— * '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."*

— * '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?"*

— * '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."*

— * '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."*

— * '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. —

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."*

— * 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."

— * 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. —

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.

— * Letter to the author. —

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."*

— * '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."*

— * '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.

— * 'Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Hamlet', and 'The Tempest'. —

As to the first six class lectures on "The Physics and Metaphysics of Poetry": they unfold my system of English Prosody, in which I should thoroughly drill every student until he should be able to note down, in musical signs, the rhythm of any English poem. This drilling would continue through the whole course, inasmuch as I regard a mastery of the principles set forth in those lectures as vitally important to all systematic progress in the understanding and enjoyment of poetry.

I should have added, apropos of this class course, that there ought to be one examination each week, to every two lectures.

In the first interview we had, after my appointment, it was your intention to place this study among those required by the University for a degree. I hope sincerely you have not abandoned this idea; and the course outlined in "Class lectures" forwarded to you the other day, and in the theses of which I send the first seven herewith, seems to me the best to begin with. If it should be made a part of the "Major Course in English" (where it seems properly to belong), I could easily arrange a simpler and less arduous modification of it for the corresponding "Minor Course".

I am so deeply interested in this matter — of making a finer fibre for all our young American manhood by leading our youth in proper relations with English poetry — that at the risk of consuming your whole vacation with reading this long and unconscionable letter I will mention that I have nearly completed three works which are addressed to the practical accomplishment of the object named, by supplying a wholly different method of study from that mischievous one which has generally arisen from a wholly mistaken use of the numerous "Manuals" of English literature. These works are my three text-books: (1) "The Science of English Verse", in which the student's path is cleared of a thousand errors and confusions which have obstructed this study for a long time, by a very simple system founded upon the physical relations of sound; (2) "From Caedmon to Chaucer", in which I present all the most interesting Anglo-Saxon poems remaining to us, in a form which renders their literary quality appreciable by all students, whether specially pursuing Old English or not, thus placing these poems where they ought always to have stood, as a sort of grand and simple vestibule through which the later mass of English poetry is to be approached; and (3) my "Chaucer", which I render immediately enjoyable, without preliminary preparation, by an interlined glossarial explanation of the original text, and an indication (with hyphens) of those terminal syllables affecting the rhythm which have decayed out of the modern tongue. I am going to print these books and sell them myself, on the cheap plan which has been so successfully adopted by Edward Arber, lecturer on English literature in University College, London. I have been working on them for two months; in two more they will be finished; and by the middle of November I hope to have them ready for use as text-books. If they succeed, I shall complete the series next year with (4) a "Spenser" on the same plan with the "Chaucer", (5) "The Minor Elizabethan Song-Writers", and (6) "The Minor Elizabethan Dramatists"; the steady aim of the whole being to furnish a working set of books which will familiarize the student with the actual works of English poets, rather than with their names and biographers.

Pray forgive this merciless letter. I could not resist the temptation to unfold to you all my hopes and plans connected with my University work among your young men which I so eagerly anticipate.

I will trouble you to return these notes of theses when you have examined them at leisure.

Faithfully yours, Sidney Lanier.*

— * Published in 'South Atlantic Quarterly', April, 1905. —

He endeavored to make his courses fit in with other courses of the curriculum in Greek, Latin, and modern literatures: —

My dear Sir, — I had been meditating, as a second course of public lectures during next term, if you should want them, — twelve studies on "The English Satirists"; and on my visit to the University to-day I observed from the bulletin that Mr. Rabillon is now lecturing on "The French Satirists". It occurs to me, therefore, that perhaps some additional interest in the subject might be excited if my course on the English satirists should follow the completion of Mr. Rabillon's — which I suppose will not be before the holidays — and should be given in January and February, instead of the course mentioned in my note to you this morning. I may add that if some other gentleman would offer courses on the Greek and Latin satirists, we might make a cyclus of it. Faithfully yours,

Sidney Lanier. 435 North Calvert Street, Saturday evening.

