973.7L63 
 
 Harkness, David James. 
 
 B3H22Li 
 
 
 
 Lincoln and Byron, 
 
 
 Lovers of Liberty. 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lincolnbyronloveOOhark 
 
LINCOLN AND BYRON 
 
 LOVERS OF LIBERTY 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID J. DARKNESS 
 
250 copies of this monograph 
 
 have been printed by the Department of Lincolniana 
 
 of Lincoln Memorial University. 
 
 This is Copy Number. 
 
 X? 
 
^o 
 
 LINCOLN AND BYRON 
 
 LOVERS OF LIBERTY 
 
 By 
 
 David J. Harkness 
 
 Department of English 
 
 Lincoln Memorial University 
 
 Harrogate, Tennessee 
 
 'And what is writ is writ - 
 Would it were worthier." 
 — Byron 
 
 
 Published by 
 
 Lincoln Memorial University 
 
 Department of Lincolniana 
 
 Harrogate, Tennessee 
 1941 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The following is the first in a proposed series of 
 monographs dealing with the literary interests of Abraham 
 Lincoln. The author wishes to express his gratitude to 
 Dr. M. L. Houser of Peoria, Illinois, who has been of 
 inestimable help in gathering material and ideas for these 
 studies. Dr. Houser's association library of Books Lincoln 
 Read was used by the author in the preparation of these 
 articles. 
 
 Appreciation is also expressed to the following asso- 
 ciates of the author at Lincoln Memorial University foi 
 suggestions and inspiration: Mr. R. Gerald McMurtry, 
 Director of the Department of Lincolniana; Dr. Stewart 
 W. McClelland, President; and Dr. Robert L. Kincaid, 
 Executive Vice-President and Editor of THE LINCOLN 
 HERALD. 
 
<f 11.1 LIS 
 
 LINCOLN AND BYRON - LOVERS OF LIBERTY 
 
 In a day when human liberty is being challenged and destroyed the world over, 
 it is well for us as true lovers of democracy to look back to two men who championed 
 the cause of individual freedom and gave their lives for this ideal. Abraham Lincoln 
 dreamed that human slaves might be "forever free" and George Noel Gordon, Lord 
 Byron "dreamed that Greece might still be free," to use the actual words of these 
 patriots. If these great figures were to return to earth today they would find certain 
 parts of the world in the slavery of dictatorships and totalitarian states and the valiant 
 little country which represents the classical culture of Homer in degradation. 
 
 Since Lincoln and Byron were similar in their political views and in their 
 great interest in freedom, it is only natural that the Great Emancipator should have 
 admired the poetry of the Romantic Rebel. To a certain extent the backgrounds and 
 early experiences of these men were quite similar. In spite of congenital lameness, 
 young Byron engaged in horseback riding, boxing, fencing, cricket, and swimming, 
 just as young Abe Lincoln found much pleasure in such sports as wrestling, bowling, 
 and hand-ball. While in school at Harrow Byron read enormously, thereby obtaining 
 a rich and varied fund on which to draw for the apt allusions which distinguished his 
 writings. Lincoln's early study is well known and he too was storing up a rich 
 treasure-chest of knowledge which would help him develop the beautiful style of 
 speech and writing which marks him as a literary artist. 
 
 Lincoln and Byron were contemporaries. In 1824 Lincoln was in Indiana, read- 
 ing even at that early age some of the poetry written by Lord Byron, who that year 
 was fighting in Greece and far from home, in so far as he had a home, dying of 
 fever. Byron in his thirty-sixth year, a martyr to the cause of Greek independence, 
 was singing in his own way that line which young Abe Lincoln wrote with a turkey- 
 feather pen at Pigeon Creek: "Time! What an empty vapor 'tis!" This line sounds 
 like Byron's poetry, for it expresses the transitory nature of man's life on earth 
 just as the Romantic poet so often wrote of it. 
 
