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 every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.
Henry Fielding (1820). “The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his friend, Mr. Abraham Adams: Written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes ...”, p.3
