genius as an author, he had the meanness, when visited by Voltaire, to desire to be looked upon as a man of fashion rather than of letters. The witty Frenchman answered him as he deserved, "that if he had been only a gentleman he should not have come to visit him." In a similar state of mean weakness he allowed Jacob to receive from him the impression that he was born in England and not in Ireland, fearing that the name of an Irishman might in some degree lessen him in the eyes of his fashionable friends. This impression Jacob published to the world, and on his authority biographers to this very day, reechoing each other, declare that Congreve was born at Bardsea in Yorkshire. To make this event possible the date of his birth is also put back two years, and instead of 1672 he is said to have been born in 1670. These errors, which were first attacked by "honest Tom Southerne,” are no longer accepted as truths by any one who takes trouble to inquire into the matter.

William Congreve, then, was born in Ireland in 1672, where, and at which time, his father was steward to the Earl of Burlington. At a very early age he was sent to school at Kilkenny; afterwards to the University of Dublin, where he displayed great precocity and studied with success. Shortly after the Revolution of 1688, while he was yet in his seventeenth year, his father sent him over to London, where he was placed in the Middle Temple, and "where," says Johnson," he lived for several years, but with very little attention to statutes or reports." Soon after taking up his abode in the Temple he produced his first work, a novel called Incognita; or Love and Duty Reconciled. Several biographers praise this work as showing vivacity of wit and fluency of style, and Johnson speaks of some quotations from it as "for such a time of life uncommonly judicious." He, however, adds, “I would rather praise it than read it.”

While Incognita was being talked over by the critics Congreve composed his first dramatic work, The Old Bachelor, which, with foolish affectation, he declares he wrote with "little thoughts of the stage; but did it to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit of sickness." The comedy was placed in the hands of Dryden, who fitted it for the stage, and who stated that he "had never seen such a first play in his life." It was acted, after some delay, in 1693, when the author was actually only twenty-one years of age. Its success was unequivocal, and procured for

Congreve the patronage of Halifax, who made him a commissioner for licensing coaches, and soon after appointed him to a post in the Pipe Office, and to the office of commissioner of wine licenses, worth £600 a year. Johnson says that "this gay comedy, when all deductions are made, will still remain the work of very powerful and fertile faculties; the dialogue is quick and sparkling, the incidents such as seize the attention, and the wit so exuberant that it 'o'er-informs its tenement."" Encouraged by his success Congreve produced in the following year (1694) The Double Dealer, which was not successful, though praised by the best critics, and now known to be a better play than The Old Bachelor. At the end of the year Queen Mary died, and Congreve wrote a pastoral on the event. Johnson calls it a 66 despicable effusion," but another biographer speaks of it as "in point of simplicity, elegance, and correctness of language, equal to anything of the kind that has appeared in our language." In 1695 appeared Love for Love, which, like the first play, was highly successful, and deservedly so. In the same year also appeared his poem On the Taking of Namur, in which he is said to have "succeeded greatly." In 1697 he produced his Mourning Bride, a tragedy, which raised high expectations, and, strange to say, was not in consequence a failure. Indeed, nothing could be better received, and the play, though marked by more of bustle and noise than good writing, still holds the stage.

In the following year (1698), Jeremy Collier issued his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, in which he handled Congreve's four plays rather roughly. Congreve attempted a reply, "which, if it does not justify him, shows, however, great modesty and wit." This quarrel seems to have given him somewhat of a distaste for the stage, and it was some time before his fifth, last, best, and most carefully constructed play, The Way of the World, was produced. This was at first unsuccessful, for, says a writer in the General Biographical Dictionary, "it gave so just a picture of the way of the world' that the world seemed resolved not to bear it."

