Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

of these years of study we have his Science of English Verse and his The English Novel, together with the editions of Mallory, Froissart, Percy, and the Mabinogion which he edited for boys. He had a genius for making friends, and none of those whom in these days he made was more helpful than Bayard Taylor. By him suggestion was made of Lanier's name for the writing of the Centennial Cantata. Despite the unintelligent criticism which the work received, it brought the poet into wider notice among literary men. It was at this time that Stedman describes him as "nervous and eager, with dark hair and silken beard, features delicately moulded, pallid complexion, hands of the slender, white, artistic type."

The remaining years of his life were spent in vainly seeking relief from the terrible malady that was oppressing him. Joy came in 1879 in the fact of an assured income from a lectureship in the Johns Hopkins University. In great suffering he delivered the two courses of lectures on Verse and on the Novel. During these years of suffering he was prolific as poet. Much of his best work was done in days of pain and suffering.

In 1881 the weary poet fled to North Carolina, vainly hoping for relief. Several places were visited in the search for a suitable climate, but without success. At last, September 7, the poet joined the choir invisible.

APPRECIATIONS

"There are two geniuses who hover over the charming city of Baltimore, slumbering all rosy red beneath what is almost a Southern sun: the one more celebrated among foreigners than in his own country, the other almost absolutely unknown in Europe. Their names: Edgar Allan Poe and Sidney Lanier, the Ahriman and the Ormuzd of the place; the demon of perversity and the angel of light; the former carried away by morbid passions that conducted him to an ignominious end, the latter faithful to the purest ideal in his life as in his work; both marked by fate for the victims of a frightful poverty; both doomed to die young, at almost the same age, after having suffered from a hopeless malady. In different degrees, with their contrasts and analogies, these two poets are the glory of the South, which cannot boast of a literature so rich as the North. . . . Sidney Lanier attains often to the height of the great American poets, and, like Walt Whitman, he is much more the poet in the absolute sense of vision, divination, and invention, than are some stars which are reputed to be of first rank. The difference is that their genius burned with a fixed and unrestrained brilliance, while his gave only intermittent light. At the moment when he flies highest, one might say, an arrow suddenly arrests his move

...

ment and causes him to fall wounded. It is, indeed, just like the disease which attacked him. One knows what a struggle it fought against the power of his spirit, and nothing is so pathetic as this fall of Icarus. But there remains a diamond shower of beautiful verses, of images grandiose and gracious, of happy expressions which compose the most exquisite of anthologies."

-MME. BLANC: Revue des Deux Mondes, January 15, 1900.

"To an age assailed by the dangerous doctrines of the fleshly school in poetry, and by that unhealthy 'æstheticism' and that debauching 'realism' which see in vice and uncleanness only new fields for the artist's powers of description, and no call for the artist's divine powers of denunciation to save young men into whose ears is dinned the maxim, ‘art for art's sake only,' 'a moral purpose ruins art,'- Lanier came, noble-souled as Milton in youthful consciousness of power, yet humble before the august conception of a moral purity higher than he could hope to utter or attain, discerning with the true poet's insight the 'beauty of holiness' and the 'holiness of beauty.'

"Had he lived and died in England, how he would have been embalmed in living odes, his sepulchre how perpetually draped with insignia of national appreciation! He is ours! He was an American to the centre of his great, loving heart. Shall we cherish his mem

ory any the less lovingly because his works are the first fruits of a reunited people—the richest contribution to our national fame in letters yet made by our brothers of the South?"

- MERRILL EDWARDS GATES, in Presbyterian Review, October, 1887.

"Sixteen years have elapsed since Lanier's takingoff; and he is now seen more clearly every day to be the most important native singer the Southern United States has produced, and one of the most distinctive and lovely of American singers wherever born. Enthusiastic admirers and followers he has always attracted to him; now the general opinion begins to swing round to what seemed to many, a little time ago, the extravagant encomium of partiality and prejudice. . . . Had Lanier lived longer, had he had a freer opportunity, doubtless his literary bequest would have been richer and more completely expressive of himself. But as it is, in quality and in accomplishment Sidney Lanier takes his place as an American poet of distinction. He is one of those rare illustrations of the union, in a son of genius, of high character and artistic production in harmony therewith; a spectacle feeding the heart with tender thoughts and pure ideals: —

"His song was only living aloud,

His work, a singing with his hand!"

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][ocr errors]

John Shaw was born in Annapolis, Maryland, May 4, 1778. He was graduated at St. John's College of his native town in 1795, and then studied medicine in the University of Pennsylvania. Some years later he went. to Scotland to continue his medical studies in Edinburgh. In the meantime he had become a surgeon in the United States navy.

He returned from his Edinburgh studies to the practice of medicine in the city of Baltimore. On a sea-voyage from Charleston to the Bahamas, he died, January 10, 1809. His literary remains were published in Philadelphia, in 1810.

ST. GEORGE TUCKER

St. George Tucker, a member of the Virginia family distinguished since colonial days, was born on the island of Bermuda, July 10, 1752.

He came to Virginia to be prepared for college and was graduated at William and Mary College in 1772. He began at once to study law and entered upon a successful practice, which was interrupted by military service during the Revolutionary War. He was pres

ent at the surrender of Yorktown as a lieutenant colonel.

« ZurückWeiter »