Indeed, no two species of writing can differ more widely than the comic and the burlesque: for as the latter is ever the exhibition of what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprising absurdity, as in appropriating the manners of the highest to the lowest, or _e converso_; so in the former, we should ever confine ourselves strictly to nature, from the just imitation of which, will flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to a sensible reader.

And perhaps, there is one reason, why a comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.
I have hinted this little, concerning burlesque; because I have often heard that name given to performances, which have been truly of the comic kind, from the author's having sometimes admitted it in his diction only; which as it is the dress of poetry, doth like the dress of men establish characters, (the one of the whole poem, and the other of the whole man), in vulgar opinion, beyond any of their greater excellences: but surely, a certain drollery in style, where characters and sentiments are perfectly natural, no more constitutes the burlesque, than an empty pomp and dignity of words, where everything else is mean and low, can entitle any performance to the appellation of the true sublime.
And I apprehend, my Lord Shaftesbury's opinion of mere burlesque agrees with mine, when he asserts, "There is no such thing to be found in the writings of the antients." But perhaps I have less abhorrence than he professes for it: and that not because I have had some little success on the stage this way; but rather as it contributes more to exquisite mirth and laughter than any other; and these are probably more wholesome physic for the mind, and conduce better to purge away spleen, melancholy, and ill affections, than is generally imagined.
Nay, I will appeal to common observation, whether the same companies are not found more full of good-humour and benevolence, after they have been sweetened for two or three hours with entertainments of this kind, than soured by a tragedy or a grave lecture.
But to illustrate all this by another science, in which, perhaps, we shall see the distinction more clearly and plainly: let us examine the works of a comic history-painter, with those performances which the Italians call _Caricatura_, where we shall find the greatest excellence of the former to consist in the exactest copy of nature, insomuch, that a judicious eye instantly rejects anything _outre_, any liberty which the painter hath taken with the features of that _alma mater_.

Whereas in the _Caricatura_ we allow all licence.

Its aim is to exhibit monsters, not men, and all distortions and exaggerations whatever are within its proper province.
Now what Caricatura is in painting Burlesque is in writing, and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other.

And here I shall observe, that as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer, for the Monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the Ridiculous to describe than paint.
And tho' perhaps this latter species doth not in either science so strongly affect and agitate the muscles as the other, yet it will be owned I believe, that a more rational and useful pleasure arises to us from it.