But suppose a literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and
elaborate description of one of these grisly things--the critics would
skin him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her
privileges, Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the
whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time."
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's biographer, likewise acknowledged its
greatness, when he said, "1601 is a genuine classic, as classics of that
sort go. It is better than the gross obscenities of Rabelais, and
perhaps in some day to come, the taste that justified Gargantua and the
Decameron will give this literary refugee shelter and setting among the
more conventional writing of Mark Twain. Human taste is a curious thing;
delicacy is purely a matter of environment and point of view."
Suppose Sir Walter [Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the
mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for
themselves? We should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the
soft lady Rowena which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to
the unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate."