III. GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE 181

fear, yet not to the same extent, for we can in some sort allow for the distortion of an image, if only we can see it clearly. And the fallen human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe round it;¹ and the wider the scope of its glance, and the vaster the truths into which it obtains an insight, the more fantastic their distortion is likely to be, as the winds and vapours trouble the field of the telescope most when it reaches farthest.

§ 62. Now, so far as the truth is seen by the imagination* in its wholeness and quietness, the vision is sublime; but so far as it is narrowed and broken by the inconsistencies of the human capacity, it becomes grotesque; and it would seem to be rare that any very exalted truth should be impressed on the imagination without some grotesqueness; in its aspect, proportioned to the degree of diminution of breadth in the grasp which is given of it. Nearly all the dreams recorded in the Bible,-Jacob’s, Joseph’s, Pharaoh’s Nebuchadnezzar’s,-are grotesques; and nearly the whole of the accessory scenery in the books of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse. Thus, Jacob’s dream revealed to him the ministry of angels; but because this ministry could not be seen or understood by him in its fulness, it was narrowed to him into a ladder between heaven and earth, which was a grotesque. Joseph’s two dreams were evidently intended to be signs of the steadfastness of the Divine purpose towards him, by possessing the clearness of special prophecy; yet were couched in such imagery, as not to inform him prematurely of his destiny, and only to be understood after their fulfilment. The sun, and moon, and stars were at the period, and are indeed throughout the Bible, the symbols

* I have before stated (Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. ii. ch. iii. §§ 28, 29) that the first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate truth.

¹ [Compare Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 137), where it is said that the artist’s mind must not be “like a badly blown glass that distorts what we see through it;” see also Vol. IX. pp. 409-410.]

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