Lanier's public lectures were largely attended. What has been said of the Peabody lectures applies to the University lectures. Of the effect produced by him in his smaller University classes, one of his students writes: —

"I think that it was in the winter of 1879-80 that I heard that Mr. Lanier was to conduct a class in English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University, where I was then a Fellow. My field of work was Aesthetics and the History of Art, and as I was eagerly searching for chances to broaden and deepen my ideas, I enrolled myself in the class. We were not many, and I have no recollection of individuals in the group. Neither can I distinctly recall either the topics taken up or the method followed, except that most of the hours consisted of extended readings by Mr. Lanier with all sorts of interjected remarks, often setting aside the reading altogether. That the course was a real source of intellectual profit to me I cannot doubt, but not in the form of definite information or systemized opinion. The benefit lay in a subtle expansion of the power of appreciation and an undefinable exaltation of the instincts of taste that I have since learned were more precious than any precise increments of cold knowledge.

"What I do remember vividly is the fact that often, almost regularly, I used to wait for Mr. Lanier after the class (which was held in the evening) and walk home with him a mile or so, sometimes walking up and down for a long time. On these occasions we doubtless talked of all manner of things. I was only a student trying to 'find himself' in reference to the vast areas of thought. I was eager for sympathy and for inspiration. My life-work was still unchosen, but I was conscious of an intense drawing toward artistic topics — not much with the creative impulse of the artist, but rather with the analytic and rational desire of the student. I was beginning to have a profound sense of the interrelations of the fine arts with each other and of all of them with the movement of history. I wanted a chance to talk out what I was thinking and to get new lights and promptings. So in our slow strolls homeward I presume that I often babbled freely of my studies in architecture and music, and my inconsequent remarks often led Mr. Lanier to speak somewhat freely, too, of his speculations and fancies. I now recall with wonder how he put me on such a footing of equality that I often quite forgot the difference in age and experience between us and almost felt him to be a companion student. I now see that this was the sign of two notable traits, — the extreme native Southern courtesy that clothed him always in all his dealings with every one, and the essential youthfulness of his mind when moving among his favorite subjects. His was surely one of the finest of sympathies, delicate, sensitive, elastic, vital to the highest degree, the like of which is all too rare among men, though hardly described by the term 'feminine'. In it breathed a genuine capacity for love in the most noble sense, for he was ready to identify himself with the interests of another, to etherealize and dignify what he thought he saw in them, and thus absolutely to transform them by the alchemy of his touch. And, the more I think of it, the more I recognize that his soul was incapable of aging. . . . This absolute freshness of heart and spirit seems to me to have been one of the highest notes of Mr. Lanier's genius. Here he was clearly allied to many a more famous poet or painter or musician."*

— * Letter to the author from Professor Waldo S. Pratt, now of Hartford Theological Seminary. —

Among American poets Lanier has the same place with regard to the teaching of English that Lowell and Longfellow have in the study of modern languages. There were, to be sure, some greater English scholars in this country during the seventies than Lanier was, just as there were more scientific students of modern languages in the time of Longfellow and Lowell. Professors Child of Harvard, Lounsbury of Yale, March of Lafayette, Corson of Cornell, and Price of Randolph-Macon College — afterwards of Columbia University — have a commanding place in the development of English teaching which has become such a marked feature of educational progress since, say, 1870. Throughout schools and colleges and universities English is now firmly established as perhaps the most important branch of study. It is to the credit of Lanier that before much had been done in this direction he saw the great need of such work. Indeed, as early as 1868, while examining the catalogue of a Southern university, he jotted down in his note-book a suggestion that the most serious defect in the curriculum was the lack of any English training. It is true that there had been from time immemorial chairs of belles lettres in institutions of learning, but the department had rather to do with things in general. Even where English was studied there was a tendency to use manuals of literature rather than the works of authors themselves; and there is now a tendency to use literature as the basis for philological work. Lanier's ideas strike one as singularly balanced and sane, suggesting a compromise between the warring camps of recent years.

By reason of Lanier's sympathy with the ideals of the University, and his influence over some few students, he has a permanent place in the history of Johns Hopkins. Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote to President Gilman: "It is a fine thing that such an institution as your University should have its shrines — and among them that of its own poet, in a certain sense canonized, and with his most ideal memory a lasting part of its associations." The University has, indeed, kept the fame and the personality of Lanier fresh in its memory. As one enters McCoy Hall and notices the life-size portraits of the first president and the first members of the faculty, he misses the face of Lanier; but on entering Donavan Hall, just at the end of the main hallway, he finds himself in a room dedicated to the highest uses of poetry. There are pictures of men who have delivered lectures on the Percy Turnbull and Donavan foundations, manuscript letters of distinguished American poets and critics, and the bust of Lanier, whose spirit seems to dominate the surroundings. It is the best of the likenesses of the poet, and is the source of admiration to all visitors, as well as an inspiration to all who labor at Johns Hopkins. Those who were never thrilled by the lustre of his dark eyes or never heard the tones of his voice as he interpreted passages of great poetry, may find some satisfaction in such an image.



