Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: used this power to carry out his own sometimes wise, sometimes selfish, purposes; to deceive and to dominate; the other for the expression of truth and the persuasion of his fellowmen. Napoleon's literary art was the making of phrases which pierced like a Corsican knife or tingled the blood like the call of a trumpet. His words went to their mark quick as a stroke of lightning. When he speaks it is as if an earthquake had passed under one's feet. Lincoln's style is very different; heroic, appealing, gracious or humorous, it does not so much startle as melt the heart. These men were alike in this -- that they learned to express themselves by dint of long practice, and both in youth wrote much nonsense. Napoleon in his young days wrote romance and history; Lincoln wrote verse and composed speeches. Napoleon failed as a literary man; Lincoln certainly did not make any great success as a lyceum lecturer; in fact, his style was at its best only when his whole heart was enlisted. Lincoln's style, at its best, is characterized by great simplicity and directness, which in themselves are artistic qualities. In addition there is an agreeable cadence, not over-done except in one curious instance, -- a passage of the Second Inaugural, -- where it deflects into actual rhythm and rhyme: chapter{Section 4 Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- That this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. This does not spoil, but it somewhat injures, one of the most memorable of his writings. Then there is in Lincoln a quaintness, a homeliness and humor of illustration, along with a most engaging frankness and intellectual honesty. The reader has both an intellectual and moral satisfaction in the clearness and fairness of the statement. All this affects agreeably the lit...