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WILLIAM CONGREVE was born in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neighborhood of Leeds. His
father, a younger son of a very ancient Staffordshire family, had distinguished
himself among the cavaliers in the civil war, was set down after the Restoration
for the Order of the Royal Oak, and subsequently settled in Ireland, under the
patronage of the Earl of Burlington.
Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. He was sent to school at
Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of Dublin. His learning does great
honor to his instructors. From his writings it appears, not only that he was
well acquainted with Latin literature, but that his knowledge of the Greek poets
was such as was not, in his time, common even in a college.
When he had completed his academical studies, he was sent to London to study the
law, and was entered of the Middle Temple. He troubled himself, however, very
little about pleading or conveyancing, and gave himself up to literature and
society. Two kinds of ambition early took possession of his mind, and often
pulled it in opposite directions. He was conscious of great fertility of thought
and power of ingenious combination. His lively conversation, his polished
manners, and his highly respectable connections, had obtained for him ready
access to the best company. He longed to be a great writer. He longed to be a
man of fashion. Either object was within his reach. But could he secure both?
Was there not something vulgar in letters, something inconsistent with the easy
apathetic graces of a man of the mode? Was it aristocratical to be confounded
with creatures who lived in the cock lofts of Grub Street, to bargain with
publishers, to hurry printers' devils and be hurried by them, to squabble with
managers, to be applauded or hissed by pit, boxes, and galleries? Could he
forego the renown of being the first wit of his age? Could he attain that renown
without sullying what he valued quite as much, his character for gentility? The
history of his life is the history of a conflict between these two impulses. In
his youth the desire of literary fame had the mastery; but soon the meaner
ambition overpowered the higher, and obtained supreme dominion over his mind.
His first work, a novel of no great value, he published under the assumed name
of Cleophil. His second was the Old Bachelor, acted in 1693, a play inferior
indeed to his other comedies, but, in its own line, inferior to them alone. The
plot is equally destitute of interest and of probability. The characters are
either not distinguishable, or are distinguished only by peculiarities of the
most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which
indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet
preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease of which
Wycherley had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate.
The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a good
play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, pretended that he had
merely scribbled a few scenes for his own amusement, and affected to yield
unwillingly to the importunities of those who pressed him to try his fortune on
the stage. The Old Bachelor was seen in manuscript by Dryden, one of whose best
qualities was a hearty and generous admiration for the talents of others. He
declared that he had never read such a first play, and lent his services to
bring it into a form fit for representation. Nothing was wanted to the success
of the piece. It was so cast as to bring into play all the comic talent, and to
exhibit on the boards in one view all the beauty, which Drury Lane Theatre, then
the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result was a complete triumph;
and the author was gratified with rewards more substantial than the applauses of
the pit. Montagu, then a Lord of the Treasury, immediately gave him a place,
and, in a short time, added the reversion of another place of much greater
value, which, however, did not become vacant till many years had elapsed.
In 1694, Congreve brought out the Double Dealer, a comedy in which all the
powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves, matured by time
and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked by the characters of
Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is something strangely revolting
in the way in which a group that seems to belong to the House of Laius or of
Pelops is introduced into the midst of the Brisks, Froths, Carelesses, and
Plyants. The play was unfavorably received. Yet, if the praise of distinguished
men could compensate an author for the disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve
had no reason to repine. Dryden, in one of the most ingenious, magnificent, and
pathetic pieces that he ever wrote, extolled the author of the Double Dealer in
terms which now appear extravagantly hyperbolical. Till Congreve came forth,--so
ran this exquisite flattery,--the superiority of the poets who preceded the
civil wars was acknowledged.
"Theirs was the giant race before the flood."
Since the return of the Royal House, much art and ability had been exerted, but
the old masters had been still unrivalled.
"Our builders were with want of genius curst, The second temple was not like the
first."
At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had surpassed the
authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the Silent Woman, and who had
only one rival left to contend with.
"Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, To Shakespeare gave as much, she
could not give him more."
Some lines near the end of the poem are singularly graceful and touching, and
sank deep into the heart of Congreve.
"Already am I worn with cares and age, And just abandoning the ungrateful stage
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and oh, defend Against your judgment your departed
friend. Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue, But guard those laurels which
descend to you."
