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.

Sec. 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