Lanier, however, while carefully avoiding the methods and principles
of a mere dry-as-dust, spiritualizes all their facts,
and works out in passages of remarkable beauty and eloquence
the growth of Shakespeare's mind and art. To Lanier a metrical test or a date
is no insignificant thing. "Many a man," he says, "may feel inclined to say,
Why potter about your dates and chronologies? . . . But it so happens
that here a whole view of the greatest mind the human race has yet evolved
hangs essentially upon dates." Lanier's reverence for exact scholarship
and his application of seemingly technical standards do not interfere at all
with his deeper appreciation of Shakespeare's plays. While he overstated
the autobiographical value of a chronological study of the plays,
-- reading into this study meanings that are not warranted
by the facts, -- it must be said that it is difficult to find
in the writings of Americans on Shakespeare more significant passages
than chapters xx-xxiv of "Shakspere and His Forerunners".
Other illustrations of the modernness of Lanier's scholarly work are easy
to cite. His plan for the publication of a book of Elizabethan sonnets,
while not realized by him, has been carried out during the past year
in a far more extensive and scholarly way than he could have done it
by Mr. Sidney Lee. In the light of the recent scholar's investigation,
many of Lanier's ideas with regard to the autobiographical
value of the sonnets vanish, but his insight into the need
of the study of the Elizabethan sonnets is none the less notable.
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