Philip Neri's
heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst his ribs: "I was
curious to know what Philip had for dinner." Mark Twain was capable of
epigrams worthy, in their dark levity, of Swift himself. In speaking of
Pudd'nhead Wilson, Anna E. Keeling has said "Humour there is in almost
every scene and every page; but it is such humour as sheds a wild gleam
on the greatest Shakespearian tragedies--on the deep melancholy of
Hamlet, the heartbreak of Lear." The greatest ironic achievements of
Mark Twain, in brief compass, are the two stories: 'The Man that
Corrupted Hadleyburg' and 'Was it Heaven or Hell'? They reveal the
power and subtlety of his art as an ironic humorist--or shall we rather
say, ironic wit? For they range all the way from the most mordant to
the most pathetic irony--from Mephistophelean laughter to warm, human
tears:
"_Sunt lachrymae rerum._"
"Make a reputation first by your more solid achievements," counselled
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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