ominent, and his _Virgile Travesti_ (1648-1653) was followed by numerous
imitators. In English literature Chaucer's _Rime of Sir Thopas_ is a
burlesque of the long-winded medieval romances. Among the best-known true
burlesques in English dramatic literature may be mentioned the 2nd duke of
Buckingham's _The Rehearsal_, a burlesque of the heroic drama; Gay's
_Beggar's Opera_, of the Italian opera; and Sheridan's _The Critic_. In the
later 19th century the name "burlesque" was given to a form of musical
dramatic composition in which the true element of burlesque found little or
no place. These musical burlesques, with which the Gaiety theatre, London,
and the names of Edward Terry, Fred Leslie and Nellie Farren are
particularly connected, developed from the earlier extravaganzas of J.R.
Planche, written frequently round fairy tales. The Gaiety type of burlesque
has since given place to the "musical comedy," and its only survival is to
be found in the modern pantomime.

BURLINGAME, ANSON (1820-1870), American legislator and diplomat, was born
in New Berlin, Chenango county, New York, on the 14th of November 1820. In
1823 his parents took him to Ohio, and about ten years afterwards to
Michigan. In 1838-1841 he studied in one of the "branches" of the
university of Michigan, and in 1846 graduated at the Harvard law school. He
practised law in Boston, and won a wide reputation by his speeches for the
Free Soil party in 1848. He was a member of the Massachusetts
constitutional convention in 1853, of the state senate in 1853-1854, and of
the national House of Representatives from 1855 to 1861, being elected for
the first term as a "Know Nothing" and afterwards as a member of the new
Republican party, which he helped to organize in Massachusetts. He was an
effective debater in the House, and for his impassioned denunciation (June
21, 1856) of Preston S. Brooks (1819-1857), for his assault upon Senator
Charles Sumner, was challenged by Brooks. Burlingame accepted the challenge
and specified rifles as the weapons to be used; his second chose Navy
Island, above the Niagara Falls, and in Canada, as the place for the
meeting. Brooks, however, refused these conditions, saying that he could
not reach the place designated "without running the gauntlet of mobs and
assassins, prisons and penitentiaries, bailiffs and constables." To
Burlingame's appointment as minister to Austria (March 22, 1861) the
Austrian authorities objected because in C