to avail myself of your thoughtful warning against being in any way hampered. It will give me keen pleasure to know from you, as soon as you shall have digested the poem, that you like it.
God send you a soul full of colossal and simple chords, — says
Yours sincerely,
Sidney Lanier.
In another letter, of February 1, 1876, he wrote: “I will leave the whole matter of the publication of the poem in the hands of Mr. Thomas and yourself; only begging that the inclosed copy be the one which shall go to the printer. The truth is, I shrank from the criticism which I fear my poem will provoke, — not because I think it unworthy, but because I have purposely made it absolutely free from all melodramatic artifice, and wholly simple and artless; and although I did this in the full consciousness that I would thereby give it such a form as would inevitably cause it to be disappointing on the first reading to most people, yet I had somewhat the same feeling (when your unexpected proposition to print first came) as when a raw salt spray dashes suddenly in your face and makes you duck your head. As for my own private poems, I do not even see the criticisms on them, and am far above the plane where they could possibly reach me; but this poem is NOT mine, it is to represent the people, and the people have a right that it should please them.”
In this letter Lanier anticipates the criticism that was sure to come upon the poem when printed without the music. It was at once received with ridicule in all parts of the country. The leading critical journal of America exclaimed: “It reads like a communication from the spirit of Nat Lee, rendered through a bedlamite medium, failing in all the ordinary laws of sense and sound, melody and prosody.” It urged the commissioners to “save American letters from the humiliation of presenting to the assembled world such a farrago as this.” For several weeks Lanier could not pick up a newspaper without seeing his name held up to ridicule, the Southern papers alone, out of purely sectional pride and with “no understanding of the PRINCIPLES involved,” coming to his rescue. The spirit in which he received this criticism may be seen in a letter written to his brother: —
This is the sixth letter I’ve written since nine o’clock to-night, and it is like saying one’s prayers before going to bed, to have a quiet word with you.
Your letter came to-day, and I see that you have been annoyed by the howling of the critics over the Cantata. I was greatly so at first, before I had recovered from my amazement at finding a work of art received in this way, sufficiently to think, but now the whole matter is quite plain to me and gives me no more thought, at all. . . .
The whole agitation has been of infinite value to me. It has taught me, in the first place, to lift my heart absolutely above all EXPECTATION save that which finds its fulfillment in the large consciousness of beautiful devotion to the highest ideals in art. This enables me to work in tranquillity.
In the second place, it has naturally caused me to make a merciless arraignment and trial of my artistic purposes; and an unspeakable content arises out of the revelation that they come from the ordeal confirmed in innocence and clearly defined in their relations with all things. . . .
The commotion about the Cantata has not been unfavorable, on the whole, to my personal interests. It has led many to read closely what they would otherwise have read cursorily, and I believe I have many earnest friends whose liking was of a nature to be confirmed by such opposition. . . .
And now, dear little Boy, may God convoy you over to the morning across this night, and across all nights, Prays your S. L.
That the poem was misjudged cannot be denied. Lanier’s defense published in the New York “Tribune” must be taken as a justification, in part at least, of the principles he had in mind.* It was not written as a poem, — and Mrs. Lanier has wisely put it as an appendix to her edition of the poems, — but as the words of a musical composition to be rendered by a large orchestra and chorus. It compares, therefore, with a lyric very much as one of the librettos of a Wagner drama would compare with a genuine drama. It serves merely to give the ideas which were to be interpreted emotionally through the forms of music. Lanier knew well the requirements of an orchestra. He knew the effect of contrasts and of short, simple words which would suggest the deeper emotions intended by the author. He thought of Beethoven’s “large and artless forms” rather than that of formal lyric poetry. He had heard Von Buelow conduct the Peabody Orchestra in a symphony based on one of Uhland’s poems, in which only the simple elemental words were retained, “leaving all else to his hearers’ imaginations.” This served as a model for his Cantata.
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* `Music and Poetry’, p. 80.
—
That the Cantata was a success is borne out by contemporary evidence. The very paper which had criticised Lanier most severely said, in giving an account of the opening exercises, “The rendering of Lanier’s Cantata was exquisite, and Whitney’s bass solo deserves to the full all the praise that has been heaped upon it.” Ex-President Gilman thus writes of the effect produced on the vast audience assembled in Philadelphia:
“As a Baltimorean who had just formed the acquaintance of Lanier (both of us being strangers at that time in a city we came to love as a most hospitable and responsive home), — I was much interested in his appointment. It was then true, though Dr. Holmes had not yet said it, that Baltimore had produced three poems, each of them the best of its kind: the `Star-Spangled Banner’ of Key, `The Raven’, of Poe, and `Maryland, My Maryland’, by Randall. Was it to produce a fourth poem as remarkable as these? Lanier’s Cantata appeared in one of the daily journals, prematurely. I read it as one reads newspaper articles, with a rapid glance, and could make no sense of it. I heard the comments of other bewildered critics. I read the piece again and again and again, before the meaning began to dawn on me. Soon afterwards, Lanier’s own explanation, and the dawn became daylight. The ode was not written `to be read’. It was to be sung — and sung, not by a single voice, with a piano accompaniment, but in the open air, by a chorus of many hundred voices, and with the accompaniment of a majestic orchestra, to music especially written for it by a composer of great distinction. The critical test would be its rendition. From this point of view the Cantata must be judged.
