Selected Poems of Sidney Lanier | Page 8

greatest of modern English novelists" (p. 4). Addressing himself to the former, Lanier attempts to prove (1) that our time, when compared with that of Aeschylus, shows an "enormous growth in the personality of man" (p. 5); (2) that what we moderns call Physical Science, Music, and the Novel, all had their origin at practically the same time, about the middle of the seventeenth century (p. 9); and (3) "that the increase of personalities thus going on has brought about such complexities of relation that the older forms of expression were inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity?has developed the wonderfully free and elastic form of the modern novel out of the more rigid Greek drama, through the transition form of the Elizabethan drama" (p. 10). In fulfilment of his second purpose, the author gives a detailed study of several of the novels of George Eliot, whom he takes to be the greatest modern English novelist. Even this brief synopsis of the book must indicate its broad and stimulating character, in which respect it is a worthy successor of `The Science of English Verse'. Despite the limitations induced by failing life, which necessitated the cutting down of the course of lectures from twenty to twelve,** I know of few more life-giving books; and I venture to assert that it cannot safely be overlooked by any careful student of the subject.
--?* Mrs. Lanier informs me that `The English Novel' will soon be issued in an amended form and with a new sub-title,?`Studies in the Development of Personality', which indicates precisely what Mr. Lanier intended to attempt, and relieves the book of its seeming incompleteness as to scope.?** `Spann'.?--
Among other prose works I may mention Lanier's early extravaganza, `Three Waterfalls'; `Bob', a happy account of a pet mocking-bird, worthy of being placed beside Dr. Brown's `Rab and his Friends'; his books for boys: `Froissart', `King Arthur', `Mabinogion', and `Percy', which have had, as they deserve, a large sale; and his posthumous `From Bacon to Beethoven', a highly instructive essay on music.
III. Lanier's Poetry: Its Themes
But it is chiefly as a poet that we wish to consider Lanier, and I turn to the posthumous edition of his `Poems' gotten out by his wife. At the outset let us ask, How did the poet look at the world? what problems engaged his attention and how were they solved? A careful investigation will show, I believe, that,?despite the brevity of his life and its consuming cares,?Lanier studied the chief questions of our age, and that in his poems he has offered us noteworthy solutions.
What, for instance, is more characteristic of our age than its tendency to agnosticism? I pass by the manifestations of this spirit in the world of religion, of which so much has been heard,?and give an illustration or two from the field of history and politics. Picturesque Pocahontas, we are told, is no more to be believed in; moreover, the Pilgrim Fathers did not land at Plymouth Rock, nor did Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. Which way we turn there is a big interrogation-point, often not for information but for negation. Of the good resulting from the inquisitive spirit, we all know; of the baneful influence of inquisitiveness?that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism, we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza from Lanier's `Acknowledgment':
"O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,?Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,?And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,?Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!?Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,?Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,?Blinking at o'er-bright Science, smit with desire?To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.?Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street, Thy halfness hot with his rebuke would swell;?Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat?His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell."*
--?* `Acknowledgment', ll. 1-12.?--
More hurtful than agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people, is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century, especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading `The Symphony', his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments. The violins begin:
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!?The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head."*
Then all the stringed instruments join with the violins in giving the wail of the poor, who "stand wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand":
"`We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,?We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,?And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills,?To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? --?The beasts, they hunger, and eat,