 Lincoln and Byron had similar tastes in literature. Both admired Shakespeare's 
 KING LEAR. Young Lincoln heard Jack Kelso recite passages from the Bard of Avon 
 during the New Salem years and while he was President he saw Edwin Forrest and 
 John E. McCullough play Lear at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln was so pleased with 
 McCullough's performance on one occasion that he asked the actor to come to his box 
 between acts, where he praised his interpretation of the role very highly. It was 
 while a student at Harrow that Byron recited the storm scene from KING LEAR 
 in a very stormy manner, a performance which was greatly admired by his contem- 
 poraries. It is an interesting digression to note that Byron's Alma Mater was the 
 origin of the name Harrow Hall, which was suggested by Lady Pauncefote as an 
 appropriate name for the little school started by the Reverend Myers at Harrogate, 
 
 Page three 
 
(Courtesy of Lincoln National Life Foundation') 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 There is a tradition among Lincoln students that Charles A Barry, the 
 artist of the above portrait, likely had in mind the features of Lord Byron 
 when he produced this crayon drawing of Lincoln from life. This portrait, 
 which is instantly recognized as the Railsplitter, has certain characteristics 
 definitely reminiscent of the Romantic Poet. It has been designated by some 
 Lincoln students as "The Greek God" and certainly the picture brings out 
 Lincoln's Byronic characteristics in an unusually vivid and interesting manner. 
 
 Tennessee which later be- 
 came Lincoln Memorial 
 University, a living me- 
 morial to a man who loved 
 the poetry of life and the 
 freedom of all mankind. 
 
 Byron's activity and 
 zeal in defense of the 
 natural rights of man are 
 definitely comparable to 
 Lincoln's ettorts in free- 
 ing the slaves. Byron left 
 tne land of his lathers to 
 help rescue the Greeks 
 from Turkish oppression. 
 JNoble impulses stirred 
 him to become the de- 
 liverer of Greece. He was 
 engaged in the cause of 
 Right and Freedom and he 
 rendered important serv- 
 ice to the country which 
 has given the world such 
 great contributions in art 
 and literature. Byron is 
 highly respected in Greece 
 today for his sacrifices 
 and services in the cause 
 of Greek independence. 
 He was willing to give 
 his life for this cause, just 
 as Lincoln was ultim- 
 ately called upon to sacri- 
 fice his life for the cause 
 of human freedom. 
 
 The efforts for liberty in the last years of the lives of Lincoln and Byron were 
 decidedly similar. Byron was riding madly, despite his crippled foot, to rally the 
 Greek troops to the colors. Lincoln was visiting the soldiers in camps and hospitals, 
 cheering and comforting them. Byron was pacifying mutineers in his tent while 
 he lay ill with malaria, arranging plans, even while he was on his deathbed, to drive 
 the Turks out of Greece. Lincoln was making a trip to Hampton Roads, doing 
 all in his power to bring about peace and restore the Confederacy in brotherly 
 love to the Union. 
 
 Both these patriots met an untimely death and both were mourned and 
 eulogized by their associates in the struggle for liberty for all mankind. As Byron 
 
 Page four 
 
lay dying at Missolonghi 
 the thunder was roaring 
 and pealing like the sum- 
 mons of doom. Likewise 
 thunderous pandemonium 
 broke out after the inci- 
 dent at Ford's Theatre. 
 Lincoln's last hours were 
 breathed amid the hushed 
 awe of his people, who 
 stood in profound grief 
 at the blow destiny had 
 dealt the nation by the 
 assassin's hand. The 
 Greeks, to whom Byron's 
 name was already a leg- 
 end, waited for news and 
 when the word of his 
 death reached them they 
 cried aloud: "The great 
 man is dead." It was by 
 similar words attributed to 
 Stanton that the heroic 
 legend of Lincoln was for- 
 ever epitomized : "Now he 
 belongs to the ages." 
 
