writing, it was considered good form to
spoof not only the classics but surplus learning of any kind. A man was
popularly known as an affected cuss when he could handle anything more
erudite than a nasal past participle or two in his own language, and any
one who wanted to qualify as a humorist had to be able to mispronounce
any word of over three syllables.

Thus we find Mark Twain, in the selections given in this volume, having
amusing trouble with the pronunciation of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da
Vinci, expressing surprise that Michael Angelo was dead, picking flaws
in the old master's execution and complaining of the use of foreign
words which have their equivalent "in a nobler language--English."

There certainly is no harm in this school of humor, and it has its
earnest and prosperous exponents today. In fact, a large majority of the
people still like to have some one poke fun at the things in which they
themselves are not proficient, whether it be pronunciation, Latin or
bricklaying.

* * * * *

But there is an increasingly large section of the reading public who
while they may not be expert in Latin composition, nevertheless do not
think that a Latin word in itself is a cause for laughter. A French
phrase thrown in now and then for metrical effect does not strike them
as essentially an affectation, and they are willing to have references
made to characters whose native language may not have been that noblest
of all languages, our native tongue.

That such a school of readers exists is proved by the popularity of
F.P.A's verses and prose. If any one had told Mark Twain that a man
could run a daily newspaper column in New York and amass any degree of
fame through translations of the "Odes of Horace" into the vernacular,
the veteran humorist would probably have slapped Albert Bigelow Paine on
the back and taken the next boat for Bermuda. And yet in "Something Else
Again" we find some sixteen translations of Horace and other
"furriners," exotic phrases such as "eheu fugaces" and "ex parte" used
without making faces over them, and a popular exposition of highly
technical verse forms which James Russell Lowell and Hal Longfellow
would have considered terrifically high-brow. And yet thousands of
American business men quote F.P.A. to thousands of other American
business men every morning.

* * * * *

Can it be said that the American people are not