How wonderfully does this publish the supremacy of Abraham Lincoln! Lincoln saw clearly, where others had an indistinct vision. As to gravity, Isaac Newton's vote outweighs all the other millions of men, and from the hour that Lincoln published this letter to Horace Greeley the people saw that Abraham Lincoln had the last fact in the case, saw the whole truth, saw it through and through. By sheer power, clarity of thought, strength of statement and fairness, Abraham Lincoln finally won over not only a lukewarm North, but a bitter South, until to-day he belongs to the ninety millions. If every Northerner should die, the brave and patriotic men of the South living now would defend everything for which Abraham Lincoln lived and died. For at last it is true of both North and South, in Lincoln's own pathetic words, that the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The most striking characteristic of Lincoln's character was his honesty. Some men are naturally secretive: Lincoln was naturally open as sunshine. The exact fact, truth in the hidden parts, openness, these were the innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli laid out the diplomat's career on the line of deceit, and concealing the cards. Lincoln would have made a poor diplomat,—he spread all his cards out on the table. He won from his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, the tribute, "Lincoln was the fairest and most honest man I ever knew." If there ever lived an absolutely honest lawyer, Lincoln was the man. In his work before the jury Lincoln never misrepresented his opponent's position, never twisted the testimony of the witness, never made biassed statements to win a verdict. Once a young lawyer who was opposing Lincoln made a poor plea for his client, and overlooked in his argument before the jury two most important considerations. Lincoln was restless, and greatly disturbed. He seemed to think that the lawyer's client had been badly used, and that his attorney had not given him a fair chance, or guarded his rights. When Lincoln arose, therefore, he began by saying that the opposing counsel had overlooked the most important point. He then stated his opponent's position far more strongly than his lawyer had, and made the best possible statement for his opponent, to the astonishment and indignation of his own client, whom he was defending. Then Lincoln turned to answer these arguments,—with the result that for the first time the two litigants understood the exact facts of both sides, and at Lincoln's request settled the case, withdrawing it from the court.
This love of the exact truth and of fair play and of essential justice shone from the man's face, dominated his arguments, explained his view-point, revealed his character. The nickname, "Honest Old Abe," tells the whole story. Lincoln's final judgment partook of the nature of a final decree and law. At length his pronouncements became like a divine fiat. Take the truth out of Lincoln's character, and it would be like taking the warmth out of a sunbeam. He was truth, he thought truth, loved the truth, surrendered himself to the truth. Under that influence he refused to play politics, or fence for position with Douglas. Once Lincoln won a case so easily that he returned one-half of the retainer's fee, because he felt that he had not earned it.
Here, therefore, is found the secret of Lincoln's unbounded popularity. The common people know their friends, and—what with Lincoln's gentleness, his justice, his boundless kindness, his sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, and his honesty—he became the most beloved man in the Illinois circuit.
Wonderful, too, his literary achievements. His great passages read like the Bible, and have almost the moral authority thereof. If preachers ever wear the old Bible out, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and his speech at Gettysburg, and certain other passages, will furnish texts for another hundred years. One thing is certain,—if Chinese students in their universities two thousand years from now translate any oration out of the English language, as we now translate the speeches of Demosthenes, these Chinese students will translate Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg, and his Second Inaugural Address. Contrary to the usual idea, it may be confidently affirmed that Lincoln was a well equipped man, and had the best possible training for literary style. During the plastic years of memory, Lincoln had three books to study, and two of these are the finest models for style in all literature,—King James' Version of the Bible, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." These are the world's great literary masterpieces, these are the wells of English, pure and undefiled. Upon these two books Robert Burns was reared. To the fact that his mother made him commit to memory forty chapters of the Bible before he was seven years old, John Ruskin attributed his mastery in English style. Second rate men know something about everything. Lincoln was a first rate man who knew everything about some one thing. If you want to make a versatile man, turn a boy loose in a library. If you want a boy to have the note of distinction upon his pages, lock him out of a library, and send him into solitude, with the English Bible, with John Bunyan, and with Æsop's Fables, and let him take these three books into his intellect, as he takes meat and bread into the rich blood of the physical system.