 Lincoln was like 
 Byron in that he rose to 
 national prominence in a 
 very short time. Byron's 
 fame was like a burnii 
 
 (Courtesy of Frederick H. 
 LORD BYRON 
 
 York City~) 
 
 This is perhaps the best known portrait of Lord Byron. In its classic 
 Greek lines this likeness seems especially appropriate for the poet who is 
 known as the Greek Emancipator. 
 
 flame, leaping suddenly to the heights. After the 
 publication of the first two cantos of CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE he 
 said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." The Lincoln-Douglas debates 
 made the Railsplitter a national figure in spite of his defeat by the vote of the state 
 legislature. Charles H. Ray wrote to him on July 27, 1858: "You are like Byron, 
 who woke up one morning and found himself famous. People wish to know about 
 you. You have sprung at once from the position of a capital fellow and a leading 
 lawyer in Illinois, to a national reputation." 
 
 Both men were romantic by nature. Lincoln loved romanticism in poetry, as 
 evidenced by his interest in the poetry of Burns and Byron. Byron's Don Juan is a 
 "man of feeling," "a natural man" inclined to rely upon the natural goodness which 
 meant so much to the romantics. Lincoln was himself a "man of feeling," with 
 inherent goodness and sympathy for his fellow-man. He loved the rugged aspects 
 of nature, as did Byron, who is noted for his interest in the sea, in cataracts, in 
 
 Page five 
 
mountain peaks, in thunder and lightning. Lincoln loved Byron's emphasis on the 
 feelings, emotions, and imagination, the melancholy side of life, and the rebellion 
 against classical restraint. 
 
 Byron and Lincoln both loved satire. Lincoln wrote satirical doggerel titled 
 "Adam and Eve's Wedding Song" in honor of the marriage of his sister, Sarah 
 Lincoln, to Aaron Grigsby of Gentry ville, Indiana in 1826. Later, it has been said, he 
 wrote "The Chronicles of Reuben," a rather risque satire in prose dealing with the 
 comical mix-up of the Grigsby brothers after the double-wedding celebration. Lincoln 
 also wrote at least a part of the "Rebecca Letters," attacking James Shields as an 
 official and also a personal lampoon hitting at Shields's manners, clothes, and struttings 
 in Springfield society, reminiscent of the social satire in Byron's DON JUAN and 
 CHILDE HAROLD. Byron was a satirist in verse. He takes his hero Childe 
 Harold on a fun-poking tour of Europe. He laughs at society in Spain, the harems 
 of Turkey, and the Russian court. Lincoln's sense of humor is well known; he could 
 always see the funny side of any situation and was able to put his humor into 
 anecdotes and clever satirical verse. 
 
 Lincoln's favorite poet was Shakespeare, his second favorite Burns, with Byron 
 ranking third. Mr. R. Gerald McMurtry, Director of the Department of Lincolniana 
 of Lincoln Memorial University, has written a very interesting monograph entitled 
 LINCOLN KNEW SHAKESPEARE, in which he shows evidences of Lincoln's 
 wide knowledge of the poetry and plays of the English master. We know that "The 
 Cotter's Saturday Night," "Tarn o' Shanter," "A Man's A Man For A' That," and 
 "Holy Willie's Prayer" by the Scotch Poet were familiar to Abe Lincoln. 
 
 Byron's poems, which he first read when a boy, never entirely lost their charm 
 for the Railsplitter. It was as a boy in Indiana that he learned to love poetry. In 
 his four school readers alone he found and read with absorbing interest the choice 
 poems of several major English poets, while in the libraries to which he had access, 
 notably those of Judge Pitcher and Judge Brackenridge, he reveled in the poetry 
 of Burns and Byron. Judge Pitcher, who was the first resident attorney in Rockport, 
 Indiana, once said that at an early day he had a good library of standard works and 
 that he not only lent Lincoln books but also advised him regarding his studies. 
 
