dured a great
deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of
kindness not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it." But the gentle
nature that such words express, and that made itself deeply felt by those
that were nearest him, cannot but have suffered from want of
appreciation. With all this added to the larger cares, which before the
closing phases of the war opened had become so intense, Lincoln must have
been taxed near to the limit of what men have endured without loss of
judgment, or loss of courage or loss of ordinary human feeling. There is
no sign that any of these things happened to him; the study of his record
rather shows a steady ripening of mind and character to the end. It has
been seen how throughout his previous life the melancholy of his
temperament impressed those who had the opportunity of observing it. A
colleague of his at the Illinois bar has told how on circuit he sometimes
came down in the morning and found Lincoln sitting alone over the embers
of the fire, where he had sat all night in sad meditation, after an
evening of jest apparently none the less hilarious for his total
abstinence. There was no scope for this brooding now, and in a sense the
time of his severest trial cannot have been the saddest time of Lincoln's
life. It must have been a cause not of added depression but of added
strength that he had long been accustomed to face the sternest aspect of
the world. He had within his own mind two resources, often, perhaps
normally, associated together, but seldom so fully combined as with him.
In his most intimate circle he would draw upon his stores of poetry,
particularly of tragedy; often, for instance, he would recite such
speeches as Richard II.'s:

"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.
. . . . . All murdered."

Slighter acquaintances saw, day by day, another element in his thoughts,
the companion to this; for the hardly interrupted play of humour in which
he found relief continued to help him to the end. Whatever there was in
it either of mannerism or of coarseness, no one can grudge it him; it is
an oddity which endears. The humour of real life fades in reproduction,
but Lincoln's, there is no doubt was a vein of genuine comedy, deep,
rich, and unsoured, of a larger human quality than marks the brilliant
works of literary American humorists. It was, like the comedy of
Shakespeare, plainly i