CHAPTER III.

GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE.

§ I. In the close of the last chapter it was noted that the phases of

transition in the moral temper of the falling Venetians, during their

fall, were from pride to infidelity, and from infidelity to the

unscrupulous _pursuit of pleasure_. During the last years of the

existence of the state, the minds both of the nobility and the people

seem to have been set simply upon the attainment of the means of

self-indulgence. There was not strength enough in them to be proud, nor

forethought enough to be ambitious. One by one the possessions of the

state were abandoned to its enemies; one by one the channels of its

trade were forsaken by its own languor, or occupied and closed against

it by its more energetic rivals; and the time, the resources, and the

thoughts of the nation were exclusively occupied in the invention of

such fantastic and costly pleasures as might best amuse their apathy,

lull their remorse, or disguise their ruin.

§ II. The architecture raised at Venice during this period is amongst

the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men, being especially

distinguished by a spirit of brutal mockery and insolent jest, which,

exhausting itself in deformed and monstrous sculpture, can sometimes be

hardly otherwise defined than as the perpetuation in stone of the

ribaldries of drunkenness. On such a period, and on such work, it is

painful to dwell, and I had not originally intended to do so; but I

found that the entire spirit of the Renaissance could not be

comprehended unless it was followed to its consummation; and that there

were many most interesting questions arising out of the study of this

particular spirit of jesting, with reference to which I have called it

the _Grotesque_ Renaissance. For it is not this period alone which is

distinguished by such a spirit. There is jest--perpetual, careless, and

not unfrequently obscene--in the most noble work of the Gothic periods;

and it becomes, therefore, of the greatest possible importance to

examine into the nature and essence of the Grotesque itself, and to

ascertain in what respect it is that the jesting of art in its highest

flight, differs from its jesting in its utmost degradation.

§ III. The place where we may best commence our inquiry is one renowned

in the history of Venice, the space of ground before the Church of Santa

Maria Formosa; a spot which, after the Rialto and St. Mark's Place,

ought to possess a peculiar interest in the mind of the traveller, in

consequence of its connexion with the most touching and true legend of

the Brides of Venice. That legend is related at length in every Venetian

history, and, finally, has been told by the poet Rogers, in a way which

renders it impossible for any one to tell it after him. I have only,

therefore, to remind the reader that the capture of the brides took

place in the cathedral church, St. Pietro di Castello; and that this of

Santa Maria Formosa is connected with the tale, only because it was

yearly visited with prayers by the Venetian maidens, on the anniversary

of their ancestors' deliverance. For that deliverance, their thanks were

to be rendered to the Virgin; and there was no church then dedicated to

the Virgin, in Venice, except this.[27]

Neither of the cathedral church, nor of this dedicated to St. Mary the

Beautiful, is one stone left upon another. But, from that which has been

raised on the site of the latter, we may receive a most important

lesson, introductory to our immediate subject, if first we glance back

to the traditional history of the church which has been destroyed.

§ IV. No more honorable epithet than "traditional" can be attached to

what is recorded concerning it, yet I should grieve to lose the legend

of its first erection. The Bishop of Uderzo, driven by the Lombards from

his Bishopric, as he was praying, beheld in a vision the Virgin Mother,

who ordered him to found a church in her honor, in the place where he

should see a white cloud rest. And when he went out, the white cloud

went before him; and on the place where it rested he built a church, and

it was called the Church of St. Mary the Beautiful, from the loveliness

of the form in which she had appeared in the vision.[28]

The first church stood only for about two centuries. It was rebuilt in

864, and enriched with various relics some fifty years later; relics

belonging principally to St. Nicodemus, and much lamented when they and

the church were together destroyed by fire in 1105.

It was then rebuilt in "magnifica forma," much resembling, according to

Corner, the architecture of the chancel of St. Mark;[29] but the

information which I find in various writers, as to the period at which

it was reduced to its present condition, is both sparing and

contradictory.

§ V. Thus, by Corner, we are told that this church, resembling St.

Mark's, "remained untouched for more than four centuries," until, in

1689, it was thrown down by an earthquake, and restored by the piety of

a rich merchant, Turrin Toroni, "in ornatissima forma;" and that, for

the greater beauty of the renewed church, it had added to it two façades

of marble. With this information that of the Padre dell' Oratoria

agrees, only he gives the date of the earlier rebuilding of the church

in 1175, and ascribes it to an architect of the name of Barbetta. But

Quadri, in his usually accurate little guide, tells us that this

Barbetta rebuilt the church in the fourteenth century; and that of the

two façades, so much admired by Corner, one is of the sixteenth century,

and its architect unknown; and the rest of the church is of the

seventeenth, "in the style of Sansovino."

§ VI. There is no occasion to examine, or endeavor to reconcile, these

conflicting accounts. All that is necessary for the reader to know is,

that every vestige of the church in which the ceremony took place was

destroyed _at least_ as early as 1689; and that the ceremony itself,

having been abolished in the close of the fourteenth century, is only to

be conceived as taking place in that more ancient church, resembling St.

Mark's, which, even according to Quadri, existed until that period. I

would, therefore, endeavor to fix the reader's mind, for a moment, on

the contrast between the former and latter aspect of this plot of

ground; the former, when it had its Byzantine church, and its yearly

procession of the Doge and the Brides; and the latter, when it has its

Renaissance church "in the style of Sansovino," and its yearly honoring

is done away.

§ VII. And, first, let us consider for a little the significance and

nobleness of that early custom of the Venetians, which brought about the

attack and the rescue of the year 943: that there should be but one

marriage day for the nobles of the whole nation,[30] so that all might

rejoice together; and that the sympathy might be full, not only of the

families who that year beheld the alliance of their children, and prayed

for them in one crowd, weeping before the altar, but of all the families

of the state, who saw, in the day which brought happiness to others, the

anniversary of their own. Imagine the strong bond of brotherhood thus

sanctified among them, and consider also the effect on the minds of the

youth of the state; the greater deliberation and openness necessarily

given to the contemplation of marriage, to which all the people were

solemnly to bear testimony; the more lofty and unselfish tone which it

would give to all their thoughts. It was the exact contrary of stolen

marriage. It was marriage to which God and man were taken for witnesses,

and every eye was invoked for its glance, and every tongue for its

prayers.[31]

§ VIII. Later historians have delighted themselves in dwelling on the

pageantry of the marriage day itself, but I do not find that they have

authority for the splendor of their descriptions. I cannot find a word

in the older Chronicles about the jewels or dress of the brides, and I

believe the ceremony to have been more quiet and homely than is usually

supposed. The only sentence which gives color to the usual accounts of

it is one of Sansovino's, in which he says that the magnificent dress of

the brides in his day was founded "on ancient custom."[32] However this

may have been, the circumstances of the rite were otherwise very simple.

Each maiden brought her dowry with her in a small "cassetta," or chest;

they went first to the cathedral, and waited for the youths, who having

come, they heard mass together, and the bishop preached to them and

blessed them: and so each bridegroom took his bride and her dowry and

bore her home.

§ IX. It seems that the alarm given by the attack of the pirates put an

end to the custom of fixing one day for all marriages: but the main

objects of the institution were still attained by the perfect publicity

given to the marriages of all the noble families; the bridegroom

standing in the Court of the Ducal Palace to receive congratulations on

his betrothal, and the whole body of the nobility attending the

nuptials, and rejoicing, "as at some personal good fortune; since, by

the constitution of the state, they are for ever incorporated together,

as if of one and the same family."[33] But the festival of the 2nd of

February, after the year 943, seems to have been observed only in memory

of the deliverance of the brides, and no longer set apart for public

nuptials.

§ X. There is much difficulty in reconciling the various accounts, or

distinguishing the inaccurate ones, of the manner of keeping this

memorable festival. I shall first give Sansovino's, which is the popular

one, and then note the points of importance in the counter-statements.

Sansovino says that the success of the pursuit of the pirates was owing

to the ready help and hard fighting of the men of the district of Sta.

Maria Formosa, for the most part trunkmakers; and that they, having been

presented after the victory to the Doge and the Senate, were told to ask

some favor for their reward. "The good men then said that they desired

the Prince, with his wife and the Signory, to visit every year the

church of their district, on the day of its feast. And the Prince asking

them, 'Suppose it should rain?' they answered, 'We will give you hats to

cover you; and if you are thirsty, we will give you to drink.' Whence is

it that the Vicar, in the name of the people, presents to the Doge, on

his visit, two flasks of malvoisie[34] and two oranges; and presents to

him two gilded hats, bearing the arms of the Pope, of the Prince, and of

the Vicar. And thus was instituted the Feast of the Maries, which was

called noble and famous because the people from all round came together

to behold it. And it was celebrated in this manner:...." The account

which follows is somewhat prolix; but its substance is, briefly, that

twelve maidens were elected, two for each division of the city; and that

it was decided by lot which contrade, or quarters of the town, should

provide them with dresses. This was done at enormous expense, one

contrada contending with another, and even the jewels of the treasury of

St. Mark being lent for the occasion to the "Maries," as the twelve

damsels were called. They, being thus dressed with gold, and silver, and

jewels, went in their galley to St. Mark's for the Doge, who joined them

with the Signory, and went first to San Pietro di Castello to hear mass

on St. Mark's day, the 31st of January, and to Santa Maria Formosa on

the 2nd of February, the intermediate day being spent in passing in

procession through the streets of the city; "and sometimes there arose

quarrels about the places they should pass through, for every one wanted

them to pass by his house."

§ XI. Nearly the same account is given by Corner, who, however, does not

say anything about the hats or the malvoisie. These, however, we find

again in the Matricola de' Casseleri, which, of course, sets the

services of the trunkmakers and the privileges obtained by them in the

most brilliant light. The quaintness of the old Venetian is hardly to be

rendered into English. "And you must know that the said trunkmakers were

the men who were the cause of such victory, and of taking the galley,

and of cutting all the Triestines to pieces, because, at that time, they

were valiant men and well in order. The which victory was on the 2nd

February, on the day of the Madonna of candles. And at the request and

entreaties of the said trunkmakers, it was decreed that the Doge, every

year, as long as Venice shall endure, should go on the eve of the said

feast to vespers in the said church, with the Signory. And be it noted,

that the vicar is obliged to give to the Doge two flasks of malvoisie,

with two oranges besides. And so it is observed, and will be observed

always." The reader must observe the continual confusion between St.

Mark's day the 31st of January, and Candlemas the 2nd of February. The

fact appears to be, that the marriage day in the old republic was St.

Mark's day, and the recovery of the brides was the same day at evening;

so that, as we are told by Sansovino, the commemorative festival began

on that day, but it was continued to the day of the Purification, that

especial thanks might be rendered to the Virgin; and, the visit to Sta.

Maria Formosa being the most important ceremony of the whole festival,

the old chroniclers, and even Sansovino, got confused, and asserted the

victory itself to have taken place on the day appointed for that

pilgrimage.

§ XII. I doubt not that the reader who is acquainted with the beautiful

lines of Rogers is as much grieved as I am at the interference of the

"casket-makers" with the achievement which the poet ascribes to the

bridegrooms alone; an interference quite as inopportune as that of old

Le Balafré with the victory of his nephew, in the unsatisfactory

conclusion of "Quentin Durward." I am afraid I cannot get the

casket-makers quite out of the way; but it may gratify some of my

readers to know that a chronicle of the year 1378, quoted by

Galliciolli, denies the agency of the people of Sta. Maria Formosa

altogether, in these terms: "Some say that the people of Sta. M. Formosa

were those who recovered the _spoil_ ("predra;" I may notice, in

passing, that most of the old chroniclers appear to consider the

recovery of the _caskets_ rather more a subject of congratulation than

that of the brides), and that, for their reward, they asked the Doge and

Signory to visit Sta. M. Formosa; but _this is false_. The going to Sta.