Literary style is the shadow that the soul flings across the page. Style is simply the intellect rushing into exhibition and verbal form. Therefore style is the balance of faculty, symmetry of development. A man is healthy when he does not know that he has a single organ in his body, and a page has style when you do not know where to find the note of distinction. There is a world of difference between "style," and "a style." Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural has style. Carlyle's French Revolution has a style. A perfect Kentucky horse has style. A knee-sprung horse has a style. Down the track comes this perfect horse, eyes flashing, head up, neck arched, feet dancing, not a flaw, not a blemish, upon leg or body. Looking at the glorious creature you exclaim, "That horse has style!" For a horse's style is born of perfect health, perfect lungs and perfect legs, one power balancing another, and all united to produce an absolutely perfect horse. Now comes a horse that represents a collection of ringbones, and glanders, and poll-evil. The one horse limping in front has "a style." Thomas Carlyle's sentences are knee-sprung in front and his phrases are spavined behind, and, therefore, Carlyle has "a style" but not "style." You would know one of his sentences if you saw its skeleton lying in the desert on the road to Khartoum. But on the other hand, Lincoln has "style,"—that indescribable bloom and beauty, born of balance, development and symmetrical growth. Samuel Johnson bulged on the side of Latinity. Daniel Webster is an example of the magnificent, illustrating gorgeousness, opulence, and tropic splendour. Lincoln's sentences are like the Bible and Bunyan,—they are plate-glass windows through which you look to see the jewelled thought beyond.
Lincoln tells us how he made his style. One day he heard a man use the word "demonstrate." For days he cudgelled his brains to find out just what it was to demonstrate a statement. He tells us that when he was about eight years old, he began to be irritated when men used long words that he could not understand. He began the habit of thinking over in the dark before he went to sleep any story he had heard, any statement that had been made, and he tried to substitute for the long hard words little short simple words, that a boy could understand. During those early years, he learned that the rich, racy, homey words are steeped and perfumed with beautiful associations. He knew that words are fossil poetry. What would one not give for the old cloak that Paul had from Troas, a piece of the marble by Phidias, the old threshold worn by the feet of Socrates, an old missal illuminated by Bellini, an old note-book in which Shakespeare wrote the first outline of Hamlet! And the old, sweet, home words with which a mother soothes her babe, with which a lover woos his bride, the old words of God, and home and native land, are the words that are rich in association and in power to move the heart. A bird lines its nest with feathers plucked from its own breast, and the heart steeps the dear, simple speech of home life in sacred associations. So Lincoln cut out all the long Latin words, and substituted the short Saxon ones. Schooled in the two great master books that are the precious life spirit of earth's greatest souls treasured up, he developed his style.
Nor must we overlook the fact that the apparent narrowness of his culture represents a real concentration that made for richness and depth. If one must choose, take the upper Rhine that is a river deep and pure and sweet, and strong for bearing the fleets of war and peace because it is confined between banks and narrowed. But when the Rhine comes down to the flats and approaches the sea and casts off all restraints, and tries to include everything, it turns into a swamp, a morass, losing its power for commerce, and becoming a source of disease and death. Lincoln's culture was limited to the English, and to a mastery of the Constitution—the principles of fundamental justice, to one country—the Republic, to one topic—the Union, and to one reform—Slavery. Beyond all doubt, this concentration of study during the critical years of his career made up a much better preparation than if he had gone to a college, studied half a dozen languages, and fifty or sixty different subjects, and come out well smattered, but poorly educated. It may be doubted whether Lincoln would have been much better off had he been able to read Latin and Greek, and speak French and German. Many people can say "It is a little yellow dog" in Greek, and German, and French, and Italian, and English, but after all it is only a little yellow dog. What educates is the idea, and not the half dozen names of a thing without an idea.
The important thing about a cistern is water, and not many mouths to the pump. Having spent many years learning to express one idea in five ways, one might be glad to trade the five ways of expression for five ideas to be expressed in one way. Edward Everett, once President of Harvard University, could talk in five languages, and at Gettysburg spoke for two hours. Lincoln could speak in one language, and did so for two minutes. But the next morning Mr. Everett wrote to the President: "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Lincoln's one language shames our knowledge of four languages, his three books shame our libraries, and our four years of college culture.
Nor must we overlook the influence upon Lincoln's style of the parables of Jesus and the fables of Æsop. There are two invariable signs of genius in a boy,—one is the serious note, and the other is the picture-making note. All the great things represent serious thinking. The greatest artist of the last century was the most serious one,—Watt, with his Love and Life, and Love and Death, and Mammon, and Hope. The great poems have been the serious poems, the In Memoriam, and the Intimations of Immortality, the Hamlet and the Lear. The great orators have been the serious orators.