Chapter X. The New South



While Lanier was finding his place in the larger spheres of scholarship, of music, and of poetry, he constantly returned in thought and imagination to the South. Even after 1877, when he and his family became residents of Baltimore, his correspondence with his father and brother kept him in touch with that section. He continued to read Southern newspapers and to follow with interest Southern development. In his desk he kept a regular drawer for matters pertaining to the South. Both from his experience, which enabled him to enter with unusual sympathy into the life of the South, and from the larger point of view gained from his life in other sections, his observations on Southern life and literature are of special value. They show that he was not such a detached figure as has been frequently thought. He was of the South, and took delight in every evidence of her progress. He sometimes despaired of her future — so much so that he urged his brother to come to Baltimore in 1879. He had little patience with the prevailing type of political leader at the time when the Silver Bill was passed, so he wrote, June 8, 1879, to Clifford Lanier: —

"I cannot contemplate with any patience your stay in the South. In my soberest moments I can perceive no outlook for that land. Our representatives in Congress have acted with such consummate unwisdom that one may say we have no future there. Mr. —— and Mr. —— (as precious a pair of rascals as ever wrought upon the ignorance of a country) have disgusted all thoughtful men of whatever party; while the shuffling of our better men on the question of public honesty, their folly in allowing such people as Blaine and Conkling to taunt them into cheap hurlings back of defiance (as the silly Southern newspapers term it), their inconceivable mistake in permitting the stalwart Republicans to arrange all the issues of the campaign and to bring on the battle, not only whenever they want it, but on whatever ground they choose, instead of manfully holding before the people the real issues of the time, — the tariff, the prodigious abuses clustered about the capitol at Washington, the restriction of granting powers in Congress, the non-interference theory of government, — all these things have completely obscured the admitted good intentions of Morgan and Lamar and their fellows, and have entirely alienated the feelings of men who at first were quite won over to them. The present extra session has been from the beginning a piece of absurdity such as the world probably never saw before. Our men are such mere politicians, that they have never yet discovered — what the least thoughtful statesmanship ought to have perceived at the close of our war — that the belief in the sacredness and greatness of the American Union among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest is really the principle which conquered us. As soon as we invaded the North and arrayed this sentiment in arms against us, our swift destruction followed. But how soon they have forgotten Gettysburg! That the presence of United States troops at the polls is an abuse no sober man will deny; but to attempt to remedy it at this time, when the war is so lately over, when the North is naturally sensitive as to securing the hard-won results of it, when, consequently, every squeak of a penny whistle is easily interpreted into a rebel yell by the artful devices of Mr. Blaine and his crew, — this was simply to invade the North again as we did in '64. And we have met precisely another Gettysburg. The whole community is uneasy as to the silver bill and the illimitable folly of the greenbackers; business men anxiously await the adjournment of Congress, that they may be able to lay their plans with some sense of security against a complete reversal of monetary conditions by some silly legislation; and I do not believe that there is a quiet man in the Republic to whom the whole political caucus at Washington is not a shame and a sorrow.

"And thus, as I said, it really seems as if any prosperity at the South must come long after your time and mine. Our people have failed to perceive the deeper movements under-running the times; they lie wholly off, out of the stream of thought, and whirl their poor old dead leaves of recollection round and round, in a piteous eddy that has all the wear and tear of motion without any of the rewards of progress. By the best information I can get, the country is substantially poorer now than when the war closed, and Southern securities have become simply a catchword. The looseness of thought among our people, the unspeakable rascality of corporations like M—— — how long is it going to take us to remedy these things? Whatever is to be done, you and I can do our part of it far better here than there. Come away."

