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
be joined with such pathos as one finds in Lamb, Hood, Irving, or
Holmes." This passage stands in the 1892 edition of that work, though
'Tom Sawyer' had appeared in 1876, 'The Prince and the Pauper' in 1882,
'Life on the Mississippi' in 1883, 'Huckleberry Finn' in 1884, and 'A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' in 1889. Opinions analogous
to those expressed in the passage just cited have found frequent
expression among leaders of critical opinion in America; and only
yesterday 'The Jumping Frog' and 'The Innocents Abroad' were seriously
put forward, by a clever and popular American critic, as Mark Twain's
most enduring claims upon posterity! A bare half-dozen men in the ranks
of American literary criticism have recognized and eloquently spoken
forth in vindication of Mark Twain's title as a classic author, not
simply of American literature, but of the literature of the world.

It is, even now, perhaps not too early to attempt some sort of inquiry
into the causes contributory to Mark Twain's recognition as the prime
representative of contemporary American literature. One of the cheap
catchwords of Mark Twain criticism is the statement that he is "American