stand in the trough of the awful cross-waves of circumstance and look over their heights along the whole sea of God's manifold acts, and deep enough to admit the peace that passeth understanding. This is, indeed, the fault of all German culture, and the weakness of all German genius. A great artist should have the sensibility and expressive genius of Schumann, the calm grandeur of Lee, and the human breadth of Shakespeare, all in one.

Now in this particular, of being open, unprejudiced, and unenvious, Schumann soars far above his brother Germans; he valiantly defended our dear Chopin, and other young musicians who were struggling to make head against the abominable pettiness of German prejudice. But, withal, I cannot find that his life was great, as a whole; I cannot see him caring for his land, for the poor, for religion, for humanity; he was always a restless soul; and the ceaseless wear of incompleteness finally killed, as a maniac, him whom a broader Love might have kept alive as a glorious artist to this day.

The truth is, the world does not require enough at the hands of genius. Under the special plea of greater sensibilities, and of consequent greater temptations, it excuses its gifted ones, and even sometimes makes "a law of their weakness." But this is wrong: the sensibility of genius is

just as much greater to high emotions as to low ones; and whilst it subjects to stronger temptations, it at the same time interposes—if it will stronger considerations for resistance.

These are scarcely fair things to be saying apropos of Robert Schumann; for I do not think he was ever guilty of any excesses of genius as they are called: I only mean them to apply to the unrest of his life.

And yet, for all I have said, how his music does burn in my soul! It stretches me upon the very rack of delight; I know no musician that fills me so full of heavenly anguish, and if I had to give up all the writers of music save one, my one should be Robert Schumann. Some of his experiences cover some of my own as aptly as one half of an oyster shell does the other half.1

1 Letters, p. 103.

CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY CAREER

DURING the winter of 1873-74, the first winter in Baltimore, Lanier had, as has been seen, given his entire time to music. The only poetry he had written had been inspired by love for his absent wife, - poems breathing of the deepest and tenderest affection. Scarcely less poetical were the letters written to her giving expression to his joy in the large new world into which he was entering, and at the same time to his sense of loneliness and pain at their separation. To her and his boys he went as soon as his engagement with the Peabody Orchestra was ended. In one of his letters he had spoken of himself as "an exile from his dear Land, which is always the land where my loved ones are.' He found delight during this summer, as in the following ones, in the renewal of home ties, and in the enjoyment of the natural scenery of Macon and Brunswick, to whose beauty he never ceased to be sensitive.

It was in August, 1874, that he received a fresh impulse towards poetry, or, at least, towards

the writing of more important poems than those he had heretofore written. While visiting at Sunnyside, Georgia, some sixty miles from Macon, he was struck at once with the beauty of cornfields and the pathos of deserted farms. Hence arose his first poem that attracted attention throughout the country. He took it to New York with him in the fall. Writing to his friend, Judge Logan E. Bleckley, now Chief Justice of Georgia, who during this summer spoke encouraging words to him about the faith he had in his literary future, he inclosed his recently finished poem with these words:

195 DEAN ST., BROOKLYN, N.Y.

October 9, 1874.

you

how

MY DEAR SIR, I could never tell sincerely grateful I am to you, and shall always be, for a few words you spoke to me recently.

Such encouragement would have been pleasant at any time, but this happened to come just at a critical moment when, although I had succeeded in making up my mind finally and decisively as to my own career, I was yet faint from a desperate struggle with certain untoward circumstances which it would not become me to detail.

Did you ever lie for a whole day after being wounded, and then have water brought you? If so, you will know how your words came to me.

I inclose the manuscript of a poem in which I have endeavored to carry some very prosaic matters up to a loftier plane. I have been struck with alarm in seeing the number of old, deserted homesteads and gullied hills in the older counties of Georgia ; and though they are dreadfully commonplace, I have thought they are surely mournful enough to be poetic. Please give me your judgment on my effort, without reserve ; for if you should say you do not like it, the only effect on me will be to make me write one that you do like.

Believe me always your friend,

SIDNEY LANIER.

The answer to this letter, giving a detailed criticism of the poem, was very helpful to Lanier. Judge Bleckley is a man of much cultivation, and is widely known throughout Georgia as at once one of the leading lawyers of the State and a man who can in his leisure moments engage in literary work which, though not published, gives evidence of imagination and taste. Lanier was wise enough to accept most of his criticism: the revised form of the poem compared with the first form shows a great many changes, and is striking evidence of Lanier's power to improve his work. Judge Bleckley's characterization of "Corn" so accurately describes it that his words may be quoted