But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills. To him music was one of earth's chief blessings. Of his early passion for the violin and his substitution of the flute therefor, we have already learned. According to competent critics he was possibly the greatest flute-player*1* in the world, a fact all the more interesting when we remember that, as he himself tells us,*2* he never had a teacher. With such a talent for music the poet has naturally strewn his pages with fine tributes thereto. In `Tiger-lilies', for instance, he tells us that, while explorers say that they have found some nations that had no god, he knows of none that had no music, and then sums up the matter in this sentence: "Music means harmony; harmony means love; and love means -- God!"*3* Even more explicit is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL; poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES. I could play passably on several instruments before I could write legibly, and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music, which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4* We have already seen incidentally that in his `Symphony' the speakers are musical instruments; and it is in this poem that occurs his felicitous definition, "Music is love in search of a word."*5* In `To Beethoven' he describes the effect of music upon himself: "I know not how, I care not why, Thy music brings this broil at ease, And melts my passion's mortal cry In satisfying symphonies. "Yea, it forgives me all my sins, Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme, And tunes the task each day begins By the last trumpet-note of Time."*6* It was this profound knowledge of music, of course, that enabled Lanier to write his work on `The Science of English Verse', and gave him a technical skill in versification akin to that of Tennyson. -- *1* See Ward's `Memorial', pp. xx, xxxi. *2* Hayne's (P. H.) `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. *3* `Tiger-lilies', p. 32. *4* Hayne's `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. After settling in Baltimore Lanier devoted more time to poetry than to music, as we may see from this sentence to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of March 20, 1876: "As for me, life has resolved simply into a time during which I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket." *5* `The Symphony', l. 368. *6* `To Beethoven', ll. 61-68. --