“I remember well the day of trial. The President of the United States, the Emperor of Brazil, the governors of States, the judges of the highest courts, the chief military and naval heroes, were seated on the platform in the face of an immense assembly. There was no pictorial effect in the way they were grouped. They were a mass of living beings, a crowd of black-coated dignitaries, not arranged in any impressive order. No cathedral of Canterbury, no Sanders Hall, no episcopal or academic gowns. The oratory was likewise ineffective. There were loud voices and vigorous gestures, but none of the eloquence which enchants a multitude. The devotional exercises awakened no sentiment of reverence. At length came the Cantata. From the overture to the closing cadence it held the attention of the vast throng of listeners, and when it was concluded loud applause rang through the air. A noble conception had been nobly rendered. Words and music, voices and instruments, produced an impression as remarkable as the rendering of the Hallelujah Chorus in the nave of Westminster Abbey. Lanier had triumphed. It was an opportunity of a lifetime to test upon a grand scale his theory of verse. He came off victorious.”*
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* `South Atlantic Quarterly’, April, 1905. —
The most important thing, however, about the writing of the Cantata was that it gave expression to a strong faith in the nation as felt by one who had been a Confederate soldier. The central note of the poem is the preservation of the Union. In spite of all the physical obstacles that had hindered the early settlers, in spite of the distinct individualities of the various people of the sections, in spite of sectional misunderstandings which had led in the process of time to a bloody civil war, the nation had survived. All of these had said, “No, thou shalt not be.”
Now praise to God’s oft-granted grace, Now praise to man’s undaunted face,
Despite the land, despite the sea, I was: I am: and I shall be.
Lanier desired, however, to avoid anything like spread-eagleism, and so after the chorus of jubilation just quoted, there is a note of doubt as to how long the nation will last. The answer, sung by the Boston soloist, Myron D. Whitney, was particularly impressive: —
Long as thine Art shall love true love, Long as thy Science truth shall know,
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove, Long as thy Law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy Brother every man below,
So long, dear Land of all my love, Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!
Soon after finishing the Centennial Cantata, Lanier started upon a much longer centennial poem which, as the “Psalm of the West”, was published in “Lippincott’s Magazine”, June, 1876, and for which he received $300. “By the grace of God,” he writes to Bayard Taylor, April 4, 1876, “my centennial Ode is finished. I now only know how divine has been the agony of the last three weeks, during which I have been rapt away to heights where all my own purposes as to a revisal of artistic forms lay clear before me, and where the sole travail was of choice out of multitude.” This poem was written with the idea of a symphony in his mind. One of the last things he planned was to write the music for it.
The poem as a whole is a musical rhapsody rather than a self-contained work of art. Although there are fancies and obscurities, the general theme, the magnificent opening lines, and the Columbus sonnets, with here and there lines of imaginative power, make it noteworthy. The poem is a passionate assertion of the triumph of freedom in America, — freedom, the Eve of this tall Adam of lands.
Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast, Her shalt thou kiss for a calm to thy wars of unrest, Her shalt extol in the psalm of the soul of the West.
Freedom with all its dangers is the precious heritage of Americans. “For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength with a chain.” With the aid of the God of the artist the poet reviews the history of the past, beginning with the time when in this continent “Blank was king and Nothing had his will.” The coming of the Northmen, the discovery of the land by Columbus, the voyage of the Mayflower, — ship of Faith’s best hope, — the battle of Lexington, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the opening up of the West, are all chanted in unrestrained poetry. The Civil War is described as a tournament: —
Heartstrong South would have his way, Headstrong North hath said him nay.
They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled; Brain rose again, ungloved;
Heart fainting smiled and softly said, `My love to my Beloved.’
Heart and brain! no more be twain; Throb and think, one flesh again!
Lo! they weep, they turn, they run; Lo! they kiss: Love, thou art one.
The poem closes as it began, with the triumphant vision of the future: —
At heart let no man fear for thee: Thy Past sings ever Freedom’s song,
Thy Future’s voice sounds wondrous free; And Freedom is more large than Crime, And Error is more small than Time.
