Has he a right to be in such a book? His work as a scholar has been discussed
in a previous chapter; his rank as a critic is a very different matter.
It goes without saying that Lanier was not a great critic.
He did not have the learning requisite for one. One might turn
the words of his criticism of Poe and say that he needed to know more.
He knew but little of the classics beyond what he studied in college;
while he read French and German literature to some extent,
he did not go into them as Lowell did. Homer, Dante, and Goethe
were but little more than names to him. Furthermore, his criticism
is often marked by a tendency to indulge in hasty generalizations,
due to the fact that he had not sufficient facts to draw upon.
An illustration is his preference of the Elizabethan sonnets
to the English sonnets written on the Italian model,
or his discussion of personality as found in the Greek drama.
His generalizations are often either patently obvious or far-fetched.
He was too eager to "bring together people and books
that never dreamed of being side by side." His tendency to fancy,
so marked in his poetry, is seen also in his criticism,
as for instance, his comparison of a sonnet to a little drama,
or his statement that every poem has a plot, a crisis, and a hero.
He had De Quincey's habit of digressing from the main theme, --
what he himself called in speaking of an Elizabethan poet,
the "constant temptation, to the vigorous and springy mind of the poet,
to bound off wherever his momentary fancy may lead him.
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