The very next year, however, he wrote his essay on the New South, showing a far more hopeful view. After reading for two years the newspapers of Georgia, with a view to understanding the changed conditions in his native State, Lanier published in October, 1880, an article on that subject in "Scribner's Magazine".* To one who reads it with the expectation of getting an idea of the forces that have made the New South, it is sadly disappointing; for he is told at once that the New South means small farming, and the article deals largely with the increase in the number of small farms and a consequent diversity of products. Insignificant as such a study may seem, it is noteworthy as showing Lanier's interest in practical affairs. It has been seen that ever since the war he had been interested in the redemption of the agricultural life of the South, that this was the subject of his first important poem. Since the writing of "Corn" and of the earlier dialect poems, he had frequently commented on the future of the South as to be determined largely by an improved agricultural system. To him the best evidence of the enduring character of the new civilization was a democracy, growing out of a vital revolution in the farming economy of the South. "The great rise of the small farmer in the Southern States during the last twenty years," he says, "becomes the notable circumstance of the period, in comparison with which noisier events signify nothing." The hero of the sketch is a small farmer "who commenced work after the war with his own hands, not a dollar in his pocket, and now owns his plantation, has it well stocked, no mortgage or debt of any kind on it, and a little money to lend." Lanier clips from his newspaper files passages indicating the constantly increasing diversity of crops. The reader is carried into the country fairs and along the roads and through plantations by a man who had a realistic sense of what was going on in the whole State of Georgia. "The last few years," he says, "have witnessed a very decided improvement in Georgia farming: moon-planting and other vulgar superstitions are exploding, the intelligent farmer is deriving more assistance from the philosopher, the naturalist, and the chemist, and he who is succeeding best is he who has thirty or forty cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry of his own raising, together with good-sized barns and meat-houses, filled from his own fields, instead of from the West."

— * 'Retrospects and Prospects', pp. 104-135. —

Lanier saw that out of this growth in small farming — this agricultural prosperity — would come changes of profound significance. He saw an intimate relation between politics, social life, morality, art, on the one hand, and the bread-giver earth on the other. "One has only to remember, particularly here in America, whatever crop we hope to reap in the future, — whether it be a crop of poems, of paintings, of symphonies, of constitutional safeguards, of virtuous behaviors, of religious exaltation, — we have got to bring it out of the ground with palpable plows and with plain farmer's forethought, in order to see that a vital revolution in the farming economy of the South, if it is actually occurring, is necessarily carrying with it all future Southern politics and Southern relations and Southern art, and that, therefore, such an agricultural change is the one substantial fact upon which any really new South can be predicated." It has been seen that Lanier underrated the development of the manufacturing interests in the South; and yet who does not see that with all the industrial prosperity of this section during the last twenty years, the most crying need now is the rehabilitation of the South's agricultural life? The present aggressive movement in the direction of the improvement of the rural schools is a confirmation of Lanier's vision of "the village library, the neighborhood farmers'-club, the amateur Thespian Society, the improvement of the public schools, the village orchestra, all manner of betterments and gentilities and openings out into the universe." He saw, too, the effect on the negro of his becoming a landowner, and the consequent obliteration of the color line in politics. He cites from his newspaper clippings evidences of the increasing prosperity of the negro race, — for instance, how "at the Atlanta University for colored people, which is endowed by the State, the progress of the pupils, the clearness of their recitation, their excellent behavior, and the remarkable neatness of their schoolrooms, altogether convince 'your committee that the colored race are capable of receiving the education usually given at such institutions.'" He sees in the appearance of the negro as a small farmer a transition to the point in which "his interests, his hopes, and consequently his politics become identical with those of all other small farmers, whether white or black."

Much as has been accomplished, however, he looks forward with expectancy to a still greater future: "Everywhere the huge and gentle slopes kneel and pray for vineyards, for cornfields, for cottages, for spires to rise up from beyond the oak-groves. It is a land where there is never a day of summer or of winter when a man cannot do a full day's work in the open field; all the products meet there, as at nature's own agricultural fair. . . . It is because these blissful ranges are still clamorous for human friendship; it is because many of them are actually virgin to plow, pillar, axe, or mill-wheel, while others have known only the insulting and mean cultivation of the early immigrants who scratched the surface for cotton a year or two, then carelessly abandoned all to sedge and sassafras, and sauntered on toward Texas: it is thus that these lands are with sadder significance than that of small farming, also a New South."