The significance of the national spirit in these two poems may be seen only when it is looked at from the standpoint of the sectionalism that prevailed in the South and in the North. At the very time when Lanier was writing them, men in Congress were giving exhibitions of partisanship and prejudice that threatened to make of the Centennial a farce. “The fate of the Centennial bill in Congress,” he writes to Dudley Buck, “reveals — in spite of its passage — a good deal of opposition. All this will die out in a couple of months, and THEN every one will be in a temper to receive a poem of reconciliation. I fancy that to print the poem NOW will be much like making a dinner speech before the wine has been around.” Indeed, there were few men in America at this time who really understood the significance of the national spirit. Southern men, smarting under reconstruction governments and bitter with the prejudice engendered by the war, had not been able, except in rare cases, to rise to a national point of view. The sectional spirit was ready to break out at any time. It was but natural. In the Centennial year a speaker at the University of Virginia said: “Not space, or time, or the convenience of any human arm, can reconcile institutions for the turbulent fanatic of Plymouth Rock and the God-fearing Christian of Jamestown. . . . You may assign them to the closest territorial proximity, with all the forms, modes, and shows of civilization, but you can never cement them into the bonds of brotherhood.” On the other hand, the leading public men of the North, while protesting their love of the Union and naturally believing in the Union, which Northern armies had saved, had little of the spirit of a sympathetic realization of the South’s problem and her condition. Only in a few large-minded publicists, and in editors like Godkin and poets like Lowell and Walt Whitman, did the national spirit prevail.
Lanier came forward, therefore, at a critical time to express his passionate faith in the future of the American Union. He was not the only Southerner, however, who felt this way. His two friends, Senators Morgan of Alabama and Lamar of Mississippi (formerly of Georgia), had been stout upholders of the national idea in Congress. As early as 1873 Lamar had paid a notable tribute to Charles Sumner. He had risen to the point where he could see the whole struggle against slavery and against secession from Sumner’s standpoint. At the conclusion of his remarkable address he said: “Bound to each other by a common constitution, destined to live together under a common government, shall we not now at last endeavor to grow TOWARD each other once more in heart, as we are already indissolubly linked in fortunes? . . . Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we lament to-day could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord in tones which should reach every heart throughout this broad territory: My countrymen! KNOW one another, and you will LOVE one another.” In 1876 he made an extended argument for the Centennial bill, an eloquent plea AGAINST the old States’-rights arguments. “He poured out,” says his biographer, “an exposition of nationalism and constitutionalism which equaled in effect one of Webster’s masterpieces.” “As a representative of the South,” Lamar said at a later time, “I felt myself, with my Southern associates, to be a joint heir of a mighty and glorious heritage of honor and responsibility.”
It was in this spirit and to voice the better sentiment of the South, that Lanier eagerly responded to the invitation to write the Centennial poems. He had fought with valor in the Confederate armies, hoping to the last that they would be victorious. He had suffered all the poverty and humiliation of reconstruction days, but he had risen out of sectionalism into nationalism. It is a striking fact that the two poets who are the least sectional of all American poets — for even Lowell never saw Southern life and Southern problems from a national point of view — were Walt Whitman and Lanier, the only two poets of first importance who took part in the Civil War. It is also significant, that in Lanier’s “Psalm of the West” we have a Southerner chanting the glory of freedom, without any chance of having the slavery of a race to make the boast a paradox.
“Corn”, “The Symphony”, and the “Psalm of the West”, with a few shorter poems, were published in a volume in the fall of 1876 (the volume bore the date 1877, however). Reserving the discussion of the merits of the volume for a future chapter, I wish now to give some idea of Lanier’s widening acquaintance with men of culture and of letters. The first man of prominence to herald him as a new poet was, as has been seen, Mr. Gibson Peacock. The correspondence between them is well known to all students of Lanier.* Mr. Peacock “had read widely the best English literature, was familiar with the modern languages, had traveled far in this country and in Europe, and had cultivated himself not less in dramatic criticism than in books.” He brought to Lanier financial aid at critical times in his life; but more than that, his home in Philadelphia was as a second home to the poet in those years before he had settled in Baltimore, when, as he wrote Hayne, he was “as homeless as the ghost of Judas Iscariot.” Mrs. Peacock — a good linguist, a highly skilled musician, and withal a most magnetic personality — joined with her husband in his hearty friendship for the newly discovered poet. She was the daughter of the Marquis de la Figaniere, Portuguese minister to this country. In their home were entertained all the first-rate artistic people who came to Philadelphia, such as Salvini, Charlotte Cushman, Bayard Taylor, and others. It was a home in which music and literature were highly honored, and here Lanier met some of the most interesting people then living in Philadelphia, such as John Foster Kirk, editor of “Lippincott’s Magazine”, Charles Heber Clarke — “big, heartsome, `Max Adeler'” — and others.
—
* See `Letters’.