M. Formosa was because the thing had succeeded on that day, and because

this was then the only church in Venice in honor of the Virgin." But

here is again the mistake about the day itself; and besides if we get

rid altogether of the trunkmakers, how are we to account for the

ceremony of the oranges and hats, of which the accounts seem authentic?

If, however, the reader likes to substitute "carpenters" or

"house-builders" for casket-makers, he may do so with great reason (vide

Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1758); but I fear that one or the other body of

tradesmen must be allowed to have had no small share in the honor of the

victory.

§ XIII. But whatever doubt attaches to the particular circumstances of

its origin, there is none respecting the splendor of the festival

itself, as it was celebrated for four centuries afterwards. We find that

each contrada spent from 800 to 1000 zecchins in the dress of the

"Maries" entrusted to it; but I cannot find among how many contrade the

twelve Maries were divided; it is also to be supposed that most of the

accounts given refer to the later periods of the celebration of the

festival. In the beginning of the eleventh century, the good Doge Pietro

Orseolo II. left in his will the third of his entire fortune "per la

Festa della Marie;" and, in the fourteenth century, so many people came

from the rest of Italy to see it, that special police regulations were

made for it, and the Council of Ten were twice summoned before it took

place.[35] The expense lavished upon it seems to have increased till the

year 1379, when all the resources of the republic were required for the

terrible war of Chiozza, and all festivity was for that time put an end

to. The issue of the war left the Venetians with neither the power nor

the disposition to restore the festival on its ancient scale, and they

seem to have been ashamed to exhibit it in reduced splendor. It was

entirely abolished.

§ XIV. As if to do away even with its memory, every feature of the

surrounding scene which was associated with that festival has been in

succeeding ages destroyed. With one solitary exception,[36] there is not

a house left in the whole Piazza of Santa Maria Formosa from whose

windows the festa of the Maries has ever been seen: of the church in

which they worshipped, not a stone is left, even the form of the ground

and direction of the neighboring canals are changed; and there is now

but one landmark to guide the steps of the traveller to the place where

the white cloud rested, and the shrine was built to St. Mary the

Beautiful. Yet the spot is still worth his pilgrimage, for he may

receive a lesson upon it, though a painful one. Let him first fill his

mind with the fair images of the ancient festival, and then seek that

landmark the tower of the modern church, built upon the place where the

daughters of Venice knelt yearly with her noblest lords; and let him

look at the head that is carved on the base of the tower,[37] still

dedicated to St. Mary the Beautiful.

§ XV. A head,--huge, inhuman, and monstrous,--leering in bestial

degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be

beheld for more than an instant: yet let it be endured for that instant;

for in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to which Venice

was abandoned in the fourth period of her decline; and it is well that

we should see and feel the full horror of it on this spot, and know what

pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty, until it

melted away like the white cloud from the ancient fields of Santa Maria

Formosa.

§ XVI. This head is one of many hundreds which disgrace the latest

buildings of the city, all more or less agreeing in their expression of

sneering mockery, in most cases enhanced by thrusting out the tongue.

Most of them occur upon the bridges, which were among the very last

works undertaken by the republic, several, for instance, upon the Bridge

of Sighs; and they are evidences of a delight in the contemplation of

bestial vice, and the expression of low sarcasm, which is, I believe,

the most hopeless state into which the human mind can fall. This spirit

of idiotic mockery is, as I have said, the most striking characteristic

of the last period of the Renaissance, which, in consequence of the

character thus imparted to its sculpture, I have called grotesque; but

it must be our immediate task, and it will be a most interesting one, to

distinguish between this base grotesqueness, and that magnificent

condition of fantastic imagination, which was above noticed as one of

the chief elements of the Northern Gothic mind. Nor is this a question

of interesting speculation merely: for the distinction between the true

and false grotesque is one which the present tendencies of the English

mind have rendered it practically important to ascertain; and that in a

degree which, until he has made some progress in the consideration of

the subject, the reader will hardly anticipate.

§ XVII. But, first, I have to note one peculiarity in the late

architecture of Venice, which will materially assist us in understanding

the true nature of the spirit which is to be the subject of our inquiry;

and this peculiarity, singularly enough, is first exemplified in the

very façade of Santa Maria Formosa which is flanked by the grotesque

head to which our attention has just been directed. This façade, whose

architect is unknown, consists of a pediment, sustained on four

Corinthian pilasters, and is, I believe, the earliest in Venice which

appears _entirely destitute of every religious symbol, sculpture, or

inscription_; unless the Cardinal's hat upon the shield in the centre of

the impediment be considered a religious symbol. The entire façade is

nothing else than a monument to the Admiral Vincenzo Cappello. Two

tablets, one between each pair of flanking pillars, record his acts and

honors; and, on the corresponding spaces upon the base of the church,

are two circular trophies, composed of halberts, arrows, flags,

tridents, helmets, and lances: sculptures which are just as valueless in

a military as in an ecclesiastical point of view; for, being all copied

from the forms of Roman arms and armor, they cannot even be referred to

for information respecting the costume of the period. Over the door, as

the chief ornament of the façade, exactly in the spot which in the

"barbarous" St. Mark's is occupied by the figure of Christ, is the

statue of Vincenzo Cappello, in Roman armor. He died in 1542; and we

have, therefore, the latter part of the sixteenth century fixed as the

period when, in Venice, churches were first built to the glory of man,

instead of the glory of God.

§ XVIII. Throughout the whole of Scripture history, nothing is more

remarkable than the close connection of punishment with the sin of

vain-glory. Every other sin is occasionally permitted to remain, for

lengthened periods, without definite chastisement; but the forgetfulness

of God, and the claim of honor by man, as belonging to himself, are

visited at once, whether in Hezekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, or Herod, with the

most tremendous punishment. We have already seen, that the first reason

for the fall of Venice was the manifestation of such a spirit; and it is

most singular to observe the definiteness with which it is here

marked,--as if so appointed, that it might be impossible for future ages

to miss the lesson. For, in the long inscriptions[38] which record the

acts of Vincenzo Cappello, it might, at least, have been anticipated

that some expressions would occur indicative of remaining pretence to

religious feeling, or formal acknowledgement of Divine power. But there

are none whatever. The name of God does not once occur; that of St. Mark

is found only in the statement that Cappello was a procurator of the

church: there is no word touching either on the faith or hope of the

deceased; and the only sentence which alludes to supernatural powers at

all, alludes to them under the heathen name of _fates_, in its

explanation of what the Admiral Cappello _would_ have accomplished,

"nisi fata Christianis adversa vetuissent."

§ XIX. Having taken sufficient note of all the baseness of mind which

these facts indicate in the people, we shall not be surprised to find

immediate signs of dotage in the conception of their architecture. The

churches raised throughout this period are so grossly debased, that even

the Italian critics of the present day, who are partially awakened to

the true state of art in Italy, though blind, as yet, to its true cause,

exhaust their terms of reproach upon these last efforts of the

Renaissance builders. The two churches of San Moisè and Santa Maria

Zobenigo, which are among the most remarkable in Venice for their

manifestation of insolent atheism, are characterized by Lazari, the one

as "culmine d'ogni follia architettonica," the other as "orrido ammasso

di pietra d'Istria," with added expressions of contempt, as just as it

is unmitigated.

§ XX. Now both these churches, which I should like the reader to visit

in succession, if possible, after that of Sta. Maria Formosa, agree with

that church, and with each other, in being totally destitute of

religious symbols, and entirely dedicated to the honor of two Venetian

families. In San Moisè, a bust of Vincenzo Fini is set on a tall narrow

pyramid, above the central door, with this marvellous inscription:

"OMNE FASTIGIVM

VIRTVTE IMPLET

VINCENTIVS FINI."

It is very difficult to translate this; for fastigium, besides its

general sense, has a particular one in architecture, and refers to the

part of the building occupied by the bust; but the main meaning of it is

that "Vincenzo Fini fills all height with his virtue." The inscription

goes on into farther praise, but this example is enough. Over the two

lateral doors are two other laudatory inscriptions of younger members of

the Fini family, the dates of death of the three heroes being 1660,

1685, and 1726, marking thus the period of consummate degradation.

[Illustration: Plate III.

NOBLE AND IGNOBLE GROTESQUE.]

§ XXI. In like manner, the Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo is entirely

dedicated to the Barbaro family; the only religious symbols with which

it is invested being statues of angels blowing brazen trumpets, intended

to express the spreading of the fame of the Barbaro family in heaven. At

the top of the church is Venice crowned, between Justice and Temperance,

Justice holding a pair of grocer's scales, of iron, swinging in the

wind. There is a two-necked stone eagle (the Barbaro crest), with a

copper crown, in the centre of the pediment. A huge statue of a Barbaro

in armor, with a fantastic head-dress, over the central door; and four

Barbaros in niches, two on each side of it, strutting statues, in the

common stage postures of the period,--Jo. Maria Barbaro, sapiens

ordinum; Marinus Barbaro, Senator (reading a speech in a Ciceronian

attitude); Franc. Barbaro, legatus in classe (in armor, with high-heeled

boots, and looking resolutely fierce); and Carolus Barbaro, sapiens

ordinum: the decorations of the façade being completed by two trophies,

consisting of drums, trumpets, flags and cannon; and six plans,

sculptured in relief, of the towns of Zara, Candia, Padua, Rome, Corfu,

and Spalatro.

§ XXII. When the traveller has sufficiently considered the meaning of

this façade, he ought to visit the Church of St. Eustachio, remarkable

for the dramatic effect of the group of sculpture on its façade, and

then the Church of the Ospedaletto (see Index, under head Ospedaletto);

noticing, on his way, the heads on the foundations of the Palazzo Corner

della Regina, and the Palazzo Pesaro, and any other heads carved on the

modern bridges, closing with those on the Bridge of Sighs.

He will then have obtained a perfect idea of the style and feeling of

the Grotesque Renaissance. I cannot pollute this volume by any

illustration of its worst forms, but the head turned to the front, on

the right-hand in the opposite Plate, will give the general reader an

idea of its most graceful and refined developments. The figure set

beside it, on the left, is a piece of noble grotesque, from fourteenth

century Gothic; and it must be our present task to ascertain the nature

of the difference which exists between the two, by an accurate inquiry

into the true essence of the grotesque spirit itself.

§ XXIII. First, then, it seems to me that the grotesque is, in almost

all cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful;

that, as one or other of these elements prevails, the grotesque falls

into two branches, sportive grotesque and terrible grotesque; but that

we cannot legitimately consider it under these two aspects, because

there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both

elements; there are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast

with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to

exclude all ideas of jest. But although we cannot separate the grotesque

itself into two branches, we may easily examine separately the two

conditions of mind which it seems to combine; and consider successively

what are the kinds of jest, and what the kinds of fearfulness, which may

be legitimately expressed in the various walks of art, and how their

expressions actually occur in the Gothic and Renaissance schools.

First, then, what are the conditions of playfulness which we may fitly

express in noble art, or which (for this is the same thing) are

consistent with nobleness in humanity? In other words, what is the

proper function of play, with respect not to youth merely, but to all

mankind?

