In his more than forty years of authorship he was both industrious and prolific.  In the nineteen volumes of his published work there must be more than two hundred titles of stories and sketches, and many of them are little known.  Some of them are disappointing in comparison with his earlier and perhaps best work, but many of them are charming and all are in his delightful style, with its undertone of humor that becomes dominant at unexpected intervals.  His literary form was distinctive, with a manner not derived from the schools or copied from any of his predecessors, but developed from his own personality.  He seems to have founded a modern school, with a lightness of touch and a felicity of expression unparalleled.  He was vividly imaginative, and also had the faculty of giving dramatic form and consistency to an incident or story told by another.  He was a story-teller, equally dexterous in prose or verse.  His taste was unerring and he sought for perfect form.  His atmosphere was breezy and healthful—­out of doors with the fragrance of the pine-clad Sierras.  He was never morbid and introspective.  His characters are virile and natural men and women who act from simple motives, who live and love, or hate and fight, without regard to problems and with small concern for conventionalities.  Harte had sentiment, but was realistic and fearless.  He felt under no obligation to make all gamblers villains or all preachers heroes.  He dealt with human nature in the large and he made it real.

His greatest achievement was in faithfully mirroring the life of a new and striking epoch.  He seems to have discovered that it was picturesque and to have been almost alone in impressing this fact on the world.  He sketched pictures of pioneer life as he saw or imagined it with matchless beauty and compelled the interest and enjoyment of all mankind.

His chief medium was the short story, to which he gave a new vogue.  Translated into many tongues, his tales became the source of knowledge to a large part of the people of Europe as to California and the Pacific.  He associated the Far West with romance, and we have never fully outlived it.

That he was gifted as a poet no one can deny.  Perhaps his most striking use of his power as a versifier was in connection with the romantic Spanish background of California history.  Such work as “Concepcion de Arguello” is well worth while.  In his “Spanish Idylls and Legends” he catches the fine spirit of the period and connects California with a past of charm and beauty.  His patriotic verse has both strength and loveliness and reflects a depth of feeling that his lighter work does not lead us to expect.  In his dialect verse he revels in fun and shows himself a genuine and cleanly humorist.