ought to kill, but Shakespeare knew that such goodness
would not much interest the pit. He made him a handsome prince, and a
puzzling meditative character; these secular qualities relieve his
moral excellence, and so he becomes 'nice'. In proportion as an artist
has to deal with types essentially imperfect, he must disguise their
imperfections; he must accumulate around them as many first-rate
accessories as may make his readers forget that they are themselves
second-rate. The sudden _millionaires_ of the present day hope to
disguise their social defects by buying old places, and hiding among
aristocratic furniture; just so a great artist who has to deal with
characters artistically imperfect will use an ornate style, will fit
them into a scene where there is much else to look at.

For these reasons ornate art is within the limits as legitimate as
pure art. It does what pure art could not do. The very excellence of
pure art confines its employment. Precisely because it gives the best
things by themselves and exactly as they are, it fails when it is
necessary to describe inferior things among other things, with a list
of enhancements and a crowd of accompaniments that in reality do not
belong to it. Illusion, half belief, unpleasant types, imperfect
types, are as much the proper sphere of ornate art, as an inferior
landscape is the proper sphere for the true efficacy of moonlight. A
really great landscape needs sunlight and bears sunlight; but
moonlight is an equalizer of beauties; it gives a romantic unreality
to what will not stand the bare truth. And just so does romantic art.

There is, however, a third kind of art which differs from these on the
point in which they most resemble one another. Ornate art and pure art
have this in common, that they paint the types of literature in as
good perfection as they can. Ornate art, indeed, uses undue disguises
and unreal enhancements; it does not confine itself to the best types;
on the contrary it is its office to make the best of imperfect types
and lame approximations; but ornate art, as much as pure art, catches
its subject in the best light it can, takes the most developed aspect
of it which it can find, and throws upon it the most congruous colours
it can use. But grotesque art does just the contrary. It takes the
type, so to say, _in difficulties_. It gives a representation of it in
its minimum development, amid the circumstances least favourable to
it, just while it