—
Soon after meeting Mr. Peacock and his wife, Lanier was sought out by Charlotte Cushman on one of her trips to Baltimore. She had been much interested in reading “Corn”, and was so attracted by the personality of the author (as he was by her), that an intimate friendship sprang up between them, growing in intensity until her death, February 18, 1876. She had but recently been greeted with a great ovation in New York city, at a meeting in which Joseph Jefferson had represented the stage and Bryant and Stoddard the realm of letters. The ovation was repeated in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. “Though coming into the circle of her friendships during the latter years of her life, when she had become famous throughout the English-speaking world, Lanier won for himself there a warm and high place,” says her biographer. There was much to attract the two to each other. Both had the highest ideals of their art; for to Miss Cushman as to Lanier, art was a sacred thing. “I know,” she said, “He does not fail to set me his work to do and help me to do it and help others to help me.” Furthermore, they were both sufferers from an incurable malady, and both victors over it in a certain serene spirit which transcended suffering. Her words are paralleled by many of Lanier’s: “I know my enemy; he is ever before me and he must conquer, but I cannot give up to him; I laugh in his face and try to be jolly — and I am! I declare I am even when he presses me hardest.” She talked much with him of the great men she had known and discussed with him the ideals of art.
Lanier threw himself into this friendship with characteristic ardor. He gave her the manuscript copies of his poems and dedicated the first volume to her, greeting her as “Art’s artist, Love’s dear woman, Fame’s good queen.” During 1875 he wrote many letters to her, letters full of chivalry and love and humility. Some of these tell the story of his life during the months of 1875 so well, and are at the same time so characteristic, that I quote: —
Brunswick, Ga., June 17, 1875.
It is only seldom, dear Miss Cushman, that I can bring myself to such a point of daring as to ask that you will stretch out your tired arms merely to take one of my little roses, — you whose hands are already filled with the best flowers this world can grow.
Does she not (I say to myself) find them under her feet and wear them about her brows; may she not walk on them by day and lie on them by night, nay, does not her life stand rooted in men’s regard like one pistil in a great lily?
But sometimes I really cannot help making love to you, just for one little intense minute; there is a certain Communistic temper always adhering in true love which WILL occasionally break out and behead all the Royal Proprieties and hang Law to the first lamp-post: it is even now so, my heart is a little ’93, `aux armes!’ Where is this minister that imprisons us, away from our friends, in the Bastile of Separation, let him die, — and as for Silence, that luxurious tyrant that collects all the dead for his taxes, behold, I am even now pricking him to a terrible death with the point of this good pen.
When one is in a state of insurrection, one makes demands: mine is that you write me, dear friend, if you are quite recovered from the fatigues of Baltimore and of Boston, and if you have not nourished yourself to new strength in feeding upon the honeys the people brought you there so freely.
. . . . .
Copies of “The Symphony” have been ordered sent to you and Miss Stebbins, and I have the MS. copy which you desired, ready to transmit to you. You will be glad to know that “The Symphony” has met with favor. The “Power of Prayer” in “Scribner’s” for June — although the editor cruelly mutilated the dialect in some places, turning, for instance, “Marster” (which is pure Alabama negro) into Mah’sr (which is only Dan Bryant negro, and does not exist in real life) — has gone all over the land, and reappears before my eyes in frequent heart-breaking yet comical disguises of misprints and disfigurements. Tell me; OUGHT one to be a little ashamed of writing a dialect poem, — as at least one newspaper has hinted? And did Robert Burns prove himself no poet by writing mostly in dialect? And is Tennyson’s “Death of the North Country Farmer” — certainly one of the very strongest things he ever wrote — not a poem, really?
Mr. Peacock’s friendship, in the matter of “The Symphony”, as indeed in all others, has been wonderful, a thing too fine to speak of in prose.
To-morrow I go to Savannah, and hope to find there a letter from Miss Stebbins. Tell me of her, when you write: and tell HER, from me, how truly and faithfully I am her and
Your friend,
Sidney Lanier.
Philadelphia, Pa., July 31, 1875.
It was so good of you, my dear friend, to write me in the midst of your suffering, that it amounts to a translation of pain into something beautiful; and with this thought I console myself for the fear lest your exertion may have caused you some pang that might have been spared.
I long to hear from you; though Miss Stebbin’s letter brought me a good account from your physician about you. If tender wishes were but medicinal, if fervent aspirations could but cure, if my daily upward breathings in your behalf were but as powerful as they are earnest, — how perfect would be your state!
I have latterly been a shuttlecock betwixt two big battledores — New York and Florida. I scarcely dare to recall how many times I have been to and fro these two States in the last six weeks. It has been just move on, all the time: car dust, cinders, the fumes of hot axle grease, these have been my portion; and between them I have almost felt sometimes as if my soul would be asphyxiated. But I now cease to wander for a month, with inexpressible delight. To-morrow I leave here for Brooklyn, where I will be engaged in hard labor for a month, namely, in finishing up the Florida book. . . .
