d or
phrase must be searched for until it is found. Perhaps you have read Mr.
Barrie's inimitable story "Sentimental Tommy," and you will remember how
Tommy failed to write the prize essay because he couldn't think of the
right word, and would be satisfied with no other. Well, that is the
spirit. Somebody has said that "easy writing makes hard reading," and
this is especially true of poetry. Inspiration doesn't extend to
technic--that must be acquired, like any art, with infinite pains.

Of the three poets, Lanier, Timrod, and Hayne, Lanier was by far the
greatest, and has even become, in a small way, the centre of a cult; but
his voice, while often pure and sweet, lacks the strength needed to
carry it down the ages. He is like a little brook making beautiful some
meadow or strip of woodland; but only mighty rivers reach the ocean.
Lanier is memorable not so much for his work as for the gallant fight he
made against the consumption which he had contracted as the result of
exposure in the Confederate army during the Civil War. The war also
played a disastrous part in the lives of both Hayne and Timrod, for it
impoverished both of them, and did much to hasten the latter's death.

Timrod, too, rose occasionally to noble utterance, but his voice is
fainter and his talent more slender than Lanier's. His life was a
painful one, marred by poverty and disease, and he died at the age of
thirty-eight. Hayne's work is even less important, for he did not, like
Timrod and Lanier, touch an occasional height of inspired utterance. His
name is cherished in his native state of South Carolina, and in Georgia,
where his last years were spent; but his poems are little read
elsewhere.

Timrod and Hayne were both born at Charleston, South Carolina, as was a
third poet and novelist, who, in his day, loomed far larger than either
of them, but who is now almost forgotten, except by students of American
literature--William Gilmore Simms. Few American writers have produced so
much--eighteen volumes of verse, three dramas, thirty-five novels and
volumes of short stories, and about as many more books of history,
biography and miscellany--and none, of like prominence in his day, has
dropped more completely out of sight. In common with the other Southern
writers we have mentioned, Simms lacked self-restraint and the power of
self-criticism.

Genius has been defined as the capacity for taking pains; and perhaps it
is because Southern writers have