50 BIRDS AND POETS 
vantes, or Sterne, or Scott, is that he approaches 
his subject, not through his head merely, but 
through his heart, his love, his humanity. His 
humor is full of compassion, full of the milk of 
human kindness, and does not separate him from 
his subject, but unites him to it by vital ties. How 
Sterne loved Uncle Toby and sympathized with 
him, and Cervantes his luckless knight! I fear our 
humorists would have made fun of them, would 
have shown them up and stood aloof superior, and 
“laughed a laugh of merry scorn.” Whatever else 
the great humorist or poet, or any artist, may be or 
do, there is no contempt in his laughter. And this 
point cannot be too strongly insisted on in view of 
the fact that nearly all our humorous writers seem 
impressed with the conviction that their own dignity 
and self-respect require them to look down upon 
what they portray. But it is only little men who 
look down upon anything or speak down to anybody. 
One sees every day how clear it is that specially 
fine, delicate, intellectual persons cannot portray 
satisfactorily coarse, common, uncultured characters. 
Their attitude is at once scornful and supercilious. 
The great man, like Socrates, or Dr. Johnson, or 
Abraham Lincoln, is just as surely coarse as he is 
fine, but the complaint I make with our humorists 
is that they are fine and not coarse in any healthful 
and manly sense. <A great part of the best litera- 
ture and the best art is of the vital fluids, the 
bowels, the chest, the appetites, and is to be read 
and judged only through love and compassion, Let 