 Lincoln was fond of Jack Kelso, the fisherman-philosopher of New Salem, and 
 with him read Byron's poetry. Kelso was always busy fishing, trapping, and reading. 
 Lincoln was attracted to this happy-go-lucky ne'er-do-well and through him first 
 became acquainted with some of the classics of literature. We can picture these two 
 products of the prairies sitting on a high bank overlooking the peaceful Sangamon 
 River, enjoying the rhythmical beauty of Byron's verse and reveling in the heart- 
 stirring sentiments which are so well expressed therein. Abe Lincoln no doubt found 
 in Byron an answer to his own seeking and a reflection of his views on freedom and 
 the integrity of the individual man. 
 
 Lincoln continued to read this poet of the Romantic Era in Springfield. Joshua 
 F. Speed, probably the closest friend Lincoln ever had, once said in Springfield that 
 the Railsplitter "could quote more poetry than any man in town." DON JUAN 
 
 Page six 
 
seems to have been a special favorite, for a gentleman who visited the old law-office 
 of Lincoln and Herndon once related the following story: "I took up carelessly, as 
 I stood thinking, a handsome octavo volume lying on the office table. It opened so 
 persistently at one place, as I handled it, that I looked to see what it was, and found 
 somebody had thoroughly thumbed the pages of DON JUAN. I knew Mr. 
 Herndon was not a man to dwell on it, and it darted through my mind that perhaps 
 it had been a favorite with Lincoln. 'Did Mr. Lincoln ever read this book?' I said 
 hurriedly. 'That book!' said Herndon, looking up from his writing and taking it 
 out of my hand. 'Oh, yes; he read it often. It is the office copy'." This incident 
 shows that Lincoln was so fond of the book that he kept it near at hand. Since this 
 was "the office copy" he evidently had a copy at home also. He read this satire of 
 Byron's when he visited the Todd home in Lexington. The Todd books were a 
 varied assortment, and poking about in these well-stocked bookcases was one of 
 Lincoln's chief diversions. Absorbed in some interesting volume, he would sit for 
 hours in the rear parlor or in the passageway upstairs where some of the books 
 were kept, wholly oblivious to the romping and chatter of the Todd children. 
 In DON JUAN he must have found much food for thought, for in Byron's keen 
 analysis of the foibles and weaknesses of mankind he found a viewpoint similar to 
 his own poetic voice that spoke in rhythm with his own soul. 
 
 General Egbert L. Viele in his tribute to Lincoln says that he was a man 
 of the highest degree of self-culture, in so far as regards a knowledge of the 
 most beautiful and sublime writings in the English language. "His memory 
 was photographic in character. He could repeat from memory almost any 
 passage after he had read it once, and nothing delighted him so much as to sit 
 down of an evening among his immediate friends and repeat whole passages from 
 Byron. . . . Most of the grand and sublime passages in literature were familiar 
 to him." In his account of a trip made with Lincoln, Chase, and Stanton, General 
 Viele says: "With a mind well stored with the grandest and most beautiful in 
 English literature ... he would sit for hours during the trip repeating whole 
 cantos of Byron. He was as familiar with helles lettres as many men who make 
 much more pretension to 'culture.' " We may be certain that in his reading of Byron 
 Lincoln knew those stanzas which are one of the finest products of Byron's great 
 metrical power. Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln's secretaries in the White House, also 
 prove the Emancipator's knowledge of Byron's poems. 
 
 Byron expressed the inarticulate sentiments of Lincoln's soul and seemed to speak 
 to the very heart of this moody man, who preferred what he called "little sad songs." 
 Lincoln seemed to like all songs which had for their theme the rapid flight of time, 
 decay, or the recollections of early days. Lincoln's writing of the line "Time! What 
 an empty vapor 'tis" has been mentioned before. Another Byronic poem written by 
 Lincoln is the one beginning: 
 
 My childhood's home I see again, 
 
 And sadden with the view; 
 And still, as memory crowds my brain, 
 
 There's pleasure in it too. 
 
