iffers in its characters, by introducing persons of
inferiour rank, and consequently of inferiour manners, whereas the
grave romance sets the highest before us; lastly in its sentiments and
diction; by preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the
diction I think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which
many instances will occur in this work, as in the description of the
battles, and some other places not necessary to be pointed out to the
classical reader; for whose entertainment those parodies or burlesque
imitations are chiefly calculated.

But tho' we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, we have
carefully excluded it from our sentiments and characters; for there
it is never properly introduced, unless in writings of the burlesque
kind, which this is not intended to be. 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 wri