The crowd, as usual, gradually came over to the opinion of the men of note; and
the Double Dealer was before long quite as much admired, though perhaps never so
much liked, as the Old Bachelor.
In 1695 appeared Love for Love, superior both in wit and in scenic effect to
either of the preceding plays. It was performed at a new theatre which Betterton
and some other actors, disgusted by the treatment which they had received in
Drury Lane, had just opened in a tennis-court near Lincoln's Inn. Scarcely any
comedy within the memory of the oldest man had been equally successful. The
actors were so elated that they gave Congreve a share in their theatre; and he
promised in return to furnish them with a play every year, if his health would
permit. Two years passed, however, before he produced the Mourning Bride, a play
which, paltry as it is when compared, we do not say, with Lear or Macbeth, but
with the best dramas of Massinger and Ford, stands very high among the tragedies
of the age in which it was written. To find anything so good we must go twelve
years back to Venice Preserved, or six years forward to the Fair Penitent. The
noble passage which Johnson, both in writing and in conversation, extolled above
any other in the English drama, has suffered greatly in the public estimation
from the extravagance of his praise. Had he contented himself with saying that
it was finer than anything in the tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Lee, Rowe,
Southern, Hughes, and Addison, than anything, in short, that had been written
for the stage since the days of Charles the First, he would not have been in the
wrong.
The success of the Mourning Bride was even greater than that of Love for Love.
Congreve was now allowed to be the first tragic as well as the first comic
dramatist of his time; and all this at twenty-seven. We believe that no English
writer except Lord Byron has, at so early an age, stood so high in the
estimation of his contemporaries.
At this time took place an event which deserves, in our opinion, a very
different sort of notice from that which has been bestowed on it by Mr. Leigh
Hunt. The nation had now nearly recovered from the demoralizing effect of the
Puritan austerity. The gloomy follies of the reign of the Saints were but
faintly remembered. The evils produced by profaneness and debauchery were recent
and glaring. The Court, since the Revolution, had ceased to patronize
licentiousness. Mary was strictly pious; and the vices of the cold, stern, and
silent William, were not obtruded on the public eye. Discountenanced by the
Government, and failing in the favor of the people, the profligacy of the
Restoration still maintained its ground in some parts of society. Its
strongholds were the places where men of wit and fashion congregated, and above
all, the theatres. At this conjuncture arose a great reformer whom, widely as we
differ from him in many important points, we can never mention without respect.
JEREMY COLLIER was a clergyman of the Church of England, bred at Cambridge. His
talents and attainments were such as might have been expected to raise him to
the highest honors of his profession. He had an extensive knowledge of books;
yet he had mingled much with polite society, and is said not to have wanted
either grace or vivacity in conversation.
There were few branches of literature to which he had not paid some attention.
But ecclesiastical antiquity was his favorite study. In religious opinions he
belonged to that section of the Church of England which lies furthest from
Geneva and nearest to Rome. His notions touching Episcopal government, holy
orders, the efficacy of the sacraments, the authority of the Fathers, the guilt
of schism, the importance of vestments, ceremonies, and solemn days, differed
little from those which are now held by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman. Towards the
close of his life, indeed, Collier took some steps which brought him still
nearer to Popery, mixed water with the wine in the Eucharist, made the sign of
the cross in confirmation, employed oil in the visitation of the sick, and
offered up prayers for the dead. His politics were of a piece with his divinity.
He was a Tory of the highest sort, such as in the cant of his age was called a
Tantivy. Not even the persecution of the bishops and the spoliation of the
universities could shake his steady loyalty. While the Convention was sitting,
he wrote with vehemence in defense of the fugitive king, and was in consequence
arrested. But his dauntless spirit was not to be so tamed. He refused to take
the oaths, renounced all his preferments, and, in a succession of pamphlets
written with much violence and with some ability, attempted to excite the nation
against its new masters. In 1692, he was again arrested on suspicion of having
been concerned in a treasonable plot. So unbending were his principles that his
friends could hardly persuade him to let them bail him; and he afterwards
expressed his remorse for having been induced thus to acknowledge, by
implication, the authority of an usurping government. He was soon in trouble
again. Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkins, were tried and convicted of high
treason for planning the murder of King William. Collier administered spiritual
consolation to them, attended them to Tyburn, and, just before they were turned
off, laid his hands on their heads, and by the authority which he derived from
Christ, solemnly absolved them. This scene gave indescribable scandal. Tories
joined with Whigs in blaming the conduct of the daring priest. Some acts, it was
said, which fall under the definition of treason are such that a good man may,
in troubled times, be led into them even by his virtues. It may be necessary for
the protection of society to punish such a man. But even in punishing him we
consider him as legally rather than morally guilty, and hope that his honest
error, though it cannot be pardoned here, will not be counted to him for sin
hereafter. But such was not the case of Collier's penitents. They were concerned
in a plot for waylaying and butchering, in an hour of security, one who, whether
he were or were not their king, was at all events their fellow-creature. Whether
the Jacobite theory about the rights of governments and the duties of subjects
were or were not well founded, assassination must always be considered as a
great crime. It is condemned even by the maxims of worldly honor and morality.
