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. {401}Congreve’s mind, though a mind of no common fertility and
vigour, 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 {402}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
defence 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 favourable 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 {403}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 labours. 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 any thing {404}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 forever.
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
{405}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, bad 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 practise the frugality which he had learned when
he could scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the chairmen
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. {406}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 honour,
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, should be 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 patronised 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 {407}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 honourable 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 {408}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 quarrelled with her daughter as she had quarrelled with everybody
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 {409}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 honour 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, 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 honoured him with a cenotaph, which seems to us, though that is
a bold word, the ugliest and most absurd of the buildings at Stowe.
{410}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 arisen 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.
{411}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.