 Page seven 
 
O Memory! thou midway world 
 
 'Twixt earth and paradise, 
 Where things decayed and loved ones lost 
 
 In dreamy shadows rise. 
 And, freed from all that's earthly vile, 
 Seem hallowed, pure and bright, 
 Like scenes in some enchanted isle 
 All bathed in liquid light. 
 This sounds like the following lines from Byron's WERNER: 
 He seems 
 To have seen better days, as who has not 
 Who has seen yesterday? 
 or this quotation from THE AGE OF BRONZE: 
 
 The "good old times" — all times 
 when old are good. 
 Noah Brooks once said that "the music of Lincoln's thought was always in the 
 minor key," a note which is certainly characteristic of the poetry of Byron. William 
 H. Herndon said Lincoln's "melancholy dripped from him as he walked." Henry 
 C. Whitney said that in his sad moments the mind of Lincoln "gravitated toward the 
 weird, sombre, and mystical." Lincoln in his brooding melancholy was a Byronic 
 type and naturally found in the Romantic Poet a nature akin to his own. This 
 melancholy strain is seen in the poem which Lincoln wrote dealing with Matthew 
 Gentry, a former schoolmate of his in Indiana who had lost his mind. The poem 
 begins: 
 
 But here's an object more of dread 
 
 Than aught the grave contains — 
 A human form with reason fled, 
 While wretched life remains. 
 This sounds like Byron's THE PRISONER OF CHILLON: 
 O God! it is a fearful thing 
 To see the human form take wing 
 In any shape, in any mood. 
 
 In tracing the development of Lincoln's interest in specific poems by Byron 
 it is interesting to note that on the morning of Tuesday, October 20, 1840 Lincoln 
 borrowed a copy of Byron's poems from the local teacher in the log school house in 
 Albion, Illinois, the home town of Isaas P. Walker, the Democratic presidential 
 elector, with whom Lincoln was to hold a joint debate. Later in the day, in the 
 course of the debate, Lincoln, dressed in blue jeans, presented a striking contrast to 
 the faultlessly dressed Walker. Very appropriately, Lincoln gave the following 
 quotation from Byron: 
 
 He, the unhoped but unforgotten lord, 
 
 The long self-exiled chieftain is restored. 
 
 Not that he came, but came not long before. 
 Page eight 
 
This very appropriate quotation, delivered in Lincoln's individual style, is said to 
 have taken the wind out of Walker's sails. Thus Lincoln was able to choose a 
 quotation from Byron which suited the occasion and his own remarks. 
 
 In the fall of 1854 Lincoln and some fellow-lawyers drove over from Urhana, 
 the county seat, to West Urbana (now Champaign) to see the new town and while 
 there stopped at Henry C. Whitney's law office. Lincoln took down a well-worn 
 copy of Byron, which, Mr. Whitney says, no boy's library at that time was without, 
 and, readily turning to the third canto of CHILDE HAROLD, read aloud from 
 the 34th verse, beginning: 
 
 There is a very life in our despair 
 to and including the 45th verse: 
 
 He who ascends to mountain tops shall find 
 
 Those loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow; 
 
 He who surpasses or subdues mankind 
 
 Must look down on the hate of those below; 
 
 Though high above the sun of glory glow, 
 
 And far beneath, the Earth and Ocean spread, 
 
 Round him are very rocks and loudly blow 
 
 Contending tempests on his naked head, 
 
 And thus reward the toils which to those summits lead. 
 
 No doubt Lincoln in his magnanimity, his broad sympathy, and his forgiving 
 spirit found solace in this selection. Whitney says: "This poetry was very familiar 
 to him evidently; he looked specifically for, and found it with no hesitation, and 
 read it with a fluency that indicated that he had read oftentimes before. I think 
 I am justified in saying that he read it sadly and earnestly, if, not indeed, reverently." 
 There is no doubt that Lincoln saw himself in these stanzas — his own great efforts, 
 which were met with questionings, with hostility, and ultimately with the taking of 
 his life, which "thus reward the toils which to those summits lead." 
 
