Few men ever enjoyed reading more than Lanier. He knew something
of Stevenson's joy of being "rapt clean out of himself by a book," --
the process was "absorbing and voluptuous". And this enthusiasm
he shared with all his hearers. After much criticism of the scientific type
by followers of Arnold and Brunetiere, after many class-room
lectures and recitations, in which the spiritual value of literature
has been lost sight of, it is altogether refreshing to read
the almost childlike expressions of Lanier. One feels often
that the worship of what he calls his "sweet masters" is overdone,
and that he praises far too highly some obscure sonneteer;
but there is in his work the spirit of the romantic critic --
the zest of Charles Lamb and Hazlitt for the old masters.
Lowell, speaking of a period in his own life when he was delivering
his early lectures at Lowell Institute, said: "Then I was at
the period in life when thoughts rose in covies, . . . a period of life
when it doesn't seem as if everything has been said; when a man
overestimates the value of what specially interests himself, . . .
when he conceives himself a missionary, and is persuaded
that he is saving his fellows from the perdition of their souls
if he convert them from belief in some aesthetic heresy.
That is the mood of mind in which one may read lectures with some
assurance of success. . . . This is the pleasant peril of enthusiasm."
There could not be a better description of Lanier's lectures.
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