, and beard after the manner of the Italian school of art. . . . He sits not very reposefully in his 330 SIDNEY LANIER professorial armchair, and reads from dainty slips of MS. in a clear, penetrating voice full of sub tlest comprehension, but painfully and often in terrupted by a cough. ... As we met for a moment, when the lecture was oyer, he spoke kindly of my work, evincing that sympathy of the scholar with the work of progressive philan thropy. 'We are all striving for one end,' said Lanier, with genial, hopeful smile, 'and that is to develop and ennoble the humanity of which we form a part.' " 1 Just after finishing his lectures, which were reduced from twenty to twelve out of considera tion for his health, Lanier went to New York to consult his publishers about future work. The im pression made by him on one of his old students is seen in this passage: " One day I had a star tling letter from Mrs. Lanier, saying that he was coming to New York on business, though he was in no condition for such an effort, and begging me, as one whom he loved, to meet him and to watch over him as best I could. I found him at the St. Penis, and we had dinner together. I now know how completely he deceived me as to his condition. With the intensity and exaltation often characteristic of the consumptive, he led me to think that he was only slightly ailing, was gay and versatile as ever, insisted on going some- 1 Independent, Sept. 1, 1881. THE LAST YEAR 331 where for the evening ' to hear some music,' and absolutely demanded to exercise through the evening .the rights of host in a way that baffled my inexperience completely. Only just as I left Mm did he let fall a single remark that I later saw showed how severe and unfortunate, prob ably, was the strain of it all." Brave as he was, however, and eager to keep at his work, he finally submitted to the inevita ble, and in May started with his brother to the mountains of western North Carolina. His final interview with Dr. Gilman is thus related by the latter: -- "The last time that I saw Lanier was in the spring of 1881, when after a winter of severe illness he came to make arrangements for his lectures in the next winter and to say good-bye for the summer. His emaciated form could scarcely walk across the yard from the carriage to the door. ' I am going to Asheville, N. C.,' he said, ' and I am going to write an account o that region as a railroad guide. 'It seems as if the good Lord always took care of me. Just as the doctors had said that I must go to that mountain region, the publishers gave me a commission to prepare a book.' ' Good-bye,' he added, and I supported his tottering steps to the carriage door, never to see his face again." l 1 South Atlantic Quarterly, April, 1905. 332 SIDNEY LANIEE The last months of Lanier's career seem to bring together all the threads of his life. He was in the mountains which had first stimulated his love of nature and were the background of -his early romance. He was lovingly attended by father, brother, and wife, and took constant delight in the little boy who had come to cheer his last days of weariness and sickness. He named the tent Camp Kobin, after his youngest son, and from that camp sent his last message to the boys of America. They are the words of the preface to " The Boy's Mabinogion," or " Knightly Le gends of Wales : " " In now leaving this beauti ful book with my young countrymen, I find my self so sure of its charm as to feel no hesitation in taking authority to unite the earnest expres sion of their gratitude with that of my own to Lady Charlotte Guest, whose talents and schol arship have made these delights possible; and I can wish my young readers few pleasures of finer quality than that surprised sense of a whole new world of possession which came with my first reading of these Mabinogion, and made me re member Keats's watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken." A letter to President Gilman indicates his con tinued interest in scientific investigation: -- THE LAST YEAR 333 ASHEVILLE, N. C., June 5, 1881. DEAR MR. OILMAN, -- Can you help me -- or tell me how I can help myself -- in the follow ing matter? A few weeks from now I wish to study the so-called no-frost belt on the side of Tryon Mountain; and in order to test the popu lar account I propose to carry on two simultane ous series of meteorological observations during a fortnight or longer, -- the one conducted by myself in the middle of the belt, the other by a friend stationed well outside its limits. For this purpose I need two small self-registering ther mometers, two aneroid thermometers, and two hygrometers of any make. It has occurred to me that since these observations will be con ducted during the University recess I might -- always provided, of course, that there is any au thority or precedent for such action -- procure this apparatus from the University collection, es pecially as no instrument is included which could not easily be replaced. Of course I would cheer fully deposit a sum sufficient to cover the value of the whole outfit. Should this arrangement be possible, I merely ask that you turn this letter over to Dr. Hast ings, with the request that he will have this ap paratus packed at my expense and shipped by express to me at this point immediately. Yours very sincerely, SIDNEY LANIKB. 334 SIDNEY LANIER The impulse- to poetry was with him, too. He jotted down or dictated to his "wife outlines and suggestions of poems which he hoped to write. Of these one has been printed : -- I was the earliest bird awake, It was a while before dawn, I believe, But somehow I saw round the world, And the eastern mountain top did not hinder me. And I knew of the dawn by my heart, not by mine eyes. One agrees with " Father " Tabb that no utter ance of the poet ever betrayed more of his na ture, --" feeble and dying, but still a ' bird,' awake to every emotion of love, of beauty, of faith, of star-like hope, keeping the dawn in his heart to sing, when the mountain-tops hindered it from his eyes." On August 4 the party started across the mountains to Lynn, Polk County, North Caro lina. On the way they stopped with a friend in whose house Lanier gave one more exhibition of his love of music. " It was in this house," says Miss Spann, " the meeting-place of all sweet nobility with nature and with the human spirit, that he uttered his last music on earth. At the close of the day Lanier came in and passed down the long drawing-room until he reached a western window. In the distance were the far-reaching Alleghany hills, with Mt. Pisgah supreme among them, and the intervening valley bathed in sun- THE LAST YEAR 335 / set beauty.^ Absorbed away from those around Mm, he watched the -sunset glow deepen into twilight, then sat down to the piano, facing the window. Sorrow and joy and pain and hope and triumph Ms soul poured forth. They felt that in that tvrilight hour he had risen to an angel's song." -1 Lyn.o is in a sheltered valley among the moun tains of Polk County, whose " climate is tempered by a curious current of warm air along the slope of Tryon Mountain, its northern boundary, a sort of ethereal Gulf Stream." Here death came sooner than was anticipated by the brother, who had gone back to Montgomery, preceded already by his father. Mrs. Lanier's own words tell the story of the end in simplicity and love: " We are left alone (August 29) with one another. On the last night of the summer comes a change. His love and immortal will hold off the destroyer of our summer yet one more week, until the fore noon of September 7, and then falls the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to the adored will of God." His death before the open window was a realiza tion of Matthew Arnold's wish with regard to dying: -- Let me be, While all around in silence lies, 1 Independent, June 28, 1894. 336 SIDNEY LANIER Moved to the window near, and see Once more, before my dying eyes,-- Bathed in the sacred dews of morn The wide aerial landscape spread, The world which was ere I was born, The world which lasts when I am dead." The closing lines of " Sunrise" express better than anything else Lanier's own confident faith as he passed behind the veil: -- And ever my heart through the night shall with know ledge abide thee, And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee, Labor, at leisure, in art -- till yonder beside tbee My soul shall float, friend Sun, The day being done. His body was taken to Baltimore, where it rests in Greenmount Cemetery in the lot of his friends, the Turnbulls, close by the son whose memory they have perpetuated by the endow ment of a permanent lectureship on poetry in Johns Hopkins University. The grave is un marked -- even by a slab. It divides the interest of visitors to Baltimore with the grave of Poe, which, however, is in another part of the city. So these two poets, whose lives and whose char acters were so strikingly unlike, sleep in their adopted city. Shortly after Lanier's death memorial services THE LAST YEAR 337 were held at Johns Hopkins University, at which time beautiful tributes were paid to him by his colleagues and friends. A committee of the citi zens of Baltimore was appointed to raise a fund for the sustenance and education of the poet's family. They were aided in this by admirers of Lanier and public-spirited citizens throughout the country. Meantime his fame was growing, the publication of his poems in 1884 giving fresh impetus thereto. Seven years after his death a bust of the poet was presented to the University by Mr. Charles Lanier of New York.1 "The hall was filled," says ex-President Gilman, " with a company of those who knew and admired him. On the ped estal which supported the bust hung his flute and a roll of his music; a garland of laurels crowned his brow, and the sweetest of flowers were strewn at his feet. Letters came from Lowell, Holmes, Gilder, Stedman; young men who never saw him, but who had come under his in fluence, read their tributes in verse; a former student of the University made a critical esti mate of the ' Science of Verse;' a lady read several of Lanier's own poems; another lady sang one of his musical compositions adapted to words of Tennyson, and another song, one of his to 1 For a full record of the exercises see A Memorial of Sid ney Lanier, Baltimore, 1888. 