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SIDNEY LANIER.


ARTES
1817
SCIENTIA
LIBRARY
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
TUEBOR
TRIS PENINSULAM-AMINAM
CIRCUMSPICE
WITHDRAW
A BRIEF SKETCH
OF
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OF

SIDNEY LANIER.
BY
CHARLES N. WEST, M. A.
AN ADDRESS delivered before THE GEORGIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, at Savannah
on the 5th of December, 1887.
PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY.
SAVANNAH, GA.
TOWNSEND, PRINTER AND BINDER.
1888.
MU
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W52
SIDNEY LANIER.
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society:
When the Centennial Commission of the United
States in 1876 sought for a pcet who could best ex-
press the national feeling in its opening cantata,
their choice fell upon Sidney Lanier.
When Asger
Hamerik, the conductor of the Peabody Orchestra,
the aim of which is to teach music in its highest
forms, desired to employ the best artist on the flute
attainable, he turned to Sidney Lanier. When the
Johns Hopkins University, which, from enormous
resources, had obtained its chief mathematician in
Sylvester, its chief Greek scholar in Gildersleeve, its
electrician in Roland, its chief chemist in Remsen,
its Romance lecturer in Eliot, and the other members
of its Faculty from the best scholars known to the
world, wished an equally gifted and capable lecturer
upon English prose and poetry, it was to Lanier that
it looked as the man for the task. Such was the ver-
dict on him, while living, by competent judges of his
powers as poet, musician, and critic.
Upon a list of our purchases a few months ago,
you will find his complete poems. That only
then did we order this volume, and that we
are not now the owners of a copy of each of his
works, afford convincing proof that if this Georgian
were, in fact, such a man as to have attracted t
admiration of the reading world, and if his w

4
SIDNEY LANIER.
were familiarly known to all lovers of books at the
North and abroad, we, his compatriots at home, have
no such knowledge of him. I offer this as my sin-
cere excuse for detaining you to-night, and for tell-
ing you something about him; something which,
while I esteem it a privilege to mention to you, might
and should be told by others, who, in addition to the
admiration that I cannot but feel for the man, writer
and musician, would address you with that intimate
knowledge of the fullness and subtlety of Lanier's
genius that is born of constant and comparative
study and criticism. This view I will not pretend
to give you, but will be happy, and count myself
successful indeed, if I can inspire you with some of
that delight in and love for his personality, that even
those who know nothing of him save by his books,
have drank in with the music of his English, and
with a natural pleasure, that this true son of Geor-
gia, who, by his boyish soldier career, his brave,
beautiful life, his elevation of thought, and grasp of
language and knowledge, and his exquisite poetic
fancy has charmed the whole English-speaking
world, came from us, was one of us, and forever will
go down to posterity as one of our own.
For such he was. His family name is not unfam-
iliar to you.
All in this room, of my profession,
have known his father as one of the honored heads
of our bar in Macon, where Sidney was born in 1842.
1842-and he died in 1881! That was a short
enough time in which to do what he did, and when
u come to know, in some measure only, what that
and how he did it, the facts will amaze you.

SIDNEY LANIER.
5
He graduated at our own Oglethorpe College in
1860, and within a few months later entered the
army as a private with the first organized body that
went to Virginia from Georgia. He remained a pri-
vate through the entire civil war, although three
times offered promotion, refusing each offer because
of consequent separation from his younger brother.
I need not recount to you any especial features of
his army life. We are familiar with the nature of
that, and his differed not from the ordinary course
of the soldier's existence in those four dreadful
years. We may not have had the same weary
marches and countermarches, the same battles, the
same camp-fires, the same starvation, heats, freezes,
sicknesses, and prison pens, the identical incidents of
Lanier's life; but we had others of such likeness that
we know all about how he then lived, without one
word more.
It is sufficient to say that he did his
whole duty.
Seven Pines, Drewry's Bluff, Chicka-
hominy and Malvern Hill saw that, and finally cap-
tivity at Point Lookout became his lot, and the
source of that mortal disease which ended his life
when it had barely commenced.
Released in February, 1865, he struggled home-
ward on foot, as did many another of us, reaching
it worn out, foot sore, and broken down. After his
partial recovery from the attack of illness which
supervened, he looked around for means of
support, and became a clerk in a store, where
he remained until April, 1867.
