LANIER, SIDNEY (1842-81). An American musician and poet, born at Macon. Ga. February 3. 1842. He died at Lynn, N. C., September 7, 1881. Ile was of Huguenot stock, and inherited great musical ability. His education was obtained at Oglethorpe College, Georgia, where he gradu ated and served as tutor for one year before he entered the Confederate Army. His main experi ences during the war were connected with bloc0 ade-running ; but lie was much exposed to physical hardships, and suffered imprisonment for several months, with the result that he developed con sumption. Immediately after the war he went to Alabama. where he was a clerk in a shop and a teacher: but his bad health forced him to re turn to Macon, where he studied and practiced law with his father until 1873. Then his two dominant passions. poetry and music, overmas tered him, and he decided to give his life to them. Ile had previously published (1867) a rather evade romance entitled Tiger Lilies, but its Want of success had not discouraged him. He went to Baltimore, and obtained a position as first flute in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, and he also saw sonwthing of musical life in New York, his ability, especially for the flute, being everywhere recognized. his literary ability was encouraged by friends like Bayard Taylor, and in 1876 he was invited to write a poem for the Centennial Exposition. A year later a volume of his poems appeared. Jul 1879 he was made lecturer on Eng lish literature at the Johns Hopkins University. where he delivered courses afterwards published as The Science of English Verse (1SS1) and The English ore/ (1883). the latter volume being unfinished. Throughout these years his strength had been steadily waning, and he had frequent ly been obliged to seek health in Florida and other favorable regions. It was on such a visit to North Carolina that lie filially succumbed. Considering the short time he was actually de voted to literature and the unfavorable conditions under which he worked. his achievement was as
remarkable as that of any other American of his generation. Besides the books already named, he adapted Froissart, Percy, and the Ilabinogion to youthful readers, wrote a guide-book to Flori da, and did other miscellaneous work which has recently been gathered and put in permanent form. It is difficult to say whether Lanier's genius was greater for music than for poetry. In his poems and in his writings about poetry the element of music is everywhere, and in The Sci ence of English Verse rather tends to make less useful and perhaps less trustworthy a remarkably subtle and stimulating book, which is nevertheless of distinctly greater value than the lectures on the English novel. In his other prose works, espe cially in the Letters, Lanier makes the appeal to chosen readers that we always expect from the prose of a genuine poet. And this Lanier was, whether or not we believe that he not infrequent ly strained after effects in a manner that injured the strictly poetical quality of his work. No American since Poe has been so fully dominated by the idea of beiluty in art. Lanier added an ethical element foreign to Poe, and it is a ques tion whether here again there is not a lack of that fusion of powers and qualities that is essen tial to the production of perfect poetry. Be this as it may, it is quite certain that Lanier is gain ing steadily in fame, and that he bids fair to be recognized as the most important poet pro duced in America in the last quarter of the nine teenth century. Among his best-known poems may be mentioned: "Corn;" "The Song of the Chattahoochee:" ''The Marshes of Glynn:" and the cantata sung at the Centennial. his interest ing letters have also been published, as well as his complete poems, edited by his widow, Mary Day Lanier, with a memoir by William Hayes \Vard (New York, MI, 1884). His Shakespeare and His Forerunners was published in New York (1902).