338 SIDNEY LANIER which some one else wrote the music ; a college president of New Jersey held up Lanier as a teacher of ethics; but the most striking figure was the trim, gaunt form of a Catholic priest, who referred to the day when they, two Confede rate soldiers (the Huguenot and the Catholic), were confined in the Union prison, and with tears in his eyes said, his love for Lanier was like that of David for Jonathan. The sweetest of all the testimonials came at the very last moment, un solicited and unexpected, from that charming poetess, Edith Thomas. She heard of the me morial assembly, and on the spur of the moment wrote the well-known lines, suggested by one of Lanier's own verses : -- On the Paradise side of the river of death." The aftermath of Lanier's home life is all pleasant to contemplate. His wife, although still an invalid, has, by her readings from her hus band's letters and poems, and by her sympa thetic help for all those who have cared to know more about him, done more than any other per son to extend his fame. With tremendous ob stacles in her way, she has reared to manhood the four sons, three of whom are now actively identified with publishing houses in New York city, and one of whom, bearing the name of his father, is now living upon a farm in Georgia, THE LAST YEAR 339 Charles Day Lanier is president of the Review of Reviews Company, and is associated with his youngest brother, Robert Sampson Lanier, in editing "The Country Calendar." Henry Wysham Lanier is a member of the firm of Doubleday, Page & Company, and editor of " Country Life in America." They all inherit their father's love of music and poetry, and through their maga zines are doing much to foster among Americans a taste for country life. By a striking coinci dence-- entirely unpremeditated on their part -- three of the sons and their mother live at Green wich, Connecticut. It will be remembered that the home of the English Laniers was at Green wich, -- and so the story of the Lanier family begins and ends with this name, -- one in the Old World and one in the New. CHAPTEE XIII THE ACHIEVEMENT IN CRITICISM AND IN POETRY SPECULATIONS as to what Lanier might have done with fewer limitations and with a longer span of years inevitably arise in the mind of any one who studies his life. If, like the late Theodore Thomas, he had at an early age been able to develop his talent for music in the musi cal circles of New York ; if, like Longfellow, he had gone from a small college to a German uni versity, or, like Mr. Howells, from the provinces to Cambridge, where he would have come in contact with a group of men of letters; if, after the Civil War, he had, like Hayne, retired to a cabin and there devoted himself entirely to literary work; if, like Lowell, he could have given attention to literary subjects and lectured in a university without teaching classes of im mature students or without resorting to " pot boilers," " nothings that do mar the artist's hand ; " if, like Poe, he could have struck some one vein and worked it for all it was worth,-- if, in a word, the varied activity of his life could have given way to a certain definiteness of CRITICISM AND POETRY 341 purpose and concentration of effort, what might have been the difference! Music and poetry strove for the mastery of his soul. Swinburne, speaking of those who attempt success in two realms of art, says, " On neither course can the runner of a double race attain the goal, but must needs in both races alike be caught up and resign his torch to a runner with a single aim." And yet;one feels that if Lanier had had time and health to work out all these diverse interests and all his varied experiences into a unity, if scholarship and music and poetry could have been developed simultaneously over a long stretch of time, there would have resulted, perhaps, a more many-sided man and a finer poetry than we have yet had in America. So at last the speculation reduces itself to one of time. Lycidas was dead ere his prime. From 1876 till the fatal illness took hold of him he made great strides in poetry. Up to the very last he was making plans for the future. His letters to friends outlining the volumes that he hoped to publish, -- work demanding decades in stead of years, -- the memoranda jotted down on bits of paper or backs of envelopes as the rough drafts of essays or poems, would be pathetic, if one did not believe with Lanier that death is a mere incident in an eternal life, or with Brown ing, that what a man would do exalts him. The 342 SIDNEY LANIER lines of Robert Browning's poems in which he sets forth the glory of the life of aspiration -- as piration independent of any achievement--ring in one's ears, as he reads the story of Lanier's life. This low mail seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it; This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. The imperfect poems, the unfinished poems, the sheaves unharvested, not like Coleridge's for lack of will, but for lack of time, are suggestive of one of the finest aspects of romantic art. " I would rather fail at some things I wot of than succeed at others," said Lanier.\jThere are moods when the imperfection of Lanier pleases more than the perfection of Poe -- even from the ar tistic standpoint^] What he aspired to be enters into one's whole thought about his life and his art. The vista of his grave opens up into the unseen world. On earth the broken ares; in the heaven a perfect round. But the time comes when none of these con siderations-- neither admiration for the man, nor speculations as to what he might have done tinder different circumstances, nor thoughts as to what he may be doing in larger, other worlds than ours -- should interfere with a judicial estimate of what he really achieved. It would CRITICISM AND POETRY 343 have been the miracle of history if with all his obstacles he had not had limitations as a writer; and yet many who have insisted most on his suf ferings, liave resented any criticism passed upon his work. One has the authority of Lanier's writings about other men and his letters about his own poems for judging him only by the highest standards. Did he in aiming at a million miss a unit ? Was he blinded by the very excess of light ? How will he fare in that race with time of which a contemporary essayist has written? " When the admiration of his friends no longer counts, when his friends and admirers are them selves gathered to the same silent throng," will there be enough inherent worth in his work to keep his fame alive ? These are questions that one has a right to ask. And, first, as to Lanier's prose work. He has suffered from the fact that so many of his uurevised works have been published ; these have their excuse for being in the light they throw on his life; but otherwise some of them are dis appointing. If, instead of ten volumes of prose, there could be selected his best work from all of them, there would still be a residue of writ ing that would establish Lanier's place among the prose writers of America. There is no better illustration of his development than that seen in comparing his early prose -- the war letters 344 SIDNEY LANIER and " Tiger Lilies," for instance, or such essays as " Retrospects and Prospects " -- with that of his maturer years. I doubt if justice has been done to Lanier's best style, its clearness, flu ency, and eloquence. It may be claimed without dispute that he was a rare good letter-writer; perhaps only Lowell's letters are more inter esting. The faults of his poetry are not always seen in his best letters. In them there is a play fulness, a richness of humor, an exuberance of spirits, animated talk about himself and his work, and withal a distinct style, that ought to keep them alive. There might be selected, too, a volume of essays, including " From Bacon to Beethoven," " The Orchestra of To-Day," " San Antonio de Bexar," " The Confederate Memo rial Address," " The New South," and others. A volume of American Criticism, edited by Mr. William Morton Payne, includes Lanier among the dozen best American critics, giving a selection from the " English Novel " as a typi cal passage. Has he a right to be in such a book ? His work as a scholar has been discussed in a previous chapter; his rank as a critic is a very different matter. It goes without saying that Lanier was not a great critic. He did not have the learning requisite for one. One might turn the words of his criticism of Poe and say that he needed to know more. He knew but little of the CRITICISM AND POETRY 345 classics beyond what he studied in college; while he read French and German literature to some extent, he did not go into them as Lowell did. Homer, Dante, and Goethe were but little more than names to him. Furthermore, his criticism is often marked by a tendency to indulge in hasty generalizations, due to the fact that he had not sufficient facts to draw upon. An illustration is his preference of the Elizabethan sonnets to the English sonnets written on the Italian model, or his discussion of personality as found in the Greek drama. His generalizations are often either patently obvious or far-fetched. He was too eager to "bring together people and books that never dreamed of being side by side." His tendency to fancy, so marked in his poetry, is seen also in his criticism, as for instance, his com parison of a sonnet to a little