§ XXIV. It is a much more serious question than may be at first

supposed; for a healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a

healthy manner of work: and because the choice of our recreation is, in

most cases, left to ourselves, while the nature of our work is generally

fixed by necessity or authority, it may be well doubted whether more

distressful consequences may not have resulted from mistaken choice in

play than from mistaken direction in labor.

§ XXV. Observe, however, that we are only concerned, here, with that

kind of play which causes laughter or implies recreation, not with that

which consists in the excitement of the energies whether of body or

mind. Muscular exertion is, indeed, in youth, one of the conditions of

recreation; "but neither the violent bodily labor which children of all

ages agree to call play," nor the grave excitement of the mental

faculties in games of skill or chance, are in anywise connected with the

state of feeling we have here to investigate, namely, that sportiveness

which man possesses in common with many inferior creatures, but to which

his higher faculties give nobler expression in the various

manifestations of wit, humor, and fancy.

With respect to the manner in which this instinct of playfulness is

indulged or repressed, mankind are broadly distinguishable into four

classes: the men who play wisely; who play necessarily; who play

inordinately; and who play not at all.

§ XXVI. First: Those who play wisely. It is evident that the idea of any

kind of play can only be associated with the idea of an imperfect,

childish, and fatigable nature. As far as men can raise that nature, so

that it shall no longer be interested by trifles or exhausted by toils,

they raise it above play; he whose heart is at once fixed upon heaven,

and open to the earth, so as to apprehend the importance of heavenly

doctrines, and the compass of human sorrow, will have little disposition

for jest; and exactly in proportion to the breadth and depth of his

character and intellect, will be, in general, the incapability of

surprise, or exuberant and sudden emotion, which must render play

impossible. It is, however, evidently not intended that many men should

even reach, far less pass their lives in, that solemn state of

thoughtfulness, which brings them into the nearest brotherhood with

their Divine Master; and the highest and healthiest state which is

competent to ordinary humanity appears to be that which, accepting the

necessity of recreation, and yielding to the impulses of natural delight

springing out of health and innocence, does, indeed, condescend often to

playfulness, but never without such deep love of God, of truth, and of

humanity, as shall make even its slightest words reverent, its idlest

fancies profitable, and its keenest satire indulgent. Wordsworth and

Plato furnish us with, perhaps, the finest and highest examples of this

playfulness: in the one case, unmixed with satire, the perfectly simple

effusion of that spirit--in

"Which gives to all the self-same bent,

Whose life is wise, and innocent;"

Plato, and, by the by, in a very wise book of our own times, not

unworthy of being named in such companionship, "Friends in Council,"

mingled with an exquisitely tender and loving satire.

§ XXVII. Secondly: The men who play necessarily. That highest species of

playfulness, which we have just been considering, is evidently the

condition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but so habitually

trained to intellectual labor that it can bring a considerable force of

accurate thought into its moments even of recreation. This is not

possible, unless so much repose of mind and heart are enjoyed, even at

the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the system

is diffused over the whole life. To the majority of mankind, such a

state is evidently unattainable. They must, perforce, pass a large part

of their lives in employments both irksome and toilsome, demanding an

expenditure of energy which exhausts the system, and yet consuming that

energy upon subjects incapable of interesting the nobler faculties. When

such employments are intermitted, those noble instincts, fancy,

imagination, and curiosity, are all hungry for the food which the labor

of the day has denied to them, while yet the weariness of the body, in a

great degree, forbids their application to any serious subject. They

therefore exert themselves without any determined purpose, and under no

vigorous restraint, but gather, as best they may, such various

nourishment, and put themselves to such fantastic exercise, as may

soonest indemnify them for their past imprisonment, and prepare them to

endure their recurrence. This sketching of the mental limbs as their

fetters fall away,--this leaping and dancing of the heart and intellect,

when they are restored to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by

their captivity, and unable to turn themselves to any earnest

purpose,--I call necessary play. It is impossible to exaggerate its

importance, whether in polity, or in art.

§ XXVIII. Thirdly: The men who play inordinately. The most perfect state

of society which, consistently with due understanding of man's nature,

it may be permitted us to conceive, would be one in which the whole

human race were divided, more or less distinctly, into workers and

thinkers; that is to say, into the two classes, who only play wisely, or

play necessarily. But the number and the toil of the working class are

enormously increased, probably more than doubled, by the vices of the

men who neither play wisely nor necessarily, but are enabled by

circumstances, and permitted by their want of principle, to make

amusement the object of their existence. There is not any moment of the

lives of such men which is not injurious to others; both because they

leave the work undone which was appointed for them, and because they

necessarily think wrongly, whenever it becomes compulsory upon them to

think at all. The greater portion of the misery of this world arises

from the false opinions of men whose idleness has physically

incapacitated them from forming true ones. Every duty which we omit

obscures some truth which we should have known; and the guilt of a life

spent in the pursuit of pleasure is twofold, partly consisting in the

perversion of action, and partly in the dissemination of falsehood.

§ XXIX. There is, however, a less criminal, though hardly less dangerous

condition of mind; which, though not failing in its more urgent duties,

fails in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the degree, and

directs the choice, of amusement, at those times when amusement is

allowable. The most frequent error in this respect is the want of

reverence in approaching subjects of importance or sacredness, and of

caution in the expression of thoughts which may encourage like

irreverence in others: and these faults are apt to gain upon the mind

until it becomes habitually more sensible to what is ludicrous and

accidental, than to what is grave and essential, in any subject that is

brought before it; or even, at last, desires to perceive or to know

nothing but what may end in jest. Very generally minds of this

character are active and able; and many of them are so far

conscientious, that they believe their jesting forwards their work. But

it is difficult to calculate the harm they do, by destroying the

reverence which is our best guide into all truth; for weakness and evil

are easily visible, but greatness and goodness are often latent; and we

do infinite mischief by exposing weakness to eyes which cannot

comprehend greatness. This error, however, is more connected with abuses

of the satirical than of the playful instinct; and I shall have more to

say of it presently.

§ XXX. Lastly: The men who do not play at all: those who are so dull or

so morose as to be incapable of inventing or enjoying jest, and in whom

care, guilt, or pride represses all healthy exhilaration of the fancy;

or else men utterly oppressed with labor, and driven too hard by the

necessities of the world to be capable of any species of happy

relaxation.

§ XXXI. We have now to consider the way in which the presence or absence

of joyfulness, in these several classes, is expressed in art.

1. Wise play. The first and noblest class hardly ever speak through art,

except seriously; they feel its nobleness too profoundly, and value the

time necessary for its production too highly, to employ it in the

rendering of trivial thoughts. The playful fancy of a moment may

innocently be expressed by the passing word; but he can hardly have

learned the preciousness of life, who passes days in the elaboration of

a jest. And, as to what regards the delineation of human character, the

nature of all noble art is to epitomize and embrace so much at once,

that its subject can never be altogether ludicrous; it must possess all

the solemnities of the whole, not the brightness of the partial, truth.

For all truth that makes us smile is partial. The novelist amuses us by

his relation of a particular incident; but the painter cannot set any

one of his characters before us without giving some glimpse of its whole

career. That of which the historian informs us in successive pages, it

is the task of the painter to inform us of at once, writing upon the

countenance not merely the expression of the moment, but the history of

the life: and the history of a life can never be a jest.

Whatever part, therefore, of the sportive energy of these men of the

highest class would be expressed in verbal wit or humor finds small

utterance through their art, and will assuredly be confined, if it occur

there at all, to scattered and trivial incidents. But so far as their

minds can recreate themselves by the imagination of strange, yet not

laughable, forms, which, either in costume, in landscape, or in any

other accessaries, may be combined with those necessary for their more

earnest purposes, we find them delighting in such inventions; and a

species of grotesqueness thence arising in all their work, which is

indeed one of its most valuable characteristics, but which is so

intimately connected with the sublime or terrible form of the grotesque,

that it will be better to notice it under that head.

§ XXXII. 2. Necessary play. I have dwelt much in a former portion of

this work, on the justice and desirableness of employing the minds of

inferior workmen, and of the lower orders in general, in the production

of objects of art of one kind or another. So far as men of this class

are compelled to hard manual labor for their daily bread, so far forth

their artistical efforts must be rough and ignorant, and their

artistical perceptions comparatively dull. Now it is not possible, with

blunt perceptions and rude hands, to produce works which shall be

pleasing by their beauty; but it is perfectly possible to produce such

as shall be interesting by their character or amusing by their satire.

For one hard-working man who possesses the finer instincts which decide

on perfection of lines and harmonies of color, twenty possess dry humor

or quaint fancy; not because these faculties were originally given to

the human race, or to any section of it, in greater degree than the

sense of beauty, but because these are exercised in our daily

intercourse with each other, and developed by the interest which we take

in the affairs of life, while the others are not. And because,

therefore, a certain degree of success will probably attend the effort

to express this humor or fancy, while comparative failure will

assuredly result from an ignorant struggle to reach the forms of solemn

beauty, the working-man, who turns his attention partially to art, will

probably, and wisely, choose to do that which he can do best, and

indulge the pride of an effective satire rather than subject himself to

assured mortification in the pursuit of beauty; and this the more,

because we have seen that his application to art is to be playful and

recreative, and it is not in recreation that the conditions of

perfection can be fulfilled.

§ XXXIII. Now all the forms of art which result from the comparatively

recreative exertion of minds more or less blunted or encumbered by other

cares and toils, the art which we may call generally art of the wayside,

as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best

sense of the word, Grotesque. And it is noble or inferior, first,

according to the tone of the minds which have produced it, and in

proportion to their knowledge, wit, love of truth, and kindness;

secondly, according to the degree of strength they have been able to

give forth; but yet, however much we may find in it needing to be

forgiven, always delightful so long as it is the work of good and

ordinarily intelligent men. And its delightfulness ought mainly to

consist _in those very imperfections_ which mark it for work done in

times of rest. It is not its own merit so much as the enjoyment of him

who produced it, which is to be the source of the spectator's pleasure;

it is to the strength of his sympathy, not to the accuracy of his

criticism, that it makes appeal; and no man can indeed be a lover of

what is best in the higher walks of art, who has not feeling and charity

enough to rejoice with the rude sportiveness of hearts that have escaped

out of prison, and to be thankful for the flowers which men have laid

their burdens down to sow by the wayside.

§ XXXIV. And consider what a vast amount of human work this right

understanding of its meaning will make fruitful and admirable to us,

which otherwise we could only have passed by with contempt. There is

very little architecture in the world which is, in the full sense of the

words, good and noble. A few pieces of Italian Gothic and Romanesque, a

few scattered fragments of Gothic cathedrals, and perhaps two or three

of Greek temples, are all that we possess approaching to an ideal of

perfection. All the rest--Egyptian, Norman, Arabian, and most Gothic,

and, which is very noticeable, for the most part all the strongest and

mightiest--depend for their power on some developement of the grotesque

spirit; but much more the inferior domestic architecture of the middle

ages, and what similar conditions remain to this day in countries from

which the life of art has not yet been banished by its laws. The

fantastic gables, built up in scroll-work and steps, of the Flemish

street; the pinnacled roofs set with their small humorist double

windows, as if with so many ears and eyes, of Northern France; the

blackened timbers, crossed and carved into every conceivable waywardness

of imagination, of Normandy and old England; the rude hewing of the pine

timbers of the Swiss cottage; the projecting turrets and bracketed

oriels of the German street; these, and a thousand other forms, not in

themselves reaching any high degree of excellence, are yet admirable,

and most precious, as the fruits of a rejoicing energy in uncultivated

minds. It is easier to take away the energy, than to add the

cultivation; and the only effect of the better knowledge which civilized

nations now possess, has been, as we have seen in a former chapter, to

forbid their being happy, without enabling them to be great.

