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with disease and weakness of body, a struggle not so much for health and more years of existence in the world, as for strength and time to utter the thoughts and test by experiment the principles of whose truth he was profoundly convinced. He taught school and practised law for a time; and was lecturer on Literature at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. This, with a short list of his publications, is the meagre outline of a life to whose worth and real interest it does scant justice. He was an accomplished musician, the flute being his favorite. instrument; this musical tendency having a great deal to do with his literary work. He was a student, with an acute, theorizing cast of mind, and worked out for himself an elaborate theory of poetical composition; which he has stated in his book, "The Science of English Verse." The essential point of the theory is implied in the title. Verse, in his view, is an art, resting upon a science which needs only investigation to be capable of a statement as definite, positive, and complete as that of any other science.

He published, in 1867, "Tiger Lilies," a prose romance based upon his war experiences. In 1880 appeared the formal statement of his theories of versification, in "The Science of English Verse." A course of lectures on the "English Novel," delivered at Johns Hopkins University, was published in 1883. Books written probably with first reference to the pressing financial needs of his life were the series of reproductions of old English legends and ballads: "The Boy's Froissart," 1878; "The Boy's King

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Arthur," 1880; "The Boy's Mabinogion," 1881; "The Boy's Percy," 1882. His poems appeared at various times, in various periodicals; the one which first attracted general attention being "Corn," which was published in "Lippincott's Magazine,” Philadelphia, 1874. This gave him recognition as the most important poet from the South; and as such he was chosen to write the words for the Cantata, with which the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876, was opened; Whittier writing the "Hymn," and Bayard Taylor the extended poem. A collected edition of his poems was published after his death, in 1884, edited by his wife Mary D. Lanier. Lanier's theory of verse is at the opposite extreme from Whitman's. He believes that all expression in words is essentially musical; the difference between speech and what is usually called music being that speech has far greater variety of tone. Hence his poems are remarkable for their elaborate and beautiful study of tone. one has shown such mastery of the possible modulations of sound. It is not that he sacrifices thought to sound; but that, to an unusual degree, he seeks to fit thought and sound together. E. C. Stedman expresses the difference between Lanier and other poets in this particular by saying that Lanier would add to melody, harmony and counterpoint. There is a possible analogy between his theory of the relation between thought and sound in words, and that of Wagner as to the relation between music and text in the music-drama. Not only must the thought be expressed in musical words, but the sound must be

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held of supreme importance in the expression of the thought. Read the opening lines of

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Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, —

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Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,

Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn ;·

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,

Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,

Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,

15 Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good.

All the elements of form we have studied are illustrated here. The assonance is particularly delicate and beautiful in its effects. The alliteration is rich and musical. The rimes are varied and perfect. The length of line is varied, but always rhythmical. Notice how the vowel sounds accord with the thought in line 15, the close a's and e's giving intensity to the expression; and in the closing line, where the double o and the u seem to carry the calm coolness of the first word through the whole line. We will study, also, a short passage from

1 Copyright, 1884, Charles Scribner's Sons. New York.

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