Selected Poems of Sidney Lanier | Page 8

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 paramount literary
form; and, secondly, to illustrate this abstract inquiry, when completed,
by some concrete readings 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 worthy successor 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