ce in art, as in
all true criticism. When one's curiosity is deficient, when one is not
eager enough for new impressions, and new pleasures, one is liable to
value mere academical proprieties too highly, to be satisfied with
worn-out or conventional types, with the insipid ornament of Racine, or
the prettiness of that later Greek sculpture, which passed so long for
true Hellenic work; to miss those places where the handiwork of nature,
or of the artist, has been most cunning; to find the most stimulating
products of art a mere irritation. And when one's curiosity is in
excess, when it overbalances the desire of beauty, then one is liable
to value in works of art what is inartistic in them; to be satisfied
with what is exaggerated in art, with productions like some of those of
the romantic school in Germany; not to distinguish, jealously enough,
between what is admirably done, and what is done not quite so well, in
the writings, for instance, of Jean Paul. And if I had to give [247]
instances of these defects, then I should say, that Pope, in common
with the age of literature to which he belonged, had too little
curiosity, so that there is always a certain insipidity in the effect
of his work, exquisite as it is; and, coming down to our own time, that
Balzac had an excess of curiosity--curiosity not duly tempered with the
desire of beauty.

But, however falsely those two tendencies may be opposed by critics, or
exaggerated by artists themselves, they are tendencies really at work
at all times in art, moulding it, with the balance sometimes a little
on one side, sometimes a little on the other, generating, respectively,
as the balance inclines on this side or that, two principles, two
traditions, in art, and in literature so far as it partakes of the
spirit of art. If there is a great overbalance of curiosity, then, we
have the grotesque in art: if the union of strangeness and beauty,
under very difficult and complex conditions, be a successful one, if
the union be entire, then the resultant beauty is very exquisite, very
attractive. With a passionate care for beauty, the romantic spirit
refuses to have it, unless the condition of strangeness be first
fulfilled. Its desire is for a beauty born of unlikely elements, by a
profound alchemy, by a difficult initiation, by the charm which wrings
it even out of terrible things; and a trace of distortion, of the
grotesque, may perhaps linger, as an additional element of exp