MARK TWAIN
The Works., of Mark Twain. Florida Edition. 16 volumes. (C.hottb find Whidus. Gs. each.) .
. IT has been argued with more force than- charity that Mark Twain would have been a great writer if he had not been afraid of his wife; and that his criticisms of contemporary America; if they had not been bowdlerised to suit .SIew England's decorum-, would have. been very sharp indeed: His works; however, when all allowance has been made for mutilation by domestic -critics and for their author's timidity, do nothing to eanfirkt thiS theory. As a humorist Mark Twain was fairly good, though distinctly inferior to ArtemuS .Ward, Frank Stockton, Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, and Mr: Don Marquis. It was his 'good fortune to be taken both here and in his own country -as - a representative exponent of 'Anieriean humour; so that persons who only remember of Ward that he spelt joke with " g,7' and of Stockton that he wrote Rudder Grange se That Mark Twai was not-on ly representative butcasily first (It is as if Owen Mererlith*ere called the greatest _Victorian poet,) An& besides'. being a hiiniorise; Mirk Twain was to some extent 4-satirist, ile-ohly succeeded in satirizing wiiia lie did notUnderstand; anifsb,. although he naively, as in kris controversy with M. Paul Bourget; `reveals his almost ' incredible " Babbittisia," he cannot be esteemed for his-efforts .
:to Correct human folly. As . novelist, he suffered from the disadvantages of being unable either to invent 'a plot or to imagine character. As a journalist, he would have ruined any reputation less grandiose than his own by the indolence with which lie repeated himself and by the sharp practices he dis- played in self.exploitation ; his later books were excessively padded, and, if one admires Torn Sawyer or The Jumping Frog, then the abuse of those famous names as titles for collections of casual journalistic writings disgusts one.
Yet, if Mark Twain was not a great writer, he had a peculiar genias.for one kind of work. Torn Sawyer—the real one, not Tom Sawyer, Detective and Tom Sawyer Abroad—with Huckleberry Finn, deserve every one of the superlative praises lavished upon them. They are bright with the magic that only memories of boyhood can east, and informed by the sympathy that could only be given by one who ever remained a child at heart, as, alas ! he did in mental development. There is nothing like them in the English language. Something of their radiance may be seen in Mark Twain's reminiscences of his life on the Mississippi. Thereafter his iinagination* as blinded. He may have learnt much in later. years, but he could not assimilate it. He can argue and report and be facetious, but his imagination lives in boyhood memories alone, and all the rest is chaff and sawdist. It was not respectability nor marriage that killed the artist in Mark Twain. Hewes a victim of infantilism. There are many other such victims less con-- apicuous, poets who cannot find beauty in anything , they did not admire before the end of their adolescence, and novelists who after describing their school days find nothing else to describe., What is the cause of it ? Physiological ? Psycho- logical ?
The eminently sane Voltaire and the -eminently insane Swift have this in common, that their lightest work has a definite savour and that their crankiness never degenerates into folly. They fight hard. The rapier flashes, the cudgel crashes to its mark. Mark Twain, of course, had not their courage, or he would not have so carefully tried to conceal his disbelief in the literal inspiration and scientific truth of the Old Testa- ment ; he need not, by the way, have been-afraid of the effects on religion of his doubts ; at his shrewdest, he-would only-have heCome the William-Jennings Bryan of agnosticism. But it was not timidity that makes the mass of Mark Twain's work a desert of dullness. It was stupidity. ' He lacked any hind- of philosophy, even the raw kind called • by Mr. Santayena Animal Faith. He lacked any criticism wherewith to judge the transitory phenomena of his amusing existence. He lacked the native wit which might have filled the gaps in his eduea- tion. He was not even industrious. The well-informed bore is troublesinfie enough, and Mark Twain was not well infOrmed. Let us Pass lightly over such errors as his interpretation of a noisy squabble in a European parliament as a constitutional crisis of thegreatest gravity, or his complete misunderstanding al* 447iii_IACriWnt-t iceirdratiiitilWe0rtithe:gertianlirti-- lessors. (Concerning the essay describing how he Met Momm-
sea -one . thing, however, should be noted. He was right" esteeming Mommsen. But what did he esteem him for ?!
That Mommtien should remember such a lot about Rome ! For, ;. • • ppor Mark-Twain, ItS for Goldsmith's villagers; the marvel was
that one small head . . . . ) Look rather at The Prince and- the Pauper, an historical novel intended to gratify the nine- teenth century by proofs of its superiority to the sixteenth. With theprirely fantastic plot; of course, it would be pedantic to quarrel. By all means let Edward VI and a gutter boy change places. On the other hand, there must be some attention Paidlo the facts of history if the book is to serve its phrpose, and its author appears to recognize this fact in his appendix of p.'ecis justice/keg. But Mark Twain is all at sea. He does not know the period. He is ignorant of Edward VI's character. He is iniSinformed concerning the Constitution. He has not troubled, as the appendix itself proves by its Omis- sions, to consult the right authorities. And he has not even contrived a plausible reason why Edward VI and his double should be confused. Yet, as his correspondence shows, Mark Twain meant this book. to be good ; it was not a pot boiler. COnsider, too, the vapid and misdirected satire, whereby "The 11,000,000 Note " is spoiled ; the mushy speculations on telepathy ; the crude buffoonery into which The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg-relapses ; the weakness with which his case against Christian Science is pleaded, or, in short, the man's inability to do, without the help of Tom Sawyer, the simplest Jo .
Perhaps you disagree ? This excellent and inexpensive edition should then please, if it does not convert you.
H. C. HARWOOD.
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