for authority which Napoleon had is lacking in these others.
Their basal inspiration seems to resemble the impulse of the artist to
express, rather than the impulse of the man of action to possess. Had
it not been for secession, Lee would probably have ended his days as an
exemplary superintendent of West Point. And what of Lincoln? He dabbled
in politics, early and without success; he left politics for the law,
and to the law he gave during many years his chief devotion. But the
fortuitous break-up of parties, with the revival of the slavery issue,
touched some hidden spring; the able provincial lawyer felt again the
political impulse; he became a famous maker of political phrases; and on
this literary basis he became the leader of a party.

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. We
have already seen that his next period, the winter of 1860-61, has its
biographical problems. The impression which he made on the country as
President-elect was distinctly unfavorable. Good humor, or opportunism,
or what you will, brought together in Lincoln's Cabinet at least three
men more conspicuous in the ordinary sense than he was himself. We
forget, today, how insignificant he must have seemed in a Cabinet that
embraced Seward, Came