 This incident shows that Lincoln must have had a premonition that he was 
 destined to ascend to the mountain tops of human achievements. Lincoln was 
 psychic; he foresaw events in his life and even prophesied his own tragic end. He 
 seemed to have an inherent belief in his destiny, feeling that "destiny had touched 
 him with her wand and marked him for her own," as Whitney says. He no doubt 
 liked this quotation from Byron, expressing as it does the heights to which certain 
 individuals are destined: 
 
 The star which rules thy destiny 
 
 Was ruled ere earth began by me. 
 
 The hour arrived and it became 
 
 A wandering mass of shapeless flame, 
 
 A bright deformity on high, 
 
 The monster of the upper sky. 
 
 This belief that coming events cast their shadows before is shown in Lincoln's 
 liking of Byron's THE DREAM, which Ward Hill Lamon says was a favorite poem 
 and one from which he had often heard Lincoln repeat the following lines: 
 
 Page nine 
 
Sleep hath its own world, 
 
 A boundary between the things misnamed 
 
 Death and existence. Sleep hath its own world, 
 
 And a wide realm of reality. 
 
 And dreams in their development have breath, 
 
 And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy; 
 
 They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, 
 
 They take a weight from off our waking toils, 
 
 They do divide our being. 
 Lincoln believed in dreams and felt that they were avant-couriers of destiny, 
 haunting him all his life and prophesying his fate. "I can't help being in this way," 
 he said, "my father was so before me," stating that his father believed strongly in 
 dreams and felt that they controlled man's life to a great extent. Lincoln could 
 say with Byron (in his poem DARKNESS): "I had a dream which was not all a 
 dream." He told Mrs. Lincoln of a dream in which he had seen his own body lying 
 in state in the East Room of the White House. He felt that his career had been 
 foreshadowed in the incident of his seeing two images of himself in a mirror on the 
 evening of his nomination in Chicago, saying that the shadowy ghost meant death 
 during his second term. He often recalled the same dream which he had before 
 such important military events as the firing on Fort Sumter; the battles of Bull Run, 
 Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, and Wilmington; and Sherman's 
 victory in the South. The most famous of all was the dream Lincoln related on 
 Good Friday, 1865, to several Cabinet members. This dream concerned a ship 
 "moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." Lamon says that 
 "the natural bent of Lincoln's mind, aided by early associations, inclined him to 
 read books which tended to strengthen his early convictions on occult subjects." 
 Lincoln's interest in Byron's poetry is a case in point, for the Romantic poet often 
 wrote of what Lincoln expressed as "matters strangely in keeping with my own 
 thoughts — supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc." Certainly Lincoln's curios- 
 ity about dreams would have led him to find much pleasure in another quotation 
 from THE DREAM: 
 
 I would recall a vision which I dream'd 
 
 Perchance in sleep — for in itself a thought, 
 
 A slumbering thought, is capable of years, 
 
 And curdles a long life into one hour. 
 
 * ¥■ * 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had an ear for good poetry. His liking for Byron proves 
 that he had a sense of rhythm, for so many of Byron's poems are written in anapestic 
 verse, the most beautiful meter in our language. The melody of this measure pleased 
 Lincoln, who learned to love this type of verse by reading Byron's STANZAS TO 
 AUGUSTA. The following lines from the poem show the lilting cadence of this 
 measure: 
 
 In the desert a fountain is springing, 
 
 In the wild waste there still is a tree, 
 And a bird in the solitude singing. 
 
 Which speaks to my spirit of thee. 
 Page ten 
 
We know that Lincoln's favorite poem was MORTALITY, written by the Scotch 
 poet William Knox. When one reads the first line of this poem, "O why should 
 the spirit of mortal be proud?" he is reminded of the anapestic meter in Byron's THE 
 DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB, beginning: "The Assyrian came down 
 like the wolf on the fold," a parallel which Lincoln himself no doubt noted. 
 
