leaving outside of it Walter Scott and that strange old world which is
as confused and as indefensible and as inspiring and as healthy as he.




BRET HARTE


There are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons
which we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte. But one
supreme reason stands not in a certain general superiority to them
all--a reason which may be stated in three propositions united in a
common conclusion: first, that he was a genuine American; second, that
he was a genuine humourist; and, third, that he was not an American
humourist. Bret Harte had his own peculiar humour, but it had nothing in
particular to do with American humour. American humour has its own
peculiar excellence, but it has nothing in particular to do with Bret
Harte. American humour is purely exaggerative; Bret Harte's humour was
sympathetic and analytical.

In order fully to understand this, it is necessary to realise, genuinely
and thoroughly, that there is such a thing as an international
difference in humour. If we take the crudest joke in the world--the
joke, let us say, of a man sitting down on his hat--we shall yet find
that all the nations would differ in their way of treating it
humourously, and that if American humour treated it at all, it would be
in a purely American manner. For example, there was a case of an orator
in the House of Commons, who, after denouncing all the public abuses he
could think of, did sit down on his hat. An Irishman immediately rose,