I am very glad to find my “Symphony” copied in full in Dwight’s “Journal of Music”: and I am sure you will care to know that the poem has found great favor in all parts of the land. I have the keenest desire to see some English judgment on this poem; but not the least idea how to compass that end. Can you make me any suggestion in that behalf?
I am full curious to hear you talk about Tennyson’s “Queen Mary”. Nothing could be more astonishing than the methods of treatment with which this production has been disposed of, in the few criticisms I have seen upon it. One critic declared that it was a good poem but no drama; another avers decidedly that it is a fine drama, but not a poem; while the “Nation” man thinks that it is neither a poem nor a drama, but a sort of didactic narrative intended to be in the first place British, and, in the second place, a warning against the advancing powers of the Catholic Church. There is but a solitary thread of judgment in common among these criticisms.
I cannot tell you with how much delight I read the account of Sidney Dobell, nor with how much loving recognition I took into my heart all the extracts from his poems given in the review. I am going to read all his poems when my little holiday comes, I hope in September, and I will send you then some organized and critical thanks for having introduced me to so noble and beautiful a soul. . . .
As for you, my dear Queen Catherine, may this velvety night be spread under your feet even as Raleigh’s cloak was spread for HIS queen’s, so that you may walk dry shod as to all pain over to the morning, — prays
Your faithful Sidney Lanier.
195 Dean St., Brooklyn, N.Y., August 15, 1875.
I did not dream, my dear friend, of giving you anything in the least approaching the nature of a worry, — in asking you for a suggestion as to the best method of piercing the British hearts of oak; and you must not “think about it” as you declare you are going to do — for a single minute. Indeed, I had, in mentioning it to you, no more definite idea in my head than that perhaps you might know somebody who knew somebody that knew somebody that . . . etc., etc., ad infinitum . . . that might . . . and then my idea of what the somebody was to do, completely faded into vague nothing.
It isn’t WORTH thinking about, to you; and I have not the least doubt that what I want will finally come, in just such measure as I shall deserve.
The publishers have limited me in time so rigorously, quoad the Florida book, that I will have to work night and day to get it ready. I do not now see the least chance for a single day to devote to my own devices before the fifth or sixth of September.
And I do SO long to see you and Miss Stebbins!
Out of the sombre depths of a bottomless sea of Florida statistics in which I am at this present floundering, pray accept, my liege Queen, in art as in friendliness, all such loyal messages and fair reports compacted of love, as may come from so dull a waste of waters; graciously resting in your mind upon nothing therein save the true faithful allegiance of your humble knight and subject,
Sidney L.
In November, 1875, he visited her for a week at the Parker House in Boston. Though she was at that time critically ill, she was “fairly overflowing with all manner of tender and bright and witty sayings.” “Each day,” he wrote, “was crowded with pleasant things which she and her numerous friends had prepared for me.” On this visit to Boston Lanier spent two “delightful afternoons” with Lowell and Longfellow. Of this visit Lowell afterwards wrote President Gilman: “He was not only a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word, but had in him qualities that won affection and commanded respect. I had the pleasure of seeing him but once, when he called on me `in more gladsome days’, at Elmwood, but the image of his shining presence is among the friendliest in my memory.”
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 considerate regard for his friends, which expressed itself in many delicate ways, especially on anniversaries 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) he 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 together; 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.
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 encouraging 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 quotation: —
“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 one can almost come to know the dead thinkers too well: a certain mournfulness of longing seems 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 surround one’s self with a companionship less awful, and would rather have a friend than a god.”*
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* `Letters’, p. 171.
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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 delicately 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 to welcome him into the fellowship of authors. He gave him some valuable criticism as to the details of his work, and encouraged him by showing 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 friendship which began as a literary friendship soon developed on Taylor’s part, as well as Lanier’s, into one of deep personal regard. Taylor recognized, as did every other man who came in personal touch with Lanier, the charm and the fineness of his personality.
By the summer of 1876 Lanier had thus established himself as a promising man of letters. He had not only written poetry that had attracted 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 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 Baltimore 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 extracts are given:* —
—
* `Letters’, passim.
—
“I have found a shaggy gray mare upon whose back I thrid the great pine forests daily, much to my delight. Nothing seems so restorative 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 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 mare, 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, because 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 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 Stirrup-Cup”, “To Beethoven”, “The Dove”, “The Song of the Chattahoochee”, and “An Evening Song”. He was in a fair way to realize his ambition 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”.
Chapter 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 librarian’s position in the Peabody Library, and a place in some of the departments of the government 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 clerkship in any department. The days of civil service reform and the time when a commissioner of civil service would urge the application for government 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 appointment; and furthermore I could not see it to be delicate, on general principles, for me to 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 has 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.”* 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 position, “seventy-five dollars a month and the like,” in any department in Washington.