drama, or his state ment that every poem has a plot, a crisis, and a hero. He had De Quincey's habit of digressing from the main theme, -- what he himself called in speaking of an Elizabethan poet, the " con stant temptation, to the vigorous and springy mind of the poet, to bound off wherever his momentary fancy may lead him." This is es pecially seen in his lectures on the English Novel, where he is often carried far afield from the general theme. In his lectures on " Shakspere and His Forerunners," he was so often 346 SIDNEY LANIER troubled with an embarrassment of riches that he did not endeavor to follow a rigidly formed plan. A more serious defect, however, was his lack of catholicity of judgment. He had all of Carlyle's distaste for the eighteenth century; his dislike of Pope was often expressed, and he went so far as to wish that the novels of Fielding and Rich ardson might be " blotted from the face of the earth." His characterization of Thackeray as a " low-pitched artist" is wide of the mark. As Lanier had his dislikes in literature and ex pressed them vigorously, so he over-praised many men. When he says, for instance, that Bartholo mew Griffin " will yet obtain a high and immor tal place in English literature," or that William Drummond of Hawthornden is one of " the chief glories of the English tongue," or that Gavin Douglas is " one of the greatest poets of our lan guage," one wonders to what extent the " pleas ant peril of enthusiasm" will carry a man. One may be an admirer of George Eliot and yet feel that Lanier has overstated her merits as compared with other English novelists, and that his praise of " Daniel Deronda " is excessive. Such defects as are here suggested should not, however, blind the reader to some of Lanier's better work. The history of criticism, especially of romantic criticism, is full of just such un balanced judgments. It is often true in criticism CRITICISM AND POETRY 347 that a man " should like what he does like ; and his likings are facts in criticism for him." With out very great learning and with strong preju dices in some directions, Lanier yet had re markable insight into literature. Lowell's say ing that he was " a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word" is especially true of some of his critical writing. Examples are his well-known characterizations of great men in "TheCrystal:" -- Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee That all the All thou hadst for needy man Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was But not to be. Langley, that with but a touch Of art had sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songK whereof't is dearest, now And roost adorable. Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes. Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting. There are scattered throughout his prose works criticisms of writers that are at once penetrating and subtle. The one on Browning has already been quoted. The best known of these criticisms is that on Walt Whitman, but it is too long for 348 SIDNEY LANIEE insertion here. There is a sentence in one of his letters to Bayard Taylor, however, that hits the mark better than, the longer criticism, perhaps: " Upon a sober comparison, I think Walt Whit man's ' Leaves of Grass ' worth at least a million of ' Among my Books ' and ' Atalanta in Calydon.' In the two latter I could not find anything which has not been much better said before; but ' Leaves of Grass' was real refreshing to me -- like rude salt spray in your face -- in spite of its enormous fundamental error that a thing is good because it is natural, and in spite of the world-wide difference between my own concep tions of art and the author's." Another good one is that on Shelley: " In truth, Shelley ap pears always to have labored under an essential immaturity: it is very possible that if he had lived a hundred years he would never have be come a man; he was penetrated with modern ideas, but penetrated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, and with a constant tendency to the . extravagant and illogical; so that I call him the modern boy." Lanier writes of the songs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as " short and unstudied lit tle songs, as many of them are, songs which come upon us out of that obscure period like brief little bird-calls from a thick-leaved wood." He speaks of Chaucer's works as " full of cunning CRITICISM AND POETRY 349 hints and twinkle-eyed suggestions which peep between the lines like the comely faces of country children between the fence bars as one rides by." He draws a fine comparison between William Morris and Chaucer: " How does the spire of hope spring and upbound into the infinite in Chaucer; while, on the other hand, how blank, world-bound, and wearying is the stone facade of hopelessness which rears itself uncompro misingly behind the gayest pictures of William Morris ! . . . Again, how openly joyful is Chau cer, how secretly melancholy is Morris! Both, it is true, are full of sunshine ; but Chaucer's is spring sunshine, Morris's is autumn. . . . Chaucer rejoices as only those can who know the bound of good red blood through unob structed veins, and the thrilling tingle of nerve and sinew at amity ; and who can transport this healthy animalism into their unburdened minds, and spiritualize it so that the mere drawing of breath is at once a keen delight and an inwardly felt practical act of praise to the God of a strong and beautiful world. Morris too has his sensuous element, but it is utterly unlike Chaucer's; it is dilettante^ it is amateur sensualism; it is not strong, though sometimes excessive, and it is nervously afraid of that satiety which is at once its chief temptation and its most awful doom. " Again, Chaucer lives, Morris dreams. . . . 350 SIDNEY LANIEE ' The Canterbury Tales' is simply a drama with somewhat more of stage direction than is com mon ; but the ' Earthly Paradise ' is a reverie, which would hate nothing so much as to be broken by any collision with that rude actual life which Chaucer portrays. " And, finally, note the faith that shines in Chaucer and the doubt that darkens in Morris. Has there been any man since St. John so lova ble as the ' Persoune' ? or any sermon since that on the Mount so keenly analytical, ... as ' The Persoune's Tale' ? . . . A true Hindu lifeweariness (to use one of Novalis' marvelous phrases) is really the atmosphere which pro duces the exquisite haze of Morris's pictures. . . . Can any poet shoot his soul's arrow to its best height, when at once bow and string and muscle and nerve are slackened in this vaporous and relaxing air, that comes up out of the old dreams of fate that were false and of passions that were not pure ? " l Lanier's enthusiasm for Chaucer is typical of much of his critical writing. He was a generous praiser of the best literature, and generally his praise was right. " Lyrics of criticism " would be a good title for many of his passages. There was nothing of indifferentism in him. In a letter to Gibson Peacock he wrote of a certain type of 1 Music and Poetry, p. 198. CRITICISM AND POETRY 351 criticism which, it may be said, has been widely prevalent in recent years: " In the very short time that I have been in the hands of the critics, nothing has amazed me more than the timid solicitudes with which they rarefy in one line any enthusiasm they may have condensed in an other-- a process curiously analogous to those irregular condensations and rarefactions of air which physicists have shown to be the conditions of producing an indeterminate sound. Many of my critics have seemed -- if I may change the figure -- to be forever conciliating the yet-unrisen ghosts of possible mistakes." Enough quotations have already been given from his lectures in Baltimore to show his enthusiasm for many of the periods and many of the authors of English literature. It is a distinction for him as a critic that he has set forth in so many passages his conception of the mission of poetry, -- passages that are in the line of succession of defenses of poetry by Sidney, Hazlitt, and Shelley. There is enough good criticism in the Shake speare lectures and in the " English Novel," in the prefaces of the boy's books and in his letters, to make a volume of interest and importance. Suppose we cease to think of the first two as formal treatises on the subjects they discuss, and rather select from them such passages as the discussion of personality, the relation of music, 352 SIDNEY LANIER science, and the novel, the criticism of Whitman's theory of art, the discussion of the relation of morals to art, the best passages on Anglo-Saxon poetry and the Elizabethan sonneteers, and the finer passages on Shakespeare's growth as a man and as a dramatist. Such a volume would, I believe, confirm one in the opinion that Lanier belongs by right among the best American critics. Certainly, the " Science of English Verse " en titles him to that distinction. About 1875 Lanier became interested in the formal side of poetry and projected a work on a scientific basis. It was natural that one who had so much reverence for science and who had studied the " physics of music," should apply the scientific method to the study of poetry. He knew that the science of versification was not the most important phase of poetry: in the pre face, as in the epilogue, to the " Science of Eng lish Verse," he makes clear that " for the artist in verse there is no law : the perception and love of beauty constitute the whole outfit." In many other passages in his writings may be seen his view of the moral significance of poetry. He desired, however, to formulate for himself and for students certain metrical laws. What differ entiates poetry from prose? How does a writer produce certain effects with certain rhythms and vowel and consonant arrangements? The