§ XXXV. It is very necessary, however, with respect to this provincial

or rustic architecture, that we should carefully distinguish its truly

grotesque from its picturesque elements. In the "Seven Lamps" I defined

the picturesque to be "parasitical sublimity," or sublimity belonging to

the external or accidental characters of a thing, not to the thing

itself. For instance, when a highland cottage roof is covered with

fragments of shale instead of slates, it becomes picturesque, because

the irregularity and rude fractures of the rocks, and their grey and

gloomy color, give to it something of the savageness, and much of the

general aspect, of the slope of a mountain side. But as a mere cottage

roof, it cannot be sublime, and whatever sublimity it derives from the

wildness or sternness which the mountains have given it in its covering,

is, so far forth, parasitical. The mountain itself would have been

grand, which is much more than picturesque; but the cottage cannot be

grand as such, and the parasitical grandeur which it may possess by

accidental qualities, is the character for which men have long agreed to

use the inaccurate word "Picturesque."

§ XXXVI. On the other hand, beauty cannot be parasitical. There is

nothing so small or so contemptible, but it may be beautiful in its own

right. The cottage may be beautiful, and the smallest moss that grows on

its roof, and the minutest fibre of that moss which the microscope can

raise into visible form, and all of them in their own right, not less

than the mountains and the sky; so that we use no peculiar term to

express their beauty, however diminutive, but only when the sublime

element enters, without sufficient worthiness in the nature of the thing

to which it is attached.

§ XXXVII. Now this picturesque element, which is always given, if by

nothing else, merely by ruggedness, adds usually very largely to the

pleasurableness of grotesque work, especially to that of its inferior

kinds; but it is not for this reason to be confounded with the

grotesqueness itself. The knots and rents of the timbers, the irregular

lying of the shingles on the roofs, the vigorous light and shadow, the

fractures and weather-stains of the old stones, which were so deeply

loved and so admirably rendered by our lost Prout, are the picturesque

elements of the architecture: the grotesque ones are those which are not

produced by the working of nature and of time, but exclusively by the

fancy of man; and, as also for the most part by his indolent and

uncultivated fancy, they are always, in some degree, wanting in

grandeur, unless the picturesque element be united with them.

§ XXXVIII. 3. Inordinate play. The reader will have some difficulty, I

fear, in keeping clearly in his mind the various divisions of our

subject; but, when he has once read the chapter through, he will see

their places and coherence. We have next to consider the expression

throughout of the minds of men who indulge themselves in unnecessary

play. It is evident that a large number of these men will be more

refined and more highly educated than those who only play necessarily;

the power of pleasure-seeking implies, in general, fortunate

circumstances of life. It is evident also that their play will not be so

hearty, so simple, or so joyful; and this deficiency of brightness will

affect it in proportion to its unnecessary and unlawful continuance,

until at last it becomes a restless and dissatisfied indulgence in

excitement, or a painful delving after exhausted springs of pleasure.

The art through which this temper is expressed will, in all probability,

be refined and sensual,--therefore, also, assuredly feeble; and because,

in the failure of the joyful energy of the mind, there will fail, also,

its perceptions and its sympathies, it will be entirely deficient in

expression of character, and acuteness of thought, but will be

peculiarly restless, manifesting its desire for excitement in idle

changes of subject and purpose. Incapable of true imagination, it will

seek to supply its place by exaggerations, incoherencies, and

monstrosities; and the form of the grotesque to which it gives rise will

be an incongruous chain of hackneyed graces, idly thrown

together,--prettinesses or sublimities, not of its own invention,

associated in forms which will be absurd without being fantastic, and

monstrous without being terrible. And because, in the continual pursuit

of pleasure, men lose both cheerfulness and charity, there will be small

hilarity, but much malice, in this grotesque; yet a weak malice,

incapable of expressing its own bitterness, not having grasp enough of

truth to become forcible, and exhausting itself in impotent or

disgusting caricature.

§ XXXIX. Of course, there are infinite ranks and kinds of this

grotesque, according to the natural power of the minds which originate

it, and to the degree in which they have lost themselves. Its highest

condition is that which first developed itself among the enervated

Romans, and which was brought to the highest perfection of which it was

capable, by Raphael, in the arabesques of the Vatican. It may be

generally described as an elaborate and luscious form of nonsense. Its

lower conditions are found in the common upholstery and decorations

which, over the whole of civilized Europe, have sprung from this

poisonous root; an artistical pottage, composed of nymphs, cupids, and

satyrs, with shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and

nondescript vegetables. And the lowest of all are those which have not

even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption

of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is

the case in the latter Renaissance of Venice, which we were above

examining. It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the

human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque. In a

recent Italian garden, the favorite ornaments frequently consist of

stucco images, representing, in dwarfish caricature, the most disgusting

types of manhood and womanhood which can be found amidst the dissipation

of the modern drawingroom; yet without either veracity or humor, and

dependent, for whatever interest they possess, upon simple grossness of

expression and absurdity of costume. Grossness, of one kind or another,

is, indeed, an unfailing characteristic of the style; either latent, as

in the refined sensuality of the more graceful arabesques, or, in the

worst examples, manifested in every species of obscene conception and

abominable detail. In the head, described in the opening of this

chapter, at Santa Maria Formosa, the _teeth_ are represented as

_decayed_.

§ XL. 4. The minds of the fourth class of men who do not play at all,

are little likely to find expression in any trivial form of art, except

in bitterness of mockery; and this character at once stamps the work in

which it appears, as belonging to the class of terrible, rather than of

playful, grotesque. We have, therefore, now to examine the state of mind

which gave rise to this second and more interesting branch of

imaginative work.

§ XLI. Two great and principal passions are evidently appointed by the

Deity to rule the life of man; namely, the love of God, and the fear of

sin, and of its companion--Death. How many motives we have for Love, how

much there is in the universe to kindle our admiration and to claim our

gratitude, there are, happily, multitudes among us who both feel and

teach. But it has not, I think, been sufficiently considered how

evident, throughout the system of creation, is the purpose of God that

we should often be affected by Fear; not the sudden, selfish, and

contemptible fear of immediate danger, but the fear which arises out of

the contemplation of great powers in destructive operation, and

generally from the perception of the presence of death. Nothing appears

to me more remarkable than the array of scenic magnificence by which the

imagination is appalled, in myriads of instances, when the actual danger

is comparatively small; so that the utmost possible impression of awe

shall be produced upon the minds of all, though direct suffering is

inflicted upon few. Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a single

thunder-storm. Perhaps two or three persons may be struck dead within

the space of a hundred square miles; and their deaths, unaccompanied by

the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momentary

sadness in the busy hearts of living men. But the preparation for the

Judgment by all that mighty gathering of clouds; by the questioning of

the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds

shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of

the destroying angels before they draw forth their swords of fire; by

the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noon-day, and the

rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot-wheels of death;--on

how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as great as the

actual witnessing of the fatal issue! and how strangely are the

expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the apprehension of

the human soul! The lurid color, the long, irregular, convulsive sound,

the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all as true and

faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger, as the moaning or

wailing of the human voice itself is to our instinct of pity. It is not

a reasonable calculating terror which they awake in us; it is no matter

that we count distance by seconds, and measure probability by averages.

That shadow of the thunder-cloud will still do its work upon our hearts,

and we shall watch its passing away as if we stood upon the

threshing-floor of Araunah.

§ XLII. And this is equally the case with respect to all the other

destructive phenomena of the universe. From the mightiest of them to the

gentlest, from the earthquake to the summer shower, it will be found

that they are attended by certain aspects of threatening, which strike

terror into the hearts of multitudes more numerous a thousandfold than

those who actually suffer from the ministries of judgment; and that,

besides the fearfulness of these immediately dangerous phenomena, there

is an occult and subtle horror belonging to many aspects of the creation

around us, calculated often to fill us with serious thought, even in our

times of quietness and peace. I understand not the most dangerous,

because most attractive form of modern infidelity, which, pretending to

exalt the beneficence of the Deity, degrades it into a reckless

infinitude of mercy, and blind obliteration of the work of sin; and

which does this chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God's

kindness on the face of creation. Such kindness is indeed everywhere and

always visible; but not alone. Wrath and threatening are invariably

mingled with the love; and in the utmost solitudes of nature, the

existence of Hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand

spiritual utterances, as that of Heaven. It is well for us to dwell with

thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew,

and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted

trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the

black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain streams, the

solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty

into darkness, and of all strength into dust, have these no language for

us? We may seek to escape their teaching by reasonings touching the good

which is wrought out of all evil; but it is vain sophistry. The good

succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so also the evil to

the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven

and hell, divide the existence of man, and his Futurity.[39]

§ XLIII. And because the thoughts of the choice we have to make between

these two, ought to rule us continually, not so much in our own actions

(for these should, for the most part, be governed by settled habit and

principle) as in our manner of regarding the lives of other men, and our

own responsibilities with respect to them; therefore, it seems to me

that the healthiest state into which the human mind can be brought is

that which is capable of the greatest love, and the greatest awe: and

this we are taught even in our times of rest; for when our minds are

rightly in tone, the merely pleasurable excitement which they seek with

most avidity is that which rises out of the contemplation of beauty or

of terribleness. We thirst for both, and, according to the height and

tone of our feeling, desire to see them in noble or inferior forms. Thus

there is a Divine beauty, and a terribleness or sublimity coequal with

it in rank, which are the subjects of the highest art; and there is an

inferior or ornamental beauty, and an inferior terribleness coequal with

it in rank, which are the subjects of grotesque art. And the state of

mind in which the terrible form of the grotesque is developed, is that

which in some irregular manner, dwells upon certain conditions of

terribleness, into the complete depth of which it does not enter for the

time.

§ XLIV. Now the things which are the proper subjects of human fear are

twofold; those which have the power of Death, and those which have the

nature of Sin. Of which there are many ranks, greater or less in power

and vice, from the evil angels themselves down to the serpent which is

their type, and which though of a low and contemptible class, appears

to unite the deathful and sinful natures in the most clearly visible and

intelligible form; for there is nothing else which we know, of so small

strength and occupying so unimportant a place in the economy of

creation, which yet is so mortal and so malignant. It is, then, on these

two classes of objects that the mind fixes for its excitement, in that

mood which gives rise to the terrible grotesque; and its subject will be

found always to unite some expression of vice and danger, but regarded

in a peculiar temper; sometimes (A) of predetermined or involuntary

apathy, sometimes (B) of mockery, sometimes (C) of diseased and

ungoverned imaginativeness.

§ XLV. For observe, the difficulty which, as I above stated, exists in

distinguishing the playful from the terrible grotesque arises out of

this cause; that the mind, under certain phases of excitement, _plays_

with _terror_, and summons images which, if it were in another temper,

would be awful, but of which, either in weariness or in irony, it

refrains for the time to acknowledge the true terribleness. And the mode

in which this refusal takes place distinguishes the noble from the

ignoble grotesque. For the master of the noble grotesque knows the depth

of all at which he seems to mock, and would feel it at another time, or

feels it in a certain undercurrent of thought even while he jests with

it; but the workman of the ignoble grotesque can feel and understand

nothing, and mocks at all things with the laughter of the idiot and the

cretin.