The comparative failure of this last play so heightened Congreve's dislike to the stage that he left off writing for it for ever; upon which Dennis the critic remarked "that Mr. Congreve quitted the stage early, and that comedy left it with him." From that time his literary labours were confined to original poems and translations, a complete edition of

which appeared in 1710. On the appearance of Southerne's Oroonoko he wrote an epilogue for it, and he gave Dryden considerable assistance in his translation of Virgil. He also wrote the translation of the eleventh satire of Juvenal, published in Dryden's translation of that poet, and he contributed at least one paper to Steele's Tatler. The latter part of his life was passed chiefly in retirement, not, however, of an eremitic kind, but broken into by the visits of old friends and distinguished people either in fashion or literature. On the 19th January, 1729, he died in his house in Surrey Street, Strand, and on the 26th his corpse "lay in state" in the Jerusalem Chamber, whence it was carried with great pomp into Westminster Abbey and buried there. In keeping with the tuft-hunting weakness in his character he bequeathed the chief part of his fortune, £10,000, to the Duchess of Marlborough, to whom it could be but of little use, while he left his own family connections and others who had moral claims on him to struggle on unhelped by any hand of his.

Congreve "raised the glory of comedy," says Voltaire, "to a greater height than any English writer before or since his time. He wrote only a few plays, but they are excellent of their kind." Johnson speaks slightingly of his poems, but acknowledges that "while comedy or while tragedy is regarded, his plays are likely to be read." In our own days Mr. Cowden Clarke, a careful if not very brilliant critic, speaks of Congreve as "the keystone to the arch of the conventional and artificial school of the comic drama." Of The Way of the World he says, "I do not think it too much to say in its praise that it comprises the

most quintessentialized combination of qualities requisite to compound an artificially legitimate comedy to be found in the whole range of our dramatic literature." Finally he remarks that "the stronghold of Congreve's genius was wit in its greatest brilliancy."

In addition to the works already mentioned Congreve wrote The Judgment of Paris, a masque, and an oratorio or opera called Semele, which was set to music by Handel, but never acted, so far as we can discover.]

Coquet and coy at once her air,
Both studied, though both seem neglected;
Careless she is with artful care,

Affecting to seem unaffected.

With skill her eyes dart every glance,

Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect them; For she'd persuade they wound by chance, Though certain aim and art direct them.

She likes herself, yet others hates

For that which in herself she prizes; And, while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.

LETTER TO A FRIEND.

Should hope and fear thy heart alternate tear,

Or love, or hate, or rage, or anxious care,
Whatever passions may thy mind infest,
(Where is that mind which passions ne'er molest?)
Still think the present day the last of life;
Amidst the pangs of such intestine strife,
Defer not till to-morrow to be wise,
To-morrow's sun to thee may never rise.
Or should to-morrow chance to cheer thy sight
With her enlivening and unlook'd-for light,
How grateful will appear her dawning rays,
As favours unexpected doubly please!
Who thus can think, and who such thoughts

pursues,

Content may keep his life, or calmly lose:
All proofs of this thou may'st thyself receive,
When leisure from affairs will give thee leave.
Come, see thy friend, retir'd without regret,
Forgetting care, or striving to forget;
In easy contemplation soothing time
With morals much, and now and then with rhyme:
Not so robust in body as in mind,

And always undejected, though declin'd;
Not wondering at the world's wicked ways,
Compar'd with those of our forefathers' days;
For virtue now is neither more or less,
And vice is only varied in the dress.
Believe it, men have ever been the same,
And all the golden age is but a dream.

AMORET.

Fair Amoret is gone astray;

Pursue and seek her, ev'ry lover; I'll tell the signs by which you may The wandering shepherdess discover.

OF PLEASING.

AN EPISTLE TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE.

'Tis strange, dear Temple, how it comes to pass
That no one man is pleas'd with what he has.
So Horace sings-and sure as strange is this,
That no one man's displeas'd with what he is.
The foolish, ugly, dull, impertinent,
Are with their persons and their parts content.

Nor is that all; so odd a thing is man,
He most would be what least he should or can.
Hence, homely faces still are foremost seen,
And cross-shap'd fops affect the nicest mien;
Cowards extol true courage to the skies,
And fools are still most forward to advise;
Th' untrusted wretch to secrecy pretends,
Whispering his nothing round to all as friends.
Dull rogues affect the politician's part,

And learn to nod, and smile, and shrug with art.
Who nothing has to lose the war bewails,
And he who nothing pays at taxes rails.
Thus man perverse against plain nature strives,
And to be artfully absurd contrives.

