hose work is characteristic not of his
country, but of himself, who fondly believed that he would make a loud
appeal to the democracy because he stamped upon the laws of verse, and
used words which are not to be found in the dictionary. Had the people
ever encountered his 'Leaves of Grass,' it would not have understood it.
The verse for which the people craves is the ditties of the music-hall.
It has no desire to consider its own imperfections with a self-conscious
eye. It delights in the splendour of mirrors, in the sparkle of
champagne, in the trappings of a sordid and remote romance. The praise
of liberty and equality suits the ear not of the democrat, but of the
politician and dilettante, and it was to the dilettante and politician
that Walt Whitman addressed his exhortations. Even his studied contempt
for the literary conventions is insincere, and falls away from Kim
when he sees and feels most vividly. He attempted to put into practice
Emerson's theory of anarchy. He was at the pains to prove that he was
at once a savage and a poet. That he had moments of poetic exaltation is
true. The pomp of Brooklyn Ferry lives in his stately verse.

But he was no savage. It was his culture that spoke to the culture
of others; it was a worn-out commonplace which won him the regard
of politicians. He inspired parodists, not poets. And he represented
America as little as he echoed the voice of the people.

Nor is it in the works of the humourists that we shall catch a glimpse
of the national character. They, too, cast no shadow but their own.
They attain their effects by bad spelling, and a simple transliteration
reveals the poverty of their wit. There is but one author who represents
with any clarity the spirit of his country, and that author is Mark
Twain. Not Mark Twain the humourist, the favourite of the reporters, the
facile contemner of things which are noble and of good report, but Mark
Twain, the pilot of the Mississippi, the creator of Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer. He is national as Fielding is national. Future ages will look
upon Huck Finn as we look upon Tom Jones,--as an embodiment of national
virtue. And Mark Twain's method is his own as intimately as the puppets
of his imagining. It is impossible to read a page of his masterpieces
without recognising that they could have been composed only in an
American environment. The dialect in which they are written enhances
their verisimilitude without impairing their dignity; and