To work out this distinction completely is the chief difficulty in our

present inquiry; and, in order to do so, let us consider the above-named

three conditions of mind in succession, with relation to objects of

terror.

§ _XLVI_. (A). Involuntary or predetermined apathy. We saw above that

the grotesque was produced, chiefly in subordinate or ornamental art, by

rude, and in some degree uneducated men, and in their times of rest. At

such times, and in such subordinate work, it is impossible that they

should represent any solemn or terrible subject with a full and serious

entrance into its feeling. It is not in the languor of a leisure hour

that a man will set his whole soul to conceive the means of representing

some important truth, nor to the projecting angle of a timber bracket

that he would trust its representation, if conceived. And yet, in this

languor, and in this trivial work, he must find some expression of the

serious part of his soul, of what there is within him capable of awe, as

well as of love. The more noble the man is, the more impossible it will

be for him to confine his thoughts to mere loveliness, and that of a low

order. Were his powers and his time unlimited, so that, like Frà

Angelico, he could paint the Seraphim, in that order of beauty he could

find contentment, bringing down heaven to earth. But by the conditions

of his being, by his hard-worked life, by his feeble powers of

execution, by the meanness of his employment and the languor of his

heart, he is bound down to earth. It is the world's work that he is

doing, and world's work is not to be done without fear. And whatever

there is of deep and eternal consciousness within him, thrilling his

mind with the sense of the presence of sin and death around him, must be

expressed in that slight work, and feeble way, come of it what will. He

cannot forget it, among all that he sees of beautiful in nature; he may

not bury himself among the leaves of the violet on the rocks, and of the

lily in the glen, and twine out of them garlands of perpetual gladness.

He sees more in the earth than these,--misery and wrath, and

discordance, and danger, and all the work of the dragon and his angels;

this he sees with too deep feeling ever to forget. And though when he

returns to his idle work,--it may be to gild the letters upon the page,

or to carve the timbers of the chamber, or the stones of the

pinnacle,--he cannot give his strength of thought any more to the woe or

to the danger, there is a shadow of them still present with him: and as

the bright colors mingle beneath his touch, and the fair leaves and

flowers grow at his bidding, strange horrors and phantasms rise by their

side; grisly beasts and venomous serpents, and spectral fiends and

nameless inconsistencies of ghastly life, rising out of things most

beautiful, and fading back into them again, as the harm and the horror

of life do out of its happiness. He has seen these things; he wars with

them daily; he cannot but give them their part in his work, though in a

state of comparative apathy to them at the time. He is but carving and

gilding, and must not turn aside to weep; but he knows that hell is

burning on, for all that, and the smoke of it withers his oak-leaves.

§ XLVII. Now, the feelings which give rise to the false or ignoble

grotesque, are exactly the reverse of these. In the true grotesque, a

man of naturally strong feeling is accidentally or resolutely apathetic;

in the false grotesque, a man naturally apathetic is forcing himself

into temporary excitement. The horror which is expressed by the one,

comes upon him whether he will or not; that which is expressed by the

other, is sought out by him, and elaborated by his art. And therefore,

also, because the fear of the one is true, and of true things, however

fantastic its expression may be, there will be reality in it, and force.

It is not a manufactured terribleness, whose author, when he had

finished it, knew not if it would terrify any one else or not: but it is

a terribleness taken from the life; a spectre which the workman indeed

saw, and which, as it appalled him, will appal us also. But the other

workman never felt any Divine fear; he never shuddered when he heard the

cry from the burning towers of the earth,

"Venga Medusa; sì lo farem di smalto."

He is stone already, and needs no gentle hand laid upon his eyes to save

him.

§ XLVIII. I do not mean what I say in this place to apply to the

creations of the imagination. It is not as the creating but as the

_seeing_ man, that we are here contemplating the master of the true

grotesque. It is because the dreadfulness of the universe around him

weighs upon his heart, that his work is wild; and therefore through the

whole of it we shall find the evidence of deep insight into nature. His

beasts and birds, however monstrous, will have profound relations with

the true. He may be an ignorant man, and little acquainted with the laws

of nature; he is certainly a busy man, and has not much time to watch

nature; but he never saw a serpent cross his path, nor a bird flit

across the sky, nor a lizard bask upon a stone, without learning so much

of the sublimity and inner nature of each as will not suffer him

thenceforth to conceive them coldly. He may not be able to carve plumes

or scales well; but his creatures will bite and fly, for all that. The

ignoble workman is the very reverse of this. He never felt, never looked

at nature; and if he endeavor to imitate the work of the other, all his

touches will be made at random, and all his extravagances will be

ineffective; he may knit brows, and twist lips, and lengthen beaks, and

sharpen teeth, but it will be all in vain. He may make his creatures

disgusting, but never fearful.

§ XLIX. There is, however, often another cause of difference than this.

The true grotesque being the expression of the _repose_ or play of a

_serious_ mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the

result of the _full exertion_ of a _frivolous_ one. There is much

grotesque which is wrought out with exquisite care and pains, and as

much labor given to it as if it were of the noblest subject; so that the

workman is evidently no longer apathetic, and has no excuse for

unconnectedness of thought, or sudden unreasonable fear. If he awakens

horror now, it ought to be in some truly sublime form. His strength is

in his work; and he must not give way to sudden humor, and fits of

erratic fancy. If he does so, it must be because his mind is naturally

frivolous, or is for the time degraded into the deliberate pursuit of

frivolity. And herein lies the real distinction between the base

grotesque of Raphael and the Renaissance, above alluded to, and the true

Gothic grotesque. Those grotesques or arabesques of the Vatican, and

other such work, which have become the patterns of ornamentation in

modern times, are the fruit of great minds degraded to base objects. The

care, skill, and science, applied to the distribution of the leaves, and

the drawing of the figures, are intense, admirable, and accurate;

therefore, they ought to have produced a grand and serious work, not a

tissue of nonsense. If we can draw the human head perfectly, and are

masters of its expression and its beauty, we have no business to cut it

off, and hang it up by the hair at the end of a garland. If we can draw

the human body in the perfection of its grace and movement, we have no

business to take away its limbs, and terminate it with a bunch of

leaves. Or rather our doing so will imply that there is something wrong

with us; that, if we can consent to use our best powers for such base

and vain trifling, there must be something wanting in the powers

themselves; and that, however skilful we may be, or however learned, we

are wanting both in the earnestness which can apprehend a noble truth,

and in the thoughtfulness which can feel a noble fear. No Divine terror

will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength

in elaborating toys; for the first lesson which that terror is sent to

teach us, is the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal

time.

§ L. And are we never, then, it will be asked, to possess a refined or

perfect ornamentation? Must all decoration be the work of the ignorant

and the rude? Not so; but exactly in proportion as the ignorance and

rudeness diminish, must the ornamentation become rational, and the

grotesqueness disappear. The noblest lessons may be taught in

ornamentation, the most solemn truths compressed into it. The Book of

Genesis, in all the fulness of its incidents, in all the depth of its

meaning, is bound within the leaf-borders of the gates of Ghiberti. But

Raphael's arabesque is mere elaborate idleness. It has neither meaning

nor heart in it; it is an unnatural and monstrous abortion.

§ LI. Now, this passing of the grotesque into higher art, as the mind of

the workman becomes informed with better knowledge, and capable of more

earnest exertion, takes place in two ways. Either, as his power

increases, he devotes himself more and more to the beauty which he now

feels himself able to express, and so the grotesqueness expands, and

softens into the beautiful, as in the above-named instance of the gates

of Ghiberti; or else, if the mind of the workman be naturally inclined

to gloomy contemplation, the imperfection or apathy of his work rises

into nobler terribleness, until we reach the point of the grotesque of

Albert Durer, where, every now and then, the playfulness or apathy of

the painter passes into perfect sublime. Take the Adam and Eve, for

instance. When he gave Adam a bough to hold, with a parrot on it, and a

tablet hung to it, with "Albertus Durer Noricus faciebat, 1504,"

thereupon, his mind was not in Paradise. He was half in play, half

apathetic with respect to his subject, thinking how to do his work well,

as a wise master-graver, and how to receive his just reward of fame. But

he rose into the true sublime in the head of Adam, and in the profound

truthfulness of every creature that fills the forest. So again in that

magnificent coat of arms, with the lady and the satyr, as he cast the

fluttering drapery hither and thither around the helmet, and wove the

delicate crown upon the woman's forehead, he was in a kind of play; but

there is none in the dreadful skull upon the shield. And in the "Knight

and Death," and in the dragons of the illustrations to the Apocalypse,

there is neither play nor apathy; but their grotesque is of the ghastly

kind which best illustrates the nature of death and sin. And this leads

us to the consideration of the second state of mind out of which the

noble grotesque is developed; that is to say, the temper of mockery.

§ LII. (B). Mockery, or Satire. In the former part of this chapter, when

I spoke of the kinds of art which were produced in the recreation of the

lower orders, I only spoke of forms of ornament, not of the expression

of satire or humor. But it seems probable, that nothing is so refreshing

to the vulgar mind as some exercise of this faculty, more especially on

the failings of their superiors; and that, wherever the lower orders are

allowed to express themselves freely, we shall find humor, more or less

caustic, becoming a principal feature in their work. The classical and

Renaissance manufacturers of modern times having silenced the

independent language of the operative, his humor and satire pass away in

the word-wit which has of late become the especial study of the group of

authors headed by Charles Dickens; all this power was formerly thrown

into noble art, and became permanently expressed in the sculptures of

the cathedral. It was never thought that there was anything discordant

or improper in such a position: for the builders evidently felt very

deeply a truth of which, in modern times, we are less cognizant; that

folly and sin are, to a certain extent, synonymous, and that it would be

well for mankind in general, if all could be made to feel that

wickedness is as contemptible as it is hateful. So that the vices were

permitted to be represented under the most ridiculous forms, and all the

coarsest wit of the workman to be exhausted in completing the

degradation of the creatures supposed to be subjected to them.

§ LIII. Nor were even the supernatural powers of evil exempt from this

species of satire. For with whatever hatred or horror the evil angels

were regarded, it was one of the conditions of Christianity that they

should also be looked upon as vanquished; and this not merely in their

great combat with the King of Saints, but in daily and hourly combats

with the weakest of His servants. In proportion to the narrowness of the

powers of abstract conception in the workman, the nobleness of the idea

of spiritual nature diminished, and the traditions of the encounters of

men with fiends in daily temptations were imagined with less terrific

circumstances, until the agencies which in such warfare were almost

always represented as vanquished with disgrace, became, at last, as much

the objects of contempt as of terror.

The superstitions which represented the devil as assuming various

contemptible forms of disguises in order to accomplish his purposes

aided this gradual degradation of conception, and directed the study of

the workman to the most strange and ugly conditions of animal form,

until at last, even in the most serious subjects, the fiends are oftener

ludicrous than terrible. Nor, indeed, is this altogether avoidable, for

it is not possible to express intense wickedness without some condition

of degradation. Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, cannot be

written upon noble forms; and I am aware of no effort to represent the

Satanic mind in the angelic form, which has succeeded in painting.

