SOURCE: Painter, F. V. N. “Sidney Lanier.” In Poets of the South: A Series of Biographical and Critical Studies with Typical Poems, Annotated, pp. 81-101. New York: American Book Company, 1903.

In the following excerpt, Painter examines Sidney Lanier's life, poetry, and literary criticism.

Lanier's genius was predominantly musical. He descended from a musical ancestry, which included in its line a “master of the king's music” at the court of James I. His musical gifts manifested themselves in early childhood. Without further instruction in music than a knowledge of the notes, which he learned from his mother, he was able to play, almost by intuition, the flute, guitar, violin, piano, and organ. He organized his boyish playmates into an amateur minstrel band; and when in early manhood he began to confide his most intimate thoughts to a notebook, he wrote, “The prime inclination—that is, natural bent (which I...