In that year
he commenced to teach school, and in the same year
married Miss Mary Day, of Macon-herself a most
6
SIDNEY LANIER.
accomplished musician. She is living still, and I
may not, with propriety, speak more of her, but fur-
ther on when I deal with what he accomplished and
wished to do, I will refer to a letter from which
you can probably draw conclusions yourselves as to
what manner of helpmeet she was for him. The
month after his marriage his first hemorrhage from
the lungs occurred, and from that time to his death
his life was a contest-a race between creative power
and his mortal foe. I give you these details of his
early career, for the reason that I can thus better
bring him home to us, who know every step of the
path so trod by him, and can in this more fully per-
ceive the immense latent force that subsequently
came into play, and raised him out of the ranks of
privates, clerks, schoolmasters, and poor lawyers into
equal communion with the great spirits and masters
of the creative literary world.
He seems have practiced law for four
years or more in Macon, but was driven by
sickness to San Antonio, whence he made his
way in December, 1873, to Baltimore. There
he effected an engagement as flute player in the
Peabody concerts, and really began his wonderful
life and that series of literary performances which
made him famous. From that time on his history
is so much a story of those productions, that in this
personal account I had best weave, as I proceed, some
brief description of the works that he has left to us.
Concerning them all this ought to be first re-
marked. He had been, as you have seen, a soldier
in the great civil war, which had resulted in the de-
SIDNER LANIER.
7
feat and utter ruin of his people. But when Lanier
pur off his uniform and took up his pen, having
done his duty manfully, he bent his whole energy
towards literature, pure and simple, without calling
to he assistance feelings and impulses, which to lit-
erature are of meretricious nature. Like the great
captainder whom he had served, he looked calm-
ly toward the future, and humbly and steadfastly
pursed his way as man of letters, with no appeals
to passions, sorrows, or patriotism of his readers.
is not difficult to see that his first few years in
Bmore must have been given largely to study-at
east so much time as in his days of partial strength
could be spared from bread winning by the flute and
his pen.
His stores of antiquarian learning were not
gathered in Georgia, nor did he become a master of
English prose and verse on the battle fields of Vir-
guia. From camp fires and marches one may glean
a vast and intimate knowledge of the best and worst
sides of human nature, but not of recondite medi-
eval history, nor of exactness and simplicity in lit-
erary style.
In the seven years from 1874 to 1881, what labor
nhust have been his! Delving deep in lore which to
us is almost unknown; drinking at the fountain.
heads the old knightly stories of Froissart, Sir
Thomas Malory, and the Welsh heroic fables; writ-
ing constantly for the periodical magizines; lecturing
upon prose and poetry to the John Hopkins post
graduates; and playing upon the flute at night to eke
out the daily bread of the little people, whose tugs
at his coat he felt as Erskine did in his maiden


8
SIDNEY LANIER.
speech-even until that last course of lectures when,
too weak to walk, he was driven to his hall, there to
speak with struggling breath to his devoted class,
who hung upon his words with hearts divided be-
tween delight in his beautiful thoughts and fear that
his breath would leave him even while he spoke-I
think of him as the bravest soul of whom I ever
heard!
I think that the first work of Lanier whic at-
tracted general attention was a poem entitled "C"
which you will find in the volume before me. [e
had written much before this was given out, bu I
speak from my own memory when I say that my a
tention was thus first called to the new star riseh.
Under this commonplace name he drew charming
pictures of the familiar scenes of his native State.
With loving eyes he looked
"To where, beyond the mouldering mill,
Yon old deserted Georgian hill
Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest,
And seamy breast,
By restless-hearted children left to lie
Untended there beneath the heedless sky,
As barbarous folk expose their old to die."
I remember a visit that I made when a boy, to the
home of a relative in one of the rich cotton counties
of this State. We drove in the dusk of evening u
an avenue, bordered on either hand by hedges of
Cherokee roses, to the top of a hill, on which stood
the family mansion in a large grove of splendid oaks.
The glow of sunset still lingered in the West, suf
ficient to disclose, before reaching the grove, wide
spreading fields under careful culture. The hands


...
SIDNEY LANIER.
9
were riding home, with trace chains rattling, to the
negro quarter, whence streamed through doors and
cracks the light of a score of fires; and the swine-
herd's cry came melodiously across
across the fields.
When we reached the house, we found ourselves in
the midst of light and warmth, and welcome from
sweet faces and hearty manly voices.