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* `Letters’, p. 43.
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Under these circumstances he wrote what are perhaps the most pathetic words in all his letters. “Altogether,” he says, “it seems as if there wasn’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.”* 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 his ability to get the most out of everything than his letter to Gibson Peacock: —
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* `Letters’, p. 46.
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33 Denmead St., Baltimore, Md., January 6, 1878.
The painters, the whitewashers, 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, bargained with, reproached for bad jobs, and finally paid off: I have also coaxed my landlord into all manner of outlays for damp walls, cold bathrooms, and other like matters: I have furthermore bought at least three hundred and twenty-seven 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 generally 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 Harry 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 accomplished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous necessary nothings, — and have NOT, in consequence of the aforesaid, sent to you and my dear 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 gas-bills, 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 dining-room! — 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 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.*
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* `Letters’, p. 49.
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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 unusually 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 systematic and more scholarly way. A distinct advance 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 department 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 ordinarily 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 country. 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 Elizabethan 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 of 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 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 presentation of the anonymous poems in the early collections 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 morning, occupying the same seat at the end of the table, where he worked until lunch time, so absorbed 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 frequently his wife would come to the library to do the copying for him.”*
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* Letter of Mr. John Park to the author. —
This library was Lanier’s university. While other Southerners were finding their way to German universities, he was training himself in the methods and ideals of the modern scholar. The dream of his college days was being fulfilled. He 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 learning which 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.”* 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 welcomed him to her home when he first came to Baltimore. These lectures on Elizabethan poetry were attended by many of the most prominent 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: —
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* `Letters’, p. 214.
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180 St. Paul St., Baltimore, Md., November 5, 1878.
I have been “allowing” — as the Southern negroes say — that I would write you, for the last two weeks; but I had a good deal to say, and haven’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 decisive aim. The lectures which I was invited to 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 receiving 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 — `indigesta 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 Biology 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 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 organized means of any sort, by which people engaged in ordinary avocations can accomplish such an aim.
Here, then, seems to be, first, a universal admission of the usefulness of organized intellectual pursuit for business people; secondly, an underlying desire for it by many of the people themselves; 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 Baltimore. 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 writers and conditions of a particular epoch (for instance) than in reading any amount of commentary 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 presentation of the whole SCIENCE of poetry as preparatory to a serious and profitable study of some of the greatest singers in our language.*
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* `Letters’, p. 53.
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In accordance with this idea he drew up a scheme for four independent series of class lectures, 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 Literature, (2) the Household, (3) Natural Science, and (4) Art. Thirty lectures were to be given in each school, he to give those on English Literature. He hoped that he would be able to arrange for such series in Washington, Philadelphia, 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 Extension lectures since established at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and other American universities.
The only part of the scheme that took shape was the Shakespeare course planned for the Peabody Institute. In addition to twenty-four lectures 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 lectures 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 Baltimore. Published as they have been recently,* 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 lectures of a similar kind, — Lowell’s Lowell Institute lectures, for instance. Viewed from this standpoint, one cannot but marvel at the carefulness with which Lanier prepared his lectures, 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; but 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.
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. —
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 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 lectures at Lowell Institute, said: “Then I was at the period in life when thoughts rose in covies, . . . a period of life when it doesn’t seem as if everything has been said; when a man overestimates the value of what specially interests himself, . . . when he conceives himself a missionary, 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 lectures. 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 single note of weariness; there is always the freshness and exuberance of youth, the joy of discovery, of interpretation, of illuminating comment.
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, presenting some specially striking scenes therefrom in a translation that in rhythm and substance preserves 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”, — especially when accompanied by admirable translations?
“To our old ancestors there were many times 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 consumes him. . . .
“And so, as I said, there is to me an indescribable 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 fast-rooted, 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 Nature, traces of a time when Nature was still a savage Mother of Grendel, tearing and devouring the sons of men.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. i, p. 55. —
Lanier believed strongly that the early English poems ought to be taught in schools and colleges. 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 remarking the outcrop of Anglo-Saxon blood in our modern physical achievements, there is certainly little in our present art of words to show a literary 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 inclusive and amateur vagueness removing it out of the rank of facts which involve grave and important duties. We can neither deny the fact nor the strangeness of it, that the English poetry written between the time of Aldhelm and Caedmon 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 Grein’s Bibliothek in order to get a compact reproduction of the body of Old English 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 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 recorded in English words that ring on the soul like arrows on armor. Why do we not draw in this poem — and its like — with our mother’s milk? Why have we no nursery songs of Beowulf and the Grendel? Why does not the serious education of every English-speaking boy commence, as a matter of course, with the Anglo-Saxon grammar?”*
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* `Music and Poetry’, p. 136. This quotation is an expansion of one in the lectures now under consideration. He evidently overstates his point, but the passage suggests what the study of old English meant to Lanier himself.
