Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute
for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled
with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work,
this began with the publication of his novel, `Tiger-lilies', in 1867,
and in the same year, of occasional poems in `The Round Table' of New York.
`Corn', published in `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia)
for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice,
and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor.
To Taylor he owed his selection to write the `Centennial Cantata',
which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure,
some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published
his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems',
which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2*
previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore,
Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which
he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class
and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879.
During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order.
On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment
as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore
for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since
his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his `Science of English Verse',
which constituted the basis of his first course of lectures
at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness,
this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools
and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts.
The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing
(`Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees)
and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied
in `The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him