killed three of them.  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 I read the other day, had compared him on this ground with old Mr. Weller.  It would be difficult to find a comparison indicating a more completely futile instinct for literature.  Tony Weller and Yuba Bill were both coach-drivers, and this fact establishes a resemblance just about as much as the fact that Jobson in “Rob Roy” and George Warrington in “Pendennis” were both lawyers; or that Antonio and Mr. Pickwick were both merchants; or that Sir Galahad and Sir Willoughby