His Style
"No criticism of Mr. Lincoln," says the Spectator, "can be in any sense adequate which does not deal with his astonishing power over words. It is not too much to say of him that he is among the greatest masters of prose ever produced by the English race. Self-educated, or rather not educated at all in the ordinary sense, he contrived to obtain an insight and power in the handling and mechanism of letters such as has been given to but few men in his, or, indeed, in any age. That the gift of oratory should be a natural gift is understandable enough, for the methods of the orator, like those of the poet, are primarily sensuous and may well be instinctive.... Mr. Lincoln did not get his ability to handle prose through his gift of speech. It is in his conduct of the pedestrian portions of composition that Mr. Lincoln's genius for prose style is exhibited." Lincoln avoided the superfluous in writing as in speaking, and style came after the matter of his thought, not as a conscious effort while he was uttering his thoughts. He was not consciously a literary artist. When, in his famous inaugural address, he made "pray" rhyme with "away," it sounded like a false note struck in the movement of a great symphony. That blemish remains like a flaw in a diamond which cannot be removed, but the miracle remains that this master of men and moods accomplished in his speeches and letters what no one else accomplished in his time.