Excerpt from Sidney Lanier It cannot be said, however, that Lanier's rank as a poet even in American, to say nothing of English literature is yet fixed. He is a very uneven writer, and his defects are serious. Some of the best American critics men who have a right to speak with authority shake their heads in disapproval at what they call the Lanier cult. Abroad he has had no vogue, as have Emerson and Poe and Walt Whitman. The enthusiastic praise of the Spectator has been more than bal anced by the indifierence of some English critics and the sarcasm of others. Mme. Blanc's article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, setting forth the charm of his personality and the excellence of his poetry, met with little response in France. In View of this divergence of Opinion among critics, it may be doubted if the time has yet come for anything approaching a final valuation of Lanier's work. In the later pages of this book an attempt will be made to give a reasonably balanced and critical study of his actual achieve ment in poetry and criticism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.