1
A few years ago, in a day of shooting, I found my-
self on the self-same spot. There was no sound ex-
cept that made by ourselves. The hedges and roses
had fled. The avenue itself had gone under the
plow, which had some time ran up to the mansion
door. Quarter and barns had disappeared, and
thrifty culture had been lost in a system which had
left behind it an old red hill scantily clothed with
brush, except where rough gullies scarred its sides.
There was no stairway to the gaping hall door,
and the windows, once bright with lights, stared upon
us, shutterless, from unpainted walls. And as I
looked around, scarcely crediting where I stood, I
saw that most of the trees had been slaughtered, the
few remaining, with girdled trunks and blasted tops,
raising their naked and withered limbs to Heaven, as
if in silent protest against the sacrilege.
Of such scenes Lanier hopefully prophesied-down
to this time, we know, in vain :-
"Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn,
Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn,
Visions of golden treasuries of corn,
Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart
That manfully shall take thy part,

And tend thee,
And defend thee,
With antique sinew and with modern art."
10
SIDNEY LANIER.
Such hopes may be visionary dreams, not to be
realized in our time, but it was a new and a great
thing indeed, that there should be a Georgia writer,
who not only felt and could sing the charms of his
native woods and shades, but was capable of invest-
ing our old worn hills with the poetic color and
fancy that Burns and the Ettrick Shepherd had seen
in Scotland's heath-covered heights.
In 1878 he published his "Boy's Froissart," a work
concerning which his own explanation is best:
"My main task in editing this book for you has
been to choose connected stories which would show
you as many of the historic figures in Froissart as
possible, though I have tried to preserve at the same
time the charm which lies in his very rambling man-
ner. I have not altered his language at all. Every
word in this book is Froissart's, except, of course, that
he wrote in French, and his words are here trans-
lated into English."
This work created a great sensation at the North
and in England, where it was hailed as an invalu-
able acquisition to English literature, and it was felt
that Lanier had succeeded in that most difficult and
delicate task of translating the old chronicle into
perfect modern English, while losing nothing of the
quaint spirit of the original as it was written by the
old monk. Lanier sometimes spoke of it and ts
three companions from his pen as "pot-boiling," bat
the sternest critics have not agreed with him in this
verdict, if by the term a poor result may be implied,
while it is yet true that these and all other products
of his mind, with few exceptions, were written n

SIDNEY LANIER.
11
dire necessity. He was never free from the res an-
gustæ domi, and to that extent pot-boiling was his
fate as long as he lived. A few months before he
died he said in a letter to a friend :-
((
My lectures take all my time, and I cannot write
you. I had not thought they would be so laborious,
but I find the numerous illustrations of antique
thought and habit require a great deal of research,
and each lecture is a good week's work for a well
man. And when I contemplate the other things I
am waiting to do, many of them half done, to-wit:
(1) my Hymns of The Marshes, nearly complete,
whereof you have The Marshes of Glynn and the lit-
tle song of Trees and The Master; (2) my Clover
and Other Poems, now quite ready for the press; (3)
my Credo, and Other Poems, a thick volume, all in
memoranda, ready to be written out in a few weeks;
(4) my Choral Symphony, for chorus and orchestra,
being my Psalm of the West, with music; (5) my
Symphony Life, in four movments, 1st, Childhood;
2nd, Youth; 3rd, Manhood; 4th, Old Age; (6) my
Symphony of the Plantation, being the old and the
new life of the negro, in music; (8) my Girl's Pas-
ton Letters, now in my desk, half prepared; (9)
my Boy's Monstrelet, also in desk ready to arrange;
(10) my Boy's Gesta Romanorum-when I contem-
plate these, now lying upon my hands in actual
forms of one sort or another, without daring to
think of books merely projected;-I fall to wonder-
ing whether I have any business or right to wait,
whether I had not better go and borrow five thou-
sand, ten thousand dollars-which could be so easily
repaid in five years (the copyrights of the Boy's Frois-
sart and King Arthur would have done it, if I had not
been obliged to sell them)-and put myself in heaven
at once, with nothing but poetry to write and two
years of freedom from slavery to butcher and baker."
12
SIDNEY LANIER.
I have been led away by his own name for his
labor from the Froissart, which I have mentioned as
his first large work. In reading the preface to this
book I have been often struck with a passage which
seems to me to have been unconsciously portrayed
the character of the writer with absolute fidelity
*
"As you read of the fair knights and the foul
knights-for Froissart tells of both-it cannot but
occur to you"-you must remember that he was speak-
ing to boys" that somehow it seems harder to be a
good knight nowadays than it was then. This is be-
cause we have so many more ways of fighting now
than in King Edward the Third's time. A good
deal of what is really combat nowadays is not called
combat.
