LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIDNEY LANIER IN 1870. (Photogravure.) Frontispiece SIDNEY LANIER AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN, IN 1857. . 26 SIDNEY LANIER IN 1866, FROM A

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CARTE DE VISITE

PHOTOGRAPH IN POSSESSION OF MR. MILTON H.

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FACSIMILE OF ONE OF LANIER'S EARLIEST EXISTING MUSICAL SCORES, WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF 19. FACSIMILE OF LETTER TO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. . 190

BRONZE BUST OF SIDNEY LANIER BY EPHRAIM KEYSER 262

SIDNEY LANIER

INTRODUCTION

THE author of the introduction to the first complete edition of Sidney Lanier's poems-published three years after the poet's death-predicted with confidence that Lanier would "take his final rank with the first princes of American song." Anticipating the appearance of this volume, one of the best of recent lyric poets, who had been Lanier's fellow prisoner during the Civil War, prophesied that "his name to the ends of the earth would go." Indeed, there was a sense of surprise to those who had read only the 1877 edition of Lanier's poems, when his poems were collected in an adequate and worthy edition. Since that time the space devoted to him in histories of American literature has increased from ten or twelve lines to as many pages an indication at once of popular interest and of an increasing number of scholars and critics who have recognized the value of his work. His growing fame found a notable expression when his picture

appeared in the frontispiece of the standard American Anthology, along with those of Poe, Walt Whitman, and the five recognized New England poets.

It cannot be said, however, that Lanier's rank as a poet—even in American, to say nothing of English literature is yet fixed. He is a very uneven writer, and his defects are glaring. Some of the best American critics men who have a right to speak with authority-shake their heads in disapproval at what they call the Lanier cult. Abroad he has had no vogue, as have Emerson and Poe and Walt Whitman. The enthusiastic praise of the "Spectator" has been more than balanced by the indifference of some English critics and the sarcasm of others. Mme. Blanc's article in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," setting forth the charm of his personality and the excellence of his poetry, met with little response in France. In view of this divergence of opinion among critics, it may be doubted if the time has yet come for anything approaching a final valuation of Lanier's work. In the later pages of this book an attempt will be made to give a reasonably balanced and critical study of his actual achievement in poetry and criticism.

Certainly those who have at heart the interest of American poetry cannot but wage a feud with death for taking away one who had just begun