A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 19

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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 "b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages than chapters xx-xxiv of "Shakspere and His Forerunners".

Other ill.u.s.trations 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 cla.s.s-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 "Cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 -- const.i.tute 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 a.s.sociation with our finest ideals and loftiest souls.

Thus you see that while the course of "Cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 "Cla.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ate.

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, Sat.u.r.day 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 cla.s.ses, one of his students writes: --