Finn. . . . It may be objected that the characters are extravagant.
Not so. They are all exactly and literally true; they are quite
possible in a country so remote and so primitive. Every figure in the
book is a type; Huckleberry Finn has exaggerated none. We see the life
--the dull and vacuous life--of a small township upon the Mississippi
River forty years ago. So far as I know, it is the only place where we
can find that phase of life portrayed."

Mark Twain impressed one always as writing with utter individuality
--untrammelled by the limitations of any particular sect of art. In his
books of travel, he reveals not only the instinct of the trained
journalist for the novel and the effective, but also the feeling of the
artist for the beautiful, the impressive, and the sublime. His
descriptions, of striking natural objects, such as the volcano of Mount
Kilauea in the Sandwich Islands, of memorable architecture, such as the
cathedral at Milan, show that he possessed the "stereoscopic
imagination" in rare degree. The picture he evokes of Athens by
moonlight, in the language of simplicity and restraint, ineffaceably
fixes itself in the fancy.

Mark Twain was regarded in France as a remarkable "impressionist" and
praised by the critics for the realistic accuracy and minuteness of his
delineation. Kipling frankly acknowledged the great debt that he owed
him. Tennyson spoke in high praise of his finesse in the choice of
words, his feeling for the just word to catch and, as it were, visualize
the precise shade of meaning desired. In truth, Mark Twain was an
impressionist, rather than an imaginative artist. That passage in
'A Yankee in King Arthur's Court' in which he describes an early morning
ride through the forest, pictorially evocative as it is, stands
self-revealed--a confusedly imaginative effort to create an image he has