Too little attention has been paid to this progression of Lincoln
through literature into politics. The ease with which he drifted
from one to the other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show
a certain slackness, a certain aimlessness, at the bottom of his
nature? Had it, in a way, some sort of analogy--to compare
homespun with things Olympian--to the vein of frivolity in the
great Caesar? One is tempted to think so. Surely, here was one
of those natures which need circumstance to compel them to
greatness and which are not foredoomed, Napoleon-like, to seize
greatness. Without encroaching upon the biographical task, one
may borrow from biography this insistent echo: the anecdotes of
Lincoln sound over and over the note of easy-going good nature;
but there is to be found in many of the Lincoln anecdotes an
overtone of melancholy which lingers after one's impression of
his good nature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical
atmosphere, we find ourselves thinking of him at first as a
little too good-humored, a little too easy-going, a little prone
to fall into reverie. We are not surprised when we find his
favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be
proud."
This enigmatical man became President in his fifty-second year.
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