CRITICISM AND POETRY 353 student wishes to know why the forms are fair and hear how the tale is told. By the study of rhythm, tune, and color, Lanier believed that one might receive " a whole new world of possi ble delight." He believed with Sylvester that " versification has a technical side quite as well capable of being reduced to rules as that of painting or any other fine art." His book was intended to furnish students with such an outfit of facts and principles as would serve for pursu ing further researches. The time was ripe for such a study. Lanier wrote to Mr. Stedman that " in all directions the poetic art was suffering from the shameful circumstance that criticism was without a scien tific basis." The book at once received com mendation from competent critics. Edward Row land Sill wrote Dr. Oilman that it was " the only thing extant on that subject that is of any earthly value. I wonder that so few seem to have discovered its great merit," -- an opinion afterwards repeated by him in the " Atlantic Monthly." The late Richard Hovey, in a series of articles in the " Independent" on the technic of poetry, said that Lanier had begun such a scientific study with " great soundness and com mon sense ;" the book is " accurate, scientific1, suggestive." The editor of the " Dial" referred to it as " the most striking and thoughtful ex- 354 SIDNEY LANIER position yet published on trie technics of English poetry." Within the past ten years books on English verse have multiplied fast. In Germany, in England, and in America, the discussion of metrics has gone on. While dissenting from some of Lanier's conclusions, few of the writers have failed to recognize his work as of great im portance.1 One man rarely sees all round any great subjebt like this, -- each man sees some one special point and states it in an individual way, and finally, in the course of time, the truth is evolved. There is little objection to Parts II and III of the " Science of English Verse." They are gen erally recognized as strikingly, suggestive and helpful. It is with the main thesis of the first part that many disagree -- the author's insist ence that the laws of music and of verse are identical. According to Lanier, verse is in all respects a phenomenon of sound. From time immemorial the relation of music and of poetry has been spoken of in figurative terms, as 'in Carlyle's discussion of the subject in the essay on the " Hero as Poet." Lanier, however, was the first to work the idea out in a thorough-going fashion. He was especially qualified to do so 1 See, for instance, Winchester's Principles of Literary Criticism, Alden's English Verse, Paul Elmer More's Shelburne Essays, and Omond's English Metrists. CRITICISM AND POETRY 355 because of his knowledge of the two arts. His general conclusion was the same as that reached by Professor Gummere in his searching discussion of " Ehythm as the Essential Fact of Poetry." r Both of them saw that the origin of poetry was in the dance and the march, and later the song. In modern times the two arts had become dis tinct. Lanier believed that, in accordance with its origin and the practice of the best poets, the basis of rhythm is time and not accent. Every line is made up of bars of equal time value. " If this equality of time were taken away, no possibility of rhythm would remain." " The accent serves only to mark^ for the ear these equal intervals of time, which are the units of poetic measurement." Lanier's theory of quan tity, however, is different from the rigid laws of classic quantity, for he allows for variations from the regular type of verse that may prevail in a certain poem or line, thus providing for " an es cape out of the rigidities of the type into the in finite field of those subtle rhythms which pervade familiar utterance." He separates himself there fore from such writers as Abbott and Guest, who applied the rule of thumb to English verse. To such men " Shakspere's verse has often seemed a mass of ' license,' of ' irregularity,' and of lawless anomaly to commentators; while, ap- 1 The Beginnings of Poetry, chapter 2. 356 SIDNEY LANIER preached from the direction of that great rhyth mic sense of humanity displayed in music, in all manner of folk-songs, and in common talk, it is perfect music." Lanier's theory is a good one in so far as it applies to the ideal rhythm, for the melody of verse does approximate that of music. If one considers actual rhythm, however, he is forced to come to the conclusion that no such mathemati cal relation exists between the syllables of a foot of verse as that existing between the notes of a musical bar. In poetry another element enters in to interfere with the ideal rhythm of music, and that is what Mr. More has called " the normal unrhythmical enunciation of the lan guage." The result is a compromise shifting to ward one extreme or another. Lanier's theory would apply to the earliest folk-songs. He illus trated his point by referring to the negro melo dies, which, says Joel Chandler Harris, " depend for their melody and rhythm upon the musical quality of the time, and not upon long or short, accented or unaccented syllables." His citation of Japanese poetry was also a case in point. Unquestionably, the lyrics and choruses of the Greek drama were thoroughly musical; Sopho cles and ^Eschylus were both teachers of the chorus. Many of the lyrics of the Elizabethan age were written especially for music, and more CRITICISM AND POETRY 357 than one collector of these lyrics has bemoaned the fact that in later times there has been such a divorce between the two arts. Who will say that Coleridge's " Christabel" and " Kubla Khan " are not disembodied music ? Lamb said that Coleridge repeated the latter poem " so enehantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into any parlor when he says or sings it to me." Mr. Arthur Symons has re cently said: "' Christabel' is composed like music; you might set at the side of each section, espe cially of the opening, largo vivacissimo, and as the general expressive signature, tempo rubato." Tennyson realized the musical effect of " Paradise Lost" when he spoke of Milton as " England's God-gifted organ-voice ; " and he himself in such lyrics as those in the " Princess " and the eightysixth canto of " In Memoriam " wrought musical effects with verse. Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton says of Poe's " Ulalume " that, if properly in toned, " it would produce something like the same effect upon a listener knowing no word of English that it produces upon us." It needs to be said, in parenthesis, that in all these cases, while there is the musical effect from the standpoint of time and tone-color, there is still the perfec tion of speech. The theory will not hold, how ever, in much dramatic verse, or in meditative blank verse, as used by Wordsworth. Much of 358 SIDNEY LANIER the poetry of Byron, Browning, Keats, and Shakespeare, while supremely great from the standpoint of color, or dramatic power, or picturesqueness, or thought, is not musical. To bring some poems within the limit of musical notation would be impossible. While then one must modify Lanier's theory, the book emphasizes a point that needs con stantly to be emphasized, both by poets and by students of poetry. Followed too closely by minor poets, it will tend to develop artisans rather than artists. Followed by the greater poets,-- con sciously or unconsciously,-- it may prove to be one of the surest signs of poetry. This phase of poetical work needed to be emphasized in America, where poetry, with the exception of Poe's, has been deficient in this very element. Whatever else one may say of Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, or Longfellow, he must find that their poetry as a whole is singularly lacking in melody. Moreover, the poet who was the most domi nant figure in American literature at the time when Lanier was writing, prided himself on violating every law of form, using rhythm, if at all, in a certain elementary or oriental sense. " I tried to read a beautifully printed and schol arly volume on the theory of poetry received by mail this morning from England," said Whit man, " but gave it up at last as a bad job." One CRITICISM AND POETRY 359 may be thoroughly just to Whitman and grant the worth of his work in American literature, and yet see the value of Lanier's contention that the study of the formal element in poetry will lead to a much finer poetry than we have yet had in this country. Other books will supplant the " Science of English Verse " as text-books, and few may ever read it understandingly; but the author's name will always be thought of in any discussion of the relations of music and poetry. It is not only a scientific monograph, but a philosophical treatise on a subject that will be discussed with increasing interest. While Lanier thus stated his conception of the formal element in poetry, he has, in many other places, given his ideas of the poet's character and his work in the world. If on the one hand he criticised Whitman for lack of form, on the other he blamed Swinburne for lack of 1 substance. Seemingly a follower of Poe, he yet would have incurred the displeasure of that poet for adopting the " heresy of the didactic." He had an exalted sense of what poetry means in the redemption of mankind. He had little patience with the cry, " Art for art's sake," or with the justifica tion so often made for the immorality of the artist's life. Milton himself did not believe more ardently that a poet's life ought to be a true 360 SIDNEY LANIEK poem. In the poems " Individuality," " Clover," " Life and Song," and the " Psalm of the West," Lanier expresses his view of the responsibility of the artist. In the first he says : -- Awful is Art because 't is free; The artist trembles o'er his plan Where men his Self must