ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND WALT WHITMAN. By William E. Burton. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis. $2.75.

THE new method of taking motion pictures is to tilt the camera at various odd angles and glimpse life from strange points of vantage. Similar in idea, it would seem are the studies by William E. Barton of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Barton, who wrote "The Women Lincoln Loved," "The Great Good Man," and "A Beautiful Blunder" to supplement his "Life of Abraham Lincoln," has with diminished success attempted to correlate the lives of the Emancipator and Walt Whitman.

When Lincoln was President and Walt was a rubber-stamp clerk in the Indian Office, Lincoln had already read Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," and expressed pleasure in them, although chastening his praise with regret at veiled allusions of the lines. Later Whitman was pointed out to Lincoln, who said: "Well, he looks like a man." These are practically all the ties with Whitman from the Lincoln side.

During the President's lifetime Whitman did not write a single line of praise that would presage his becoming the poet who has said the most remembered things about the President. "Drum-Taps" and its sequel did not appear until 1866. Walt Whitman said: "Lincoln is particularly my man . . . we are afloat on the same stream--we are rooted in the same ground." His words grow in presumption as the Lincoln tradition grows heartier. In the early days he had felt that they were young Lochinvars together, seeking fame in an alfen east.