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."

His flute-playing and extensive reading did not prevent Lanier
from graduating at the head of his class in July, 1860.*
His oration was on the ambitious subject, "The Philosophy of History".
One of the most important events in his early life was the vacation
following his graduation. His grandfather had bought
in the mountains of East Tennessee, at Montvale Springs, a large estate,
on which had been built a beautiful hotel. During the summer
his children and grandchildren -- some twenty-five in all -- visited him.
Here they enjoyed the pleasures of hunting, fishing, and social life.
There were many visitors from the Southern States to this
"Saratoga of the South". "What an assemblage of facilities for enjoyment,"
Lanier writes, "I have up here in the mountains, -- kinsfolk, men friends,
women friends, books, music, wine, hunting, fishing, billiards,
tenpins, chess, eating, mosquitoless sleeping, mountain scenery,
and a month of idleness." This experience, somewhat idealized,