As to the first six class lectures on "The Physics and Metaphysics of Poetry": they unfold my system of English Prosody, in which I should thoroughly drill every student until he should be able to note down, in musical signs, the rhythm of any English poem. This drilling would continue through the whole course, inasmuch as I regard a mastery of the principles set forth in those lectures as vitally important to all systematic progress in the understanding and enjoyment of poetry.
I should have added, apropos of this class course, that there ought to be one examination each week, to every two lectures.
In the first interview we had, after my appointment, it was your intention to place this study among those required by the University for a degree. I hope sincerely you have not abandoned this idea; and the course outlined in "Class lectures" forwarded to you the other day, and in the theses of which I send the first seven herewith, seems to me the best to begin with. If it should be made a part of the "Major Course in English" (where it seems properly to belong), I could easily arrange a simpler and less arduous modification of it for the corresponding "Minor Course".
I am so deeply interested in this matter — of making a finer fibre for all our young American manhood by leading our youth in proper relations with English poetry — that at the risk of consuming your whole vacation with reading this long and unconscionable letter I will mention that I have nearly completed three works which are addressed to the practical accomplishment of the object named, by supplying a wholly different method of study from that mischievous one which has generally arisen from a wholly mistaken use of the numerous "Manuals" of English literature. These works are my three text-books: (1) "The Science of English Verse", in which the student's path is cleared of a thousand errors and confusions which have obstructed this study for a long time, by a very simple system founded upon the physical relations of sound; (2) "From Caedmon to Chaucer", in which I present all the most interesting Anglo-Saxon poems remaining to us, in a form which renders their literary quality appreciable by all students, whether specially pursuing Old English or not, thus placing these poems where they ought always to have stood, as a sort of grand and simple vestibule through which the later mass of English poetry is to be approached; and (3) my "Chaucer", which I render immediately enjoyable, without preliminary preparation, by an interlined glossarial explanation of the original text, and an indication (with hyphens) of those terminal syllables affecting the rhythm which have decayed out of the modern tongue. I am going to print these books and sell them myself, on the cheap plan which has been so successfully adopted by Edward Arber, lecturer on English literature in University College, London. I have been working on them for two months; in two more they will be finished; and by the middle of November I hope to have them ready for use as text-books. If they succeed, I shall complete the series next year with (4) a "Spenser" on the same plan with the "Chaucer", (5) "The Minor Elizabethan Song-Writers", and (6) "The Minor Elizabethan Dramatists"; the steady aim of the whole being to furnish a working set of books which will familiarize the student with the actual works of English poets, rather than with their names and biographers.
Pray forgive this merciless letter. I could not resist the temptation to unfold to you all my hopes and plans connected with my University work among your young men which I so eagerly anticipate.
I will trouble you to return these notes of theses when you have examined them at leisure.
Faithfully yours,
Sidney Lanier.*
— * Published in `South Atlantic Quarterly', April, 1905. —
He endeavored to make his courses fit in with other courses of the curriculum in Greek, Latin, and modern literatures: —
My dear Sir, — I had been meditating, as a second course of public lectures during next term, if you should want them, — twelve studies on "The English Satirists"; and on my visit to the University to-day I observed from the bulletin that Mr. Rabillon is now lecturing on "The French Satirists". It occurs to me, therefore, that perhaps some additional interest in the subject might be excited if my course on the English satirists should follow the completion of Mr. Rabillon's — which I suppose will not be before the holidays — and should be given in January and February, instead of the course mentioned in my note to you this morning. I may add that if some other gentleman would offer courses on the Greek and Latin satirists, we might make a cyclus of it. Faithfully yours,