144-
Hilary
and
qf Caricature
Grotqhue
CHAPTER
GROTESQUE FACES AND FIGURES.-PREVALENCE OF THE TASTE FOR
UGLY AND GROTESQUE FACES.--SOME OF THE POPULAR FORMS
DERIVED FROM ANTIQUITY; THE TONGUE LOLLING OUT, AND TI-IE
DISTORTED SUBJECTS! THE MAN AND THE
SERPENTS.--ALLEGORICAL FIGURES: GLUTTONY AND LUXURY.-_
OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OF CLERICAL G-LUTTONY AND DRUNKEN-
NESS.-GROTESQUE FIGURES OF INDIVIDUALS, AND GROTESQUE
GROUPS.--ORNAMENTS OF THE BORDERS OF BOOKS.-_UNINTENTIONAL
CARICATURE; THE MOTE AND THE BEAM-
THE grimaces and Itrange poltures of the jougleurs feem to have had
great attraftions for thofe who witneifed them. To unrefined and
uneducated minds no object conveys fo perfect a notion of mirth as an
ugly and diltorted face. Hence it is that among the common peafantry
at a country fair few exhibitions are more fatisfaetory than that of
grinning through a horfe-collar. This fentiment is largely exemplified
in the fculpture efpecially of the middle ages, a long period, during
which the general character of fociety prefented that want of reinement
which we now obferve chiefly in its leaft cultivated claffes. Among the
moft common decorations of our ancient churches and other mediaeval
buildings, are grotefque and monftrous heads and faces. Antiquity, which
lent us the types of many of thefe monftrolities, [aw in her Typhons and
Gorgons a flgniiication beyond the furface of the picture, and her
grotefque malks had a general meaning, and were in a manner typical of
the whole field of comic literature. The malk was lefs an individual
grotefqne to be laughed at for itfelf, than a perfonification of comedy.
In the middle ages, on the contrary, although in fome cafes certain forms
were often regarded as typical of certain ideas, in general the delign
extended no farther than the forms which the artift had given to it; the
grotefque