 The mood of Byron's poems seemed to suit the melancholy, introspective nature 
 of the Railsplitter. Lincoln could read Byron for hours, finding in his poetry 
 a reflection of his own thoughts and ideas and recognizing in the Romantic Rebel, 
 with his gift for song, a kindred spirit. Abe Lincoln could be alone with his thoughts 
 and his deep meditations, "in solitude, where we are least alone," as Byron expressed 
 it in CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 Lincoln's love of words and his great desire to improve his speech and his style 
 of writing may well have grown out of his reading of the following quotation from 
 DON JUAN: 
 
 But words are things, and a small drop of ink, 
 
 Falling like dew upon a thought, produces 
 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. 
 Perhaps Lincoln thought of those lines when he signed the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, for his words, growing out of long and serious thought, were to make people 
 the world over think on the ideal of human freedom. 
 
 The quality of sadness, so apparent in Lincoln's nature, is well expressed in the 
 following lines from DON JUAN: 
 
 And if I laugh at any mortal thing 
 
 'Tis that I may not weep. 
 This sounds like the incident in a Cabinet meeting when Lincoln, upon being chided 
 for his seeming levity in the midst of serious affairs of state, is said to have remarked 
 that he had to tell a joke now and then to keep from crying. On September 22, 
 1862 just before Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet he read 
 the members two chapters from Artemus Ward, adding when he had finished, 
 "Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night 
 and day, if I did not laugh I should die." 
 
 Lincoln's reverence for the Father of Our Country makes one quite sure that 
 he read and greatly enjoyed the tributes written to George Washington by Lord 
 Byron. In the ODE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE we read: 
 The Cincinnatus of the West, 
 
 Whom envy dared not hate, 
 Bequeathed the name of Washington 
 
 To make man blush there was but one! 
 In THE AGE OF BRONZE the following eulogy is found: 
 Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er 
 Shall sink while there's an echo left to air. 
 In DON JUAN one finds the following lines: 
 Washington, 
 Whose every battle field is holy ground 
 
 Page eleven 
 
and later in the poem we read: 
 
 George Washington had thanks and nought beside, 
 Except the all-cloudless glory (which few men's is) 
 To free his country. 
 Here we find Byron's love of freedom again and it is only natural that Lincoln, a 
 kindred spirit and lover of liberty, should read and enjoy these lines, which no doubt 
 inspired his own eulogy on Washington, delivered before the Springfield Washing- 
 tonian Temperance Society on February 22, 1842: "Washington is the mightiest 
 name on earth ... In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked death- 
 less splendor leave it shining on." 
 
 Lincoln's love of liberty caused him to conceive of this great principle as the 
 shining hope of humanity. He once said, "We shall nobly save or meanly lose the 
 last best hope of earth." — a warning which holds even greater significance for lovers 
 of liberty today. On another occasion he spoke of "the principle of 'Liberty to all'— 
 the principle that clears the path for all — gives hope to all — and, by consequence, 
 enterprise and industry to all." Again he spoke of "that sentiment in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, 
 but hope to all the world, for all future time." At still another time he referred to 
 liberty as "the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world," exhorting 
 "every lover of liberty" to cherish respect for the law in order that democracy as a way 
 of life might be preserved. He once said, "The world has never had a good defini- 
 tion of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of 
 one," a statement which might well apply to us today. Perhaps in his reading of 
 Byron's poetry Lincoln noted the poet's apostrophe to Liberty in his "Sonnet On 
 Chillon," a quotation which seems especially fitting when we think of these two great 
 martyrs to the cause of liberty: 
 
 Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! 
 
 Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, 
 For there thy habitation is the heart — 
 
 The heart which love of thee alone can bind; 
 
 Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 
 And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
 
 Lincoln loved the out-of-doors and he no doubt enjoyed the following quotation 
 from CHILDE HAROLD, for it seems to express his own liking for nature: 
 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
 There is society, where none intrudes, 
 By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 
 
 I love not man the less, but Nature more. 
 The melancholy aspects of nature appealed to Lincoln and we can picture him lying 
 on the banks of the Sangamon River reading the following selection from Byron's 
 MANFRED, finding a familiar note which seemed to fit the pastoral beauty of the 
 scenery around New Salem: 
 
 Pave twelve 
 
When the moon is on the wave, 
 And the glow-worm in the grass, 
 And the meteor on the grave, 
 And the wisp on the morass; 
 When the falling stars are shooting, 
 And the answered owls are hooting, 
 And the silent leaves are still 
 In the shadow of the hill, 
 Then my soul shall be on thine 
 With a power and with a sign. 
 
