the two forms of literature.

Not that it is strictly true that comedy and the grotesque were
entirely unknown to the ancients. In fact, such a thing would be
impossible. Nothing grows without a root, the germ of the second epoch
always exists in the first. In the Iliad Thersites and Vulcan furnish
comedy, one to the mortals, the other to the gods. There is too much
nature and originality in the Greek tragedy for there not to be an
occasional touch of comedy in it. For example, to cite only what we
happen to recall, the scene between Menelaus and the portress of the
palace. _(Helen_, Act I), and the scene of the Phrygian _(Orestes,_
Act IV) The Tritons, the Satyrs, the Cyclops are grotesque, Polyphemus
is a terrifying, Silenus a farcical grotesque.

But one feels that this part of the art is still in its infancy. The
epic, which at this period imposes its form on everything, the epic
weighs heavily upon it and stifles it. The ancient grotesque is timid
and forever trying to keep out of sight. It is plain that it is not
on familiar ground, because it is not in its natural surroundings. It
conceals itself as much as it can. The Satyrs, the Tritons, and the
Sirens are hardly abnormal in form. The Fates and the Harpies are
hideous in their attributes rather than in feature; the Furies are
beautiful, and are called _Eumenides_, that is to say, _gentle,
beneficent_. There is a veil of grandeur or of divinity over other
grotesques. Polyphemus is a giant, Midas a king, Silenus a god.

Thus comedy is almost imperceptible in the great epic _ensemble_
of ancient times. What is the barrow of Thespis beside the Olympian
chariots? What are Aristophanes and Plautus, beside the Homeric
colossi, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides? Homer bears them along with
him, as Hercules bore the pygmies, hidden in his lion's skin!

In the idea of men of modern times, however, the grotesque plays an
enormous part. It is found everywhere; on the one hand it creates the
abnormal and the horrible, on the other the comic and the burlesque.
It fastens upon religion a thousand original superstitions, upon
poetry a thousand picturesque fancies. It is the grotesque which
scatters lavishly, in air, water, earth, fire, those myriads of
intermediary creatures which we find all alive in the popular
traditions of the Middle Ages; it is the grotesque which impels the
ghastly antics of the witches' revels, which gives Satan his horns,
his cloven foot and his bat