There is enough good criticism in the Shakespeare lectures and in the "English Novel", in the prefaces of the boy's books and in his letters, to make a volume of interest and importance. Suppose we cease to think of the first two as formal treatises on the subjects they discuss, and rather select from them such passages as the discussion of personality, the relation of music, science, and the novel, the criticism of Whitman's theory of art, the discussion of the relation of morals to art, the best passages on Anglo-Saxon poetry and the Elizabethan sonneteers, and the finer passages on Shakespeare's growth as a man and as a dramatist. Such a volume would, I believe, confirm one in the opinion that Lanier belongs by right among the best American critics. Certainly, the "Science of English Verse" entitles him to that distinction.

About 1875 Lanier became interested in the formal side of poetry and projected a work on a scientific basis. It was natural that one who had so much reverence for science and who had studied the "physics of music", should apply the scientific method to the study of poetry. He knew that the science of versification was not the most important phase of poetry: in the preface, as in the epilogue, to the "Science of English Verse", he makes clear that "for the artist in verse there is no law: the perception and love of beauty constitute the whole outfit." In many other passages in his writings may be seen his view of the moral significance of poetry. He desired, however, to formulate for himself and for students certain metrical laws. What differentiates poetry from prose? How does a writer produce certain effects with certain rhythms and vowel and consonant arrangements? The student wishes to know why the forms are fair and hear how the tale is told. By the study of rhythm, tune, and color, Lanier believed that one might receive "a whole new world of possible delight." He believed with Sylvester that "versification has a technical side quite as well capable of being reduced to rules as that of painting or any other fine art." His book was intended to furnish students with such an outfit of facts and principles as would serve for pursuing further researches.

The time was ripe for such a study. Lanier wrote to Mr. Stedman that "in all directions the poetic art was suffering from the shameful circumstance that criticism was without a scientific basis." The book at once received commendation from competent critics. Edward Rowland Sill wrote Dr. Gilman that it was "the only thing extant on that subject that is of any earthly value. I wonder that so few seem to have discovered its great merit," -- an opinion afterwards repeated by him in the "Atlantic Monthly". The late Richard Hovey, in a series of articles in the "Independent" on the technic of poetry, said that Lanier had begun such a scientific study with "great soundness and common sense;" the book is "accurate, scientific, suggestive." The editor of the "Dial" referred to it as "the most striking and thoughtful exposition yet published on the technics of English poetry." Within the past ten years books on English verse have multiplied fast. In Germany, in England, and in America, the discussion of metrics has gone on. While dissenting from some of Lanier's conclusions, few of the writers have failed to recognize his work as of great importance.* One man rarely sees all round any great subject like this, -- each man sees some one special point and states it in an individual way, and finally, in the course of time, the truth is evolved.

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* See, for instance, Winchester's `Principles of Literary Criticism', Alden's `English Verse', Paul Elmer More's `Shelburne Essays', and Omond's `English Metrists'.
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There is little objection to Parts II and III of the "Science of English Verse". They are generally recognized as strikingly suggestive and helpful. It is with the main thesis of the first part that many disagree -- the author's insistence that the laws of music and of verse are identical. According to Lanier, verse is in all respects a phenomenon of sound. From time immemorial the relation of music and of poetry has been spoken of in figurative terms, as in Carlyle's discussion of the subject in the essay on the "Hero as Poet". Lanier, however, was the first to work the idea out in a thorough-going fashion. He was especially qualified to do so because of his knowledge of the two arts. His general conclusion was the same as that reached by Professor Gummere in his searching discussion of "Rhythm as the Essential Fact of Poetry".* Both of them saw that the origin of poetry was in the dance and the march, and later the song. In modern times the two arts had become distinct. Lanier believed that, in accordance with its origin and the practice of the best poets, the basis of rhythm is time and not accent. Every line is made up of bars of equal time value. "If this equality of time were taken away, no possibility of rhythm would remain." "The accent serves only to mark for the ear these equal intervals of time, which are the units of poetic measurement." Lanier's theory of quantity, however, is different from the rigid laws of classic quantity, for he allows for variations from the regular type of verse that may prevail in a certain poem or line, thus providing for "an escape out of the rigidities of the type into the infinite field of those subtle rhythms which pervade familiar utterance." He separates himself therefore from such writers as Abbott and Guest, who applied the rule of thumb to English verse. To such men "Shakspere's verse has often seemed a mass of `license', of `irregularity', and of lawless anomaly to commentators; while, approached from the direction of that great rhythmic sense of humanity displayed in music, in all manner of folk-songs, and in common talk, it is perfect music."

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* `The Beginnings of Poetry', chapter 2.
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