works of a comic history painter, with those performances which the
Italians call Caricatura, where we shall find the true excellence of the
former to consist in the exactest copying 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 though 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 return. The Ridiculous only, as I have before said, falls within
my province in the present work. Nor will some explanation of this word