We are a his torian, not a critic.

Whether the fact is agreeable or not matters little, it is a fact.

Let us resume, therefore, and try to prove that it is of the fruitful union of the grotesque and the sublime types that modern genius is born--so complex, so diverse in its forms, so inexhaustible in its creations, and therein directly opposed to the uniform simplicity of the genius of the ancients, let us show that that is the point from which we must set out to establish the real and radical difference between 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.