Nevertheless the same
qualities which made a manful fighter then make
one now. To speak the very truth; to perform a
promise to the uttermost; to reverence all women; to
maintain right and honesty; to help the weak; to
treat high and low with courtesy; to be constant to
one love; to be fair to his bitter foe; to despise luxury;
to preserve simplicity, modesty and gentleness in
heart and bearing; this was in the oath of the young
knight who took the stroke upon him in the four-
teenth century, and this is still the way to win love
and glory in the nineteenth."
And of such sort he proved himself to be.
To put such a book, written in such a spirit, into
a boy's hand is to open to him the doors of truth
and honor, and to invite him out of the dirt and
pollution abounding around him, into a clean, white
temple, where high aspirations and manful wishes
will become his bosom friends.
In 1880, Lanier's "Boy's King Arthur" was pub-
lished. In this book the treatment of the old
SIDNEY LANIER.
13
Arthurian legends is similar to that of Froissart's
Chronicles, every word of Malory's remaining un-
changed, except in the spelling and arrangement.
His Boy's Percy, and the "Knightly Legends of
Wales,"-called by himself more properly, but less
popularly, "The Mabinogion,"-were not published
until after his death, but were written in 1880 and
1881. The former is a translation of the ballads col-
lated by Bishop Percy, and the latter speak for
themselves by the title. All these works were done
with the same discriminating taste and delicacy that
had surprised the public in the Froissart, and we
have in them the old legends and poems with all the
ancient flavor.
His lectures on the Science of English Verse were
published in 1880, the object being to demonstrate
and illustrate the proposition that verse is essentially
but a form of music. As he
As he says himself:-
"For the artist in verse there is no law. The per-
ception and love of beauty constitute the whole out-
fit, and what is herein set forth is to be taken merely
as enlarging that perception and exalting that love.
In all cases the appeal is to the ear; but the ear
should for that purpose be educated up to the highest
possible plane of culture."
His work called "The English Novel and the Prin-
ciple of its Development," was not published until
after his death, and was misnamed by the publishers.
The name that he gave it and that it should prop-
erly bear, is mentioned by Mrs. Lanier in the letter
to which I have alluded. This book contains the
richest coinage of Lanier's mind and-to my mind—
14
SIDNEY LANIER.
the finest specimens of that method of expression
which had become his as a vehicle of intense thought.
For myself, I can see two distinct styles in Mr.
Lanier's works, of one of which you have already
had examples. Its charm does not lie merely in the
transition from logical reasoning to poetical ideas, but
in the exact use of words, and perfect ease and sim-
plicity, in which method his meaning would be
caught at once by the lightest and most trifling
reader. But when he thought strongly, he expressed
himself more tersely, the words used carrying with
them a suggestiveness of a much larger and fuller
meaning than appeared upon the surface. In those
cases, (and they occur constantly in the book "On
the Science of English Verse," and "The Develop-
ment of Personality in the English Novel "), the at-
tention of the careful reader is frequently arrested
by a sentence which seems at first obscure. But as
you read it again, the enlarged meaning dawns upon
you, and you see that a few words have served the
purpose of many. It is not Carlyleism. It is not so
studied as Emerson; and yet, like them both, when he
so writes careless reading is useless. Such is the
field of the essayist, and he was a born essayist.
But time does not serve me for any extended crit-
cism, if I dared to attempt it. I am sure that his
own words do him more justice with you than I can
hope by any language of mine. Permit me again
to quote him. In his conclusion of the "Develop-
ment of Personality," in summarising the thoughts
worked out in its pages, terminating with his opinion
14
SIDNEY LANIER.
the finest specimens of that method of expression
which had become his as a vehicle of intense thought.
For myself, I can see two distinct styles in Mr.
Lanier's works, of one of which you have already
had examples. Its charm does not lie merely in the
transition from logical reasoning to poetical ideas, but
in the exact use of words, and perfect ease and sim-
plicity, in which method his meaning would be
caught at once by the lightest and most trifling
reader. But when he thought strongly, he expressed
himself more tersely, the words used carrying with
them a suggestiveness of a much larger and fuller
meaning than appeared upon the surface. In those
cases, (and they occur constantly in the book “On
the Science of English Verse," and "The Develop-
ment of Personality in the English Novel "), the at-
tention of the careful reader is frequently arrested
by a sentence which seems at first obscure.
