sible, up to this time, to specify just what books had entered into Lincoln's cultural reading. There is evidence that this material included the English Bible, certain of Shakespeare's plays, "Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," Weems's Washington, Statutes of Indiana, a history of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Just what knowledge he had of poetry and of fiction is indefinite. He was familiar 1 with current political parties and issues, both State and national, and had arrived at settled convictions upon matters of public interest. He had already exhibited the elan of a politician and had ambitions looking toward the future. During this year he made a well-considered speech before the legislature on the State bank issue, which a capable student of Lincoln regards as "an able argument, logical, convincing, and expressed in the best English." The speech is indeed expressed in excellent English, and shows a studious grasp of the subject discussed. 2 1 Herndon and Weik, I:37-45. Herndon speaks of Webster's Spelling Book and the American Speller, Pike's Arithmetic, Murray's English Reader, and Esop's Fables as among Lincoln's school books in Indiana. He quotes John Hanks on Abe's devotion to reading, reproduces specimens of his juvenile verse and mentions two prose compositions, one on the "American Government" and another on "Temperance." Arnold, in his "Abraham Lincoln," includes Burns's poems in his early reading, p. 21. 2 Richards, "Abraham Lincoln, the Lawyer-Statesman," pp. 4, 5. Lincoln was now a man of advancing reputation in the State, recognized as a resourceful debater and as a man of integrity and ideals. On January 27 of this same year, he gave before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield a written address on the "Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." The language of this address as a whole is over-rhetorical, as might be expected from a young man ambitious as an orator, self-instructed in the art of expression, and still under the spell of frontier standards. But the address has the substance of high ideals and moral convictions as well as reflection. It contains the following quotable passage on law enforcement : Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of "seventy-six" did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spellingbooks, and in almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. This address, instinct with noble feeling and sincerity, foreshadows the deep devotion to duty and the natural refinement of spirit which Lincoln, under the impress of experience, so often exhibited. It is prophetic of the high seriousness and simplicity which gradually matured toward the faultless diction in which he conceived the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. The student of Lincoln's works is sometimes tempted to ascribe his command of good English to genius.1 He does indeed appear to have had some native gift of style. There is a letter of Lincoln's, dated April 1, 1838, to Mrs. O. H. Browning, anent his courtship of Mary Owen and their contemplated marriage. The story is familiar to readers of Lincoln's biography, but it is told in this letter with a I Compare C. W. Eliot, in “The New Definition of an Educated Man." 2 Page 291, Appendix. freedom and elegance of diction which suggests the artist in narration. As a composition the piece engages greater interest with the re-reading. It betrays a certain Addisonian acumen for words that goes far to persuade one that the writer held within his endowments the possibility of a successful essayist. The informal type of expression is lighted up with delicacy of humor and a touch of literary allusion. The lady in question, when he had first seen her, was "over-size," but now had grown "a fair match for Falstaff." Although he had misgivings about his affection for her, he determined he would make no concession to dishonor, but would stand "firm as the surge-repelling rock."1 I For a ludicrously puritanic estimate of the letter to Mrs. Browning, see Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 181. Herndon takes a more cheerful view of it, p. 156 ff. CHAPTER II INTIMATIONS OF A PUBLIC CAREER A good man, through obscurest aspiration, -Goethe The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.-Johnson. In the year 1839, Lincoln, in company with E. D. Baker and two other Whigs of local repute, engaged in a public debate in Springfield against Stephen A. Douglas and three other Democrats, on the relative merits of the Independent Treasury and the National Bank. Aside from being Mr. Lincoln's first public appearance against Douglas-an early study for the great debate nearly twenty years in the future-his speech on this occasion contains abundant evidence of his intimate acquaintance with public documents and his capacity to gather and assemble details of fact. There is a careful and convincing arrangement of the materials of his argument, and a competent knowledge of the Con |