The Poems of Sidney Lanier

nd doubt the most remarkable, the most persistent, the most wide-spread, and the most noble of all those methods of arranging

solid physical basis for this science, and a precise nomenclature in which we could talk intelligibly upon this century-b

er advantage of entertainment for you may lie in contrast and variety, I have thought that inasmuch as we have already studied the Verse-Form in General, we might now profitably study some great Prose-Forms in Particular, and in still further co

the course of time, and of the curious and subtle needs of the modern civilized man which, under the stress of that imperious demand for expression which all men's emotions make, have respectively determined the modes of such expression to be in one case The Novel, in another The Sermon, in another The Newspap

h I hope will satisfactorily emerge as we go on, lead me irresisti

he first place in such a series as the present, the question of the Novel has just at this time become o

this audience upon the spread of the novel among all classes of modern readers: while I have been writing this, a well-considered paper on "Fiction in our Public Libraries," has appeared in the current International Review, which, among many suggestive statements, declares that out of pretty nearly five millions (4,872,595) of volumes circulated in five years by the Boston Public Library, nearly four millions (3,824,938), that is about four-fifths, were classed as "Juveniles and Fiction;" and merely mentioning the strength which these figures gain when considered along with the fact that they represent the reading of a people supposed to be more "solid" in literary matter than any other in the country-if we inquire into the proportion at Baltimore, I fancy I have only to hold up this copy of James's The American, which

ws upon a living issue which demands your opinion, that I now invite you to enter with me, without further preliminary, upon a series of studies in which it is proposed, first, to inquire what is that special relation of th

inasmuch as several of the minor demonstrations will begin somewhat remotely from the Novel, it will save me many details which would be other

owth in the personality of man which our time reveals

rn personality as I conceive it, by stating it in terms which have recently been made prominent and familiar by the discussion as to the evolution of genius; a phase of which appears in a very agreeable paper by Mr. John Fiske in a recent Atlantic Monthly on "Sociology and Hero Worship." Says Mr. Fiske, in a certain part of this article, "Every species of animals or plants consists of a great number of individuals which are nearly, but not exactly alike. Each individual varies slightly in one characteristic or another from a certain type which expresses the average among all the individuals of the species.... Now the moth with his proboscis twice as lo

er possession but his personality has ever been brought to say he would be willing to exchange it entire for that of the happiest being; this personality which has brought about that, whereas in the time of ?schylus the common man was simply a creation of the State, like a modern corporation with rights and powers strictly limited by the State's charter, now he is a genuine sovereign who makes the State, a king as to every minutest particle of his individuality so long as that kinghood does not cross the kinghood of his fellow,-when we reflect upon this awful spontaneous variation of personality, this "mystery in us which calls itself I" (as Thomas Carlyle has somewhere called it), which makes every man scientifically a human atom, yet an atom endowed above all other atoms with the power to choose its own mode of motion, its own combining equivalent,-when farther we reflect upon the relation of each human atom to each oth

t. I have since observed that much fun has been made of this piece, and I have seen elaborate burlesques upon it. But I think such an attitude could be possible only to one who had not passed along this line of thought. At an

; you will find the whole poem much more satisfactory. Please observe, however, the ample, comforting phrases and summaries with which Tenn

p, my child, o

was to be in

million ?ons

multitudinous-

hanging world of

se of ever-he

com

ost In thine own shado

thou-who waile

into myster

sible-indivi

shatter'd phantom

ee inconcei

le world-self

of the grain an

y choose; an

ath thro' life a

racle, that

thy own act an

thing-for all is

ething-that also h

Thou-but Thou wi

e Thy name

he Infinite One who made thee inconceivably thyself; this divisi

f; and I shall try to show by several concrete illustrations from the lines and between the lines of ?schylus and Plato and the lik

ell-known representative names, Sir Isaac Newton (1642), John Sebastian Bach (1685), and Samuel Richardson (1689), the first standing for the rise of modern science, the second for the rise of modern music, the third for the rise of the modern novel, and observe that these three men are born within fifty years of each other,

vague intermediary, hamadryads and forms of the Greek system), a general desire to know the exact truth about nature arises; and this desire carried to a certain enthusiasm in the nature of given men-behold the man of science; a similar feeling of direct personal relation to the Unknown, acting similarly upon particular men,-behold the musician, and the ever-increasing tendency of the modern to worship God in terms of

ties of relation that the older forms of expression were inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity has developed the wonder

me of the most characteristic modern novels, in illus

said in closing one of his powerful descript

disposed of in the outset, because they affect all these four lines of thought in general, and because I find the v

ntury C?dmon is writing a strong English poem in an elaborate form of verse. Well-founded conjecture carries us back much farther than this; but without relying upon that, we have clear knowledge that all along the time when Beowulf and The Wanderer-to me one of the most artistic and affecting of English poems-and The Battle of Maldon are being written, all along t

scure period like brief little bird-calls from a thick-leaved wood-if, I say, we examine these songs, written as many of them are by nobody in particular, it is impossible not to believe that a

none of them in which the prose seems controlled by considerations of beauty. Perhaps the most curious and interesting proof I could adduce of the obliviousness of even the most artistic Englishman in this time to the possibility of a melodious and uncloying English prose, is the prose work of Chaucer. While, so far as concerns the mere music of verse, I cannot call Chaucer a great artist, yet he was the greatest of his time; from him, therefore, we have the right to expect the best craftsmanship in words; for all fine prose depends as much upon its rhythms and correlated proportions as fine verse; and, now, since we have an art of prose, it is a perfect test of the real excellence of a poet in verse to try his corresponding excellence in prose. But in Chaucer's time there is no art of En

