President Gilman had, however,
heard with much satisfaction Lanier's lectures at Mrs. Bird's,
and had cooperated with him in the series of lectures
at the Peabody Institute. Finally, the trustees, convinced of
Lanier's scholarship, and conscious of his growing influence in Baltimore,
agreed to his appointment as lecturer in English literature,
and Dr. Gilman had the rare pleasure of announcing the fact
on the poet's thirty-seventh birthday -- February 3, 1879.
Lanier responded in a letter, indicative at once of the spirit
in which he received the appointment and of his high personal regard
for the president of the University. No story of Lanier's life
would be adequate that did not pay tribute to the uniform kindness
and thoughtful consideration of the poet's welfare manifested by Dr. Gilman.
He has his place in that inner circle of Lanier's friends
who meant much to him in opening up new fields of endeavor,
and who after his death zealously promoted his fame.
Lanier occupies a place in the history of Johns Hopkins University
that has perhaps not been fully appreciated. His appointment
was not a merely nominal one, for he threw himself with zeal and energy
into the life of the University. He breathed its atmosphere. He was
a personal friend of the president, of nearly every member of the faculty,
and of the university officers. He caught its spirit and grew with it
into a real sense of the ideals of University work. While his poem
written on the fourth anniversary of the opening of the University,
is not one of his best, it indicates the great love that he had
for the institution: --
How tall among her sisters, and how fair, --
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair
As dawn! .
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