Henry Fielding

“ 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 surprizing 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. ”

“ Nor will some explanation of this word
be thought impertinent by the reader, if he considers how wonderfully it
hath been mistaken, even by writers who have professed it: for to what
but such a mistake can we attribute the many attempts to ridicule the
blackest villanies, and, what is yet worse, the most dreadful
calamities? What could exceed the absurdity of an author, who should
write the comedy of Nero, with the merry incident of ripping up his
mother's belly? or what would give a greater shock to humanity than an
attempt to expose the miseries of poverty and distress to ridicule? ”

“ It may be likewise
noted, that affectation doth not imply an absolute negation of those
qualities which are affected; and, therefore, though, when it proceeds
from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet when it comes from
vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation: for instance, the
affectation of liberality in a vain man differs visibly from the same
affectation in the avaricious; for though the vain man is not what he
would appear, or hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree he would
be thought to have it ”

“ The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is
affectation. ”