I now recall with wonder how he put me on such a footing of equality
that I often quite forgot the difference in age and experience between us
and almost felt him to be a companion student. I now see that this
was the sign of two notable traits, -- the extreme native Southern courtesy
that clothed him always in all his dealings with every one,
and the essential youthfulness of his mind when moving among
his favorite subjects. His was surely one of the finest of sympathies,
delicate, sensitive, elastic, vital to the highest degree,
the like of which is all too rare among men, though hardly described
by the term `feminine'. In it breathed a genuine capacity for love
in the most noble sense, for he was ready to identify himself
with the interests of another, to etherealize and dignify
what he thought he saw in them, and thus absolutely to transform them
by the alchemy of his touch. And, the more I think of it,
the more I recognize that his soul was incapable of aging. . . .
This absolute freshness of heart and spirit seems to me to have been
one of the highest notes of Mr. Lanier's genius. Here he was clearly allied
to many a more famous poet or painter or musician."*
--
* Letter to the author from Professor Waldo S. Pratt,
now of Hartford Theological Seminary.
--
Among American poets Lanier has the same place with regard
to the teaching of English that Lowell and Longfellow have
in the study of modern languages. There were, to be sure,
some greater English scholars in this country during the seventies
than Lanier was, just as there were more scientific
students of modern languages in the time of Longfellow and Lowell.
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