en who,
having peculiar powers of observation for the stronger signs of
character in anything, and sincerely delighting in them, lose sight of
the associated refinements or beauties. This school is apt, more or
less, to catch at faults or strangenesses; and, associating its powers
of observation with wit or malice, produces the wild, gay, or satirical
grotesque in early sculpture, and in modern times, our rich and various
popular caricature.

I took no note of this branch of art in the chapter on the Grotesque
Ideal; partly because I did not wish to disturb the reader's mind in our
examination of the great imaginative grotesque, and also because I did
not feel able to give a distinct account of this branch, having never
thoroughly considered the powers of eye and hand involved in its finer
examples. But assuredly men of strong intellect and fine sense are found
among the caricaturists, and it is to them that I allude in saying that
the most subtle expression is often attained by "slight studies;" while
it is of the pseudo-expressionalist, or "high art" school that I am
speaking, when I say that expression may "sometimes be elaborated by the
toil of the dull;" in neither case meaning to depreciate the work,
wholly different in every way, of the great expressional schools.

I regret that I have not been able, as yet, to examine with care the
powers of mind involved in modern caricature. They are, however, always
partial and imperfect; for the very habit of looking for the leading
lines by the smallest possible number of which the expression may be
attained, warps the power of _general_ attention, and blunts the
perception of the delicacies of the entire form and color. Not that
caricature, or exaggeration of points of character, may not be
occasionally indulged in by the greatest men--as constantly by Leonardo;
but then it will be found that the caricature consists, not in imperfect
or violent _drawing_, but in delicate and perfect drawing of strange and
exaggerated forms quaintly combined: and even thus, I believe, the habit
of looking for such conditions will be found injurious; I strongly
suspect its operation on Leonardo to have been the increase of his
non-natural tendencies in his higher works. A certain acknowledgment of
the ludicrous element is admitted in corners of the pictures of
Veronese--in dwarfs or monkeys; but it is _never_ caricatured or
exaggerated. Tintoret and Titian hardly admit the element at all. T