context:

     Hence it is an infinite good to mankind when there is full 
     acceptance of the grotesque, slightly sketched or 
     expressed; and, if field for such expression be frankly 
     granted, an enormous mass of intellectual power is 
     turned to everlasting use, which, in this present century 
     of ours, evaporates in street gibing or vain revelling; all 
     the good wit and satire expiring in daily talk, (like foam on 
     wine,) which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
     had a permitted and useful expression in the arts of 
     sculpture and illumination, like foam fixed into 
     chalcedony. (4)

     Joyce, that is to say, also accepted the grotesque as a 
mode of broken or syncopated manipulation to permit inclusive