MARK TWAIN'S CAMELOT.*
NOTHING in its way could well be more deplorable than the latest and certainly not the least ambitious example of Trans- atlantic hamour,-21 Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. Mark Twain has surpassed himself as a low comedian in literature by the manner in which he has vaulted at a bound into the charmed circle of Arthurian romance. The gallant deeds of the Knights of the Round Table have enlisted many pens, since the far off years in which Sir Thomas Malory gave them a setting in the exquisite prose of Morte d'Arthur, to the present century in which the genius of the Laureate has conjured back the days of chivalry and interpreted the moral significance of the old allegory, in poetry that is already classic,—the Idylls of the King. Let it be • A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. By Mark Twain. Illustrated. London: Cbatto and Winders.
granted at once that Lord Tennyson has idealised, as only a supreme poet can, the life and aspirations which, according to
tradition, prevailed at the Court which King Arthur kept in that mystic border-land where legend and history meet and blend in indissoluble union. Possibly the Knights were far other than Tennyson has portrayed them ; yet Geraint and Lancelot, Pelleas and Bedivere, Galahad and Percevale, as we now know them, are men of like passions -with ourselves, and as we witness their "bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire," it seems as if we beheld as in a glass the glory and the shame of human life.
Camelot may be a beautiful dream; but Connecticut is a hard reality about which no illusions are possible. Hitherto, Dagonet has held undisputed sway as the only fool at the Court of King Arthur, but he, it seems, is scarcely up to modern requirements ; so Mark Twain has come to the rescue with a brand-new specimen of the breed, in the shape of this Yankee " Boss." He swaggers upon the scene with jaunty assurance, and proceeds to disport himself after the manner of his kind. Once at Camelot, this 'cute, enter- prising, conceited product of the nineteenth century duly "plays the fool exceedingly," airing his choice slang and cutting his insufferable capers in a way which was certainly calculated to astonish the natives. How the " Boss " started a newspaper, arrived at the conclusion that King Arthur's Knights were a " childlike and innocent lot," denounced Merlin as a "cheap old humbug," and discovered that in the Quest of the Holy Grail there were " worlds of reputation, but no money,"—is it not written in this coarse and clumsy burlesque, of which America in general, and Mark Twain in particular, ought already to be heartily ashamed P Mr. Howells is, however, in raptures over this sorry performance, and goes out of his way to describe, on behalf of the American public, Mark Twain as "our arch-humorist," in whose latest work " delicious satire," "marvellous wit," "unrivalled fun," and we know not what beside, are to be found by those who appreciate this kind of vulgar and boisterous horse-play. We are even assured, on the same unimpeachable authority, that A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur is an "object-lesson in democracy ;" but the humour of such a conception scarcely justifies Mr. Howells's expression, " simply immense," until we place it side by side with that critic's oracular declaration that the grotesque medley itself is a revelation of Mark Twain's "intense conviction," and that this screaming farce, which ends in the destruction of the chivalry of England by means of electricity, is " obliquely serious."
Mark Twain is quite right about the Quest of the Holy Grail, for it—in common with other enterprises the memory of which mankind will not willingly let die—had "worlds of reputation in it, but no money." Possibly, however, he may find a tangible consolation in the fact—since reverence fails to keep pace with knowledge in the present generation—that these broad grins at the expense of his betters are likely to bring him " worlds " of money, if no reputation.
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