Besides these negative recommendations, Mr. Greeley's style had positive merits of a very high order. The source of these was in the native structure of his mind; no training could have conferred them; and it was his original mental qualities, and not any special culture, that pruned his writing of verbiage and redundancies. Whatever he saw, he saw with wonderful distinctness. Whether it happened to be a sound idea or a crotchet, it stood before his mind with the clearness of an object in sunlight. He never groped at and around it, like one feeling in the dark. He saw on which side he could lay hands on it at once with the firmest grasp. It was his vividness of conception which made Mr. Greeley so clear and succinct a writer. He knew precisely what he would be at, and he hastened to say it in the fewest words. His choice of language, though often homely, and sometimes quaint or coarse, was always adapted to his purpose. He had a great command of racy phrases in common use, and frequently gave them an unexpected turn which enlivened his style as by a sudden stroke of wit or grotesque humor. But these touches were rapid, never detained him; he kept grappling with his argument, and hurried on.
This peculiar style was aided by the ardor of his feelings and his vehement moral earnestness. Bent on convincing, he tried to flash his meaning on the minds of his readers in the readiest and manliest way; and he was so impatient to make them see the full force of his main points that he stripped them as naked as he could. This combined clearness of perception, strength of conviction, and hurrying ardor of feeling, were the sources of a style which enabled him to write more than any other journalist of his time, and yet always command attention. But he is a model which none can successfully imitate without his strongly marked individuality and peculiarities of mental structure. We have mentioned his occasional coarseness; but it was merely his preference of strong direct expression to dainty feebleness; he was never vulgar.
Mr. Greeley has contributed to the surprising growth and development of journalism in our time, chiefly by his successful efforts to make it a guide of public opinion, as well as a chronicle of important news. In his hands, it was not merely a mirror which indifferently reflects back the images of all objects on which it is turned, but a creative force; a means of calling into existence a public opinion powerful enough to introduce great reforms and sweep down abuses. He had no faith in purposeless journalism, in journalism which has so little insight into the tendencies of the time that it shifts its view from day to day in accommodation to transient popular caprices. No great object is accomplished without constancy of purpose, and a guide of public opinion can not be constant unless he has a deep and abiding conviction of the importance of what he advocates. Mr. Greeley's remarkable power, when traced back to its main source, will be found to have consisted chiefly in that vigorous earnestness of belief which held him to the strenuous advocacy of measures which he thought conducive to the public welfare, whether they were temporarily popular or not. Journalism may perhaps gain more success as a mercantile speculation by other methods; but it can be respected as a great moral and political force only in the hands of men who have the talents, foresight, and moral earnestness which fit them to guide public opinion. It is in this sense that Mr. Greeley was our first journalist, and nobody can successfully dispute his rank, any more than Mr. Bennett's could be contested in the kind that seeks to float on the current instead of directing its course. The one did most to render our American journals great vehicles of news, the other to make them controlling organs of opinion. Their survivors in the profession have much to learn from both.--New York World.
Knight of the ready pen,
Soldier without a sword,
Such eyes hadst thou for other men,
So true and grand a word!
As Cæsar led his legions
Triumphant over Gaul,
And through still wilder, darker regions,
So thou didst lead us all!
Until we saw the chains
Which bound our brothers' lives,
And heard the groans and felt the pains,
Which come from wearing gyves.
To brave heroic men
The false no more was true;
And what the Nation needed then
Could any soldier do.
