ter; a rest will do you good."

_Smart Set_, October 1919

PART II

REVIEWS AND ESSAYS

_Mark Twain_

If there is anything which should make an American sick and
disgusted at the literary taste of his country, and almost swerve
his allegiance to his flag it is that controversy between Mark Twain
and Max O'Rell, in which the Frenchman proves himself a wit and a
gentleman and the American shows himself little short of a clown and
an all around tough. The squabble arose apropos of Paul Bourget's
new book on America, "Outre Mer," a book which deals more fairly and
generously with this country than any book yet written in a foreign
tongue. Mr. Clemens did not like the book, and like all men of his
class, and limited mentality, he cannot criticise without becoming
personal and insulting. He cannot be scathing without being a
blackguard. He tried to demolish a serious and well considered work
by publishing a scurrilous, slangy and loosely written article about
it. In this article Mr. Clemens proves very little against Mr.
Bourget and a very great deal against himself. He demonstrates
clearly that he is neither a scholar, a reader or a man of letters
and very little of a gentleman. His ignorance of French literature
is something appalling. Why, in these days it is as necessary for a
literary man to have a wide knowledge of the French masterpieces as
it is for him to have read Shakespeare or the Bible. What man who
pretends to be an author can afford to neglect those models of style
and composition. George Meredith, Thomas Hardy and Henry James
excepted, the great living novelists are Frenchmen.

Mr. Clemens asks what the French sensualists can possibly teach the
great American people about novel writing or morality? Well, it
would not seriously hurt the art of the classic author of "Puddin'
Head Wilson" to study Daudet, De Maupassant, Hugo and George Sand,
whatever it might do to his morals. Mark Twain is a humorist of a
kind. His humor is always rather broad, so broad that the polite
world can justly call it coarse. He is not a reader nor a thinker
nor a man who loves art of any kind. He is a clever Yankee who has
made a "good thing" out of writing. He has been published in the
North American Review and in the Century, but he is not and never
will be a part of literature. The association and companionship of
cultured men has given Mark Twain a sort of professional ve