William Dean Howells by Mark Twain — Read

Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty and then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is charged 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.