But Sir Oran was dumb, whereas Grock has a voice which reverberates along the orchestra and seems almost to lift the roof. He uses it to counterfeit the deep notes of an imaginary double bass, which he balances himself on a chair to play, and he uses it to roar with contemptuous surprise at being asked if he can play the piano. But it is good-humoured contempt. Grock is an accommodating monster, and at a mere hint from the violinist waddles off to change into evening clothes. In them he looks like a grotesque beetle. Then his antics at the piano! His chair being too far from the keyboard he makes great efforts to push the piano nearer. When it is pointed out that it would be easier to move the chair he beams with delight at the cleverness of the idea and expresses it in a peculiarly bland roar. Then he slides, in apparent absence of mind, all over the piano-case and, on finally deciding to play a tune, does it with his feet. Thereafter he thrusts his feet through the seat of the chair and proceeds to give a performance of extraordinary brilliance on the concertina.... But I am in despair, because I see that these tricks, which in action send one into convulsions of laughter, are not ludicrous, are not to be realized at all in narrative. It is the old difficulty of transposing the comic from three dimensions into two—and when the comic becomes the grotesque, and that extreme form of the grotesque which constitutes the clownesque, then the difficulty becomes sheer impossibility. Why does this queer combination of anthropoid appearance, unearthly noises, physical agility, and musical talent—so flat in description—make one laugh so immoderately in actual presentation? Well, there is, first, the old idea of the parturient mountains and the ridiculous mouse. Of the many theories of the comic (all, according to Jean Paul Richter, themselves comic) the best known perhaps is the theory of suddenly relaxed strain. Your psychic energies have been strained (say by Grock’s huge portmanteau), and are suddenly in excess and let loose by an inadequate sequel (the tiny fiddle). Then there is the old theory of Aristotle, that the comic is ugliness without pain. That will account for your laughter at Grock’s grotesque appearance, his baggy breeches, his beetle-like dress clothes, his hideous mouth giving utterance to harmless sentiments. Again, there is the pleasure arising from the discovery that an apparent idiot has wholly unexpected superiorities, acrobatic skill, and virtuosity in musical execution. But “not such a fool as he looks” is the class-badge of clowns in general. There is something still unexplained in the attraction of Grock. One can only call it his individuality—his benign, bland outlook on a cosmos of which he seems modestly to possess the secret hidden from ourselves. One comes in the end to the old helpless explanation of any individual artist. Grock pleases because he is Grock.