IN a series of twelve papers the writer proposes to give a tolerably complete survey of that literary movement which, beginning about 1870, has spread over the entire South. There will be no attempt to place a final estimate upon this contribution, though some critical opinions will now and then be offered. The effort will be rather to present biographical data and literary appreciations-to stimulate the desire for a more intimate acquaintance with this literature which is so fresh, original, and racy of the soil. The series will appear as follows, beginning with July:

No. 1. Joel Chandler Harris.
No. 2. Maurice Thompson.
No. 3. Irwin Russell.

Nos. 4, 5, and 6. Sidney Lanier.

I volume.

No. 7. George Washington Cable.
No. 8. Charles Egbert Craddock.

No. 9. Richard Malcolm Johnston.

No. 10. Thomas Nelson Page.

No. 11. James Lane Allen.

No. 12. Other Writers of Fiction and of
Verse Since 1870.

Such writers as may not unfairly be considered typical and representative will be selected for presentation in the last number.

SOUTHERN WRITERS: Published Monthly. Subscription price, $1 a year. Single number, 10 cents, postage paid.

Send orders for the whole series or for separate numbers to

BARBEE & SMITH, Agents,

Nashville, Tenn.

COPYRIGHT, 1896.

and Let. Crit.

FWECH 12-17-21

Sidney Lanier.

O golden legend writ in the skies!
I turn toward you with longing soul,
And list to the awful harmonies
Of the spheres as on they roll.

HE bearer of an evangel of
truth and beauty to the world

may ever expect a tardy ac-
ceptance of his mission. "For he
is an embodied ideal sent into the
world to rebuke its commonplace
aims, and to leaven its dull, brute
mass," and his rich and fragrant
influences are too often shed upon
"souls long coffined in indolent con-
ventions." Not unfrequently he is
made to sigh with the German
poet:

O! for all I have suffered and striven,
Care has embittered my cup and my
feast;

But here is the night and the dark-blue
heaven,

And my soul shall be at rest.

800.9 B315

For the world deals strangely with its poets. They come so seldom and in such ever new and changed garb that oftentimes only the saving remnant recognizes their existence. Sometimes, too, the poet's life is strangely at variance with his message, and the world satisfies its dull self-complacency by simply telling the "truth" about him.

But here is one whose beauty of personality is no whit inferior to the loftiness and worth of his message. He was a spotless, sunny-souled, hard-working, divinely gifted man, who had exalted ideas both of art and of life, and he

Lived and sang that life and song

Might each express the other's all, Careless if life or art were long,

Since both were one, to stand or fall. So that the wonder struck the crowd, Who shouted it about the land;

His song was only living aloud,

His work a singing with his hand.

But the shout was raised after he was called away. During his life

time he was left to the accumulated ills of poverty, neglect, disease, and premature death. "Better late than

never

"is a good old adage, and it is well to consider that Sidney Lanier is already generally recognized as the most distinctive figure in our literature since the famous group of New England poets passed away, and that many are already claiming for him the right to rank among the few genuine poets of America.

The story of his personality and work, though pathetic, is one of the most interesting and inspiring in the biographical annals of men of letters. Sidney Lanier sprang from a Huguenot family, the founder of which, on English soil, was Jerome Lanier, who emigrated with his family to England in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and obtained employment in her household service. It is probable that he was a musical composer and shared in the production of those