 The reception at the White House in 1862, a scene of triumph before the hour 
 of conflict, must have reminded Lincoln of Byron's description of the scene before 
 the battle of Waterloo, which is found in CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE: 
 
 There was a sound of revelry by night, 
 
 And Belgium's capital had gathered then 
 
 Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright , 
 
 The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. 
 
 A thousand hearts beat happily; and when 
 
 Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 
 
 Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, 
 
 And all went merry as a marriage bell. 
 
 But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell. 
 
 The closing line, fraught with the foreboding of doom, would have appealed to 
 Lincoln's psychic nature, which seemed capable of foretelling coming events. One 
 wonders if Lincoln considered the line concerning the marriage bell such an apt 
 expression, for "the fatal first of January," as Lincoln spoke of his wedding day, was 
 for him anything but a merry occasion. Lincoln's misgivings regarding marriage 
 remind one of the fact that when Byron was paying court to Ann Isabella Milbanke, 
 niece of the distinguished Lady Melbourne, he was not so ardent in his suit as he 
 might have been. He offered his betrothed frequent opportunities to retract before 
 the nuptials and even went so far as to arrive three days late for the wedding, going 
 Lincoln one better in his more extreme tardiness in arriving at the altar. His 
 expressions of doubt and his discouragement of the marriage remind one of Lincoln's 
 attitude toward both Mary Todd and "the other Mary" — Mary Owens. It is said 
 that Byron could not utter the ritualistic "with all my worldly goods I thee endow" 
 without a cynical smile at the thought of the dwindling revenues of Newstead Abbey, 
 the ancestral family estate, depleted by his own extravagances. Lincoln, too, no doubt 
 felt that even though the statutes took care of the fact regarding worldly goods 
 Mary Todd was far from marrying into wealth when she became Mrs. Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 In addition to the poems mentioned, Lincoln was also fond of MAZEPPA and 
 THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS and committed to memory long passages from these 
 poems. No doubt Lincoln gained much from his reading of Byron's poetry and 
 this probably influenced the style and poetic expression of such great speeches as 
 
 Page thirteen 
 
the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural, which illustrate " the poetry of 
 speech," as Byron expressed it in CHILDE HAROLD. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Lincoln and Byron stand today as kindred spirits in a great cause. Their 
 eminent example of devotion and self-sacrifice may well be an inspiration to us in 
 the present world conflict. These men seem almost our contemporaries, for their 
 views speak clearly today to all lovers of freedom and democracy. They exemplify 
 the fact that democracy as a way of life holds the greatest good for the greatest 
 number of people, the happiness not only of the individual but the abundant life for 
 the social group as a whole. 
 
 Byron typifies, as no other Englishman, the love of liberty and the hatred of 
 oppression with which throughout his anxious era all Europe was aflame. Lincoln 
 is the most popular American hero, the democratic ideal standing for liberty for all and 
 the spirit of tolerance, understanding, and good-will "with malice toward none, with 
 charity for all." 
 
 Lincoln was only fifteen when Byron died in Greece, but these two great 
 champions of freedom and the rights of man, though they were rather far apart in 
 point of time and place, were near each other in the similarity of their ideas and 
 beliefs. Byron wrote lovely verse, the melody of which was to sing itself into the 
 heart and soul of Lincoln, who was to pass it on to coming generations through 
 the deathless music of his great speeches. Byron inspired Lincoln by his great 
 passion for freedom for all men, a cause for which Lincoln was willing to give "the 
 last full measure of devotion" in order that all classes and all races might be free to 
 enjoy the poetry of life and the blessings of liberty for all time to come. 
 
 Page fourteen 
 
3 0112 002236161