who said of `The Science of English Verse', "It is the only work

that has ever made any approach to a rational view of the subject.
Nor are the standard ones overlooked in making this assertion."**

--
* This may be found in Professor Tolman's article,

cited in the `Bibliography'.
** Quoted by Tolman.

--
Lanier's second course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University,

delivered in the winter and spring of 1881, was published in 1883
under the title, `The English Novel and the Principles of Its Development'.*

According to the author's statement, the purpose of the book
is "first, to inquire what is the special relation of the novel

to the modern man, by virtue of which it has become a paramountliterary form;
and, secondly, to illustrate this abstractinquiry, when completed,

by some concretereadings in the greatest of modern English novelists" (p. 4).
Addressing himself to the former, Lanier attempts to prove (1) that our time,

when compared with that of Aeschylus, shows an "enormous growth
in the personality of man" (p. 5); (2) that what we moderns

call Physical Science, Music, and the Novel, all had their origin at
practically the same time, about the middle of the seventeenth century (p. 9);

and (3) "that the increase of personalities thus going on has brought about
such complexities of relation that the older forms of expression

were inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity
has developed the wonderfully free and elastic form of the modern novel

out of the more rigid Greek drama, through the transition form
of the Elizabethan drama" (p. 10). In fulfilment of his second purpose,

the author gives a detailed study of several of the novels of George Eliot,
whom he takes to be the greatest modern English novelist. Even this

brief synopsis of the book must indicate its broad and stimulating character,
in which respect it is a worthysuccessor of `The Science of English Verse'.

Despite the limitations induced by failing life, which necessitated
the cutting down of the course of lectures from twenty to twelve,**

I know of few more life-giving books; and I venture to assert
that it cannot safely be overlooked by any careful student of the subject.

--
* Mrs. Lanier informs me that `The English Novel' will soon

be issued in an amended form and with a new sub-title,
`Studies in the Development of Personality', which indicates precisely

what Mr. Lanier intended to attempt, and relieves the book
of its seeming incompleteness as to scope.

** `Spann'.
--

Among other prose works I may mention Lanier's early extravaganza,
`Three Waterfalls'; `Bob', a happy account of a pet mocking-bird,

worthy of being placed beside Dr. Brown's `Rab and his Friends';
his books for boys: `Froissart', `King Arthur', `Mabinogion', and `Percy',

which have had, as they deserve, a large sale; and his posthumous
`From Bacon to Beethoven', a highly instructive essay on music.

III. Lanier's Poetry: Its Themes
But it is chiefly as a poet that we wish to consider Lanier,

and I turn to the posthumous edition of his `Poems' gotten out by his wife.
At the outset let us ask, How did the poet look at the world?

what problems engaged his attention and how were they solved?
A careful investigation will show, I believe, that,

despite the brevity of his life and its consuming cares,
Lanier studied the chief questions of our age, and that in his poems

he has offered us noteworthy solutions.
What, for instance, is more characteristic of our age than its tendency

to agnosticism? I pass by the manifestations of this spirit
in the world of religion, of which so much has been heard,

and give an illustration or two from the field of history and politics.
Picturesque Pocahontas, we are told, is no more to be believed in;

moreover, the Pilgrim Fathers did not land at Plymouth Rock,
nor did Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. Which way we turn

there is a big interrogation-point, often not for information
but for negation. Of the good resulting from the inquisitive spirit,

we all know; of the baneful influence of inquisitiveness
that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism,

we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency
has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza

from Lanier's `Acknowledgment':
"O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,

Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,

Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,

Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,
Blinking at o'er-bright Science, smit with desire

To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.
Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street,

Thy halfness hot with his rebuke would swell;
Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat

His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell."*
--

* `Acknowledgment', ll. 1-12.
--

More hurtful than agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people,
is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century,

especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly
and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading `The Symphony',

his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments.
The violins begin:

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head."*

Then all the stringed instruments join with the violins in giving
the wail of the poor, who "stand wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand":

"`We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,
We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,

And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills,
To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? --

The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die;
And so do we, and the world's a sty;

Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?
"Swinehood hath no remedy"

Say many men, and hasten by,
Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.

But who said once, in the lordly tone,
"Man shall not live by bread alone

But all that cometh from the throne"?
Hath God said so?

But Trade saith "No":
And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go:

There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know.
Move out, if you think you're underpaid.

The poor are prolific; we're not afraid;
Trade is Trade."'

"Thereat this passionate protesting
Meekly changed, and softened till

It sank to sad requesting
And suggesting sadder still:

`And oh, if men might some time see
How piteous-false the poor decree

That trade no more than trade must be!
Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"?

Then "Trade is trade" but sings a lie:
'Tis only war grown miserly.