"*2*
In `Corn',*3* too, the "tall corn-captain" "types the poet-soul sublime."
--
*1* `Clover', ll. 126-127.
*2* `The Bee', ll. 40-42.
*3* `Corn', l. 52 ff.
--
But it is in his prose works that Lanier has treated the matter
most at length, and to these I turn. In the first place,
he insists that to be an artist one must know a great deal,
a statement that would appear superfluous but for its frequent overlooking
by would-be artists. Hence he is right in warning young writers:
"You need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your poetry
unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and saturated
with at least the largest final conceptions of current science."*
That Lanier strove to follow this precept, we have abundant evidence
in his life and in his works; and I think that, if we remember
his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy,
and the variety of his knowledge. As additionally illustrative of the last,
I may add that Lanier invented some improvements for the flute,
and made a discovery in the physics of music that the Professor of Physics
in the University of Virginia thought considerable.
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