Much more must it be an object of abhorrence to the pure Spouse of Christ. The
Church cannot surely, without the saddest and most mournful forebodings, see one
of her children who has been guilty of this great wickedness pass into eternity
without any sign of repentance. That these traitors had given any sign of
repentance was not alleged. It might be that they had privately declared their
contrition; and, if so, the minister of religion might be justified in privately
assuring them of the Divine forgiveness. But a public remission ought to have
been preceded by a public atonement. The regret of these men, if expressed at
all, had been expressed in secret. The hands of Collier had been laid on them in
the presence of thousands. The inference which his enemies drew from his conduct
was that he did not consider the conspiracy against the life of William as
sinful. But this inference he very vehemently, and, we doubt not, very sincerely
denied.
The storm raged. The bishops put forth a solemn censure Of the absolution. The
Attorney-General brought the matter before the Court of King's Bench. Collier
had now made up his mind not to give bail for his appearance before any court
which derived its authority from the usurper. He accordingly absconded and was
outlawed. He survived these events about thirty years. The prosecution was not
pressed; and he was soon suffered to resume his literary pursuits in quiet. At a
later period, many attempts were made to shake his perverse integrity by offers
of wealth and dignity, but in vain. When he died towards the end of the reign of
George the First, he still under the ban of the law.
We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or the theology of
Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as honest and
courageous a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though
passionate and often wrong-headed, he was a singularly fair controversialist,
candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most
exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It must also
be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in
themselves absurd and pernicious, eminently qualified him to be the reformer of
our lighter literature. The libertinism of the press and of the stage was, as we
have said, the effect of a reaction against the Puritan strictness. Profligacy
was, like the oak-leaf of the twenty-ninth of May, the badge of a cavalier and a
High Churchman. Decency was associated with conventicles and calves' heads.
Grave prelates were too much disposed to wink at the excesses of a body of
zealous and able allies who covered Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule.
If a Whig raised his voice against the impiety and licentiousness of the
fashionable writers, his mouth was instantly stopped by the retort: You are one
of those who groan at a light quotation from Scripture, and raise estates out of
the plunder of the Church, who shudder at a double entendre, and chop off the
heads of kings. A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have done little to
purify our literature. But when a man fanatical in the cause of episcopacy and
actually under outlawry for his attachment to hereditary right, came forward as
the champion of decency, the battle was already half won.
In 1698, Collier published his Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of
the English Stage, a book which threw the whole literary world into commotion,
but which is now much less read than it deserves. The faults of the work,
indeed, are neither few nor small. The dissertations on the Greek and Latin
drama do not at all help the argument, and, whatever may have been thought of
them by the generation which fancied that Christ Church had refuted Bentley, are
such as, in the present day, a scholar of very humble pretensions may venture to
pronounce boyish, or rather babyish. The censures are not sufficiently
discriminating. The authors whom Collier accused had been guilty of such gross
sins against decency that he was certain to weaken instead of strengthening his
case, by introducing into his charge against them any matter about which there
could be the smallest dispute. He was, however, so injudicious as to place among
the outrageous offences which he justly arraigned, some things which are really
quite innocent, and some slight instances of levity which, though not perhaps
strictly correct, could easily be paralleled from the works of writers who had
rendered great services to morality and religion. Thus he blames Congreve, the
number and gravity of whose real transgressions made it quite unnecessary to tax
him with any that were not real, for using the words "martyr" and "inspiration"
in a light sense; as if an archbishop might not say that a speech was inspired
by claret or that an alderman was a martyr to the gout. Sometimes, again,
Collier does not sufficiently distinguish between the dramatist and the persons
of the drama. Thus he blames Vanbrugh for putting into Lord Foppington's mouth
some contemptuous expressions respecting the Church service; though it is
obvious that Vanbrugh could not better express reverence than by making Lord
Foppington express contempt. There is also throughout the Short View too strong
a display of professional feeling. Collier is not content with claiming for his
order an immunity from indiscriminate scurrility; he will not allow that, in any
case, any word or act of a divine can be a proper subject for ridicule. Nor does
he confine this benefit of clergy to the ministers of the Established Church. He
extends the privilege to Catholic priests, and, what in him is more surprising,
to Dissenting preachers. This, however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins,
priests of Jupiter, priests of Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden is blamed
for making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called to a severe
account for his incivility to Tiresias. But the most curious passage is that in
which Collier resents some uncivil reflections thrown by Cassandra, in Dryden's
Cleomenes, on the calf Apis and his hierophants. The words "grass-eating,
foddered god," words which really are much in the style of several passages in
the Old Testament, give as much offence to this Christian divine as they could
have given to the priests of Memphis.