see, In the " English Novel" he says : " For, in deed, we may say that he who has not yet per ceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who is therefore not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty ; that he, in short, who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light within him, he is not yet the great artist." Lanier believed that he was, or would be, a great poet. While for a time he considered music as his special field of work and " poetry as a mere tangent," after 1875 his aspiration took the direction of poetry. Criticism of his work only strengthened his conviction that it was of a high order. > Letters to his father and to his wife indicate his positive conviction that he was meet ing with the misunderstanding that every great artist has met since the world began: '' Let my CRITICISM AND POETRY 361 name perish, -- the poetry is good poetry and the music is good music, and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it." " I know, through the fiercest tests of life, that I am in soul, and shall be in life and utterance, a great poet,/ he said again. Accordingly he hoped that he would accomplish something different from the popular poetry of the period. Time and again he spoke of " the feeble magazine lyrics" of his time. " This is the kind of poetry that is technically called cul ture poetry, yet it is in reality the product of a want of culture. If these gentlemen and ladies would read the old English poetry . . . they could never be content to put forth these little diffuse prettinessess and dandy kickshaws of verse." And again : " In looking around at the publications of the younger American poets, I am struck with the circumstance that none of them even attempt anything great. . . . Hence the endless multiplications of those little feeble magazine lyrics which we all know: consisting of one minute idea each, which is put in the last line of the fourth verse, the other three verses and three lines being mere surplusage." His characterizations of contemporary poetry are strikingly like those of Walt Whitman. Dif ferent as they were in nearly every respect, the two poets were yet alike in their idea that there 362 SIDNEY LANIER should be a reaction against the conventional and artificial poetry of their time, -- the differ ence being, that Whitman's reaction took the direction of formlessness, while Lanier's was con cerned about the extension and revival of poetic forms. In both poets there is a range and sweep, both of conception and of utterance, that sharply differentiates them from all other poets since the Civil War. The question then is, whether Lanier, with his lofty conception of the poet's work, and with his faith in himself, succeeded in writing poetry that will stand the test of time. He undoubtedly had some of the necessary qualities of a poet. lS.e had, first of all, a sense of melody that found s vent primarily in music and then in words which moved with a certain rhythmic cadence. " A holy J tune was in my soul when I fell asleep; it was going when I awoke. This melody is always moving along in the background of my spirit. If I wish to compose, I abstract my attention from the things which occupy the front of the stage, the dramatis personae of the moment, and fix myself upon the deeper scene in the rear.'3 " All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody," he writes at another time. His bast poems move to the cadence of a tune. He probably heard CRITICISM AND POETRY 363 them as did Milton the lines of " Paradise Lost." Sometimes there was a lilt like the singing of a bird, and sometimes the lyric cry, and yet again the music of the orchestra. " He has an ear for the distribution of instruments, and this gives him a desire for the antiphonal, for introducing an answer, or an echo, or a compensating note," says Mr. Higginson. Sometimes, as in the "Marshes of Glynn" and in the best parts of " Sunrise," there is a cosmic rhythm that is like unto the rhythmic beating of the heart of God, of which Poe and Lanier have written eloquently. Besides this melody that was temperamental, Lanier had ideas. He was alive to the problems of his age and to the beauties of nature. One has only to think of the names of his poems to realize how many themes occupied his attention. He wrote of religion, social questions, science, philosophy, nature, love. " My head and my heart are both [so] full of poems," he says. " So many great ideas for art are born to me each day, I am swept into the land of All-delight by their strenuous sweet whirlwind." " Every leaf that I brush against breeds a poem." " A thousand vital elements rill through my soul." So he is in no sense a " jingle man," There is a note of healthy mysticism in his poetry that makes him akin to Wordsworth and Emerson. A 364 SIDNEY LANIER series of poems might be selected that would en title him to the praise of being " the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit." With the spiritual endowment of a poet and an unusual sense of melody, where was he lack ing in what makes a great poet? In power of expression. He never attained, except in a few poems, that union of sound and sense which is characteristic of the best poetry. The touch of finality is not in his words ; the subtle charm of verse outside of the melody and the meaning is not his -- he failed to get the last " touches of vitalizing force." He did not, as Lowell said of Keats, "rediscover the delight and wonder that lay enchanted in the dictionary." He did not attain to " the perfection and the precision of the instantaneous line." Take his poem " Remon strance," for instance. It is a strong utterance against tyranny and intolerance and bigotry, hot from his soul ; but the expression is not worthy of his feeling. A few lines of Lowell's " Fable for Critics" about freedom are better. The same may be said of his attack on agnosticism in "Acknowledgment." " Corn " whilejepresentiit^^n^estsemel^^ioei^oBL^iiimiiQ^_]^3^^ one with the feeling of incompleteness^: the ideas are There is melody in the " Marsh Song at Sunset," but the poem is not clear. Or take what many consider CRITICISM AND POETRY 365 his masterpiece, " Sunrise." There is one of the most imaginative situations a poet could have, -- the ecstasy of the poet's soul as he rises from his bed to go to the forest, the silence of the night, the mystery of the deep green woods, the coming of " my lord, the Sun." There is nothing in American poetry that goes beyond the sweep and range of this conception. But look at the words; with the exception of the first stanza and those that describe the dawn, there is a nervousness of style, a strain of ex pression. If one compare even the best parts with the " Evening of Extraordinary Splendor and Beauty " by Wordsworth, he sees the differ ence in the art of expression. There is in Words worth's poem the romantic mood, -- the same uplift of soul in the presence of the greater phenomena of nature, -- but there is a classic restraint of form; it is " emotion recollected in tranquillity." What, then, is the explanation of this defect in Lanier ? Undoubtedly lack of time to revise his work is one cause. Speaking of one of his poems, he said, " Being cool next day, I find some flaws in my poem." And again, " On see ing the poem in print, I find it faulty; there's too much matter in it." Sickness, poverty, and hard work prevented him from having that re pose which is the proper mood of the artist. He 366 SIDNEY LANIER had to write as long a poem as " The Sym phony " in four days, the " Psalm of the West" in a few weeks. " Sunrise " was dictated on his death-bed. The revision of " Corn " and of all other poems which I have been able to compare with the first drafts shows conclusively that he had the power of improving his work. With more time he might have achieved with all of his poems some of the results attained by such care ful workmen as Tennyson and Poe. But lack of time for revision will not explain all. There were certain temperamental defects in Lanier as poet. There was a lack of spon taneous utterance. Writing once of Swinburne, he used words that characterize well one phase of his own work: " It is always the Fourth of July with Mr. Swinburne. It is impossible in reading this strained laborious matter not to re member that the case of poetry is precisely that where he who conquers, conquers without strain. There was a certain damsel who once came to King Arthur's court,' gert' (as sweet Sir Thomas Malory hath it) ' with a sword for to find a man of such virtue to draw it out of the scabbard.' King Arthur, to set example to his knights, first essayed, and pulled at it eagerly, but the sword would not out. ' Sir,' said the damsel, ' ye need not to pull half so hard, for he that shall pull it out shall do it with little might.' " This is not CRITICISM AND POETRY 367 to say that Lanier simulated poetic expression, but his words are not inevitable enough. He often lacked simplicity. Furthermore, he suffered from a tendency to indulge in fancies, " sucking sweet similes out of the most diverse objects." He was inoculated with the " conceit virus" of the seventeenth century. In a letter already quoted, he pointed out this defect to his father, and he never over came it. He did not restrain his luxuriant imag ination. The poem " Clover " is almost spoiled by the conceit of the ox representing the " Course-of-things " and trampling upon the souls (the clover-blossoms) of the poets. " Sunrise " is marred by the figure of the bee-hive from which the " star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, . . . the great Sun-Bee," emerges in the morning. Such examples might be easily multiplied. Lanier was undoubtedly hampered, too, by his theory of verse. The very poem " Special Plead ing," in which he said that he began to work out his theory, is a