Abraham Lincoln

George Gordon Byron

Posted on May 10, 2016 Updated on May 10, 2016

What he likes better than anything else is to stretch himself on the old sofa and read. Shakespeare is continually in his hands, and he quotes out-of-the-way passages from this author. He has several editions of Byron’s “Don Juan”, and they are all freely underlined. He is extremely fond of Burns, and once he reads aloud to his partner one of the Scotsman’s poems. The early poems of young Walt Whitman are also discussed in this office. They make a strong impression on Lincoln ; he takes the book home with him, but promptly brings it back again next day, with the grim remark that it has narrowly escaped being “purified in fire”, for “the women didn’t like it.” Of other new books, he will merely flutter the leaves, let them drop on the floor, close his eyes, and mur- muringly repeat the substance of what he has just been reading. 

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“There is no Frigate like a Book,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “to take us Lands away.” Though the young Lincoln never left the frontier, would never leave America, he traveled with Byron’s Childe Harold to Spain and Portugal, the Middle East and Italy; accompanied Robert Burns to Edinburgh; and followed the English kings into battle with Shakespeare. As he explored the wonders of literature and the history of the country, the young Lincoln, already conscious of his own power, developed ambitions far beyond the expectations of his family and neighbors. It was through literature that he was able to transcend his surroundings.
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