Milton succeeds only because he separately describes the movements of

the mind, and therefore leaves himself at liberty to make the form

heroic; but that form is never distinct enough to be painted. Dante, who

will not leave even external forms obscure, degrades them before he can

feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think,

having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper

insight into the nature of sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and

misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness. His Satan

possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil

purpose. Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this

latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the

"Insania" of excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow and false, is

a smooth and artistical, conception. On the other hand, I have always

felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable,

ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and

disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable

rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning

senselessly against itself, and still further debased by foulness of

form and action. Something is indeed to be allowed for the rude feelings

of the time, but I believe all such men as Dante are sent into the world

at the time when they can do their work best; and that, it being

appointed for him to give to mankind the most vigorous realization

possible both of Hell and Heaven, he was born both in the country and at

the time which furnished the most stern opposition of Horror and Beauty,

and permitted it to be written in the clearest terms. And, therefore,

though there are passages in the "Inferno" which it would be impossible

for any poet now to write, I look upon it as all the more perfect for

them. For there can be no question but that one characteristic of

excessive vice is indecency, a general baseness in its thoughts and acts

concerning the body,[40] and that the full portraiture of it cannot be

given without marking, and that in the strongest lines, this tendency to

corporeal degradation; which, in the time of Dante, could be done

frankly, but cannot now. And, therefore, I think the twenty-first and

twenty-second books of the "Inferno" the most perfect portraitures of

fiendish nature which we possess; and at the same time, in their

mingling of the extreme of horror (for it seems to me that the silent

swiftness of the first demon, "con l'ali aperte e sovra i pie leggiero,"

cannot be surpassed in dreadfulness) with ludicrous actions and images,

they present the most perfect instances with which I am acquainted of

the terrible grotesque. But the whole of the "Inferno" is full of this

grotesque, as well as the "Faërie Queen;" and these two poems, together

with the works of Albert Durer, will enable the reader to study it in

its noblest forms, without reference to Gothic cathedrals.

§ LIV. Now, just as there are base and noble conditions of the apathetic

grotesque, so also are there of this satirical grotesque. The condition

which might be mistaken for it is that above described as resulting from

the malice of men given to pleasure, and in which the grossness and

foulness are in the workman as much as in his subject, so that he

chooses to represent vice and disease rather than virtue and beauty,

having his chief delight in contemplating them; though he still mocks at

them with such dull wit as may be in him, because, as Young has said

most truly,

"'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool."

§ LV. Now it is easy to distinguish this grotesque from its noble

counterpart, by merely observing whether any forms of beauty or dignity

are mingled with it or not; for, of course, the noble grotesque is only

employed by its master for good purposes, and to contrast with beauty:

but the base workman cannot conceive anything but what is base; and

there will be no loveliness in any part of his work, or, at the best, a

loveliness measured by line and rule, and dependent on legal shapes of

feature. But, without resorting to this test, and merely by examining

the ugly grotesque itself, it will be found that, if it belongs to the

base school, there will be, first, no Horror in it; secondly, no Nature

in it; and, thirdly, no Mercy in it.

§ LVI. I say, first, no Horror. For the base soul has no fear of sin,

and no hatred of it: and, however it may strive to make its work

terrible, there will be no genuineness in the fear; the utmost it can do

will be to make its work disgusting.

Secondly, there will be no Nature in it. It appears to be one of the

ends proposed by Providence in the appointment of the forms of the brute

creation, that the various vices to which mankind are liable should be

severally expressed in them so distinctly and clearly as that men could

not but understand the lesson; while yet these conditions of vice might,

in the inferior animal, be observed without the disgust and hatred which

the same vices would excite, if seen in men, and might be associated

with features of interest which would otherwise attract and reward

contemplation. Thus, ferocity, cunning, sloth, discontent, gluttony,

uncleanness, and cruelty are seen, each in its extreme, in various

animals; and are so vigorously expressed, that when men desire to

indicate the same vices in connexion with human forms, they can do it no

better than by borrowing here and there the features of animals. And

when the workman is thus led to the contemplation of the animal kingdom,

finding therein the expressions of vice which he needs, associated with

power, and nobleness, and freedom from disease, if his mind be of right

tone he becomes interested in this new study; and all noble grotesque

is, therefore, full of the most admirable rendering of animal character.

But the ignoble workman is capable of no interest of this kind; and,

being too dull to appreciate, and too idle to execute, the subtle and

wonderful lines on which the expression of the lower animal depends, he

contents himself with vulgar exaggeration, and leaves his work as false

as it is monstrous, a mass of blunt malice and obscene ignorance.

§ LVII. Lastly, there will be no Mercy in it. Wherever the satire of the

noble grotesque fixes upon human nature, it does so with much sorrow

mingled amidst its indignation: in its highest forms there is an

infinite tenderness, like that of the fool in Lear; and even in its more

heedless or bitter sarcasm, it never loses sight altogether of the

better nature of what it attacks, nor refuses to acknowledge its

redeeming or pardonable features. But the ignoble grotesque has no pity:

it rejoices in iniquity, and exists only to slander.

§ LVIII. I have not space to follow out the various forms of transition

which exist between the two extremes of great and base in the satirical

grotesque. The reader must always remember, that, although there is an

infinite distance between the best and worst, in this kind the interval

is filled by endless conditions more or less inclining to the evil or

the good; impurity and malice stealing gradually into the nobler forms,

and invention and wit elevating the lower, according to the countless

minglings of the elements of the human soul.

§ LIX. (C). Ungovernableness of the imagination. The reader is always to

keep in mind that if the objects of horror, in which the terrible

grotesque finds its materials, were contemplated in their true light,

and with the entire energy of the soul, they would cease to be

grotesque, and become altogether sublime; and that therefore it is some

shortening of the power, or the will, of contemplation, and some

consequent distortion of the terrible image in which the grotesqueness

consists. Now this distortion takes place, it was above asserted, in

three ways: either through apathy, satire, or ungovernableness of

imagination. It is this last cause of the grotesque which we have

finally to consider; namely, the error and wildness of the mental

impressions, caused by fear operating upon strong powers of imagination,

or by the failure of the human faculties in the endeavor to grasp the

highest truths.

§ LX. The grotesque which comes to all men in a disturbed dream is the

most intelligible example of this kind, but also the most ignoble; the

imagination, in this instance, being entirely deprived of all aid from

reason, and incapable of self-government. I believe, however, that the

noblest forms of imaginative power are also in some sort ungovernable,

and have in them something of the character of dreams; so that the

vision, of whatever kind, comes uncalled, and will not submit itself to

the seer, but conquers him, and forces him to speak as a prophet,

having no power over his words or thoughts.[41] Only, if the whole man

be trained perfectly, and his mind calm, consistent and powerful, the

vision which comes to him is seen as in a perfect mirror, serenely, and

in consistence with the rational powers; but if the mind be imperfect

and ill trained, the vision is seen as in a broken mirror, with strange

distortions and discrepancies, all the passions of the heart breathing

upon it in cross ripples, till hardly a trace of it remains unbroken. So

that, strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always

the ruling and Divine power: and the rest of the man is to it only as an

instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and

sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and

wildly if they are stained and broken. And thus the "Iliad," the

"Inferno," the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Faërie Queen," are all of them

true dreams; only the sleep of the men to whom they came was the deep,

living sleep which God sends, with a sacredness in it, as of death, the

revealer of secrets.

§ LXI. Now, observe in this matter, carefully, the difference between a

dim mirror and a distorted one; and do not blame me for pressing the

analogy too far, for it will enable me to explain my meaning every way

more clearly. Most men's minds are dim mirrors, in which all truth is

seen, as St. Paul tells us, darkly: this is the fault most common and

most fatal; dulness of the heart and mistiness of sight, increasing to

utter hardness and blindness; Satan breathing upon the glass, so that if

we do not sweep the mist laboriously away, it will take no image. But,

even so far as we are able to do this, we have still the distortion to

fear, yet not to the same extent, for we can in some sort allow for the

distortion of an image, if only we can see it clearly. And the fallen

human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a

broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe round it; and the wider

the scope of its glance, and the vaster the truths into which it obtains

an insight, the more fantastic their distortion is likely to be, as the

winds and vapors trouble the field of the telescope most when it reaches

farthest.

§ LXII. Now, so far as the truth is seen by the imagination[42] in its

wholeness and quietness, the vision is sublime; but so far as it is

narrowed and broken by the inconsistencies of the human capacity, it

becomes grotesque; and it would seem to be rare that any very exalted

truth should be impressed on the imagination without some grotesqueness

in its aspect, proportioned to the degree of _diminution of breadth_ in

the grasp which is given of it. Nearly all the dreams recorded in the

Bible,--Jacob's, Joseph's, Pharaoh's, Nebuchadnezzar's,--are grotesques;

and nearly the whole of the accessary scenery in the books of Ezekiel

and the Apocalypse. Thus, Jacob's dream revealed to him the ministry of

angels; but because this ministry could not be seen or understood by him

in its fulness, it was narrowed to him into a ladder between heaven and

earth, which was a grotesque. Joseph's two dreams were evidently

intended to be signs of the steadfastness of the Divine purpose towards

him, by possessing the clearness of special prophecy; yet were couched

in such imagery, as not to inform him prematurely of his destiny, and

only to be understood after their fulfilment. The sun, and moon, and

stars were at the period, and are indeed throughout the Bible, the

symbols of high authority. It was not revealed to Joseph that he should

be lord over all Egypt; but the representation of his family by symbols

of the most magnificent dominion, and yet as subject to him, must have

been afterwards felt by him as a distinctly prophetic indication of his

own supreme power. It was not revealed to him that the occasion of his

brethren's special humiliation before him should be their coming to buy

corn; but when the event took place, must he not have felt that there

was prophetic purpose in the form of the sheaves of wheat which first

imaged forth their subjection to him? And these two images of the sun

doing obeisance, and the sheaves bowing down,--narrowed and imperfect

intimations of great truth which yet could not be otherwise

conveyed,--are both grotesque. The kine of Pharaoh eating each other,

the gold and clay of Nebuchadnezzar's image, the four beasts full of

eyes, and other imagery of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, are grotesques of

the same kind, on which I need not further insist.

§ LXIII. Such forms, however, ought perhaps to have been arranged under

a separate head, as Symbolical Grotesque; but the element of awe enters

into them so strongly, as to justify, for all our present purposes,

their being classed with the other varieties of terrible grotesque. For

even if the symbolic vision itself be not terrible, the sense of what

may be veiled behind it becomes all the more awful in proportion to the

insignificance or strangeness of the sign itself; and, I believe, this

thrill of mingled doubt, fear, and curiosity lies at the very root of

the delight which mankind take in symbolism. It was not an accidental

necessity for the conveyance of truth by pictures instead of words,

which led to its universal adoption wherever art was on the advance; but

the Divine fear which necessarily follows on the understanding that a

thing is other and greater than it seems; and which, it appears

probable, has been rendered peculiarly attractive to the human heart,

because God would have us understand that this is true not of invented

symbols merely, but of all things amidst which we live; that there is a

deeper meaning within them than eye hath seen, or ear hath heard; and

that the whole visible creation is a mere perishable symbol of things

eternal and true. It cannot but have been sometimes a subject of wonder

with thoughtful men, how fondly, age after age, the Church has cherished

the belief that the four living creatures which surrounded the

Apocalyptic throne were symbols of the four Evangelists, and rejoiced

to use those forms in its picture-teaching; that a calf, a lion, an

eagle, and a beast with a man's face, should in all ages have been

preferred by the Christian world, as expressive of Evangelistic power

and inspiration, to the majesty of human forms; and that quaint

grotesques, awkward and often ludicrous caricatures even of the animals

represented, should have been regarded by all men, not only with

contentment, but with awe, and have superseded all endeavors to

represent the characters and persons of the Evangelistic writers

themselves (except in a few instances, confined principally to works

undertaken without a definite religious purpose);--this, I say, might

appear more than strange to us, were it not that we ourselves share the

awe, and are still satisfied with the symbol, and that justly. For,

whether we are conscious of it or not, there is in our hearts, as we

gaze upon the brutal forms that have so holy a signification, an

acknowledgment that it was not Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, nor John, in

whom the Gospel of Christ was unsealed: but that the invisible things of

Him from the beginning of the creation are clearly seen, being

understood by the things that are made; that the whole world, and all

that is therein, be it low or high, great or small, is a continual

Gospel; and that as the heathen, in their alienation from God, changed

His glory into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds,

and four-footed beasts, the Christian, in his approach to God, is to

undo this work, and to change the corruptible things into the image of

His glory; believing that there is nothing so base in creation, but that

our faith may give it wings which shall raise us into companionship with

heaven; and that, on the other hand, there is nothing so great or so

goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the Gospel of

Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him.