failure. Alliteration, assonance, compound words, personifications, are greatly overused. Some of the rhymes are as grotesque as Browning's. Instead of the perfect union of sound and sense, there is often a mere chanting of words. It is futile to deny these tendencies in Lanier. They vitiate more than half his poems, and are 368 SIDNEY LANIER defects even, in some of the best. Sometimes, in his very highest flight, he seems to have been winged by one of these arrows. But it is .equally futile to deny that he frequently rises above all these limitations and does work that is absolutely unique, and original, and enduring. Distinction must be made, as in the case of every other man who has marked qualities-of style, between his good work and his bad work. (He has done enough good work to entitle him to a place among the genuine poets of America. Wo Ameri can anthology would be complete that did not contain some dozen or more of his poems, and no study of American poetry would be complete that did not take into consideration twice this number. It is too soon yet to fix upon such poems, but surely they may be found among the following: such lyrics as " An Evening Song," " My Springs," " A Ballad of the Trees and the Master," " Betrayal," " Night and Day," " The Stirrup-Cup," and " Nirvana;" such sonnets as " The Mocking-Bird " and " The Harlequin of Dreams;" such nature poems as " The Song of the Chattahoochee," " The Waving of the Corn," and " From the Flats; " such poems of high seriousness as " Individuality," " Opposition," " How Love looked for Hell," and " A Florida Sunday;" such a stirring ballad as " The Re venge of Hamish;" the opening lines and the \ CRITICISM AND POETRY 369 Columbus sonnets of the " Psalm of the West;" and the longer poems, " The Symphony," " Sun rise," and ".The Marshes of Glynn." The first may be quoted as an illustration of Lanier's lyric quality* Those who have heard it sung to the music of Mr. Dudley Buck can realize to some extent Lanier's idea of the union of music and poetry:=-- Look off, dear Love, across the shallow sands, And mark you meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. Ah ! longer, longer, we. Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'T is done, Love, lay thine hand in mine. Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart; Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands'. O night! divorce our sun and sky apart, Never our lips, our hands. Throughout his poems -- some of them im perfect enough as wholes -- there are lines that come from the innermost soul of poetry : -- But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep. Happy-valley hopes Beyond the bend of roads. 370 SIDNEY LANIER I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine, Holding the hills and heavens in my heart For contemplation. Sweet visages of all the souls of time Whose loving service to the world has been In the artist's way expressed. A perfect life in perfect labor wrought. The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man. He summ'd the words in song. The whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound ! My brain is beating like the heart of Haste. Where an artist plays, the sky is low. Thou 'rt only a gray and sober dove, But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love. Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee ! Music is love in search of a word. His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand ! And Science be known as the sense making love to the All, And Art be known as the soul making love to the All, And Love be known as the marriage of man with the All. CRITICISM AND POETRY 371 Indeed, if one had to rely upon one poem to keep alive the fame of Lanier, he could single out " The Marshes of Glynn " with assurance that there is something so individual and origL nal about it, and that, at the same time, there is such a roll and range of verse in it, that it will t j\ surely live, not only in American poetry but in \^jf- EriglishK Here the imagination has taken the " __ .- ^ place of fancy, the effort to do great things ends in victory, and the melody of the poem corre sponds to the exalted thought. It has all the strong points of " Sunrise," with but few of its limitations. There is something of "Whitman's virile imagination and Emerson's high spiritual ity combinecL-with the haunting melody of Poe's best work. Written in 1878, when Lanier was in the full exercise of all his powers, it is the best expression of his genius and one of the few great American poems.'-" The background of the poem -- as of " Sun rise " -- is the forest, the coast and the marshes near Brunswick, Georgia. Early in life Lanier had been thrilled by this wonderful natural scenery, and later visits had the more power fully impressed his imagination. \He is the poet of the marshes as surely as Bryant is of the forests, or Wordsworth of the mountains, j The poet represents himself as having spent the day in the forest and coming at sunset into 372 SIDNEY LANIER full view of the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes. The glooms of the liveoaks and the emerald twilights of the " dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods," have been as a refuge from the riotous noon-day sun. More than that, in the wildwood privacies and closets of lone desire he has known the passionate plea sure of prayer and the joy of elevated thought. His spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, -- he is ready for what Wordsworth calls a " god-like hour: " -- But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, -- Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought nje of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was hut bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, -- CRITICISM AND POETRY 373 Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark: -- So: Affable live-oak, leaning low, -- Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land !) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high ? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky ! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea ? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of G-lynn. As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: 374 SIDNEY LANIER I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun ! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a Lurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be ! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken CRITICISM AND POETEY 375 The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep ? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn. In the light of such a poem Lanier's poetry and his life take on a new significance. The struggles through which he passed and the vic tory he achieved are summed up in a passage which may well be the last word of this bio graphy. For Sidney Lanier was The catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. INDEX Adams, Herbert B., 210,236. Bird, Mrs. Edgeworth, Lanier Agassiz, Louis, 28,312. lectures at home of, 205, 233. Alabama, University of, 68; Bismarck, 200. Lanier seeks position in, 91. Blaine, James G., 265,266. Aldhelm, 216. Blake, William, 302. Aldricb, T. B., 75, 287. Blanc, Mme. (Th. Bentzou), Alleghany Springs, Virginia, estimate of Lauier, in "Kevue . Lanier's description of, 111- des Deux Mondes," 2, 305- 113. 307. Allston Art Association, 230. Bleckley, Judge Logan E., 153, America, future of music in, 154; Lauier's letters to, 95, 145-147. 153,157-159, 163, 291. Anderson, Clifford, 18,100. Bledsoe, Alfred T., 280, 282. Arber, Edward, 256. Boston, 163, 185; Lanier's visit Arnold, Matthew, 211, 335-336. to, 190-191. Atlanta " Constitution," 277, Browne, Sir Thomas, 251. 293. Browne, William Hand, 280, Atlanta University, 270. 281. "Atlantic Monthly," on South Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, ern Literature, 286, 287; 353. 56. Browning, Robert, 302, 318, 341, Bach, Sebastian, 146. 342, 347, 358, 367; Lanier's Baltimore, 182,183,185, 195,199- opinion of, " The Eing and 201, 203, 206, 210, 233, 237, 245, the Book," no-Ill. 264,280; climate Of, 124; La- Brunetiere, 211. nier's first visit to, 130; his Brunswick, Ga., Lanier's visits popularity in, 135; musicians to and impressions of, 99, 111, in. 135; influence of Lanier on, 152, 195, 371. 136,230; poems written there, Bryant, William Cullen, 183,192, 173; Druid Hill Park, 225; 371. change in society, 230. Buck, Dudley, 166, 167, 369; Baskervill, W. M., "Southern letters of Lanier to, 168, 169, Writers," quoted, 32, 60-62, 178. 168, 288-289. Buddha, Lanier's characteriza Beethoven, 135,140,144,145,147, tion of, 347. 172, 200. Burns, Bobert, 34,186. " Beowulf," Lanier's interpreta Burton, Eobert, 34,251. tion of, 205, 213-218. Byron, Lord, 38,358. 378 INDEX Cable, George W., 45, 284, 285, 191,301; Lanier asked to write 28T, 288; Lanier's opinion of, the life of, 104; Lanier visits 294. in Boston, 190. Caedmon, 216, 256. Calhoun, John C., 272, 288. Damrosch, Leopold, 130,133. Callaway, " Select Poems of Dante, 212, 238, 345. Lanier," 159, note. Darwin, Charles, 226, 241; La Carlyle, Thomas, 32,36, 346, 354; nier's reverence for, 313-314. influence of, on Lanier, 34. . Davidson, J. Wood, "Living Centennial Exposition, Lanier's Writers of the South," 88, 282. relation to, 166-181. Davis, Jefferson, 63, 73, 282; Century Club, Lanier's visit to, Lanier's opinion of his im 192. prisonment, 89. " Century Magazine," the, 285. " DeBow's Review," 280. Chadd's Ford, Pa., Lanier's stay De Quincey, Thomas, 345. in, 194,196. Dobbin, Mrs. Isabel L., letter of Charles I, patron of Nicholas Lanier to, 325-326. Lanier, 11. Dobell, Sydney, 188. Chatterton, Thomas, 34. Donne, John, Lanier compares Chaucer, Geoffrey, 109, 193, 202, himself to, 56. 