ug, and corruption at home and
abroad; but also because his countrymen feel him to be, beyond all other
men, the incarnation of the American spirit."

Mark Twain achieved a position of supreme eminence as a representative
national author which is without a parallel in the history of American
literature. This position he achieved directly by his appeal to the
great mass of the people, despite the _dicta_ of the _literati_. At a
time when England and Europe were throwing wide the doors to Mark Twain,
the culture of his own land was regarding him with slighting
condescension, or with mildly quizzical unconcern. Boston regarded him
with fastidious and frigid disapproval, Longfellow and Lowell found
little in him to admire or approve. There were notable exceptions, as
Mr. Howells has recently pointed out--Charles Eliot Norton, Professor
Francis J. Child, and most notable of all, Mr. Howells himself; but in
general it is true that "in proportion as people thought themselves
refined they questioned that quality which all recognize in him now, but
which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude."
The professors of literature regarded Mark Twain as an author whose
works were essentially ephemeral; and stood in the breach for Culture
against the barbaric invasion of primitive Western Barbarism. Professor
W. P. Trent was, I believe, the first to cite Professor Richardson's
American Literature (published in 1886) as a typical instance of the
position of literary culture in regard to Mark Twain. "But there is a
class of writers," we read in that work, "authors ranking below Irving
or Lowell, and lacking the higher artistic or moral purpose of the
greater humorists, who amuse a generation and then pass from sight.
Every period demands a new manner of jest, after the current fashion
. . . . The reigning favourites of the day are Frank R. Stockton,
Joel Chandler Harris, the various newspaper jokers, and 'Mark Twain.'
[Note the damning position!] But the creators of `Pomona' and 'Rudder
Grange,' of `Uncle Remus and his Folk-lore Stories,' and `Innocents
Abroad,' clever as they are, must make hay while the sun shines. Twenty
years hence, unless they chance to enshrine their wit in some higher
literary achievement, their unknown successors will be the privileged
comedians of the republic. Humour alone never gives its masters a place
in literature; it must coexist with literary qualities, and must usually