Italian model in no wise presaging 'Tartuffe' and the 'Misanthrope.'
Just as Molière succeeded first of all in pleasing the broad public that
likes robust fun, and then slowly and step by step developed into a
dramatist who set on the stage enduring figures plucked out of the
abounding life about him, so also has Mark Twain grown, ascending from
the 'Jumping Frog' to 'Huckleberry Finn,' as comic as its elder brother
and as laughter-provoking, but charged also with meaning and with
philosophy. And like Molière again, Mark Twain has kept solid hold of
the material world; his doctrine is not of the earth earthy, but it is
never sublimated into sentimentality. He sympathizes with the spiritual
side of humanity, while never ignoring the sensual. Like Molière, Mark
Twain takes his stand on common-sense and thinks scorn of affectation of
every sort. He understands sinners and strugglers and weaklings; and he
is not harsh with them, reserving his scorching hatred for hypocrites
and pretenders and frauds.

At how long an interval Mark Twain shall be rated after Molière and
Cervantes it is for the future to declare. All that we can see clearly
now is that it is with them that he is to be classed,--with Molière and
Cervantes, with Chaucer and Fielding, humorists all of them, and all of
them manly men.

(1898.)




A NOTE ON MAUPASSANT