serious standpoint. The
paragraph closed:

We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tribute
to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can
hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next
monthly "Memoranda."

The old temptation to hoax his readers prompted Mark Twain to
"reproduce" in the Galaxy, not the Review article, which he had not yet
seen, but an imaginary Review article, an article in which the imaginary
reviewer would be utterly devoid of any sense of humor and treat the
most absurd incidents of The New Pilgrim's Progress as if set down by
the author in solemn and serious earnest. The pretended review began:

Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when
we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.
Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could mete out complete and
comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impudence, the
presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance
of this author.

The review goes on to cite cases of the author's gross deception. It
says:

Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture to
himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the following
described things; and not only doing them, but, with incredible
innocence, printing them tranquilly and calmly in a book. For
instance:

He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get a shave,
and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it loosened
his "hide," and lifted him out of the chair.

This is unquestionably extravagant. In Florence he was so annoyed
by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a
frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this.
He gives at full length the theatrical program, seventeen or
eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the
ruins of the Colosseum, among the dirt-and mold and rubbish. It is
a sufficient comment upon this subject to remark that even a cast-
iron program would not have lasted so long under the circumstances.

There were two and one-half pages of this really delightful burlesque
which the author had written with huge-enjoyment, partly as a joke on
the Review, partly to trick American editors, who he believed would
accept it as a fresh and startling proof of the traditional English la