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There would come from such study a strengthening of English prose and a deepening of culture. 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 immeasurable 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 become 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 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 colony. 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 Zuetphen 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 questions; 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 relation of their globe to the solar system. To all this ferment the desperate conflict of the Catholic religion with the new form of faith now coming in adds an element of stern strength; men are pondering not only the physical relation of the earth to the heavens, but the spiritual relation of the soul to heaven and hell. This is no dandy period.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. i, p. 168. —
“And if any one should say there is not time to read these poets,” he says in a strain of excessive 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 adorable heights of worship, and by that act have so immeasurably uplifted the whole plane upon which society moves; they have given to all earnest 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 faithful and generous affection; that — I speak it with reverence — they have made another religion of loyal love and have given us a second Bible of womanhood.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. i, p. 7. —
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 Shakespeare’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 somewhat fanciful way the boyhood of Shakespeare in Stratford and his early manhood in London. The most important part of the lectures, however, is his discussion of the growth of Shakespeare’s mind and art, a study made possible by recent publications of the New Shakespeare Society. 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 conception of the moral height attained by Shakespeare as compared with contemporary dramatists: —
“The keenest scholarship, the freest discussion, 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;* 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. . . .
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* The `Midsummer Night’s Dream’, `Hamlet’, and `The Tempest’. —
“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 back 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 nothing 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 remembers the time in his own life, somewhere from near thirty to forty, when the actual oppositions of life came out before him 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 fraud, 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 humility, by love, by the fatherly care of a Prospero for his daughter Miranda, by the human tenderness 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, paralyzing 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, 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.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. ii, p. 260. —
“Surely the genius which in the heat and struggle of ideal creation has the enormous control and temperance to arrange and adjust in harmonious proportions all these aesthetic antagonisms 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, but 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 Shakspere, mind you, does not forget the real; he will not be a beggar nor a starveling; we have documents which show how he made money, how he bought land at Stratford; we have Richard Quincy’s letter to `my lovveinge 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.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. ii, p. 324. —
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 indicate 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 mystic influence of Nature on our human personality grows more intense and individual. Who can walk alone in your beautiful Druid Hill Park, among those dear and companionable oaks, without 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 times are being sucked up through those tree-roots and poured upon us out of branch and leaf in vague showers of suggestions that have no words in any language? 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?”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. i, p. 72. —
“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 conversation of trees, the talk of birds, do we not 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 commonplace, 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, to be natural . . . natural in our art, natural in our dress, natural in our behavior, natural in our affections, — is not that a modern consummation of culture? For to him who rightly understands 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 `Midsummer Night’s Dream’, to smile at — he is ever in sight of the morning and in hand-reach of God.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. i, p. 73. —
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 surely combine into some greater form or purpose 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 purposes 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 philosophy 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 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.”*
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* `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.
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One of the things which enabled Lanier to produce the effect that he did in teaching literature 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 following account by one of his hearers, written a short time after his death, gives the effect produced by his readings: —
“Mr. Lanier did not lay claim to any extraordinary 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, however, 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 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 appreciation 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 before the mental vision. In theatrical representation, 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 attention. His graphic comments caused the whole rapidly moving scene to engrave itself on the memory.”*
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* Letter of Mrs. Arthur W. Machen to the author. —
Such readings and lectures are treasured in the minds of those who heard them. In addition to his 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 Baltimore. He shared in all the advantages made possible by the philanthropy of George Peabody and Johns Hopkins, and in such aesthetic influences as the Allston Art Association and the Walters collection of French and Spanish pictures. 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 beloved. 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 identifying him with the University. Lanier had then talked with him about the advisability of establishing a chair of music and poetry, a plan which appealed to Dr. Gilman. 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 suggesting the matter to him before by his “ignorance as to whether I had pursued any special course of study in life.” Dr. Gilman recommended to the trustees that Lanier be appointed 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 materialize, and we find Lanier a year later writing a letter applying for a fellowship: —
Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 1877.
Dear Mr. Gilman, — From a published report 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 Mineralogy, 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 development should come of it.
Sincerely yours,
Sidney Lanier.
