And so, let addle-pated pedants (one does not exclude the other) claim that the deformed, the ugly, the grotesque should never be imitated in art; one replies that the grotesque is comedy, and that comedy apparently makes a part of art.  Tartuffe is not handsome, Pourceaugnac is not noble, but Pourceaugnac and Tartuffe are admirable flashes of art.

If, driven back from this entrenchment to their second line of custom-houses, they renew their prohibition of the grotesque coupled with the sublime, of comedy melted into tragedy, we prove to them that, in the poetry of Christian nations, the first of these two types represents the human beast, the second the soul.  These two stalks of art, if we prevent their branches from mingling, if we persistently separate them, will produce by way of fruit, on the one hand abstract vices and absurdities, on the other, abstract crime, heroism and virtue.  The two types, thus isolated and left to themselves, will go each its own way, leaving the real between them, at the left hand of one, at the right hand of the other.  Whence it follows that after all these abstractions there will remain something to represent—­man; after these tragedies and comedies, something to create—­the drama.

In the drama, as it may be conceived at least, if not executed, all things are connected and follow one another as in real life.  The body plays its part no less than the mind; and men and events, set in motion by this twofold agent, pass across the stage, burlesque and terrible in turn, and sometimes both at once.  Thus the judge will say:  “Off with his head and let us go to dinner!” Thus the Roman Senate will deliberate over Domitian’s turbot.  Thus Socrates, drinking the hemlock and discoursing on the immortal soul and the only God, will interrupt himself to suggest that a cook be sacrificed to AEsculapius.  Thus Elizabeth will swear and talk Latin.  Thus Richelieu will submit to Joseph the Capuchin, and Louis XI to his barber, Maitre Olivier le Diable.  Thus Cromwell will say:  “I have Parliament in my bag and the King in my pocket”; or, with the hand that signed the death sentence of Charles the First, smear with ink the face of a regicide who smilingly returns the compliment.  Thus Caesar, in his triumphal car, will be afraid of overturning.  For men of genius, however great they be, have always within them a touch of the beast which mocks at their intelligence.  Therein they are akin to mankind in general, for therein they are dramatic.  “It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous,” said Napoleon, when he was convinced that he was mere man; and that outburst of a soul on fire illumines art and history at once; that cry of anguish is the resume of the drama and of life.

It is a striking fact that all these contrasts are met with in the poets themselves, taken as men.  By dint of meditating upon existence, of laying stress upon its bitter irony, of pouring floods of sarcasm and raillery upon our infirmities, the very men who make us laugh so heartily become profoundly sad.  These Democrituses are Heraclituses as well.  Beaumarchais was surly, Moliere gloomy, Shakespeare melancholy.