But, when all deductions have been made, great merit must be allowed to this
work. There is hardly any book of that time from which it would be possible to
select specimens of writing so excellent and so various. To compare Collier with
Pascal would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly know where, except in the
Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so harmoniously and becomingly blended
with solemnity as in the Short View, In truth, all the modes of ridicule, from
broad fun to polished and antithetical sarcasm, were at Collier's command. On
the other hand, he was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indignation. We
scarcely know any volume which contains so many bursts of that peculiar
eloquence which comes from the heart and goes to the heart. Indeed the spirit of
the book is truly heroic. In order fairly to appreciate it, we must remember the
situation in which the writer stood. He was under the frown of power. His name
was already a mark for the invectives of one half of the writers of the age,
when, in the cause of good taste, good sense, and good morals, he gave battle to
the other half. Strong as his political prejudices were, he seems on this
occasion to have entirely laid them aside. He has forgotten that he is a
Jacobite, and remembers only that he is a citizen and a Christian. Some of his
sharpest censures are directed against poetry which had been hailed with delight
by the Tory party, and had inflicted a deep wound on the Whigs. It is
inspiriting to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies,
formidable separately, and, it might have been thought, irresistible when
combined, distributes his swashing blows right and left among Wycherley,
Congreve, and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his
feet, and strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden.
The effect produced by the Short View was immense. The nation was on the side of
Collier. But it could not be doubted that, in the great host which he had
defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet. The general belief
was that Dryden would take the field; and all the wits anticipated a sharp
contest between two well-paired combatants. The great poet had been singled out
in the most marked manner. It was well known that he was deeply hurt, that much
smaller provocations had formerly roused him to violent resentment, and that
there was no literary weapon, offensive or defensive, of which he was not
master. But his conscience smote him; he stood abashed, like the fallen
archangel at the rebuke of Zephon,--
"And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and
pined His loss."
At a later period he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his Fables. He
complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had been treated,
and urged some matters in mitigation. But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged
that he had been justly reproved. "If," said he, "Mr. Collier be my enemy, let
him triumph. If he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be
otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance."
It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master's example. He was
precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a vindication; for
his guilt was so clear, that no address or eloquence could obtain an acquittal.
On the other hand, there were in his case many extenuating circumstances which,
if he had acknowledged his error and promised amendment, would have procured his
pardon. The most rigid censor could not but make great allowances for the faults
into which so young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of
a vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause. The esteem,
as well as the admiration, of the public was still within his reach. He might
easily have effaced all memory of his transgressions, and have shared with
Addison the glory of showing that the most brilliant wit may be the ally of
virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him from encountering
Collier. The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and
habit, for polemical dispute. Congreve's mind, though a mind of no common
fertility and vigor, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art
of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting
them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In this sort of jewellery he attained
to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable. But he was altogether rude in the art
of controversy; and he had a cause to defend which scarcely any art could have
rendered victorious.
