29 DECEMBER 1917, Page 3

Oxford and Cambridge may well be jealous of Edinburgh, which

has long had her Lincoln statue. Lincoln educated himself, yet he had none of the faults of the self-educated man. His style was not only one of the best in English literature, but, strangely enough, had great virtues that were not merely those of simplicity and directness—like the virtues of, say, Bunyan or Cobbett—but were such as are reached by the ordinary man only by profound study of great model& Lincoln's taste and his good breeding, so to speak, in the use of words were literally never at fault. He was incapable of vulgarity on paper—a fine incapacity which few of us achieve—and there was a refinement in his rhetoric which should make all scholars and men of letters bow their heads before him.