In order to understand the development of the New South, here briefly indicated, and in order to appreciate what Lanier really accomplished, two types of Southerners must be clearly distinguished. After the war the conservative Southerner — ranging all the way from the fiery Bourbon to the strong and worthy protagonist of the old order — failed to understand the meaning of defeat. He interpreted the conflict as the triumph of brute force, — sheer material prosperity, — and comforted himself with the thought that many of the noblest causes had gone down in defeat. He threshed over the arguments of Calhoun with regard to the Constitution of 1787. He quoted Scripture in defense of slavery, or tried to continue slavery — in spirit, if not in name. He saw no hope for the negro, and looked for his speedy deterioration under freedom. Compelled by force of circumstances to acknowledge the supremacy of the Federal government, he was still dominated by the ideas of separation. He saw no future for the nation. "This once fair temple of liberty," one of them said, — "rent from the bottom, desecrated by the orgies of a half-mad crew of fanatics and fools, knaves, negroes, and Jacobins, abandoned wholly by its original worshipers — stands as Babel did of old, a melancholy monument of the frustrate hopes and heaven-aspiring ambition of its builders."

With him the passing away of the age of chivalry was as serious a matter as it was to Burke. He magnified the life before the war as the most glorious in the history of the world. He saw none of its defects; he resented criticism, either by Northerners or by his own people. He opposed the public school system, as "Yankeeish and infidel", stoutly championing the system of education which had prevailed under the old order. He recognized no standards. "We fearlessly assert," said one of them, speaking of the most distinguished of Southern universities, "that in this university, the standard is higher, the education more thorough, and the work done by both teachers and students is far greater, than in Princeton, or Yale, or Harvard, or in any other Northern college or university." If he ventured into the field of literary criticism, he maintained that the Old South had a literature equal to that of New England; if he had doubts upon that subject, he looked forward to a time not far off when the Southern cause would find monumental expression in a commanding literature. If he thought on theological or philosophical subjects, he thought in terms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The watchwords of modern life were so many red flags to him, — science the enemy of religion, German philosophy a denial of the depravity of man, democracy the product of French infidelity and of false humanitarianism, industrial prosperity the inveterate foe of the graces of life. To use Lanier's words, he "failed to perceive the deeper movements underrunning the times." Defeated in a long war and inheriting the provincialism and sensitiveness of a feudal order, he remained proud in his isolation. He went to work with a stubborn and unconquered spirit, with the idea that sometime in the future all the principles for which he had stood would triumph.

Into the hands of such men the reconstruction governments played. Worse even than the effect of excessive taxation, misgovernment, and despair produced in the minds of the people, was the permanent effect produced on the Southern mind. The prophecies that had been made with regard to the triumph of despotism seemed to be fulfilled; every contention that had been made in 1861 with regard to the dangers of Federal usurpation seemed justified in the acts of the government. The political equality of the negro, guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, and the attempt to give him social equality, were stubborn facts which seemed to overthrow the more liberal ideas of Lincoln and of those Southern leaders who after the war hoped that the magnanimity of the North would be equal to the great task ahead of the nation. The conservative leaders were invested with a dignity that recalls the popularity of Burke when his predictions with regard to the French Revolution were realized. During all the years that have intervened since reconstruction days, the conservative has had as a resource for leadership his harking back to those days. The demagogue and the reactionary — enemies of the children of light — have always been able to inflame the populace with appeals to the memories and issues of the past. Such men have forgot nothing and learned nothing.*

— * I have here sketched a composite picture; it is like no one man, but the type is recognizable. It is the result of a study of the magazines, newspapers, and biographies of the period from 1865 to 1880. The type is not extinct. —

In striking contrast with the conservative Southerner has been the progressive Southerner, a type ranging all the way from the unwise and unreasonable reformer to the well-balanced and sympathetic worker, who has endeavored to make the transition from the old order to the new a normal and healthy one. If the qualities which have made Lanier's progress possible are recalled, — his lack of prejudice, his inexhaustible energy, the alertness and modernness of his mind, his ability to find joy in constructive work, his adoption of the national point of view, — then the reader may see the elements that have made possible a New South. The same spirit applied to industry, to education, to religion, is now seen everywhere. The term "New South", used by Lanier and others, is meant in no way as a reproach to the Old South, — it is simply the recognition of a changed social life due to one of the greatest catastrophes in history. In the early eighties it was employed by four Georgians, who had a right to use it, — Benjamin H. Hill, Atticus G. Haygood, Henry Grady, and Sidney Lanier.

