en a more scientific basis to their understandings."

The publication of the cantata without the orchestral accompaniment, which the poet intended should be its chief distinction, occasioned an immense amount of ridicule, some good-natured, some spiteful. This criticism pained him deeply, though he quickly regained the serene heights on which he strove habitually to live. Not even to his friend Mr. Peacock did he show how sharp a sting it was, merely writing in a letter of April 27, in reference to one of the most vicious of these attacks: "Nothing rejoices me more than the inward perception how utterly the time and the frame of mind are passed by in which anything of this sort gives me the least disturbance. Six months ago this would have hurt me, even against my will. Now it seems only a little grotesque episode-just as when a few minutes ago I sat in

my father's garden here and heard a catbird pause in the midst of the most exquisite roulades and melodies, to mew, and then take up his song again." But to his father he wrote from New York, May 8, more seriously: "My experience in the varying judgments given about. poetry .. has all converged upon one solitary principle, and the experience of the artist in all ages is reported by history to be of precisely the same direction. That principle is that the artist shall put forth humbly and lovingly, and without bitterness against opposition, the very best and highest that is within him, utterly regardless of contemporary criticism. What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to respect-that criticism which crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, drove Dante into a hell of exile,

made Shakespeare write the sonnet When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,' gave Milton five pounds for 'Paradise Lost,' kept Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on Glück, Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner, and committed so many other impious follies and stupidities that a thousand letters like this could not suffice even to catalogue them?"

The reception given his poem continued to interest him deeply, and a few weeks later, May 27, he wrote to his wife, from Philadelphia, the following characteristic letter:

The papers are wondrously more respectful in their tone toward me, and it really seems as if my end of the seesaw was now rising steadily. I think the business has been of great value to all my artistic purpose, just at this stage of it; I have been compelled to throw aside every adventitious thing in the way of inspiration. God has been good to show

me at the outset in its most repulsive form the fatal figure of contemporary popularity, and to remind me how far apart from it were Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Bach. Hereupon I feel already resulting an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fiber in the strings of my harp, insomuch that if the world shall attempt to play me-as it does play all the popular men-it will only get its awkward fingers sore.

I inclose a slip or two for thy perusal. The is marvelously another than the contemptuous thing which a few weeks ago dismissed my poem in three lines. Of course all it says in this note is simply that sort of nonsense which Stoddard affectionately calls "rot;" the neither knows nor cares anything with regard to music.

But this criticism had no tendency to weaken the confidence which Lanier had acquired in his view of the principles of art. In his period of greatest uncertainty he had written to his wife: "It is of little consequence whether I fail; the I in the matter is a small business. • Que mon nom soit flétri, que la France

soit libre!' quoth Danton; which is to say, interpreted by my environment: Let my name perish—the poetry is good poetry and the music. is good music, and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it." But a little remark in 1875 anent "Special Pleading" reveals the fact that he is no longer agitated over the matter. "In this little song I have begun to dare to give myself some freedom in my own peculiar style, and have allowed myself to treat words, similes, and meters with such freedom as I desired. The result convinces me that I can do so now safely." And as a natural result he entered upon a period of greater productivity-"Clover," "The Waving of the Corn," "The Bee," "The Song of the Chattahoochee," "The Revenge of Hamish," "The Marshes of Glynn," and many more following in rapid succussion those already mentioned. Ten of these poems were collected into a thin vol