203, 215, 216, 238, 256; Lanier's Douglas, Savin, 346. comparison of, with "William Drummond, William, of Haw- Morris, 348-350> thornden, Lanier's opinion of, Child, Francis J., 237, 238, 240, 164,346. 261. , Chopin, 74,136,140, 150. Eggleston, George Cary, 286, J Civil War, Lanier's interpreta 292; Lanier's letter to, 292. tion of the issues of, 44-47; Eliot, President Charles W., 144, effect of, on the South, 45; Con 233. federate soldiers in, 105,106. Eliot, George, 298, 329, 346. Clarke, Charles Heber, 183, 302. Elizabethan literature, Lanier's Clay, Mrs. Clement C., friend interest in, 109, 203-206, 218- ship for Lanier, 53, 54; letter 220, 249. from Lanier to, 53. Emerson, Balph Waldo, 36, 247, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 4, 34, 251,286,312, 358, 363, 371. 56, 342; musical qualities of verse, 357. Falk-Auerbach, Mme., 135. Cook, Albert S., 240. Fielding, Henry, Lanier's opin Cooke, John Esten, 282, 285. ion of, 346. Cowley, Abraham, 56. Florida, Lanier's visits to, 165, Craddock, Charles Egbert (Miss 187, 189, 195, 196; description Mary N. Murfree) 37, 83, 287, of scenery, 165. 288. Flotow, Stradella (music), La " Crescent Monthly," the, 280. nier's interpretation of, 141. Curry, J. L. M., 278,279. French, Major-General Samuel Cushman, Charlotte, 53,159,182, G., reminiscences of Lanier, 183; letters of Lanier to, 184- 49. INDEX 379 Froissart, 10, 25, 109,118. Furnivall, F. J., 240, 246, 247. Gummere, Francis B., "Begin nings of Poetry," 355. Georgia, democracy in, before Hamerik, Asger, 141; first meet the war, 20; secession, 42; ing with Lanier, 130; account losses in war, 68 ; agricultural of Lanier's playing, 131-133; condition in, 156,268; progress influence on Lauier, 134. in, 269; leadership in the New " Harper's Magazine," 285, 286, South, 276; Lanier's enjoy 324. ment of the life as portrayed Harris, Joel Chandler, 68, 288; in fiction, 20, 296. quoted, 123, 277, 284, 356; La German literature, Lanier's nier's opinion of, 293,294. early reading of, 34; during Harte, Bret, influence on South the war, 56, 58 ; 83, 96, 97, 232, ern writers, 283,287. 299, 345. See Goethe, Heine, Hartman, Emil, Lanier's playing Herder, Schiller, UMand. of, 132. German music, 120-122; detects Hankins, V. W., reminiscences of, 148-150. See Beethoven, of Lanier, 55. Wagner. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 107. German university, Lanier plans Haygood, Atticus G., " Our Bro fo go to, 39, 40, 91,100. ther in Black," 276-278. Gildersleeve, Basil L., 39,56,210, Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 45, 68, 236, 281,282; reminiscences of 182, 202, 283, 288, 289-293, 321, Lanier, 239, 302. 340; his life after the war, 106; Oilman, Daniel Coit, president his encouragement ol Lanier, of Johns Hopkiiis University, 107, 108; letters of Lanier to, 234, 235; first interview with 110, 111, 164, 290, 321. Lanier, 231; what his friend Hazlitt, William, 212, 351. ship meant to Lanier, 233; Heidelberg University, Lanier reminiscences of Lanier, 6, plans to go to, 39-41. 173-175, 331, 337, 353; his esti Heine, Lanier reads and trans mate of Lanier's work at lates, 56, 58. Johns Hopkins, 250; letters Helmholtz, influence of his in of Lanier to, 232, 250, 252-257, vestigations on Lanier, 138. 337. Herder, Lanier translates, 58. Godkin, E. L., on condition of Herrick, Mrs. Sophie Bledsoe, South after the war, 68; on reminiscences of Lanier, 314- reconstruction, 90; national 315. spirit of, 179. Higginson, ThomasWentworth, Goethe, Lanier attends celebra 363. tion of in New York, 192 ; 312, Hill, Walter B., 285; estimate 345. of Lanier as lawyer, 101- Gordon, John B.,277, 278. 103. Grady, Henry, 96,276, 277. Hill, Benjamin H., 276,277. Griffin, Bartholomew, Lanier's Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 102, opinion of, 346. 173, 337, 358. Grosart, Alexander B., 203, 240. Hovey, Bicuard, opinion of the 380 INDEX "Science of English Verse," Lamb, Charles, 4,^212, 251,357. 353. " Land we Love," the, 280. Howells, William Dean, 286,287, Lane, Charles W., 27. 340. Langland, William, " Piers Huguenots, the, early settle Plowman," 109, 347. ment in Virginia, 12. Lanier and Anderson, Lanier " Hunt of Henry IV.," the, La- works in the firm of, 100-102, nier's description of, 142. 114. Hurd and Houghton, publish, Lanier, Charles, presents bust ers of " Tiger Lilies," 78. of Lanier to Johns Hopkins, Huxley, Thomas Henry, 313, 14, 337, 338. 316. Lanier, Charles Day (son), 100, 133, 307, 339. " Independent," the, publication Lanier, Clifford (brother), 7, 17, of Lanier's poems, 286. See 18, 38, 53, 54, 55, 63, 73-75, 157, Ward. 331, 335; reminiscences, 18,23, 24; Lanier's letters to, 99,171, Jackson, Stonewall, Lanier's 172,231, 245, 246, 265-267. opinion of, 104. Lanier, Gertrude (sister), 18,63; Johns Hopkins University, 7, letters of Lanier to, 73,117. 144, 203, 281, 318, 333, 336, 337 ; Lanier, Henry W. (son), 200, 339, Lanier appointed lecturer in, Lanier, James F. D., 10,13; as 233, 234; organization and sists Sidney Lanier with ideals of, 234-238; first faculty, " Tiger Lilies," 78, 79. 236; Lanier's influence on, 250, Lanier, Jerome, 10. 258, 259; his conception of his Lanier, Sir John, 12. work in, 252-258; his place in Lanier, Kate, 79, 80. the history of, 262; memorial Lanier, Mary Day, 52, 53, 152, exercises held in his honor, 195,199,323-325,330; marriage, 336. 97-98; account of Lanier's Johnston, Richard Malcolm, 6, death, 335; training oJ her 68,210, 281, 282, 285; Lanier's children, 338; letters of Lanier influence on, 295; letters from to, 112-114, 130, 141; 142, 143, Lanier, 295, 322. 149-151, 167, 308. Lanier, Mary J. (mother), 9,16, Keats, John, 3, 34, 56, 156,251, 17, 63. 298,332,358,364. Lanier, Nicholas, 10,11. Kennedy, John P., visits Macon, Lanier, Robert Sampson (fa 22. ther), 9,14-16,30; letters from Keyser, Ephraim, bust of Lanier Lanier to, 5, 30, 31, 56, 67, 81, by, 306. 94, 96, 97, 118, 124. Kirk, John Foster, 182,302; La Lanier, Robert Sampson (son), nier's letters to, 204, 316. 322-324, 332, 339. Kirk, Miss Sophie, reminis Lanier, Sidney (son), 200, 338. cences of Lanier, 302-304. Lanier, Sidney, born in Macon, Georgia, 1,16; ancestry, l-lfi; Lamar, L. Q. C., 22, 96,180, 265. influence of early home life, INDEX 381 16-19; life in Macon, 19-23; 161-165; appointed to write early schools, 23; fondness a cantata for the opening for music and books, 24, 25; of Centennial Exposition in at Oglethorpe University, 26- Philadelphia, 166; publishes 41; influence of Dr. Woodrow, first volume of poems, 181; 28-30; of comrades, 32; vaca meets wider circle of literary tion at Montvale Springs, men and women, 181; visit to leim., 35-37; tutor in Greek, 38; Boston, 190; attends Century plans to go to Heidelberg, 39; Club and Goethe celebration, catolies war fever and .joins 192; moves family to Chadd's Macon Volunteers, 42-48; at Ford, Pa., 194; goes to Florida Norfolk, 48; in battles around for health, 195, 196; seeks Richmond, 48, 49; at Peters in vain for government burg, 49 ; vacation in Macon, position in Washington, 198, 52, 53; as scout at Fort Boy- 199; settles with family in kin reads German poetry and Baltimore, 200; at work in begins " Tiger Lilies," 54-56, Peabody Library on English 84; captured on blockade-run literature, 202; lectures at. ner at Wilmington, N. C., 57; the Peabody Institute, 206and taken to Point Lookout 210; appointed lecturer at Prison, 58-60; rescue from Johns Hopkins University, death, 60; after illness in Ma 233; writes article on the con, goes to Point Clear on "New South," 264; last ill Mobile Bay, 64; hotel clerk at ness begins, 321; birth of Exchange Hotel, Montgom fourth son at West Chester, ery, Alabama, 64-78; resumes Pa., 322; lectures at Johns literary work, 74; goes to Hopkins, 328-330; goes to New York with "Tiger Lil New York, 330; to Asheville, ies," 78; teaches school at N. C., 331; death, 335; burial Prattville, Alabama, 91-97; in Baltimore, 336; memorial suffers from reconstruction exercises at Johns Hopkins governments, 91-95; marriage, University, 337-338. 93; practices law at Macon, Characteristics : physical ap 99; delivers Confederate pearance, 190 (Lowell), 193 Memorial address, 103; goes (Stedman), 300 (Wysham), to Alleghany Springs, Virgi 301 (Gilman ; humor, 21, 32, nia, 112, to New York, 114, to 33, 79, 80, 100, 200, 204, 310, San Antonio, 117; resolves to 311; buoyancy of spirit, give the remainder of his life 4-7, 96, 322, 323; lack Of Boto music and poetry, 120-126; hemianism, 18, 301, 302, 307; goes to New York to study knightliness and chivalry, 54, music, 129; first flute in Pea- 158, 309; capacity for hard body Orchestra in Baltimore, work, 129-130, 134, 163,187,211, 130; popularity in Baltimore, 238; capacity for friendship, 185; on a visit to Georgia 302-307 ; fondness for children, writes " Corn," 153; at work 79, 80,303, 307; love of nature, on other poems, and books, 18, 19, 37, 112-114, 224-226; pu- 382 INDEX rity of life, 59, 60, 162; rever ence for science, 28, 29, 138, 232, 312-317, 333, 334 (see also Darwin, Gilman, Kirk); enthu siasm for literature, 32-34,108110, 205, 211, 212, 350 (see also Elizabethan poetry and old English); as a scholar, 7,34, 238-250; as teacher, 258-260; as critic, 344-366 ; as poet, 360- 875; as musician, 24, 31, 32,38, 55, 58, 59, 74, 86, 115-117, 120123, chapter vi; his national spirit, 175-181; his religious faith, 6, 17, 22, 23, 27,28,87,145, 317-319, 326; inheritor of un fulfilled renown, 3,341, 342. Works: A. Birthday Song, 76; A Florida Ghost, 310; A Flor ida Sunday, 197, 368; Acknow ledgment, 364; An Evening Song, 197, 368, 369 (quoted); Baby Charley, 100, 307; Ballad of Trees and Master (quoted), 318, 368; Barnacles, 76; Be trayal, 368; Bob, 307; Boy's Froissart, The, 326; Boy's King Arthur.The, 109,326-328; Boy's Mabinogion, The, 326, 332; Boy's Percy, The, 326; Cantata, the Centennial, 166176, 291; Clover, 360, 367,369, 370; Confederate Memorial Address, 103-106, 344; Corn, 133-157, 181, 183, 268, 364, 366 ; Crystal, The, 318, 347, &70; Knglish Novel, The, 294, 314, 315, 322, 328-330, 344, 351, 352, 360; Florida, 36 (note), 164166,187; From Bacon to Bee thoven, 140, 344; From the Flats, 197,368,369; Hard Times in Elfland, 307; Harlequin of Dreams, The, 368; How Love looked for Hell, 368; In Ab sence, 307; In the Foam, 76 (note); India,Sketches of, 163; Individuality,^360, 368; Jaequerie,The, 38,101,118,158,159; Laughter in the Senate, 76 (note), 92, 93 (quoted); Laus Mariae, 307; Legend of St. Leonor, The, 315; Life and Song, 76, 370; Marsh Song at Sunset, 364; Marshes of Glynn, The, 3, 320, 322, 324, 363,370-375; Mazzini on Music, 145-147; Mocking-Bird, The, 197, 368; Modern Orchestra, The, 140; Music and Poetry, 172, 217; My Springs, 97. 