Peter lives a worldly, everyday life, but Christ is already not of this world, and cannot be measured by superficial appearances of things. And this conflict between the two worlds, higher and lower, is given with such masterful plasticity, with such nerve and skilful dramatisation of simple acts, that we could hardly find a similar work even amongst the greatest masters. One or two touches and the whole figure is as if chiselled from a rock. There is nothing aggressive, nothing fragmentary, all seems to evolve from itself, without any ostentatious "idea." It is a real model of moralism. It does not offend, does not labour, but with pleasant communicativeness, by way of humour, it glides into poetry, never into a sermon.
The humour emanating from these tales is quite its own. It is entirely original, grown from itself—our very own. It stands by itself in the whole European literature. In it there is nothing sermonising or puritanical as in English, nothing moralistic or melancholy as in Russian, nothing heavy as in German, nothing wordly as in French, but innocent human Czech humour, free from all these aberrations, pure as crystal. It is the humour of the poetic cottages of our peasants, humour that is not angry, quarrels not, but yet soars above all worldly vanity. In it is enshrined the whole outlook on life of our people, the calm and somewhat cheerful appreciation of a sorely tried man of the faults and mistakes of his fellow-man. Humour that only a man can master, who, in spite of all his troubles, is full of the joy of life. Even this humour will become a
