his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems', which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2* previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore, Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879. During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order. On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his `Science of English Verse', which constituted the basis of his first course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness, this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts. The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing (`Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees) and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied in `The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him can be gathered from the following words of Mr. Ward: "A few of the earlier lectures he penned himself; the rest he was obliged to dictate to his wife. With the utmost care of himself, going in a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture, his strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath in the carriage on his return seemed each time to threaten the end. Those who heard him listened in a sort of fascinated terror, as in doubt whether the hoarded breath would suffice to the end of the hour."*3* After this a trip was made to New York to arrange for issuing some books for boys, and four were issued, two posthumously: `Boy's Froissart' (1878), `Boy's King Arthur' (1880), `Boy's Mabinogion' (1881), and `Boy's Percy' (1882). Another work, an account of North Carolina similar to that of Florida, was contracted for and was definitely planned, but, owing to aggravating infirmities, could not be completed. -- *1* Ward's `Memorial', p. xx. f. *2* They are named in the `Bibliography'. *3* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxviii. --