The event was such as might have been foreseen. Congreve's answer was a complete
failure. He was angry, obscure, and dull. Even the Green Room and Will's
Coffee-House were compelled to acknowledge that in wit, as well as in argument,
the parson had a decided advantage over the poet. Not only was Congreve unable
to make any show of a case where he was in the wrong; but he succeeded in
putting himself completely in the wrong where he was in the right. Collier had
taxed him with profaneness for calling a clergyman Mr. Prig, and for introducing
a coachman named Jehu, in allusion to the King of Israel, who was known at a
distance by his furious driving. Had there been nothing worse in the Old
Bachelor and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper
himself, who, in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton, calls a
fox-hunting squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of
Smug. Congreve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether it
might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges were made, there
were no very serious charges to make. Instead of doing this, he pretended that
he meant no allusion to the Bible by the name of Jehu, and no reflection by the
name of Prig. Strange, that a man of such parts should, in order to defend
himself against imputations which nobody could regard as important, tell
untruths which it was certain that nobody would believe!
One of the pleas which Congreve set up for himself and his brethren was that,
though they might be guilty of a little levity here and there, they were careful
to inculcate a moral, packed close into two or three lines, at the end of every
play. Had the fact been as he stated it, the defense would be worth very little.
For no man acquainted with human nature could think that a sententious couplet
would undo all the mischief that five profligate acts had done. But it would
have been wise in Congreve to have looked again at his own comedies before he
used this argument. Collier did so; and found that the moral of the Old
Bachelor, the grave apophthegm which is to be a set-off against all the
libertinism of the piece is contained in the following triplet:
"What rugged ways attend the noon of life! Our sun declines, and with what
anxious strife, What pain, we tug that galling load--a wife."
"Love for Love," says Collier, "may have a somewhat better farewell, but it
would do a man little service should he remember it to his dying day":
"The miracle to-day is, that we find A lover true, not that a woman's kind."
Collier's reply was severe and triumphant. One of his repartees we will quote,
not as a favorable specimen of his manner, but because it was called forth by
Congreve's characteristic affectation. The poet spoke of the Old Bachelor as a
trifle to which he attached no value, and which had become public by a sort of
accident, "I wrote it," he said," to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit
of sickness." "What his disease was," replied Collier, "I am not to inquire, but
it must be a very ill one to be worse than the remedy."
All that Congreve gained by coming forward on this occasion, was that he
completely deprived himself of the excuse which he might with justice have
pleaded for his early offences. "Why," asked Collier, "should the man laugh at
the mischief of the boy, and make the disorders of his nonage his own, by an
after approbation?"
Congreve was not Collier's only opponent. Vanbrugh, Dennis, and Settle took the
field. And from a passage in a contemporary satire, we are inclined to think
that among the answers to the Short View was one written, or supposed to be
written, by Wycherley. The victory remained with Collier. A great and rapid
reform in almost all the departments of our lighter literature was the effect of
his labors. A new race of wits and poets arose, who generally treated with
reverence the great ties which bind society together, and whose very indecencies
were decent when compared with those of the school which flourished during the
last forty years of the seventeenth century.
This controversy probably prevented Congreve from fulfilling the engagements
into which he had entered with the actors. It was not till 1700 that he produced
the Way of the World, the most deeply meditated and the most brilliantly written
of all his works. It wants, perhaps, the constant movement, the effervescence of
animal spirits, which we find in love for Love. But the hysterical rants of Lady
Wishfort, the meeting of Witwould and his brother, the country knight's
courtship and his subsequent revel, and, above all, the chase and surrender of
Millamant, are superior to anything that is to be found in the whole range of
English comedy from the civil war downwards. It is quite inexplicable to us that
this play should have failed on the stage. Yet so it was; and the author,
already sore with the wounds which Collier had inflicted, was galled past
endurance by this new stroke. He resolved never again to expose himself to the
rudeness of a tasteless audience, and took leave of the theatre for ever.
He lived twenty-eight years longer, without adding to the high literary
reputation which he had attained. He read much while he retained his eyesight,
and now and then wrote a short essay, or put an idle tale into verse; but he
appears never to have planned any considerable work. The miscellaneous pieces
which he published in 1710 are of little value, and have long been forgotten.
The stock of fame which he had acquired by his comedies was sufficient, assisted
by the graces of his manner and conversation, to secure for him a high place in
the estimation of the world. During the winter, he lived among the most
distinguished and agreeable people in London. His summers were passed at the
splendid country-seats of ministers and peers. Literary envy and political
faction, which in that age respected nothing else, respected his repose. He
professed to be one of the party of which his patron Montagu, now Lord Halifax,
was the head. But he had civil words and small good offices for men of every
shade of opinion. And men of every shade of opinion spoke well of him in return.
