he now put to use in a course of lectures on Elizabethan Verse,
given in a private parlor to a class of thirty ladies.
This was followed by a more ambitious "Shakespeare Course" of lectures
in the smaller hall of the Peabody Institute. The undertaking
was immensely cheered on and greatly praised, but was a financial failure.
It opened the way, however, to one of the chiefest delights of his life,
his appointment as lecturer on English literature for the ensuing year
at the Johns Hopkins University. After some correspondence on the subject
with President Gilman, he received notice on his birthday, 1879,
of his appointment, with a salary attached (it may be mentioned),
which gave him the first income assured in any year since his marriage.
This stimulated him to new life, for he was now barely able to walk
after a severe illness and renewed hemorrhage.

The last two years had been more fruitful in verse than any
that had gone before, as he had now acquired confidence in his view
of the principles of art. In 1875 he had written:

==
"In this little song [`Special Pleading'] I have begun to dare
to give myself some freedom in my own peculiar style, and have allowed myself
to treat words, similes, and metres with such freedom as I desired.
The result convinces me that I can do so now safely."
==

Among his poems of this period may be mentioned "A Song of the Future",
"The Revenge of Hamish", and -- what are excellent examples of the kind of art
of which he had now gained command -- "The Song of the Chattahoochee",
and "A Song of Love". It was at this time that he wrote
"The Marshes of Glynn", his most ambitious poem thus far,