Next to obtaining wealth, or power, or ease,
Men most affect in general to please;
Of this affection vanity's the source,
And vanity alone obstructs its course;
That telescope of fools, through which they spy
Merit remote, and think the object nigh.
The glass remov'd, would each himself survey,
And in just scales his strength and weakness weigh,
Pursue the path for which he was design'd,
And to his proper force adapt his mind;
Scarce one but to some merit might pretend,
Perhaps might please, at least would not offend.
Who would reprove us while he makes us laugh,
Must be no Bavius, but a Bickerstaff.
If Garth, or Blackmore, friendly potions give,
We bid the dying patient drink and live:
When Murus comes, we cry, 66
Beware the pill;"
And wish the tradesman were a tradesman still.
If Addison, or Rowe, or Prior write,

We study them with profit and delight:
But when vile Macer and Mundungus rhyme,

We grieve we've learnt to read, ay, curse the time.

That I presume too much in this essay.
How should I show what pleases? How explain
A rule to which I never could attain?
To this objection I'll make no reply,
But tell a tale, which, after, we'll apply.

I have read, or heard, a learned person once
(Concern'd to find his only son a dunce)
Compos'd a book in favour of the lad,
Whose memory, it seems, was very bad.
This work contain'd a world of wholesome rules,
To help the frailty of forgetful fools.
The careful parent laid the treatise by,
Till time should make it proper to apply.
Simon, at length, the look'd-for age attains
To read and profit by his father's pains;
And now the sire prepares the book t' impart,
Which was yclept, Of Memory the Art.
But ah! how oft is human care in vain!
For, now he could not find his book again.
The place where he had laid it he forgot,
Nor could himself remember what he wrote.
Now to apply the story that I tell,
Which, if not true, is yet invented well.
Such is my case: like most of theirs who teach,
I ill may practise what I well may preach.
Myself not trying, or not turn'd to please,
May lay the line, and measure out the ways.
The Mulcibers, who in the Minories sweat,
And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat,
Deform'd themselves, yet forge those stays of steel
Which arm Aurelia with a shape to kill.
So Macer and Mundungus school the times,
And write in rugged prose the rules of softer rhymes.
Well do they play the careful critic's part,
Instructing doubly by their matchless art:
Rules for good verse they first with pains indite,
Then show us what are bad by what they write.

All rules of pleasing in this one unite,
"Affect not anything in nature's spite."
Baboons and apes ridiculous we find;
For what? for ill-resembling humankind.
"None are, for being what they are, in fault,
But for not being what they would be thought."
Thus I, dear friend, to you my thoughts impart,
As to one perfect in the pleasing art;
If art it may be call'd in you, who seem
By nature form'd for love and for esteem.
Affecting none, all virtues you possess,
And really are what others but profess.
I'll not offend you, while myself I please;
I loathe to flatter, though I love to praise..
But when such early worth so bright appears,
And antedates the fame which waits on years,
I can't so stupidly affected prove
Not to confess it in the man I love.
Though now I aim not at that known applause
You've won in arms and in your country's cause;
Nor patriot now, nor hero I commend,
But the companion praise, and boast the friend.
But you may think, and some, less partial, say,

TALKING OF LOVERS.1

MIRABLE and MRS. FAINALL together. Enter MRS. MILLAMANT a young widow, WITWOULD, and MINCING.

Mir. Here she comes, i'faith! full sail, with her fan spread and streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders-eh? no; I cry her mercy. Mrs. F. I see but one poor empty sculler; and he tows her woman after him.

Mir. You seem to be unattended, madam. You used to have the beau monde throng after you, and a flock of gay, fine perukes hovering round you.

Wit. Like moths about a candle. I had

This and the following extract are from The Way of the World.