n his sleeve
at his own preposterous brags, and does not take himself quite so
seriously as his British rival. He is vulgar, and even ostentatiously
and atrociously vulgar; but the vulgarity is mixed with a real
shrewdness which rescues it from simple insipidity. We laugh at him,
and we would rather not have too much of his company; but we do not feel
altogether safe in despising him." The lordly condescension and gross
self-satisfaction here betrayed are but preliminaries to the ludicrous
density of the subsequent reflections upon Mark Twain himself: "He
parades his utter ignorance of Continental languages and manners, and
expresses his very original judgments on various wonders of art and
nature with a praiseworthy frankness. We are sometimes left in doubt
whether he is speaking in all sincerity or whether he is having a sly
laugh at himself and his readers"! It is quite evident that the large
mass of English readers, represented by The Saturday Review, had not
caught Mark Twain's tone; but even the reviewer is more than half won
over by the infectiousness of this new American humour. "Perhaps we
have persuaded our readers by this time that Mr. Twain (sic) is a very
offensive specimen of the vulgarest kind of Yankee. And yet, to say the
truth, we have a kind of liking for him. There is a frankness and
originality about his remarks which is (sic) pleasanter than the mere
repetition of stale raptures; and his fun, if not very refined, is often
tolerable in its way. In short, his pages may be turned over with
amusement, as exhibiting more or less consciously a very lively portrait
of the uncultivated American tourist, who may be more obtrusive and
misjudging, but is not quite so stupidly unobservant as our native
product. We should not choose either of them for our companions on a
visit to a church or a picture--gallery, but we should expect most
amusement from the Yankee as long as we could stand him." It was this
review which gave Mark Twain the opening for his celebrated parody--a
parody which, I have always thought, went far to opening the eyes of the
British public to the true spirit of his humour. Such irresistible fun
could not fail of appreciation at the hands of a nation which regarded
Dickens as their representative national author.

Two years later, Mark Twain received in England an appreciative
reception of well-nigh national character. Whilst the literary and
academic circles of America withheld