But as
you read it again, the enlarged meaning dawns upon
you, and you see that a few words have served the
purpose of many. It is not Carlyleism. It is not so
studied as Emerson; and yet, like them both, when he
so writes careless reading is useless. Such is the
field of the essayist, and he was a born essayist.
But time does not serve me for any extended crit-
cism, if I dared to attempt it. I am sure that his
own words do him more justice with you than I can
hope by any language of mine. Permit me again
to quote him. In his conclusion of the "Develop-
ment of Personality," in summarising the thoughts
worked out in its pages, terminating with his opinion
16
SIDNEY LANIER.
spere, Richardson and Fielding, down to Dickens
and our author, I find all the numerous threads of
thought which have been put before you gathered
into one, if I say that George Eliot shows man
what he may be in terms of what he is."
man.
A characteristic episode in this book-or rather
these lectures—is Lanier's protest against Walt Whit-
He will not allow Whitman's claim to be the
poet of the Democracy of this country, but falls
upon him with all his power. Says he :-
"And a precisely similar fate has met Whitman.
Professing to be a mudsill, and glorying in it; chant-
ing Democracy and the shirt sleeves and equal
rights; declaring that he is nothing if not one of the
people; nevertheless, the people, the Democracy,
will yet have nothing to do with him, and it is safe
to say that his sole audience has lain among repre-
sentatives of the highest culture and the English il-
luminati. The truth is, that if closely examined,
Whitman, instead of being a true Democrat, is simply
the most incorrigible of aristocrats masquerading in
a peasant's costume; and his poetry, instead of being
the natural outcome of a fresh young Democracy, is
a product which would be impossible except in a
highly civilized society."
And so our Georgian goes on, ruthlessly destroy-
ing the idol of the yawp worshippers, whose idea of
Democracy Whitman illustrates, until he breaks out
passionately:-
"In the name of all really manful Democracy, in
the name of the true strength that only can make
our Republic reputable among the nations, let us re-
pudiate the strength that is no stronger than a
human biceps, let us repudiate the manfulness that
SIDNEY LANIER.
17
averages no more than six feet high. My Democrat,
the Democrat who is to write or to read the poetry
of the future, may have a mere thread for his biceps,
yet he shall be strong enough to handle hell; he
shall play ball with the earth, and albeit his stature
may be no more than a boy's, he shall still be taller
than the great red woods of California; his height
shall be the height of great resolution, and love and
faith, and beauty, and knowledge, and subtle medi-
tation; his head shall be forever among the stars."
Lanier's poetry was of a desultory sort. The vol-
ume before me is full of short poems, but he seems
to have had no time to spare for that mode of ex-
pression in any extended way, while popular know-
ledge of him is chiefly based on his poetry. In
reading it you will be struck with his love for his
native soil, whether he found it in the
"Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These shades in the valleys of Hall,"
where
"The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook stone
Dip bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone,
-Crystals clear or acloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet and amethyst-
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall,"
or on the coast, in
"The vast sweet visage of space,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest dark."
His catholic spirit, drinking in beauty wherever
:
18
SIDNEY LANIER.
he found it, was broad enough to love every charm-
ing thing in nature, from its mountains to its utter-
most seashore,
"Where Georgia's oaks with moss beards curled
Wave by the shining strand."
and his residence, hundreds of miles away, never
seemed to chill that love or loose the bonds of his
fealty to the dear old soil.
I think there is nothing which so distinctly
marks that sort of mind, which was Lanier's,
as the capacity for discovering nature's beauties
in all his walks, where they are hidden from
us of grosser make, until pointed out by an ar-
tistic pen. I suppose there is no one at this table
who is not perfectly familiar with the appearance of
our wide-spread marshes. To very few I imagine do
they commend themselves for beauty. But I would
not like to be the man who would not look upon
them with new eyes after reading Lanier's "Marshes
of Glynn." As my wish is more that we should
know Lanier than that we should hear of him, I
beg your indulgence while I read a few extracts from
that "Hymn of the Marshes."
"Gloom of the live-oaks, beautiful braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs-
Emerald twilights—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea marshes of Glynn ;—
*
*
*
*
*
}
18
SIDNEY LANIER.
he found it, was broad enough to love every charm-
ing thing in nature, from its mountains to its utter-
most seashore,
"Where Georgia's oaks with moss beards curled
Wave by the shining strand."
and his residence, hundreds of miles away, never
seemed to chill that love or loose the bonds of his
fealty to the dear old soil.