Georgia was the Southern State that led in this progressive work. Here the readjustment came sooner, by reason of the fact that a more democratic people lived there, and also that the burdens of reconstruction were less severe. Virginia gave to the nation at the time of the foundation of the republic a group of statesmen rarely excelled in the history of the world. South Carolina statesmen led in the movement towards secession, and her people were the first to make an aggressive movement in that direction. The leadership of the New South must be found in a group of far-seeing, liberal-minded, aggressive Georgians. The action of the State legislature in repealing the ordinance of secession and accepting the emancipation of slaves within one minute, was characteristic of her later work. In 1866, Alexander H. Stephens and Benjamin H. Hill — one before the legislature of Georgia and the other before Tammany Hall — sounded the note of patience, of nationalism, and of hope. "There was a South of slavery and secession," said the latter; "that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom; that South, thank God! is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words became the text of the now celebrated address of another Georgian who twenty years later, before the New England Club of New York, gave notable expression to his own ideals and those who had wrought with him in the genuine reconstruction of the South. Henry Grady, as editor of the Atlanta "Constitution", was, after 1876, an exponent of the idea that the future of the South lay not primarily in politics, but in an industrial order which should be the basis of a more enduring civilization. At his advice, as Joel Chandler Harris says, everybody began to take a day off from politics occasionally and devote themselves to the upbuilding of the resources of the State. Another Georgian, the late John B. Gordon, united with Grady and others in saying "a bold and manly word in behalf of the American Union in the ear of the South, and a bold and manly word in behalf of the South in the ear of the North." While recounting the last days of the Confederacy, he awoke in Northern hearts an admiration for Lee and in Southern hearts an admiration for Grant, and in all an aspiration towards nationalism.

Another Georgian, Atticus G. Haygood, — president of Emory College and afterwards bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, — voiced the sentiment of the liberal South with regard to the negro, in a book whose title, "Our Brother in Black", sufficiently indicates the spirit in which it was written. In a Thanksgiving sermon on the New South, delivered in 1881, he criticised severely the croakers and the demagogues who were endeavoring to mislead the people, and reviewed with sympathy the great progress that had been made since the war. He pleads guilty to the charge of having new light and is glad of it. He points out with keen insight the illiteracy of the masses of the Southern people and the lack of educational facilities. A movement for the development of a public school system in the South was led by J. L. M. Curry, a Confederate soldier of Georgia stock. He became an evangelist in the crusade for public education, announcing before State legislatures the principle upon which a true democratic order might be established. "I am not afraid of the educated masses," he said, in an address before the Georgia legislature; "I would rather trust the masses than king, priest, aristocracy, or established church. No nation can realize its full possibility unless it builds upon the education of the whole people."

By 1885 the forces that have here been briefly sketched were well under way throughout the South. Factories were prospering, farm products were becoming more diversified, more farmers owned their own places, a public school system was firmly established in all the leading cities and towns, colleges and universities — some of the strongest dating from the period just after the war — were enabled to increase their endowments and to modernize their work, the national spirit was growing, and a more liberal view of religion was being maintained. A day of hope, of freedom, of progress, had dawned.

It was natural that along with all these changes, and indeed anticipating some of them, there should arise a group of Southern writers. Indeed, immediately after the war there was a marked tendency in the direction of literary work — "an avalanche of literature in a devastated country." Magazines were started and books were published in abundance. The literary activity was due, no doubt, in the first place, to the poverty of men and women: some who would have looked down upon literature as a profession before the war were now eager to do anything to keep starvation from the door. Furthermore, there was a great desire among some people to have the Southern side of the war well represented before the civilized world. Hence arose innumerable biographies, histories, and historical novels, and hence the demand for Southern text-books.

It is clearly impossible to give any adequate sketch of this literary awakening, — if so it may be called, when contrasted with a later one. Of the magazines which were started, the most important were "Debow's Review", "devoted to the restoration of the Southern States and the development of the wealth and resources of the country," whose motto was, "Light up the torches of industry"; the "Southern Review", edited by Dr. A. T. Bledsoe and William Hand Browne and dedicated "to the despised, the disfranchised, and the down-trodden people of the South"; "The Land We Love", started in Charlotte, N.C., by Gen. D. H. Hill, and devoted to literature, military history, and agriculture; "Scott's Monthly", published in Atlanta, "Southern Field and Fireside", in Raleigh, and "The Crescent Monthly", in New Orleans; the "New Eclectic Magazine" and its successor, the "Southern Magazine", published by the Turnbull Brothers of Baltimore; and, as if Charleston had not had enough magazines to die before the war, the "Nineteenth Century", in that city. Most of these had but a short career, and none of them survived longer than 1878. There was in them a continual crying out for Southern literature which might worthily represent the Southern people. The response came, too — so far as quantity was concerned. One of the editors remarked that he had enough poetry on hand to last seven years and five months.

