William Dean Howells
from Samuel Clemens
Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at
forty and then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler ischarged with saying so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; I
don't know which it is. But if he said it, I can point him to a
case which proves his rule. Proves it by being an exception to
it. To this place I nominate Mr. Howells.
I read his VENETIAN DAYS about forty years ago. I compare
it with his paper on Machiavelli in a late number of HARPER, and
I cannot find that his English has suffered any impairment. For
forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and
astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great
qualities--clearness, compression, verbal exactness, and unforced
and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing--he is, in my
belief, without his peer in the English-writing world. SUSTAINED.
I entrench myself behind that protecting word. There are others
who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but only
by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of
veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howells's moon sails
cloudless skies all night and all the nights.
In the matter of verbal exactness Mr. Howells has no superior,
I suppose. He seems to be almost always able to find that
elusive and shifty grain of gold, the RIGHT WORD. Others have
to put up with approximations, more or less
