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.

Sec. 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.

Sec. 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.

Sec. 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.

Sec. LX. The grotesque which comes to all men in a disturbed dream is the
most intelligi