m. Porthos
three. Athos three." You cannot write that kind of thing unless you
have first exulted in the arithmetical ingenuity of the plots of Dumas.
It is the same in the parody of Charlotte Bronte, which opens with a
dream of a storm-beaten cliff, containing jewels and pelicans. Bret
Harte could not have written it unless he had really understood the
triumph of the Brontes, the triumph of asserting that great mysteries
lie under the surface of the most sullen life, and that the most real
part of a man is in his dreams.

This kind of parody is for ever removed from the purview of ordinary
American humour. Can anyone imagine Mark Twain, that admirable author,
writing even a tolerable imitation of authors so intellectually
individual as Hugo or Charlotte Bronte? Mark Twain would yield to the
spirit of contempt which destroys parody. All those who hate authors
fail to satirise them, for they always accuse them of the wrong faults.
The enemies of Thackeray call him a worldling, instead of what he was, a
man too ready to believe in the goodness of the unworldly. The enemies
of Meredith call his gospel too subtle, instead of what it is, a
gospel, if anything, too robust. And it is this vulgar misunderstanding
which we find in most parody--which we find in all American parody--but
which we never find in the parodies of Bret Harte.

"The skies they were ashen and sober,
The streets they were dirty and drear,
It was the dark month of October,
In that most immemorial year.
Like the skies, I was perfectly sober,
But my thoughts they were palsied and sear,
Yes, my thoughts were decidedly queer."

This could only be written by a genuine admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, who
permitted himself for a moment to see the fun of the thing. Parody might
indeed be defined as the worshipper's half-holiday.

The same general characteristic of sympathy amounting to reverence marks
Bret Harte's humour in his better-known class of works, the short
stories. He does not make his characters absurd in order to make them
contemptible: it might almost be said that he makes them absurd in order
to make them dignified. For example, the greatest creation of Bret
Harte, greater even than Colonel Starbottle (and how terrible it is to
speak of anyone greater than Colonel Starbottle!) is that unutterable
being who goes by the name of Yuba Bill. He is, of course, the
coach-driver in the Bret Harte district. Some ingenious person, whose
remarks