Does it not seem to you as to me,
that I begin to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees
of these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly,
and through so much bitterness?"*
--
* Quoted by William Hayes Ward in his Introduction to Lanier's `Poems'.
--
The letter just quoted needs to be read with caution. It sets
in too sharp antagonism his life up to this point and that of his later years.
Previous chapters of this book have been written in vain if they have not
revealed the fact that Lanier was a much more highly developed man
when he left Georgia than the letter would indicate. He wrote it
in the first flush of enthusiasm at finding himself among artists.
But it is misleading. For instance, he speaks of the "farcical college";
yet in his last days, when he saw his life in its proper perspective,
he said that he owed to Dr. Woodrow the strongest and most valuable stimulus
of his early life. He was not a raw provincial; he had traveled extensively,
had been associated with people of culture, if not of letters,
and he had read widely and wisely. His inheritance from Southern people,
-- their temperament and their civilization, -- and his indebtedness
to Southern scenery will be the more apparent in later chapters of this book.
All the while his genius had been steadily growing. When the time came
he was a prepared man -- ready to seize with avidity every opportunity
that presented itself.
Furthermore, the very struggle he had to maintain his ideal,
and it will not do to minimize this struggle, had strengthened
and enlarged his soul.
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