98, 307, 368; Nature-Metaphors, 96; New South, The, 157, 264272,344; Night and Day, 368; Nirvana, 108,368; Ode to Johns Hopkins University, The, 230, 234, 236, 238; Opposition, 128, 368; Orchestra of To-day, 344; Power of Prayer, The, 185, 186; Psalm of the West, The, 176-178,181,'360, 366,369; Eaven Days, 93; Remonstrance, 364; Retrospects and Prospects (essay), 19, 70-72, 94, 96, 344 ; Retrospects and Prospects (book), 103-106, 117-122, 264- 272; Eevenge of Hamish, The, 368; San Antonio de Bexar, 117-122, 844; Science of Eng lish Verse, The, 3,239,249,320, 329, 337, 352-359; Shakspere and His Forerunners, 98, 210228, 243-245, 351, 352; Song of the Chattahoochee, The, 197, 368; Special Pleading, 367; Steel in Soft Hands, 93; Stir. rup-Cup, The, 197, 368; Sun rise, 322, 336,363,365-367; Sym phony, The, 158-163, 181, 185, 187, 368; Tampa Eobius, 197; Tiger Lilies, 35-37, 43, 44, 55, 57, 58, 72, 74, 78, 80-89, 143,144, 312,344; Tyranny, 76,93; Un der the Cedarcroft Chestnut, INDEX 383 197; Waving of the Corn, 197, Marlowe, 223. 368. Mazzini, " Essay on Music," Lanier, Sterling (grandfather), Lanier's opinion of, 147. 14, 21, 35, 67. Michelet, History of France, Lanier, Thomas, 12,13. 118. Le Conte, Joseph, 21, 96, 241, Milledgeville, Ga., 26,42, 43. 282. Montgomery, Ala., Lanier set Lee. Robert E., 72, 90, 103, 150, tles in, 64,73; life there after 278, 282; Lanier's description the war, 65-66; Lanier leaves, of, at Petersburg, 49-52; La 78. nier's tribute to, in Confeder Milton, John, 127, 162, 357,359, ate Memorial Address, 104. 363. Lessing, 56. More, Paul Elmer, 354 (note), Lincoln, Abraham, 89, 90, 95, 356. 27S. Morgan, Senator John P., 180, " Lippincott's Magazine," 41 265. (note), 65 (note), 155, 163,176, Morris, William, Lanier's opin 183, 302. ion of, 348-350. Longfellow, Henry W., Lanier's Mozart, 140. visit to, 190; Lanier compared Music in America, future of, With, 39, 86, 144, 212, 261, 286, 145-147. 340, 358. Lowell, James Eussell, visit of Negro, the, progress of race Lanier to and characterization after the war, 270, 271; effect of Lanier by, 190; compared of reconstruction on, 274, 275; with Lanier, 144, 179, 181,190, the liberal sentiment of the 211, 212, 237, 238, 261, 313, 337, South in regard to, 270, 278. 340, 344, 345, 364; referred to, Newell, T. F., reminiscences of 286, 347, 348. Lanier, 32-34. Lucretius, Lanier's interest iu, New Shakespeare Society, The, 96. 220, 242, 246, 247. New York city, 153,163,183,187, Macaulay, 12,312. 340; Lanier's first visit to, in Maclien, Mrs. Arthur W., re 1867, 78; later visits, 114-117; miniscences of Lanier, 228- concerts at Central Park, 116; 229. Lanier goes to in 1878,129. Macon, Ga., 92,115,124, 156,162, North Carolina, Lanier's ances 195; natural beauty and cli tors live in, 14; Lanier at mate, 19; life in, 19-24; public "Wilmmgton, 48, 57; dies in spirit. 20; slavery in, 20 (note); the mountains of, 334. excitement at outbreak of Norton, Charles Eliot, 237, 238. war, 42,43; Volunteers, 47,48; Northrup, Milton H., reminis in 1863, 52; after the war, 63; cences of Lanier, 39-41; letters cemetery, 103. of Lanier to, 64, 66, 88, 91, 100. Malory, Sir Thomas, 109,366. Oglethorpe University, its his Mark Twain,influence onSouth- tory, faculty, and students, ern writers, 283. 26-30; faculty and students 384 INDEX go to war, 47; closes after Raleigh, Sir Walter, Lanier's the war, 68; Lanier's -view oi, opinion of, 188,218. 126. Bandall, J. K., " Maryland, My Old English, Lanier's idea of Maryland," 44,173; 293. the study of, 213-218, 243, Ehodes, James Ford, History 244. of the United States, 68 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 118. (note). Page, Thomas Nelson, 285,288. Eichter, 34, 36. Park, John, reminiscences of "Bound Table, The," 75; influ Lanier, 205. ence ou Lanier and his con Payne, William Morton, opin tributions thereto, 75-78; re ion of Lanier as critic, 344. view of "Tiger Lilies," 80. Peabody, George, 202, 203, 230. Euskin, John, 160,311. Peabody Institute, 130,139, 206, Eussell, Irwin, 285. 210, 229, 233, 337. Peabody Library, 1, 10,138, 236, San Antonio, Texas, Lanier's 238; its value as a research visit to and essay on, 5, 117- library and its influence on 122. Lanier, 202-205. Schelling, 56. Peabody Orchestra, 135,141,152, Schiller, 56. 173, 200, 204. Schumann, Eobert, 24, 140; La Peacock, Gibson, 159, 165, 168, nier's estimate of his charac 182, 186; his great kindness ter and his music, 148-151. to Lanier, 195; letters from Scott, Sir Walter, 16, 24, 298. Lanier to, 195, 198, 200, 206, " Scott's Monthly," 280. 250. Scribner, Charles, letters of La Peacock, Mrs. Gibson, 182, 201. nier to, 239. 326-328. Pepys, Samuel, account of the " Scribner's Monthly," 186, 268, music-loving Laniers, 11. 284, 285, 295. Philadelphia, 163, 182, 18.6, 195, Shakespeare, 109, 127, 150, 193, 208, 209. Foe, Edgar Allan, 2, 3,173,281, 292, 311, 313, 336, 340, 342, 344, 357, 358, 359, 363, 371. 355, 318; Lanier's lectures on, 206-210,220-229; Lanier's view of metrical tests as applied to Shakespeare, 221,222, 243; Point Lookout, M<3., Lanier con the moral height of, as com fined in prison at, 58-59. pared with other Elizabethan Pope, Alexander, Lanier's opin dramatists, 223-224; the value ion of, 346, of studying him as a whole, Pratt, Waldo S., reminiscences 246-248. of Lanier as a teacher, 7, 258- Shelley, 3, 34, 50, 318, 351; La 260; account of Lanier's last nier's characterization of, 348. visit to New York, 330. Sidney, Sir Philip, 218, 293,309, Prattville, Ala., Lanier teaches 351. school at, 91; condition of Sill, Edward Eowland, 78 during reconstruction, 94. (note); opinion of Lanier's Preston, Margaret J., 281, 285. Price, Thomas K., 39,261, 281. " Science of English Verse." 353. INDEX 385 Simms, William Gilmore, 68, 78 Tabb, John B., letter about La (note), 107, 282, 283. nier's life in prison, 59; La. South, The, Lanier's inherit nier's influence on, 294; his ance from the, 8, 91,126, 297 ; opinion of a fragment of La what he means to the, 8, 298- nier's poetry, 334; his appear 299; denominational colleges ance at Johns Hopkius me in, 26,27; Lanier's view ot the morial exercises, 338. social life of the Old South, Talmage, Rev. Samuel K., 27. 35, 36; war fever in, 43-47; " Tannhauser," Lanier's inter effect of war on, 45, 65-73; re pretation of, 116. construction in, 89-96, 113, 274, Taylor, Bayard, 159, 182, 192, 275; in 1873, 123; in 1874, 199; has Lanier appointed to 156; ill 1885, 279; Lanier's in write the Centennial Cantata, terest in, 264-267; the conser-. 166; introduces him to men of vative leader in, 272-275; the letters at Century Club and progressive leader in, 275-279; at Goethe celebration, 192.; literature in, 279-291; Lanier's Lanier writes to, 65,166,167, relation to Sou them literature, 176, 192, 205. 291-297; see also civil war, Tennyson, Alfred, 33, 34, 186, Georgia, Macon. 188, 251, 312, 338, 347, 357, 366. " South Atlantic Quarterly," Thackeray, W. M., 53, 224, 299; quoted from, 173, 301, 331. Lanier's opinion of, 346. " Southern Magazine, The," 118, Thomas, Edith, poem on La 280, 289, 292; Lanier contri mer, 338. butes to, 282. Thomas, Theodore, 115-117,129, " Southern Review, The," 280. 130, 134, 137, 144, 340; Offers Spann, Miss Minnie, reminis Lanier place in Orchestra, cences of Lanier, 334-335. 133; Lanier's description of, Stebbins, Miss Emma, friend of as conductor, 140; his opinion Charlotte Cushman, 183, 186, of the Centennial poem, 166. 190,194. Thompson, Maurice, 44, 68, 96, Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 2, 285, 286, 299. 75; describes Lanier, 193; let Timrod, Henry, 44, 45, 107, 283;. ter to Dr. Oilman about La Lanier's opinion of, 293. nier, 262. Turnbull, Lawrence, 280, 281, Stephens, Alexander H., 44, 73, 336. 277, 282. Turnbull, Mrs. Lawrence, poem Stevenson, Robert Louis, 211, on Lanier, 304; Mme. Blanc's 311. description of her home, 304- Stoddard, Richard Henry, 75, 307; Lanier buried on lot in 183. Greenmount Cemetery, 336. Sumner, Charles, 46; Lamar's Tweed. Lanier's opinion of, 115. speech on, 180. Uhland,56,173. Swinburne, A. C., 247, 248, 341, University of Virginia, 179, 273, 348, 359, 366. 281. Sylvester, J. J., 353; Lanier's characterization of, 236. Von Billow, 131,173. 386 INDEX Wagner, Kichard ; Lanier's ap Whitman, Walt, 2, 58, 160, 1V9, preciation ol bis music, 115, 181, 309, 329, 347, 352, 358, 359, 116, 140, 172. 361, 362, 371. Ward, William Hayes, author Willard, Frances E., account of of " Lanier Memorial." from Lanier's lectures, 329-330. which quotations are made Woodrow, James, 126, 312; in on pages i, 38-39,124 126,131- fluence on Lanier, 28-30; re 133; relation to Larder, 286. miniscences of Lanier, 30. Washington, George, the rela Wordsworth, William, 251, 298, tion of the Lanier family to, 311, 357, 363, 365, 371, 372. 13 (note). Wysham, Henry, his friendship Watt, Mrs. Jane Lanier, 19, 73. for Lanier in Baltimore, 130; Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 357. description of Lanier's physi Wehner, Carl, 133. cal appearance, soo.