I think there is nothing which so distinctly
marks that sort of mind, which was Lanier's,
as the capacity for discovering nature's beauties
in all his walks, where they are hidden from
us of grosser make, until pointed out by an ar-
tistic pen.
I suppose there is no one at this table
who is not perfectly familiar with the appearance of
our wide-spread marshes. To very few I imagine do
they commend themselves for beauty. But I would
not like to be the man who would not look upon
them with new eyes after reading Lanier's "Marshes
of Glynn." As my wish is more that we should
know Lanier than that we should hear of him, I
beg your indulgence while I read a few extracts from
that "Hymn of the Marshes."
"Gloom of the live-oaks, beautiful braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs-
Emerald twilights—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea marshes of Glynn;-
*
*
*
*
20
SIDNEY LANIER.
The creeks overflow; a thousand rivulets run,
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one.
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide
comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.
It seems fitting and just that if this sensitively at-
tuned mind had to leave its frail earthly tenement be-
fore its work were done, this should take place
amidst scenes and in circumstances harmonious with
his spirit and unwordly aspirations. In the summer
of 1881 he had gone with his wife and an infant
child to the green clad mountains of North Caro-
lina, in vain hopes of temporary relief from his suf-
ferings; and there in camp in the "Land of the
Sky," as high above the stir and bustle of the world
as his soul had ever been above its grossness, the
poet and musician passed from his life of toil and
pains and unfinished labor to his rest eternal. As
an eminent writer has said of him :-
"So the tragedy ended, the manly struggle carried
on with indomitable resolution against illness, and
want and care. Just when he seemed to have con-
quered success enough to assure him a little leisure
SIDNEY LANIER.
21
to write his poems, then his feeble but resolute hold
upon earth was exhausted. What he left behind
him was written with his life blood. High above all
the evils of the world he lived in a realm of ideal
serenity, as if it were the business of life to conquer
difficulties."
What those difficulties were, it may not be our
province to examine too closely. We have already
seen that they hung about him and embarrassed
every step of his painful way.
May we not believe that as the dying poet looked
out from his mountain camp upon the glorious world
around him, into the valleys growing chill and dim
as the light of day departed, and thought with re-
gret unutterable of the unborn children of his brain,
never to come forth, and felt the double bitterness of
death in the consciousness of exalted mental power,
never again to be fruitful of anything, his eye would
travel to the heights above still kindled and radiant
with the glowing warmth of the setting sun; that
then his feeble heart would stir to nature's promise
as he would read therein, that soon his travail would
cease forever in the companionship of such brethren
of his soul as Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Keats,
and Thompson, and his own friend, Bayard Taylor,
who had already entered into immortal fellowship
in the abiding place of such pure spirits; and that he
was comforted?
When I first thought of saying a little to you con-
cerning the subject of my remarks, I wrote to Mrs.
Lanier, asking her kind assistance as to various de-
22
SIDNEY LANIER.
tails. She answered me by a letter, to which I have
alluded, and I am sure that I will not violate her
confidence if I give you some extracts from it :
"Your letter of Feb. 18, was forwarded to me at
Arlington, Md., on the morning of my departure
from this city, the 24th. I was then leaving my
children to repair my failing health by two weeks of
rest and nursing, and it seemed certain that I should
presently be able to consider your suggestions with
care and to answer you what I could do in reference
to them. But the event has not justified the hope,
and it is at the close of my visit that I find it pos-
sible to confer with you.
"The aim of your kind letter is so gratifying to me
that it seems hardly necessary to assure you that I
am pleased to hear from you concerning it and
would gladly do anything in my power to further it.
*
܀
*
܀
*
*
"With the exception of a short (parlor) course of
lectures on English sonnets, given in the spring of
1878, and a longer "Shakespere course, given at
the Peabody Institute, throughout the following
winter, the full record of Mr. Lanier's completed
work is presented in the published volumes: Tiger
Lillies, 1867, (long out of print);
the Science of English Verse, 1879 or '80, being
the substance of the first year's lectures at the
John Hopkins University; the four "boys" books,
Froissart, King Arthur, The Mabinogion, and the
Percy Reliques; the English novel, 1883, being the
twelve last lectures delivered at the Johns Hop-
kins University, in 1881, and the complete poems,
1884.