§ LXIV. And it is easy to understand, if we follow out this thought,

how, when once the symbolic language was familiarized to the mind, and

its solemnity felt in all its fulness, there was no likelihood of

offence being taken at any repulsive or feeble characters in execution

or conception. There was no form so mean, no incident so commonplace,

but, if regarded in this light, it might become sublime; the more

vigorous the fancy and the more faithful the enthusiasm, the greater

would be the likelihood of their delighting in the contemplation of

symbols whose mystery was enhanced by apparent insignificance, or in

which the sanctity and majesty of meaning were contrasted with the

utmost uncouthness of external form: nor with uncouthness merely, but

even with every appearance of malignity or baseness; the beholder not

being revolted even by this, but comprehending that, as the seeming evil

in the framework of creation did not invalidate its Divine authorship,

so neither did the evil or imperfection in the symbol invalidate its

Divine message. And thus, sometimes, the designer at last became wanton

in his appeal to the piety of his interpreter, and recklessly poured out

the impurity and the savageness of his own heart, for the mere pleasure

of seeing them overlaid with the fine gold of the sanctuary, by the

religion of their beholder.

§ LXV. It is not, however, in every symbolical subject that the fearful

grotesque becomes embodied to the full. The element of distortion which

affects the intellect when dealing with subjects above its proper

capacity, is as nothing compared with that which it sustains from the

direct impressions of terror. It is the trembling of the human soul in

the presence of death which most of all disturbs the images on the

intellectual mirror, and invests them with the fitfulness and

ghastliness of dreams. And from the contemplation of death, and of the

pangs which follow his footsteps, arise in men's hearts the troop of

strange and irresistible superstitions which, more or less melancholy or

majestic according to the dignity of the mind they impress, are yet

never without a certain grotesqueness, following on the paralysis of the

reason and over-excitement of the fancy. I do not mean to deny the

actual existence of spiritual manifestations; I have never weighed the

evidence upon the subject; but with these, if such exist, we are not

here concerned. The grotesque which we are examining arises out of that

condition of mind which appears to follow naturally upon the

contemplation of death, and in which the fancy is brought into morbid

action by terror, accompanied by the belief in spiritual presence, and

in the possibility of spiritual apparition. Hence are developed its most

sublime, because its least voluntary, creations, aided by the

fearfulness of the phenomena of nature which are in any wise the

ministers of death, and primarily directed by the peculiar ghastliness

of expression in the skeleton, itself a species of terrible grotesque in

its relation to the perfect human frame.

§ LXVI. Thus, first born from the dusty and dreadful whiteness of the

charnel house, but softened in their forms by the holiest of human

affections, went forth the troop of wild and wonderful images, seen

through tears, that had the mastery over our Northern hearts for so many

ages. The powers of sudden destruction lurking in the woods and waters,

in the rocks and clouds;--kelpie and gnome, Lurlei and Hartz spirits;

the wraith and foreboding phantom; the spectra of second sight; the

various conceptions of avenging or tormented ghost, haunting the

perpetrator of crime, or expiating its commission; and the half

fictitious and contemplative, half visionary and believed images of the

presence of death itself, doing its daily work in the chambers of

sickness and sin, and waiting for its hour in the fortalices of strength

and the high places of pleasure;--these, partly degrading us by the

instinctive and paralyzing terror with which they are attended, and

partly ennobling us by leading our thoughts to dwell in the eternal

world, fill the last and the most important circle in that great kingdom

of dark and distorted power, of which we all must be in some sort the

subjects until mortality shall be swallowed up of life; until the waters

of the last fordless river cease to roll their untransparent volume

between us and the light of heaven, and neither death stand between us

and our brethren, nor symbols between us and our God.

§ LXVII. We have now, I believe, obtained a view approaching to

completeness of the various branches of human feeling which are

concerned in the developement of this peculiar form of art. It remains

for us only to note, as briefly as possible, what facts in the actual

history of the grotesque bear upon our immediate subject.

From what we have seen to be its nature, we must, I think, be led to one

most important conclusion; that wherever the human mind is healthy and

vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no

less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened

preëminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will

exist in full energy. And, accordingly, I believe that there is no test

of greatness in periods, nations, or men, more sure than the

developement, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test

of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more

sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of

understanding it. I think that the central man of all the world, as

representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual

faculties, all at their highest, is Dante; and in him the grotesque

reaches at once the most distinct and the most noble developement to

which it was ever brought in the human mind. The two other greatest men

whom Italy has produced, Michael Angelo and Tintoret, show the same

element in no less original strength, but oppressed in the one by his

science, and in both by the spirit of the age in which they lived;

never, however, absent even in Michael Angelo, but stealing forth

continually in a strange and spectral way, lurking in folds of raiment

and knots of wild hair, and mountainous confusions of craggy limb and

cloudy drapery; and, in Tintoret, ruling the entire conceptions of his

greatest works to such a degree that they are an enigma or an offence,

even to this day, to all the petty disciples of a formal criticism. Of

the grotesque in our own Shakspeare I need hardly speak, nor of its

intolerableness to his French critics; nor of that of Æschylus and

Homer, as opposed to the lower Greek writers; and so I believe it will

be found, at all periods, in all minds of the first order.

§ LXVIII. As an index of the greatness of nations, it is a less certain

test, or, rather, we are not so well agreed on the meaning of the term

"greatness" respecting them. A nation may produce a great effect, and

take up a high place in the world's history, by the temporary enthusiasm

or fury of its multitudes, without being truly great; or, on the other

hand, the discipline of morality and common sense may extend its

physical power or exalt its well-being, while yet its creative and

imaginative powers are continually diminishing. And again: a people may

take so definite a lead over all the rest of the world in one direction,

as to obtain a respect which is not justly due to them if judged on

universal grounds. Thus the Greeks perfected the sculpture of the human

body; threw their literature into a disciplined form, which has given it

a peculiar power over certain conditions of modern mind; and were the

most carefully educated race that the world has seen; but a few years

hence, I believe, we shall no longer think them a greater people than

either the Egyptians or Assyrians.

§ LXIX. If, then, ridding ourselves as far as possible of prejudices

owing merely to the school-teaching which remains from the system of the

Renaissance, we set ourselves to discover in what races the human soul,

taken all in all, reached its highest magnificence, we shall find, I

believe, two great families of men, one of the East and South, the other

of the West and North: the one including the Egyptians, Jews, Arabians,

Assyrians, and Persians; the other, I know not whence derived, but

seeming to flow forth from Scandinavia, and filling the whole of Europe

with its Norman and Gothic energy. And in both these families, wherever

they are seen in their utmost nobleness, there the grotesque is

developed in its utmost energy; and I hardly know whether most to admire

the winged bulls of Nineveh, or the winged dragons of Verona.

§ LXX. The reader who has not before turned his attention to this

subject may, however, at first have some difficulty in distinguishing

between the noble grotesque of these great nations, and the barbarous

grotesque of mere savages, as seen in the work of the Hindoo and other

Indian nations; or, more grossly still, in that of the complete savage

of the Pacific islands; or if, as is to be hoped, he instinctively

feels the difference, he may yet find difficulty in determining wherein

that difference consists. But he will discover, on consideration, that

the noble grotesque _involves the true appreciation of beauty_, though

the mind may wilfully turn to other images or the hand resolutely stop

short of the perfection which it must fail, if it endeavored, to reach;

while the grotesque of the Sandwich islander involves no perception or

imagination of anything above itself. He will find that in the exact

proportion in which the grotesque results from an incapability of

perceiving beauty, it becomes savage or barbarous; and that there are

many stages of progress to be found in it even in its best times, much

truly savage grotesque occurring in the fine Gothic periods, mingled

with the other forms of the ignoble grotesque resulting from vicious

inclinations or base sportiveness. Nothing is more mysterious in the

history of the human mind, than the manner in which gross and ludicrous

images are mingled with the most solemn subjects in the work of the

middle ages, whether of sculpture or illumination; and although, in

great part, such incongruities are to be accounted for on the various

principles which I have above endeavored to define, in many instances

they are clearly the result of vice and sensuality. The general

greatness of seriousness of an age does not effect the restoration of

human nature; and it would be strange, if, in the midst of the art even

of the best periods, when that art was entrusted to myriads of workmen,

we found no manifestations of impiety, folly, or impurity.

§ LXXI. It needs only to be added that in the noble grotesque, as it is

partly the result of a morbid state of the imaginative power, that power

itself will be always seen in a high degree; and that therefore our

power of judging of the rank of a grotesque work will depend on the

degree in which we are in general sensible of the presence of invention.

The reader may partly test this power in himself by referring to the

Plate given in the opening of this chapter, in which, on the left, is a

piece of noble and inventive grotesque, a head of the lion-symbol of St.

Mark, from the Veronese Gothic; the other is a head introduced as a

boss on the foundation of the Palazzo Corner della Regina at Venice,

utterly devoid of invention, made merely monstrous by exaggerations of

the eyeballs and cheeks, and generally characteristic of that late

Renaissance grotesque of Venice, with which we are at present more

immediately concerned.[43]

§ LXXII. The developement of that grotesque took place under different

laws from those which regulate it in any other European city. For, great

as we have seen the Byzantine mind show itself to be in other

directions, it was marked as that of a declining nation by the absence

of the grotesque element; and, owing to its influence, the early

Venetian Gothic remained inferior to all other schools in this

particular character. Nothing can well be more wonderful than its

instant failure in any attempt at the representation of ludicrous or

fearful images, more especially when it is compared with the magnificent

grotesque of the neighboring city of Verona, in which the Lombard

influence had full sway. Nor was it until the last links of connexion

with Constantinople had been dissolved, that the strength of the

Venetian mind could manifest itself in this direction. But it had then a

new enemy to encounter. The Renaissance laws altogether checked its

imagination in architecture; and it could only obtain permission to

express itself by starting forth in the work of the Venetian painters,

filling them with monkeys and dwarfs, even amidst the most serious

subjects, and leading Veronese and Tintoret to the most unexpected and

wild fantasies of form and color.

§ LXXIII. We may be deeply thankful for this peculiar reserve of the

Gothic grotesque character to the last days of Venice. All over the rest

of Europe it had been strongest in the days of imperfect art;

magnificently powerful throughout the whole of the thirteenth century,

tamed gradually in the fourteenth and fifteenth, and expiring in the

sixteenth amidst anatomy and laws of art. But at Venice, it had not been

received when it was elsewhere in triumph, and it fled to the lagoons

for shelter when elsewhere it was oppressed. And it was arrayed by the

Venetian painters in robes of state, and advanced by them to such honor

as it had never received in its days of widest dominion; while, in

return, it bestowed upon their pictures that fulness, piquancy, decision

of parts, and mosaic-like intermingling of fancies, alternately

brilliant and sublime, which were exactly what was most needed for the

developement of their unapproachable color-power.

