Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated
visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia,
Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute
for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled
with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work,
this began with the publication of his novel, `Tiger-lilies', in 1867,
and in the same year, of occasional poems in `The Round Table' of New York.
`Corn', published in `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia)
for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice,
and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor.
To Taylor he owed his selection to write the `Centennial Cantata',
which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure,
some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published
his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems',
which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2*
previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore,
Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which
he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class
and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879.
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