The first letter written by Lanier to his father from college announces his admission to the sophomore class: "I have just done studying to-night my first lesson, to wit, forty-five lines of Horace, which I `did' in about fifteen minutes." Other letters show that he was a very hard student and intensely conscientious. At one time having violated one of his father's regulations, that he was not under any circumstances to borrow money from his college mates, he wrote: "My father, I have sinned. With what intensity of thought, with what deep and earnest reflection have I contemplated this lately! My heart throbs with the intensity of its anguish. . . . If by hard study and good conduct I can atone for that, God in heaven knows that I shall not be found wanting. . . . Not a night passes but what the supplication, God bless my parents, ascends to the great mercy seat." At another time he writes for the following books: Olmsted's Philosophy, Blair's Rhetoric, Cicero de Oratore, and an Analytical Geometry. He already has some Greek tragedies which he is to study. Contemplating his junior year, he writes: "I feel quite enthusiastic on the subject of studying. . . . The very name of Junior has something of study-inspiring and energy-exciting to me."

Lanier pursued the limited curriculum of the college with zeal and with mastery. From his letters it is seen that he read such of the Greek and Latin classics as were generally studied in American colleges at that time. He mastered mathematics beyond any man of his class, and became interested in philosophy and science. His alert mind and energy enabled him to take at once a position of leadership in the college. He joined a secret literary society, of which he wrote to his father: "I have derived more benefit from that, than any one of my collegiate studies. We meet together in a nice room, read compositions, declaim, and debate upon interesting subjects."

His contact with these specially intimate friends was a thoroughly healthy one. He took part in their sports and mischief-making as well as in their more serious pastimes. "I shall never forget," says one of his companions, "those moonlight nights at old Oglethorpe, when, after study hours, we would crash up the stairway and get out on the cupola, making the night merry with music, song, and laughter. Sid would play upon his flute like one inspired, while the rest of us would listen in solemn silence."

Besides being a faithful student, Lanier was an omnivorous reader in the wide fields of English literature, sharing his tastes with some of his companions who with him lived in "an atmosphere of ardent and loyal friendship." "I can recall," says Mr. T. F. Newell, his classmate and room-mate,* "those Attic nights, for they are among the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume, it may have been Tennyson or Carlyle or Christopher North's `Noctes Ambrosianae', or we would make the hours vocal with music and song; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods. . . . On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony. Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned `walk-round' and `negro breakdown', in which all would participate, would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments, we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars and under `Bonny Bell window panes' -- ah, those serenades! were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again? -- when the velvet flute notes of Lanier would fall pleasantly upon the night."

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* Quoted from Baskervill's `Southern Writers', p. 149.
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Speaking further of his reading and of the way in which he shared his delight with others, the same writer says: "I recall how he delighted in the quaint and curious of our old literature. I remember that it was he who introduced me to that rare old book, Burton's `Anatomy of Melancholy', whose name and size had frightened me as I first saw it on the shelves, but which I found to be wholly different from what its title would indicate; and old Jeremy Taylor, `the poet-preacher'; and Keats's `Endymion', and `Chatterton', the `marvelous boy who perished in his pride.' Yes, I first learned the story of the Monk Rowley and his wonderful poems with Lanier. And Shelley and Coleridge and Christopher North, and that strange, weird poem of `The Ettrick Shepherd' of `How Kilmeny Came Hame', and a whole sweet host and noble company, `rare and complete'. Yes, Tennyson, with his `Locksley Hall' and his `In Memoriam' and his `Maud', which last we almost knew by heart. And then old Carlyle, with his `Sartor Resartus', `Hero-Worship', `Past and Present', and his wonderful book of essays, especially the ones on Burns and Jean Paul, `The Only'. Without a doubt it was Carlyle who first enkindled in Lanier a love of German literature and a desire to know more of the language."