Of these magazines the most important was the "Southern Magazine", published at Baltimore from 1871 to 1875, — a magazine which came nearest filling the place occupied by the "Southern Literary Messenger" before the war. While it was somewhat eclectic in its character, — reprinting articles from the English magazines, — it had as contributors a group of promising young scholars and writers. The editor was William Hand Browne, now professor of English literature in Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gildersleeve, then of the University of Virginia, Professor Thomas R. Price, then professor of English at Randolph-Macon, James Albert Harrison, later the biographer and editor of Poe, and Margaret J. Preston were regular contributors. Richard Malcolm Johnston contributed his "Dukesborough Tales" to it. One of the publishers of the magazine, Mr. Lawrence Turnbull, visited Lanier at Macon in 1871 and became much interested in him. To the magazine Lanier contributed "Prospects and Retrospects" (March and April, 1871), "A Song" and "A Seashore Grave" (July, 1871), "Nature-Metaphors" (February, 1872), "San Antonio de Bexar" (July and August, 1873), and "Peace" (October, 1874).

Of the books published during this period, few have survived. John Esten Cooke's novels and his lives of Stonewall Jackson and Lee, two or three collections of the war poetry of the South, Gayarre's histories, the "War between the States", by Alexander H. Stephens, Craven's "Prison Life of Jefferson Davis", and Dabney's "Defense of Virginia" are perhaps the most significant. J. Wood Davidson's "Living Writers of the South", published in 1869, gives the best general idea of the extent and quality of the post-bellum writing. Noteworthy, also, is a series of text-books projected with the idea that the moral and mental training of the sons and daughters of the South should no longer be intrusted to teachers and books imported from abroad. As planned originally, the scheme called for Bledsoe's Mathematics, Maury's Geographies, Holmes's Readers, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, histories of Louisiana and South Carolina by Gayarre and Simms respectively, scientific books by the Le Conte brothers, and English Classics by Richard Malcolm Johnston.

So much needs to be said of the character of the literature immediately succeeding the war, if for no other reason, that it may be contrasted with the literature of, say, the period from 1875 to 1885. With the death of Timrod in 1867, and of Simms, Longstreet, and Prentice in 1870, the old order of Southern writers had passed away. By 1875 a new group of writers had begun their work, Paul Hamilton Hayne best representing the transition from one to the other. The younger writers either had been Confederate soldiers, or had been intimately identified with those who were. They began to write, not out of response to a demand for distinctively Southern literature, but because they had the artistic spirit, the desire to create. They were interested in describing Southern scenery, and in portraying types of character in the social life of their respective States. Unlike most of the literature of the Old South, the new literature was related directly to the life of the people. Men began to describe Southern scenery, not some fantastic world of dreamland; sentimentalism was superseded by a healthy realism. The writers fell in with contemporary tendencies and followed the lead of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who had begun to write humorous local sketches and incidents. With them literature was not a diversion, but a business. They were willing to be known as men of letters who made their living by literature. They stood, too, for the national, rather than the sectional, spirit. "What does it matter," said Joel Chandler Harris, "whether I am Northerner or Southerner if I am true to truth, and true to that larger truth, my own true self? My idea is that truth is more important than sectionalism, and that literature that can be labeled Northern, Southern, Western, or Eastern, is not worth labeling at all." Again, he said, speaking of the ideal Southern writer: "He must be Southern and yet cosmopolitan; he must be intensely local in feeling, but utterly unprejudiced and unpartisan as to opinions, tradition, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as well. Only let it be the work of genius, and it will take all sections by storm."

