one process first: he must admire it, and even reverence it. Bret Harte
had a real power of imitating great authors, as in his parodies on
Dumas, on Victor Hugo, on Charlotte Brontë. This means, and can only
mean, that he had perceived the real beauty, the real ambition of Dumas
and Victor Hugo and Charlotte Brontë. To take an example, Bret Harte has
in his imitation of Hugo a passage like this:

"M. Madeline was, if possible, better than M. Myriel. M. Myriel was an
angel. M. Madeline was a good man." I do not know whether Victor Hugo
ever used this antithesis; but I am certain that he would have used it
and thanked his stars if he had thought of it. This is real parody,
inseparable from admiration. It is the same in the parody of Dumas,
which is arranged on the system of "Aramis 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 Brontë, 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 Brontës, 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 Brontë? 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