These I could send
you, yet am not confident that they contain any-
thing of moment not already incorporated. Two or
three notes relating different incidents, of no prom-
inence, written at the same time by different friends,
*
*
*
SIDNEY LANIER.
23
can be included. Then I have many thoughtful
and well-written reviews of the poems-yet those are
not likely to serve you, I imagine. I have one let-
ter of the last year where Mr. Lanier names to a
dear friend many literary and musical works which
lie all ready, blocked out in his mind, only awaiting
his opportunity to put them on paper. This might
well serve your purpose. There are some six hundred
pages now in his desk, a volume almost complete, but
lacking only the essential notes referred to; a text
book for colleges, named 'Comparative Studies of
Chaucer and Shakespere.' His aim in the series of
which this was but the first number, is interestingly
set forth in an accompanying letter sent to the Ap-
pleton's, but reserved as the basis of a future maga-
zine article. The same scheme was embodied in a
letter to President Gilman, and this letter was pub-
lished last spring in the New York "Independent,"
and is at your service. It is the outline, not going
into detail, of a very large scheme of a course in
English literature.
"My own letters, very numerous, could add little,
if anything, to the chronicle of outward accomplish-
ment. If I were not too ill I could, indeed, and with
joy, send many interesting extracts, showing the
poetry of the daily life, the passion for music, the
many devices of a many-sided genius for utilizing
his gifts, a partial history of his effort to perfect the
experiment of a new long flute,' with improve-
ments of his own invention-an effort which lack of
money arrested the mention of some discovery in
physics, of sound, and the certifying thereto of Prof.
Smith (I think), of the University of Virginia; pic-
tures of travel to Western Texas, and of his winter
in San Antonio; and so on. But many kindred un-
dertakings now lie unfinished because of my contin-
uous ill health, and this being so, I dare not promise
anything in this direction.
*
24
SIDNEY LANIER.
6
"I care to have it put on record, wherever such
particulars are appropriate, that Mr. Lanier named his
last course of lectures From Echylus to George
Eliot; the Development of Personality,' and de-
livered them under that title, which far more accur-
ately describes them than 'The English Novel,'
which the publishers and consulting friends decided
upon while I was too ill to debate the question.
"The Development of Personality in the English
Novel' would have been cumbrous, but less mislead-
ing. The book is now judged by an aim which the
text does not profess.
*
*
I
"I will do my poor best to meet your wishes.
wish, indeed, that you had known Mr. Lanier, for
then you would have learned something of him that
no pen can tell."
I have read you so much of this letter, because when
I read it myself, it seemed to me that thus, in five
minutes, I knew more of the life of Lanier, and of
his artistic aims than I had been able to gather from
many sources. It does not say, however, what I am
able to assert, as of my own knowledge, that his
death, just after he had fairly commenced to try his
wings, was deplored in all circles where literary skill
is valued as the greatest loss of that sort that Amer-
ica had sustained in many years. The critics who
thus regretted him, mourned only the loss to litera-
ture. They knew nothing of the stress in which he
labored--details so pathetic that I am not sure that
they would have been in place in such an account as
this, if those were not Georgians to whom I am
speaking concerning the career and achievements of
that Georgian, who has taken the highest rank in
literature ever attained by any from this State.
It
SIDNEY LANIER.
25
is impossible for us to measure the height to which
he would have risen, had he lived the ordinary
length of man's life. What he did, he accomplished
in seven short years, in circumstances which would
have been hopeless fetters and bonds to most men.
In that time he proved himself scholar, essayist,
musician and poet, and in each gave, not only the
promise, but the proof of an immense genius, shin-
ing with a light of an exquisite nobility of spirit.
Brave man! Beautiful soul! His head shall indeed
"be forever among the stars. In that great and
friendly city which was the place of his struggles and
successes, whose scholars and students came daily to
hear his thoughts poured forth at its chief seat of
learning, and whose musicians hung at night upon the
soft and melting notes of the poor artist's divine flute,
his bust and portrait adorn hall and library, and his
name is now a household word. But his heart was
given to us and to this land as long as he lived, and
it is our right and privilege now to claim him by that
bond. Let us in this Historical Body of the State,
whose mountains, red hills and sea beach he loved
so well, and of which he sung with such affection;
let us, at this, his own national fireside, gather him
to our hearts and keep his memory green.
S

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