And it did take all sections by storm. Contrary to the idea which had prevailed after the war that Northern people would be slow to recognize Southern genius, it must be said that Northern magazines, Northern publishers, and Northern readers made possible the success of Southern writers. In 1873, "Scribner's Magazine" sent a special train through the South with the purpose of securing a series of articles on "the great South". While in New Orleans, Mr. Edward King, who had charge of the expedition, discovered George W. Cable, whose story, "'Sieur George", appeared in "Scribner's Magazine" in October of that year. Between that time and 1881 the magazine published, in addition to Cable's stories, — afterwards collected into the volume "Old Creole Days", — stories and poems by John Esten Cooke, Margaret J. Preston, Maurice Thompson, Mrs. Burnett, Mrs. Harrison, Irwin Russell, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Thomas Nelson Page, and Sidney Lanier. In an editorial of September, 1881, the editor, referring to the fact that no less than seven articles by Southerners had appeared in a recent number of "Scribner's", said: "We are glad to recognize the fact of a permanent productive force in literature in the Southern States. . . . We welcome the new writers to the great republic of letters with all heartiness." "The Century Magazine", the successor of "Scribner's", continued to be the patron of the new Southern writers. The number for April, 1884, contained Lanier's portrait as a frontispiece, a sketch of Lanier by William Hayes Ward, Thomas Nelson Page's "Marse Chan", an installment of Cable's "Dr. Sevier", Walter B. Hill's article on "Uncle Tom Without a Cabin", and William Preston Johnston's poem, "The Master".

"Harper's Magazine", in January, 1874, began a series of articles on the New South, by Edwin De Leon, and in the following year published a series of articles by Constance F. Woolson, giving sketches of Florida and western North Carolina. In May, 1887, appeared an article giving the first complete survey of Southern literature, which, according to the author, had introduced into our national literature "a stream of rich, warm blood." The "Independent", a paper which had seemed to Southerners extremely severe in its criticism of the life of the South, is especially connected with the rising fame of Lanier. The editor recognized his genius while he was still alive, after his death continued to publish his poems, and in 1884 wrote the Memorial for the first complete edition of his poems. Maurice Thompson, another Southern writer, became its literary editor in 1888.

Nor was the "Atlantic Monthly", which had been identified with the New England Renaissance, slow to recognize the value of the new Southern story-writers and poets. In 1873, while Mr. Howells was editor, Maurice Thompson's poem, "At the Window", was hailed by the editor and by Longfellow as "the work of a new and original singer, fresh, joyous, and true." The author received encouraging letters from Lowell and Emerson. In the same year and in the following appeared a series of articles entitled "A Rebel's Recollections", by George Cary Eggleston. In May, 1878, appeared Charles Egbert Craddock's first story of the Tennessee Mountains, "A Dancing Party at Harrison's Cove". The value of her work was at once recognized by Mr. Howells and his successor, Mr. Aldrich. In a review of 1880, Cable's stories in "Old Creole Days" are characterized "as fresh in matter, as vivacious in treatment, and as full of wit as were the 'Luck of Roaring Camp' and its audacious fellows, when they came, while they are much more human and delicate in feeling." In January, 1885, in an article on recent American fiction, appears the following tribute to the work of recent Southern writers: "It is not the subjects offered by Southern writers which interest us so much as the manifestation which seemed to be dying out of our literature. We welcome the work of Mr. Cable and Mr. [sic] Craddock, because it is large, imaginative, and constantly responsive to the elemental movements of human nature; and we should not be greatly surprised if the historian of our literature a few generations hence, should take note of an enlargement of American letters at this time through the agency of a new South. . . . The North refines to a keen analysis, the South enriches through a generous imagination. . . . The breadth which characterizes the best Southern writing, the large free handling, the confident imagination, are legitimate results of the careless yet masterful and hospitable life which has pervaded that section. We have had our laugh at the florid, coarse-flavored literature which has not yet disappeared at the South, but we are witnessing now the rise of a school that shows us the worth of generous nature when it has been schooled and ordered."*

— * In 1896 Mr. Walter H. Page, a native North Carolinian, became editor of the "Atlantic". —

The effect of this literature on Northern readers was altogether wholesome, and ministered no doubt to the better understanding both of the Old South and of the New. The stories of Harris, Page, Cable, and Craddock reached the Northern mind to a degree never approached by the logic of Calhoun or the eloquence of impetuous orators, while the poems of Hayne and Lanier, breathing as they did the atmosphere of the larger modern world, and at the same time characterized by the warmth and richness of Southern scenery and Southern life, ministered in the same direction. On Southerners the effect was stimulating; one of the younger scholars of that time, the late Professor Baskervill, recalled "the rapture of glad surprise with which each new Southern writer was hailed as he or she revealed negro, mountaineer, cracker, or creole life and character to the world. There was joy in beholding the roses of romance and poetry blossoming above the ashes of defeat and humiliation, and that, too, among a people hitherto more remarkable for the masterful deeds of warrior and statesman than for the finer, rarer, and more artistic creations of literary genius."*