Diary, that captivating
old record which no one can follow continuously without catching the
infection of its manner and the desire of imitation. He had been reading
diligently one day, when he determined to try his hand on an imaginary
record of conversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the
phrase of the period. The result was Fireside Conversation in the Time
of Queen Elizabeth, or, as he later called it, 1601. The "conversation,"
recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the
outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside
sociabilities were limited only by the range of loosened fancy,
vocabulary, and physical performance, and not by any bounds of
convention. Howells has spoken of Mark Twain's "Elizabethan breadth of
parlance," and how he, Howells, was always hiding away in discreet holes
and corners the letters in which Clemens had "loosed his bold fancy to
stoop on rank suggestion." "I could not bear to burn them," he declares,
"and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to look at them."

In the 1601 Mark Twain outdid himself in the Elizabethan field. It was
written as a letter to that robust divine, Rev. Joseph Twichell, who
had no special scruples concerning Shakespearian parlance and customs.
Before it was mailed it was shown to David Gray, who was spending a
Sunday at Elmira. Gray said:

"Print it and put your name to it, Mark. You have never done a greater
piece of work than that."

John Hay, whom it also reached in due time, pronounce it a classic--a
"most exquisite bit of old English morality." Hay surreptitiously
permitted some proofs to be made of it, and it has been circulated
privately, though sparingly, ever since. At one time a special font
of antique type was made for it and one hundred copies were taken on
hand-made paper. They would easily bring a hundred dollars each to-day.

1601 is a genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better
than the gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps, in some day to
come, the taste that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give
this literary refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional
writings of Mark Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is
purely a matter of environment and point of view.--[In a note-book of
a later period Clemens himself wrote: "It depends on who writes a
thing whether it is coarse or not. I once wrote a conversation between
Elizabeth