His means were for a long time scanty. The place which he had in possession
barely enabled him to live with comfort. And, when the Tories came into power,
some thought that he would lose even this moderate provision. But Harley, who
was by no means disposed to adopt the exterminating policy of the October club,
and who, with all his faults of understanding and temper, had a sincere kindness
for men of genius, reassured the anxious poet by quoting very gracefully and
happily the lines of Virgil,
"Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni, Nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol jungit
ab urbe."
The indulgence with which Congreve was treated by the Tories was not purchased
by any concession on his part which could justly offend the Whigs. It was his
rare good fortune to share the triumph of his friends without having shared
their proscription. When the House of Hanover came to the throne, he partook
largely of the prosperity of those with whom he was connected. The reversion to
which he had been nominated twenty years before fell in. He was made secretary
to the island of Jamaica; and his whole income amounted to twelve hundred a
year, a fortune which, for a single man, was in that age not only easy but
splendid. He continued, however, to practice the frugality which he had learned
when he could scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the chairman
who carried him to Lord Halifax's. Though he had nobody to save for, he laid up
at least as much as he spent.
The infirmities of age came early upon him. His habits had been intemperate; he
suffered much from gout; and, when confined to his chamber, he had no longer the
solace of literature. Blindness, the most cruel misfortune that can befall the
lonely student, made his books useless to him. He was thrown on society for all
his amusement; and in society his good breeding and vivacity made him always
welcome.
By the rising men of letters he was considered not as a rival, but as a classic.
He had left their arena; he never measured his strength with them; and he was
always loud in applause of their exertions. They could, therefore, entertain no
jealousy of him and thought no more of detracting from his fame than of carping
at the great men who had been lying a hundred years in Poets' Corner. Even the
inmates of Grub Street, even the heroes of the Dunciad, were for once just to
living merit. There can be no stronger illustration of the estimation in which
Congreve was held than the fact that the English Iliad, a work which appeared
with more splendid auspices than any other in our language, was dedicated to
him. There was not a duke in the kingdom who would not have been proud of such a
compliment. Dr. Johnson expresses great admiration for the independence of
spirit which Pope showed on this occasion. "He passed over peers and statesmen
to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had
been complete, had his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen
for so great an honor, it is not now possible to know." It is certainly
impossible to know; yet we think it is possible to guess. The translation of the
Iliad had been zealously befriended by men of all political opinions. The poet
who, at an early age, had been raised to affluence by the emulous liberality of
Whigs and Tories, could not with propriety inscribe to a chief of either party a
work which had been munificently patronized by both. It was necessary to find
some person who was at once eminent and neutral. It was therefore necessary to
pass over peers and statesmen. Congreve had a high name in letters. He had a
high name in aristocratic circles. He lived on terms of civility with men of all
parties. By a courtesy paid to him, neither the Ministers nor the leaders of the
Opposition could be offended.
The singular affectation which had from the first been characteristic of
Congreve grew stronger and stronger as he advanced in life. At last it became
disagreeable to him to hear his own comedies praised. Voltaire, whose soul was
burned up by the raging desire for literary renown, was half puzzled and half
disgusted by what he saw, during his visit to England, of this extraordinary
whim. Congreve disclaimed the character of a poet, declared that his plays were
trifles produced in an idle hour, and begged that Voltaire would consider him
merely as a gentleman. "If you had been merely a gentleman," said Voltaire, "I
should not have come to see you."
Congreve was not a man of warm affections. Domestic ties he had none; and in the
temporary connections which he formed with a succession of beauties from the
green-room his heart does not appear to have been interested. Of all his
attachments that to Mrs. Bracegirdle lasted the longest and was the most
celebrated. This charming actress, who was, during many years, the idol of all
London, whose face caused the fatal broil in which Mountfort fell, and for which
Lord Mohun was tried by the Peers, and to whom the Earl of Scarsdale was said to
have made honorable addresses, had conducted herself, in very trying
circumstances, with extraordinary discretion. Congreve at length became her
confidential friend. They constantly rode out together and dined together. Some
people said that she was his mistress, and others that she would soon be his
wife. He was at last drawn away from her by the influence of a wealthier and
haughtier beauty. Henrietta, daughter of the great Marlborough, and Countess of
Godolphin, had, on her father's death, succeeded to his dukedom, and to the
greater part of his immense property. Her husband was an insignificant man, of
whom Lord Chesterfield said that he came to the House of Peers only to sleep,
and that he might as well sleep on the right as on the left of the woolsack.
