He was clerk in several departments of the Government at Washington from 1865 to 1874, when he was stricken with partial paralysis. He lived the rest of his life at Camden, New Jersey. His poetry meant a practical as well as an intellectual fight. It involved him in trouble with one chaste official at Washington on whom he depended for his clerkship, but his friends got him a place in another department. In Boston his publishers, Osgood and Company, were legally compelled to withdraw his book from circulation because he refused to consent to the omission of passages indicated by the District Attorney. The meddlers who made complaint were the vicious Society for the Suppression of Vice. The Boston postmaster who excluded the book from the mail was directed from Washington to admit it. The result of official interference was to advertise Whitman's poetry and make officialdom look as foolish as he always believed it to be long before he personally felt its impertinence and "the never ending audacity of elected persons. The last years of his life were peaceful and were made happy GREAT by appreciation.

His works are: Leaves of Grass, 1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871, 1882, 1883; Drum Taps, 1865; Passage to India, 1870; Democratic Vistas, 1871; Memoranda During the War, 1875; Specimen Days, 1882; November Boughs, 1888; Good-bye, My Fancy, 1891; Autobiographia, etc., 1892. Recent editions of Leaves of Grass include all his poetry, for he added his later verse to it as "Annexes."

The best Life of Whitman consists of his own "Autobiographia, or the Story of a Life," "Specimen Days, etc.,”

and his conversations, "With Walt Whitman in Camden," edited by his executor, Horace Traubel. The Life by Richard Maurice Bucke is authentic. A good study is that by the English writer, H. B. Binns. Stevenson's essay in "Familiar Studies of Men and Books" wavers between hearty praise and a fear that he and Whitman will be misunderstood, so that its effect is inconclusive. The essay by Professor George Santayana in "Poetry and Religion" is a perfect justification of Whitman's dislike of "æsthetics." The essay by Anne Gilchrist found in "Her Life and Writings," quoted from above, is excellent. J.A.Symonds's" Walt Whitman: A Study" is sympathetic. John Burroughs's "Whitman: A Study" is the work of a friend and a wise man. William D. O'Connor's "The Good Gray Poet" is a fiery piece of eloquence in defence of Whitman, still good reading, but unnecessarily hot to a generation which does not question Whitman's greatness. Swinburne's attack published in the Fortnightly Review, August, 1887, should be read by all interested in either Whitman or Swinburne. One of the best books is "Days with Walt Whitman" by the English poet and philosopher, Edward Carpenter. Many opinions of Whitman are collected in "In Re Walt Whitman," edited by the literary executors, Traubel, Bucke, and Harned.

CHAPTER XIII

MARK TWAIN

"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS" is to be found in two editions, one for adult minds, the other for adventurous immaturity. The texts differ but little, if at all; differences are mainly differences in the reader. For one audience "Gulliver's Travels" is a story book like "Robinson Crusoe" and "Treasure Island." For the other audience it is a tremendous satire on human nature, a vast portrait of man, the nakedly simple narrative uttering profundities before which the sentimental quail and hypocrites wear an unhappy smile. The boy who follows the strange fortunes of Doctor Gulliver does not know that Swift is talking over his head to the parents who gave the boy the wonder book. All satire is dual in its nature. It speaks in parable, saying one thing and meaning a deeper parallelism. It is a preacher in cap and bells.

To the holiday mood of the world and the wholesomely childish popular mind Mark Twain's books, like "Gulliver's Travels," appeal instantly. For forty years he has been a favourite comedian, a beloved jester, picturesque, histrionic in all his public attitudes. His books have been sold by hundreds of thousands. Of "Joan of Arc," one of his least popular books ("I wrote it for love," he says, "and never expected it to sell"), sixteen thousand copies were sold in

the years from 1904 to 1908. Mark Twain was the most successful man of letters of his time; in the duration and variety of his powers, in the number and enthusiasm of his audience he has no rival in English literature after Dickens.

To say in the face of that towering popularity that he is greater than his reputation may seem praise beyond reason, and it may be presumptuous to suggest that the millions who admire him do not all know how great a man they admire or what in him is most admirable. Nevertheless it is true that this incorrigible and prolific joker has kept the world chuckling so continuously that it has not sobered down to comprehend what a powerful, original thinker he is. If you mention his name, some one says, "Oh, yes! do you remember what he said when it was reported that he was dead?” You smile appreciatively and insist, "Yes, but have you read 'Joan of Arc'? Have you really read, since you grew up, the greatest piece of American fiction, 'Huckleberry Finn'?” The response is apt to be more willing than intelligent. Some men of letters, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, and some critics, such as Professor W. L. Phelps and Professor Brander Matthews, have measured his significance. Mr. Howells, after warning us not to forget the joker in the gravity of our admiration, said it all in a few words, "Clemens, the sole and incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature." Other critics remain truer to the critic type by condescending to contemporary greatness and reserving highest praise for Mark Twain's equals who lived long ago, Swift, Molière, Cervantes, Fielding. As an example of the timid ineptitude of critics in the presence of living greatness, I quote from a

2 handbook of American literature published five or six years ago. In it "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is called a "cruel parady of Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur.'" It is not cruel and it is not a parody; in other respects the criticism is profoundly true. "It is unfortunate" - says the same handbook-"it is unfortunate for Mr. Clemens that he is a humorist; no one can ever take such a man seriously." It is unfortunate; just as it is a burning shame that Lamb was not an epic poet and that Swift was not a church historian.

To take humorists seriously is superficially incongruous. We should approach all satirists from Aristophanes to George Meredith in a spirit of gay delight. If we talk too solemnly about them, their spirits will wink us out of countenance. However, it is a well-established custom to discuss masters of humour, who have been dead a long time, as if they were really important in the history of human thought; and, without a too ponderous solemnity, one may seriously praise and expound the wisdom of the great laugh-maker who died two years ago.

Mark Twain began as a newspaper reporter, a “funnycolumn" man. He was a natural story-teller; his delightful, flexible voice was a melancholy vehicle for outrageous absurdities, and the mask of a grieved and puzzled countenance was a gift of the gods to a platform humorist. His natural talents of mind and manner made him successful on the Pacific Coast before he thought of himself as a professional man of letters. As he grew older, he cultivated the gifts which he had discovered by accident, came in time to a