50 BIKDS 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 fuU 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 



