tings 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. He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter,
would, in my opinion, do him very little honour: for sure it is much
easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a
nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in
some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of
men on canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter
to say his figures _seem to breathe_, but surely it is a much greater
and nobler applause, _that they appear to think_.

But to re