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 I read the other day, had compared him on this ground with old
Mr.
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