ntryng at a

Hoost, as he w

aas, our jol

wise: "Lordyng

no tales moo

ing to t

quod he, "a

soun? Say sot

, ne breke thou

save thou, hath

chew us what i

e anoon, for

atever he may have in his male [wallet] there is none of your light-m

him answerede

fable noon i

hat the whole business of fiction-that same fiction which has now come to occupy such a commanding place with us moder

fable noon i

at writeth u

that weyveth s

es and such wre

y, if that yow

nd virtuou

shall present

at ye will ge

yne at Crist

saunce lefu

wel, I am a

e, rum, ram, r

rym hold I bu

f yow list, I

lle a mery t

gives in the general Prologue to the Canterbury Tales sweeps away the whole literature of verse and of fiction with the one contemptuous word "glose"-by which he

pastor's so-called tale, that the style is rigidly sententious, and that the movement of the whole is like that of

on fro the right wey of Jerusalem celestial; and this wey is cleped penitence. Of which men schulden gladly herken and enquere with al here herte, to wyte, what is penitence, and whens is cleped penitence? And in

Parson's character in order to forgive the droning ugliness of his prose. Nothing could better realize the

to t' choorch afoor

' awa?y loike a buzza

t a me?ned, but I thow

hat a owt to 'a said

about penitence, with many minor heads and sub-divisions, are unsparingly developed to the bitter end. But in the Tale of Melib?us his inimitable faculty of story-telling comes to his aid, and determines his sentences to a little more variety and picturesqueness, though the sententious still predominates. Here, for

n his wyf, and wounded his daughter with fyve mortal woundes, in fyve sondry places, that is to sayn, in here feet, in her handes, in here eres, in her nose, and in here mouth; and lafte her for deed, and went away." Melib?us assembles a great counsel of his friends, and these advise him to make war, with an interminable dull succession of sententious maxims and quotations which would merely have maddened a modern person to such

tc.,-that there is absolutely no individuality or personality in the talk; Melib?us drones along exactly as his friends do, and his wife quotes old authoritative saws, just as he does. But Dame Prudence replies,-and all those who are acquainted with the pungent Mrs. Poyser in George Eliot's Adam Bede will congratulate Melib?us that his foregoing sentiments concerning woman were uttered five hundred years before that lady's tongue began to wag,-"When Dame Prudence, ful debonerly and with gret pacience, hadde herd al that her housbande liked for to saye, thanne axede sche of him license for to speke, and sayde in this wise: 'My Lord,' quod sche, 'as to your firste resoun, certes it may

man alone; makes we to him an help semblable to himself. Here may ye se that, if that a womman were not good, and hir counseil good and profytable, oure Lord God of heven would neither have wrought hem, ne called hem help of man, but

that can be found before the fifteenth century, we shall find a surprising number of particulars, besides the unmusical tendency to run into t

terances of the period. For example, here are the opening lines of a fragment of prose from a MS. in the Cambridge University Library, reprinted b

he way of narrative, is just as sententious in form

beg

sterys assemblede, ande eche one askede oter quhat thing tai sho

lacoun, god wald haue gewyne it to his sone. But he sey wyell that thar was no better, and tharfor he gawe

y tirty yheris wyth-out mete, ande also were dewote in preyinge tat he mycht speke wyth angele in te erth, as dyde mary

alowys of hewyn preyd for a man, tei should not get so gret mey

earliest sign of a true feeling for the musical movement of prose sentences, we are met by the fact, which I hope to show is full of fruitful suggestions upon our present studies, that the art of English prose is at least eight hundred years younger than the art of English verse. For, in coming down our literature from C?dmon-whom, in some confl

moment to a few lines from Sir Thomas Malory. I think the most unmusical ear, the most cursory attention, cannot fail to d

armor be without the city on to-morrow-day. Right so in the morning he met with his man and his horse, and so mounted up and dressed his

a knight sat all armed in a chair. 'Sir Knight,' said King Arthur, 'for what cause abidest thou here? that there may n

will use, maugre who saith nay; and who is grie

'And I shall defend it,' said the k

e most calls for a different tune-and we have not only grace but variety. In this variety may be found an easy test of artistic prose. If you try to read two hundred lines of Chaucer's Melib?us or his Parson's Tale aloud, you

onsecutive sentences do not call for the same tune; for example, if one sentence is sharp antithesis-you know the well-marked speech tune of an an

and the iteration of the same pitch-successions in the voice presently becomes wearisome. This fault-of the succession of antithetic ideas so that the voice becomes weary of repeating the sam

erning a portrait of herself which it seems the king had

ore this time, doth now increase them in asking and desiring where you may bid and command, requiring a thing not worthy the desiring for itself, but made worthy for your highness' request. My picture I mean; in which, if the in

must fall; if you abstract the words, and say over the tune,

gh Sir Thomas More, Lord Berners, and Roger Ascham, whom we may assign to the earlier half of the 16th Century

f English prose as compared with English verse; and we have already sufficiently seen that t

development than English verse, the point that I wish to make in this

obable that the whole earlier speech of man must have been rhythmical, and that in point of fact we began with verse which is much simpler in rhythm than any prose; and that we depa

n a minute. Taking the faster rate as the more probable one in speaking, the man would, from the periodic necessity of refilling the lungs, divide his words into twenty groups, equal in time, every minute, and if these syllables were e

nd our primitive talker is speaking in the true English heroic rhythm. Thus it may be that our dear friend M. Jo