Such a plan of study did not fit in with the scheme of graduate courses, and so he was not awarded it. President Gilman 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. Finally, the trustees, convinced of Lanier’s scholarship, 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 appointment 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 consideration 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 opening 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 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 indicates the great love that he had for the institution: —
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 influence 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 American educational system. Her sister institutions have in later days gone far beyond Johns Hopkins in equipment and in opportunities for research, 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 unusually strong men, they were fortunate in securing the services of Daniel Coit Gilman, whose experience in educational matters had commended itself to the judgment of the four leading university presidents of the country to such an extent 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 universities, a graduate school with high standards. American professors had studied in German universities and distinguished European scholars had been called to chairs in American universities, 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 education in America upon a new phase in its development.” “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 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;” accomplished Martin, who “brought to this country new methods of physiological inquiry;” Rowland, “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.* These men did much original work themselves, and put before the public in popular articles and scientific journals the ideals of their several departments. 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 Library, 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 the known; how to extend, even by minute accretions, the realm of knowledge; how to cooperate with other men in the prosecution of inquiry.” Reviewing the work done by the faculty and students of the University, the leading scientific journal of England said, July 12, 1883: “We should like to see such an account of original work done and to be done issuing each year from the laboratories of Oxford and Cambridge.”
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* The account of the first faculty is based largely on ex-President Gilman’s article, “The Launching of a University”, in `Scribner’s Magazine’, March, 1902.
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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 universities. These lectures, suggested by those given at the 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, Freeman, Bryce, Von Holst, Edmund Gosse, William 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.”
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 corner 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 acquaintances 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 investigations in his special line of work, — he knew the value of scholarship. The Peabody Library enabled him to have at hand the most recent 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 Verse” and in the Shakespeare lectures indicate that he had a knowledge of the bibliography of any subject he touched. Furthermore, 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 common 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.”* When the book was finished, 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. 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 offered by him. Pray let me know if you think this worth while.” 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.
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* Letter to the author.
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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 accuracy 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 inestimable 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 science. Here the minutest accuracy in observing and the utmost faithfulness in reporting have been found in the outset to be absolutely essential, 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 of 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 “wonderful 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 recent autobiography, tells of a friend of his who had the making of a great scientist. He met him at Flat Rock 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 didn’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 remarkable than the wide reading, the deep reflection, 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 development of scholarship in some one direction. He restates, for instance, with remarkable insight and conciseness, the investigations of Fleay, Edward Dowden, and other members of the New Shakespeare Society, as to the metrical development seen in Shakespeare’s plays. But he adds to their investigations a suggestion as to the greater freedom with which Shakespeare shifted the accent 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 monotonous regularity of the regular system with the charm of those subtle rhythms which we employ in familiar discourse, so that the habit of such freedom might grow with the greatest uniformity upon a poet, and might thus present us with a test of such uniform development as to be 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 himself, 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 comprehensive view of all the word-changes which have occurred since the earliest Anglo-Saxon works were written? The other day a young 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 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 occurred 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 would in no long time collect material for a thorough and systematic view of the growth of English words for the last thousand years. The most interesting questions concerning the wonderful and subtle laws of word-change might then be solved.”*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners’, vol. i, p. 134. —
In his zeal for publishing and editing books he conceived of a rather quixotic plan for starting 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 together 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 popular 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! Indeed, if we could be a firm together! I have many times thought that `Lanier Brothers, Publishers’, 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 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 literature, 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 German 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 discerned, we shall more and more clearly see that his metre, his words, his grammar and syntax, 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 business of the present, the second school of Victorian students . . . as antiquarian illustration, emendation, and 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 Swinburne’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 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 eloquence the growth of Shakespeare’s mind and art. To Lanier a metrical test or a date is no insignificant 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 human race has yet evolved hangs essentially upon dates.” Lanier’s reverence for exact scholarship and his application of seemingly technical standards do not interfere at all with his deeper appreciation of Shakespeare’s plays. While he overstated the autobiographical value of a chronological 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 Lanier’s scholarly work are easy to cite. His plan for the publication of a book of Elizabethan sonnets, while not realized by him, has been carried out during the past year in a far more extensive 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 scholarly ideals. If not a great scholar himself, he wanted to be one, and he had the finest appreciation 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. President Gilman realized this when he wrote to Lanier: “I think your scheme (of winter lectures) 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 subjects 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 aims 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 English words and phrases, (2) a stock of illustrative 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 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 consolation and refreshment of literature when the day’s work is over, the delight of sitting with a favorite 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 repose 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.”*
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* `The Independent’, March 18, 1886. —
In another letter he wrote still further of his plans, clearly distinguishing between the popular lectures and the more technical work of the University class-room. It is a long letter, but gives so well Lanier’s idea of his work in the University and his plans for the future that it serves better than much comment: —
180 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, Md., July 13, 1879.
My dear Mr. 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 distribute 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 scholastic 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 student’. 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 and will — if properly carried out — constitute a genuine contribution to modern literary scholarship;
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 Anglo-Saxon, 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 you see that while the course of “Class Lectures” submitted to you nominally centres about the three plays of Shakspere* therein named, it really takes these for texts, and involves, 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 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 permanent lectureship covering the field above indicated. 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 sympathy 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.
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