ABSTRACT
Mr. Clemens's book, indeed, makes sorry reading for those who hold him in reverence. He is, by great odds, the most noble figure America has ever given to English literature. Having him, we may hold up onr heads when Spaniards boast of Cervantes and Frenchmen of Moliere. His one book, Huckleberry Fi1111, is worth, I believe, the complete works of Poe, Hawthorne, Cooper, Holmes, Howeils and James, with the entire literary output to date oflndiana, Pennsylvania and all the States south of the Potomac thrown in as makeweight. But since Following the Equator, his decline has been almost pathetic. Once a great artist, he is now merely a public character. He has gone the road ofWycherley: the old humanity and insight have given place to the smartness of the town wit. Let us try to forget this latter-day Mark Twain, with his pot boilers and his wheezes, and remember only the incomparable Mark Twain that was-and will be through the ages-just as we try to forget that the Thackeray who wrote Barry Lyndou also wrote Lovell tht Widower, and that the Shakespeare who wrote Much Ado About Nothi11g wrote also Cymbeli11e.
