a publisher. In regard to the time taken to write this volume various incorrect statements have been published-all doubtless due to incorrect information. One says, " written in April;" another states that "he wrote in six weeks his only novel," and still another speaks of it as "a novel written within three weeks and published immediately thereafter." In a letter to the writer, received October 9, 1896, Mrs. Lanier writes: "Very recently I have seen a letter of 1867, written to his father while he was finishing the manuscript that had begun its growth in 1862 or 1863 in the atmosphere of camp life. He says of it that, having been written at intervals during several years, it reads like a book that was begun by a boy and was finished by a man, and that he intended to leave it so, as an interesting study of literary growth." In regard to the repeated inquiry why she does not have "Tiger

Lilies" republished-it is now out of print, and rare copies bring a good sum-Mrs. Lanier says: "There are portions of it that ought to be preserved, I am sure; but in addition to feeling an inequality that is much to the disadvantage of the opening chapters-chapters that are largely discursive moods of a soldier lad whose chaos has not yet taken shape-I am restrained by a passing remark of the author's, made in August, 1881, when words were very few. The book must have been alluded to, for I recall the thoughtful, half-tender tone when he said: 'Perhaps we will rewrite "Tiger Lilies" some day.' I have always accepted this as a definite assurance that he did not wish to reprint the book as it stood." The letter of 1867, however, "seems to make almost a reason for keeping the work alive as it stands."

Mr. Clifford Lanier, in a private letter of September 21, 1896, says:

"Please remember that the artist in Sidney Lanier would have suppressed so crude and boyish an essay. It is merely a curiosity. It is a welter of suggestions tossing in the mind of a young man passing through the 'sturm und drang" period. It is eccentric as a meteoric sky in August. It is a mesh of roots from which perfect flowers grew. Some of it was conceived, if not written, during military scout duty in Virginia. It is not thought out, but poured out, like the lead fused in a ladle for bullets by a hunter. It is a phantasmagoria of one who wakes from the nightmare of the Civil War."

Few first books could be resurrected with so little drawback to the author's reputation. Its chief value is in the light thrown on the mind and character of the author, and no student of the life and writings of Sidney Lanier can afford to neglect this volume. His voice is just

changing from boy's to man's, now an airy treble; anon, a gruff bass. The tender strain of "Hyperion suddenly jars into the savage growl of "Sartor Resartus." Here is a touch of Vergil or Chopin; there, of Shakespeare or Beethoven. "He scatters thoughts as a wind shakes dewdrops from a bourgeoning spray"-a poet's thoughts and a poet's fancies of God and earth and nature and friends and home and books and music—and war, too, and his experiences in prison. But the ever recurring theme is music. Now it is the flute, with which the musicale should always begin. "It is like walking in the woods, among wild flowers, just before you go into some vast cathedral. For the flute seems to me to be peculiarly the woods instrument; it speaks the gloss of green leaves or the pathos of bare branches; it calls up the strange mosses that are under dead leaves; it breathes of wild plants

that hide and oak fragrances that vanish; it expresses to me the natural magic of music." Again it is an accompaniment that "did not follow, but went with the voice, waving and floating and wreathing around the voice like an airy robe around a sweet, flying form above us."

His idea of making a home out of a household is: "Given the raw materials to wit, wife, children, a friend or two, and a house-two other things are necessary. These are a good fire and good music. And inasmuch as we can do without the fire for half the I year, may say that music is the one essential. After the evening spent around the piano, or the flute, or the violin, how warm and how chastened is the kiss with which the family all say goodnight! Ah, the music has taken all the day cares and thrown them into its terrible alembic, and boiled them and rocked them and cooled them till they are crystallized into one