§ LXXIV. Yet, observe, it by no means follows that because the grotesque

does not appear in the art of a nation, the sense of it does not exist

in the national mind. Except in the form of caricature, it is hardly

traceable in the English work of the present day; but the minds of our

workmen are full of it, if we would only allow them to give it shape.

They express it daily in gesture and gibe, but are not allowed to do so

where it would be useful. In like manner, though the Byzantine influence

repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present

in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national

custom and festival; _acted_ grotesques, full of wit, feeling, and

good-humor. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the

beginning of this chapter, is one instance out of multitudes. Another,

more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the

twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch

of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado,

and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced,

not to death, but to send every year on "Fat Thursday" sixty-two large

loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being

understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy:

and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these

representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators;

together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the

erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the

_Doge and the Senate_ attacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the

Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to

let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish,

and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they

found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far

as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.[44]

§ LXXV. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit

is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again:

it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the

spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter, that the Venetians

were distinctively a serious people, serious, that is to say, in the

sense in which the English are a more serious people than the French;

though the habitual intercourse of our lower classes in London has a

tone of humor in it which I believe is untraceable in that of the

Parisian populace. It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and

another to be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: and gaiety of heart

during the reaction after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction in

the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogether compatible

with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of, a deep internal

seriousness of disposition; this latter being exactly the condition of

mind which, as we have seen, leads to the richest developements of the

playful grotesque; while, on the contrary, the continual pursuit of

pleasure deprives the soul of all alacrity and elasticity, and leaves it

incapable of happy jesting, capable only of that which is bitter, base,

and foolish. Thus, throughout the whole of the early career of the

Venetians, though there is much jesting, there is no levity; on the

contrary there is an intense earnestness both in their pursuit of

commercial and political successes, and in their devotion to

religion,[45] which led gradually to the formation of that highly

wrought mingling of immovable resolution with secret thoughtfulness,

which so strangely, sometimes so darkly, distinguishes the Venetian

character at the time of their highest power, when the seriousness was

left, but the conscientiousness destroyed. And if there be any one sign

by which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very

life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly

because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble),--I say, if there be

one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is this

deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the dignity

of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is clearly

owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly raised or idealized

his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or failings of

the human nature around him, so that the best of his work is that which

has most perfectly taken the color of his own mind; and the least

impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to have been

unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is exactly the

reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears often in some

degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in domestic and

grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But the moment he

gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble and grave; the

more literally true his work, the more majestic; and the same artist who

will produce little beyond what is commonplace in painting a Madonna or

an apostle, will rise into unapproachable sublimity when his subject is

a member of the Forty, or a Master of the Mint.

Such, then, were the general tone and progress of the Venetian mind, up

to the close of the seventeenth century. First, serious, religious, and

sincere; then, though serious still, comparatively deprived of

conscientiousness, and apt to decline into stern and subtle policy: in

the first case, the spirit of the noble grotesque not showing itself in

art at all, but only in speech and action; in the second case,

developing itself in painting, through accessories and vivacities of

composition, while perfect dignity was always preserved in portraiture.

A third phase rapidly developed itself.

§ LXXVI. Once more, and for the last time, let me refer the reader to

the important epoch of the death of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo in 1423,

long ago indicated as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian

power. That commencement is marked, not merely by the words of the dying

Prince, but by a great and clearly legible sign. It is recorded, that on

the accession of his successor, Foscari, to the throne, "SI FESTEGGIO

DALLA CITTA UNO ANNO INTERO:" "The city kept festival for a whole year."

Venice had in her childhood sown, in tears, the harvest she was to reap

in rejoicing. She now sowed in laughter the seeds of death.

Thenceforward, year after year, the nation drank with deeper thirst from

the fountains of forbidden pleasure, and dug for springs, hitherto

unknown, in the dark places of the earth. In the ingenuity of

indulgence, in the varieties of vanity, Venice surpassed the cities of

Christendom, as of old she surpassed them in fortitude and devotion; and

as once the powers of Europe stood before her judgment-seat, to receive

the decisions of her justice, so now the youth of Europe assembled in

the halls of her luxury, to learn from her the arts of delight.

It is as needless, as it is painful, to trace the steps of her final

ruin. That ancient curse was upon her, the curse of the cities of the

plain, "Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness." By the

inner burning of her own passions, as fatal as the fiery reign of

Gomorrah, she was consumed from her place among the nations; and her

ashes are choking the channels of the dead salt sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. i. p. 24; and the Chronicle of

1738, quoted by Galliciolli: "attrovandosi allora la giesia de Sta.

Maria Formosa sola giesia del nome della gloriosa Vergine Maria."

[28] Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who

arranged the "Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia," vol. iii. p. 7.

Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639.

[29] Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted

information on the short sentence of Sansovino: "Finalmente, l'anno

1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del

corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco." Sansovino, however, gives

842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding.

[30] Or at least for its principal families. Vide Appendix 8, "Early

Venetian Marriages."

[31] "Nazionale quasi la ceremonia, perciocche per essa nuovi

difensori ad acquistar andava la patria, sostegni nuovi le leggi, la

Liberta."--_Mutinelli._

[32] "Vestita, _per antico uso_, di bianco, e con chiome sparse giù

per le spalle, conteste con fila d'oro." "Dressed according to

ancient usage in white, and with her hair thrown down upon her

shoulders, interwoven with threads of gold." This was when she was

first brought out of her chamber to be seen by the guests invited to

the espousals. "And when the form of the espousal has been gone

through, she is led, to the sound of pipes and trumpets, and other

musical instruments, round the room, _dancing serenely all the time,

and bowing herself before the guests_ (ballando placidamente, e

facendo inchini ai convitati); and so she returns to her chamber:

and when other guests have arrived, she again comes forth, and makes

the circuit of the chamber. And this is repeated for an hour or

somewhat more; and then, accompanied by many ladies who wait for

her, she enters a gondola without its felze (canopy), and, seated on

a somewhat raised seat covered with carpets, with a great number of

gondolas following her, she goes to visit the monasteries and

convents, wheresoever she has any relations."

[33] Sansovino.

[34] English, "Malmsey." The reader will find a most amusing account

of the negotiations between the English and Venetians, touching the

supply of London with this wine, in Mr. Brown's translation of the

Giustiniani papers. See Appendix IX.

[35] "XV. diebus et octo diebus ante festum Mariarum omni

anno."--_Galliciolli._ The same precautions were taken before the

feast of the Ascension.

[36] Casa Vittura.

[37] The keystone of the arch on its western side, facing the canal.

[38] The inscriptions are as follows:

To the left of the reader.

"VINCENTIUS CAPELLUS MARITIMARUM

RERUM PERITISSIMUS ET ANTIQUORUM

LAUDIBUS PAR, TRIREMIUM ONERARIA

RUM PRÆFECTUS, AB HENRICO VII. BRI

TANNIÆ REGE INSIGNE DONATUS CLAS

SIS LEGATUS V. IMP. DESIG. TER CLAS

SEM DEDUXIT, COLLAPSAM NAVALEM DIS

CIPLINAM RESTITUIT, AD ZACXINTHUM

AURIÆ CÆSARIS LEGATO PRISCAM

VENETAM VIRTUTEM OSTENDIT."

To the right of the reader.

"IN AMBRACIO SINU BARBARUSSUM OTTHO

MANICÆ CLASSIS DUCEM INCLUSIT

POSTRIDIE AD INTERNITIONEM DELETU

RUS NISI FATA CHRISTIANIS ADVERSA

VETUISSENT. IN RYZONICO SINU CASTRO NOVO

EXPUGNATO DIVI MARCI PROCUR

UNIVERSO REIP CONSENSU CREATUS

IN PATRIA MORITUR TOTIUS CIVITATIS

MOERORE, ANNO ÆTATIS LXXIV. MDCXLII. XIV. KAL SEPT."

[39] The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance,

or greater sum, of good, in the end; but never by the annihilation

of evil. The modern doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the

consequence of benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every

one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. Why not,

therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil?

[40] Let the reader examine, with special reference to this subject,

the general character of the language of Iago.

[41] This opposition of art to inspiration is long and gracefully

dwelt upon by Plato, in his "Phædrus," using, in the course of his

argument, almost the words of St Paul: [Greek: kallion marturousin

oi palaioi manian sôphrosynês tên ek Theou tês par anthrôpôn

gignomenês]: "It is the testimony of the ancients, that _the madness

which is of God is a nobler thing than the wisdom which is of men_;"

and again, "He who sets himself to any work with which the Muses

have to do," (i. e. to any of the fine arts,) "without madness,

thinking that by art alone he can do his work sufficiently, will be

found vain and incapable, and the work of temperance and rationalism

will be thrust aside and obscured by that of inspiration." The

passages to the same effect, relating especially to poetry, are

innumerable in nearly all ancient writers; but in this of Plato, the

entire compass of the fine arts is intended to be embraced.

No one acquainted with other parts of my writings will suppose me to

be an advocate of idle trust in the imagination. But it is in these

days just as necessary to allege the supremacy of genius as the

necessity of labor; for there never was, perhaps, a period in which

the peculiar gift of the painter was so little discerned, in which

so many and so vain efforts have been made to replace it by study

and toil. This has been peculiarly the case with the German school,

and there are few exhibitions of human error more pitiable than the

manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for

ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an

unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit,

and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas

the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes' work of a strong

man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not

anything more melancholy than the sight of the huge German cartoon,

with its objective side, and subjective side; and mythological

division, and symbolical division, and human and Divine division;

its allegorical sense, and literal sense; and ideal point of view,

and intellectual point of view; its heroism of well-made armor and

knitted brows; its heroinism of graceful attitude and braided hair;

its inwoven web of sentiment, and piety, and philosophy, and

anatomy, and history, all profound: and twenty innocent dashes of

the hand of one God-made painter, poor old Bassan or Bonifazio, were

worth it all, and worth it ten thousand times over.

Not that the sentiment or the philosophy is base in itself. They

will make a good man, but they will not make a good painter,--no,

nor the millionth part of a painter. They would have been good in

the work and words of daily life; but they are good for nothing in

the cartoon, if they are there alone. And the worst result of the

system is the intense conceit into which it cultivates a weak mind.

Nothing is so hopeless, so intolerable, as the pride of a foolish

man who has passed through a process of thinking, so as actually to

have found something out. He believes there is nothing else to be

found out in the universe. Whereas the truly great man, on whom the

Revelations rain till they bear him to the earth with their weight,

lays his head in the dust, and speaks thence--often in broken

syllables. Vanity is indeed a very equally divided inheritance among

mankind; but I think that among the first persons, no emphasis is

altogether so strong as that on the German _Ich_. I was once

introduced to a German philosopher-painter before Tintoret's

"Massacre of the Innocents." He looked at it superciliously, and

said it "wanted to be restored." He had been himself several years

employed in painting a "Faust" in a red jerkin and blue fire; which

made Tintoret appear somewhat dull to him.

[42] I have before stated ("Modern Painters" vol. ii.) that the

first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate

truth.

[43] Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II.

respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman

has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the

abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a

painter's pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines,

anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the

same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as

they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the

forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who

did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular

curls.

[44] The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.

[45] See Appendix 9.