The encouragement given him by Hayne in the dark days of the law, when he had no time to write, was followed by a Northern friendship of even greater value to him when the _Lippincott_ poems were brought to the kindly attention of Bayard Taylor. This busy and large-hearted man of letters seems to have been the literary friend of his whole generation. He was on terms of easy acquaintance with the most renowned of his day. He was a companion of publishers, editors, and journalists, and he showed a most generous interest in the fortunes of promising younger men. His literary status is summarized in his relation to the literary ceremonies of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. He wrote the Ode for the Fourth of July celebration after the honor had been declined by Bryant, Lowell, and Longfellow, and he had sufficient influence to gain for Lanier the distinction of writing the Cantata for the opening ceremonies. The exchange of letters between the two in connection with their efforts is unsurpassed as a record of detailed processes in poetic composition, criticism and rejoinder, and final revision. Lanier's conscious command of a poetic theory was a product of his habits of study and led to his appointment by President Daniel Coit Gilman as lecturer in English literature at Johns Hopkins University.[33] From youth Lanier had been an extensive reader of the early English classics, and in Baltimore he eagerly used the resources of the Peabody Library, which was maintained especially for research students. He was keenly interested in stimulating general intelligence in literature among the adult public and also in promoting exact and technical study by qualified scholars. In 1878 he plunged once more into study, planned lecture courses, projected a research program for himself, and early in the next year received the Hopkins appointment. He approached his work with the utmost zest and, as long as his strength lasted, lectured effectively and worked on the critical texts and treatises which the scholarship of his time was just beginning to supply. Now, however, when he had established working relations with the orchestra and the university, he sank under the strain of all the preceding struggle, and in 1881 he died before reaching his fortieth year. [33] This was the second time that President Gilman had placed a poet in the position of teacher, for he had already done this with Edward Rowland Sill at the University of California (see p. 397). Lanier's abiding conviction put the poet on the same plane with the prophet and the seer. He was far from according with Poe's total subordination of intellect and moral sense to the feeling for beauty. He seldom or never wrote a didactic poem, but he usually composed over a strong moralistic counterpoint. In "Corn" the poet leads the vanward of his timid time And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme.