ABSTRACT
AnewbookbytheAmericanhumouristwhocallshimselfMark Twainissuretofindreaders;morethanthat,itissuretodeservethem. Mr.Clemens,intruth,isthemostsuccessfulandoriginalwagofhis day;hehasakeen,suresenseofcharacteranduncommonskillin presentingitdramatically;andheisalsoanadmirablestory-teller,with theanecdoticinstinctandhabitinperfection,andwithapowerof episodicnarrativethatisscarcelyequalled,ifatall,byMr.Charles Readehimself.Hehasseenmenandcities,haslookedwithashrewd andliberaleyeonmanymodesoflife,andhasalwayssomethingapt andpointedtosayofeverything;finally,heshareswithWaltWhitmanthehonourofbeingthemoststrictlyAmericanwriterofwhatis calledAmericanliterature.Ofall,oralmostall,themanypoets, novelists,essayists,philosophers,historians,andsuchlikenotables (oratorsexcepted)Americahasproduced,theoriginsarcplainly European.TheNewWorldisresponsiblebutfortheirbodiesand
souls; artistically they are the Old World's offspring, and the Old World's only. This one is a nursling ofFrance, tbat one of Spain, that other of England and Germany, and so on. To take but the instances that are most familiar, it is not easy to imagine an Irving guiltless of Goldsmith and Addison; or a Longfellow innocent of Goethe and Heine, of the 'Romancero' and the 'Commedia,' of the Northern sagamen and the song-smiths of the South; or an Emerson anterior to Carlyle; or a prae-Miltonic 'Thanatopsis'; or an uncultured and uncclcctic Henry James. But Mark Twain is American pure and simple. To the eastern mother-land he owes but the rudiments, the groundwork, already archaic and obsolete to him, of the speech he has to write; in his turn of art, his literary methods and aims, his intellectual habit and temper, he is as distinctly national as the fourth of July itself.