Between the Duchess and Congreve sprang up a most eccentric friendship. He had a
seat every day at her table, and assisted in the direction of her concerts. That
malignant old beldame, the Dowager Duchess Sarah, who had quarreled with her
daughter as she had quarreled with every body else, affected to suspect that
there was something wrong. But the world in general appears to have thought that
a great lady might, without any imputation on her character, pay marked
attention to a man of eminent genius who was near sixty years old, who was still
older in appearance and in constitution, who was confined to his chair by gout,
and who was unable to read from blindness.
In the summer of 1728, Congreve was ordered to try the Bath waters. During his
excursion he was overturned in his chariot, and received some severe internal
injury from which he never recovered. He came back to London in a dangerous
state, complained constantly of a pain in his side, and continued to sink, till
in the following January he expired.
He left ten thousand pounds, saved out of the emoluments of his lucrative
places. Johnson says that this money ought to have gone to the Congreve family,
which was then in great distress. Doctor Young and Mr. Leigh Hunt, two gentlemen
who seldom agree with each other, but with whom, on this occasion, we are happy
to agree, think that it ought to have gone to Mrs. Bracegirdle. Congreve
bequeathed two hundred pounds to Mrs. Bracegirdle, and an equal sum to a certain
Mrs. Jellat; but the bulk of his accumulations went to the Duchess of
Marlborough, in whose immense wealth such a legacy was as a drop in the bucket.
It might have raised the fallen fortunes of a Staffordshire squire; it might
have enabled a retired actress to enjoy every comfort, and, in her sense, every
luxury: but it was hardly sufficient to defray the Duchess's establishment for
three months.
The great lady buried her friend with a pomp seldom seen at the funerals of
poets. The corpse lay in state under the ancient roof of the Jerusalem Chamber,
and was interred in Westminster Abbey. The pall was borne by the Duke of
Bridgewater, Lord Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington, who had been Speaker, and was
afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and other men of high consideration. Her
Grace laid out her friend's bequest in a superb diamond necklace, which she wore
in honor of him, and, if report is to be believed, showed her regard in ways
much more extraordinary. It is said that a statue of him in ivory, which moved
by clockwork, was placed daily at her table, and that she had a wax doll made in
imitation of him, and that the feet of the doll were regularly blistered and
anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from
the gout. A monument was erected to the poet in Westminster Abbey, with an
inscription written by the Duchess; and Lord Cobham, honored him with a
cenotaph, which seems to us, though that is a bold word, the ugliest and most
absurd of the buildings at Stowe.
We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve. There was, indeed, a
remarkable analogy between the writings and lives of these two men. Both were
gentlemen liberally educated. Both led town lives, and knew human nature only as
it appears between Hyde Park and the Tower. Both were men of wit. Neither had
much imagination. Both at an early age produced lively and profligate comedies.
Both retired from the field while still in early manhood, and owed to their
youthful achievements in literature whatever consideration they enjoyed in later
life. Both, after they had ceased to write for the stage, published volumes of
miscellanies which did little credit either to their talents or to their morals.
Both, during their declining years, hung loose upon society; and both, in their
last moments, made eccentric and unjustifiable dispositions of their estates.
But in every point Congreve maintained his superiority to Wycherley. Wycherley
had wit; but the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every comic writer,
except Sheridan, who has within the last two centuries. Congreve had not, in, a
large measure, the poetical faculty; but compared with Wycherley he might be
called a great poet. Wycherley had some knowledge of books; but Congreve was a
man of real learning. Congreve's offences against decorum, though highly
culpable, were not so gross as those of Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like
Wycherley, exhibit to the world the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage.
Congreve died in the enjoyment of high consideration; Wycherley forgotten or
despised. Congreve's will was absurd and capricious; but Wycherley's last
actions appear to have been prompted by obdurate malignity.
Here, at least for the present, we must stop. Vanbrugh and Farquhar are not men
to be hastily dismissed, and we have not left ourselves space to do them
justice.
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