ABSTRACT
The moral of these reminiscences is that while humour of a sort is always abundant, the humour which lives throughout the ages is very rare indeed-rarer than the noblest poetry, the most profound essays, the most brilliant wit, and the dramatic expression of poignant tragedy. We are to-day noting the death of one who for more than thirty years has been regarded as a humourist of the highest order, occupying indeed a unique position, since his humour seems even to have stood the searching test of translation into other languages. Mark Twain was as well known in England and Australia and the other British colonies as in his own country. The greatest university of the English-speaking race honoured him with a degree-the first ever given by Oxford to a humourist as such. In translation he has been read in Germany and France and other foreign countries. During his lifetime a sort oflegend has sprung up regarding him as there has concerning Miguel Cervantes. Men who are usually sane have tried to see in Mark Twain's jokes and off-hand comic skits a deep philosophy, just as they have tried to fmd in Don Quixote a melancholy idealism. During the last years of his life he seems to have taken this adulation seriously; for his later writings-irrelevant, eccentric, void of either wit or humour-were poured forth by him as though he really felt himself inspired, so that he could not perpetrate a piece of drivel or
byanychancebeguiltyofasottise.However,wemustremember thatMr.Clemenslivedlongandwrotemuch.Onlytheverygreatest ofauthorscanexpecttohavetheirworksendure,especiallyifmost ofthembeworksofhumour.Insomefewbookswillbefoundthe .fineJleur,thecream,thegoldennuggetbywhichwearetojudgethe writer.Inhisotherbookstheremaybegrainsofgold,butnotenough tomakethemprecious,andthisespeciallyistrueofMarkTwain. HishumourwasonlyinpartthehumourofJuvenalandAristophanes. Itwasquiteasirreverentandoftenquiteasfullofsharplyunexpected contrasts.Butithadaqualityofitsownwhichyoucanfindnowhere else.
