hey
admit the noble grotesque to the full, in all its quaintness,
brilliancy, and awe; but never any form of it depending on exaggeration,
partiality, or fallacy.[120]

I believe, therefore, whatever wit, delicate appreciation of ordinary
character, or other intellectual power may belong to the modern masters
of caricature, their method of study for ever incapacitates them from
passing beyond a certain point, and either reaching any of the perfect
forms of art themselves, or understanding them in others. Generally
speaking, their power is limited to the use of the pen or pencil--they
cannot touch color without discomfiture; and even those whose work is of
higher aim, and wrought habitually in color, are prevented by their
pursuit of _piquant_ expression from understanding noble expression.
Leslie furnishes several curious examples of this defect of perception
in his late work on Art;--talking, for instance, of the "insipid faces
of Francia."

On the other hand, all the real masters of caricature deserve honor in
this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own--innate and
incommunicable. No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other
people to equal, in their several ways, the works of Leech or
Cruikshank; whereas, the power of pure drawing is communicable, within
certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. I do not,
indeed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character,
caricaturist skill may be laboriously attained; but certainly the power
is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood.

Farther. It is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt with
by this kind of art which are inapproachable by any other, and that its
influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may often
happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in this
way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest study),
than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even more
intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. And when the powers of quaint
fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stern
understanding of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there
results a bitter, or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at
the present day owe more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of
art whatsoever.

In poetry, the temper is seen, in perfect manifestation, in the works of
Thomas Hood; in art,