"*4* Moreover, as we shall see later,
this extraordinary musical endowment gave Lanier a unique position
among English poets.
--
*1* See `The Science of English Verse', p. 306 ff.
*2* `In the Foam', ll. 6, 8. See, too, Kent's `Study of Lanier's Poems',
which gives an exhaustive treatment of Lanier's versification.
*3* Stedman's `Poets of America', p. 449.
*4* `Kent', p. 60.
--
After what has been said the qualities of style may be briefly handled.
As we have already seen, Lanier sometimes fails in clearness,
or, more precisely, in simplicity. This comes partly
from infelicitous sentence-construction, partly, perhaps,
from Lanier's extraordinary musical endowment, but chiefly, I think,
from over-luxuriance of imagination. But this occasional defect
has been unduly exaggerated. Thus Mr. Gosse*1* declares
that Lanier is "never simple, never easy, never in one single lyric
natural and spontaneous for more than one stanza," -- a statement
so clearly hyperbolic as hardly to call for notice. As a matter of fact,
Lanier has written numerous poems that offer little or no difficulty
to the reader of average intelligence, as `Life and Song', `My Springs',
`The Symphony', `The Mocking-Bird', `The Song of the Chattahoochee',
`The Waving of the Corn', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance',
`A Ballad of Trees and the Master', etc.
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