between Wycherley and Pope, between the representative of the age that
was going out and the representative of the age that was coming in,
between the friend of Rochester and Buckingham and the friend of
Lyttelton and Mansfield. At first the boy was enchanted by the kindness
and condescension of so eminent a writer, haunted his door, and followed
him about like a spaniel from coffee-house to coffee-house. Letters full
of affection, humility, and fulsome flattery were interchanged between
the friends. But the first ardor of affection could not last. Pope,
though at no time scrupulously delicate in his writings or fastidious as
to the morals of his associates, was shocked by the indecency of a rake
who, at seventy, was still the representative of the monstrous
profligacy of the Restoration. As the youth grew older, as his mind
expanded and his fame rose, he appreciated both himself and Wycherley
more correctly. He felt a just contempt for the old gentleman's verses,
and was at no great pains to conceal his opinion. Wycherley, on the
other hand, though blinded by self-love to the imperfections of what he
called his poetry, could not but see that there was an immense
difference between his young companion's rhymes and his own. He was
divided between two feelings. He wished to have the assistance of so
skilful a hand to polish his lines; and yet he shrank from the
humiliation of being beholden for literary assistance to a lad who might
have been his grandson. Pope was willing to give assistance, but was by
no means disposed to give assistance and flattery too. He took the
trouble to retouch whole reams of feeble stumbling verses, and inserted
many vigorous lines which the least skilful reader will distinguish in
an instant. But he thought that by these services he acquired a right to
express himself in terms which would not, under ordinary circumstances,
become one who was addressing a man of four times his age. In one
letter, he tells Wycherley that "the worst pieces are such as, to render
them very good, would require almost the entire new writing of them." In
another, he gives the following account of his corrections: "Though the
whole be as short again as at first, there is not one thought omitted
but what is a repetition of something in your first volume, or in this
very paper; and the versification throughout is, I believe, such as
nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission you give me of dealing
freely with you will, I hope, excuse what I have done; for, if I have
not spared you when I thought severity would do you a kindness, I have
not mangled you where I thought there was no absolute need of
amputation." Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this hacking
and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to his
compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like
reproaches. In private, he is said to have described Pope as a person
who could not cut out a suit, but who had some skill in turning old
coats. In his letters to Pope, while he acknowledged that the
versification of the poems had been greatly improved, he spoke of the
whole art of versification with scorn, and sneered at those who
preferred sound to sense. Pope revenged himself for this outbreak of
spleen by return of post. He had in his hands a volume of Wycherley's
rhymes, and he wrote to say that this volume was so full of faults that
he could not correct it without completely defacing the manuscript. "I
am," he said, "equally afraid of sparing you, and of offending you by
too impudent a correction." This was more than flesh and blood could
bear. Wycherley reclaimed his papers, in a letter in which resentment
shows itself plainly through the thin disguise of civility. Pope, glad
to be rid of a troublesome and inglorious task, sent back the deposit,
and, by way of a parting courtesy, advised the old man to turn his
poetry into prose, and assured him that the public would like his
thoughts much better without his versification. Thus ended this
memorable correspondence.
Wycherley lived some years after the termination of the strange
friendship which we have described. The last scene of his life was,
perhaps, the most scandalous. Ten days before his death, at
seventy-five, he married a young girl merely in order to injure his
nephew, an act which proves that neither years, nor adversity, nor what
he called his philosophy, nor either of the religions which he had at
different times professed, had taught him the rudiments of morality. He
died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault under the church of St.
Paul in Covent Garden.
His bride soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became
possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a
bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no
printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a
professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakespeare, and the hero
of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In
this way a volume of miscellanies in verse and prose was got up for the
market. The collection derives all its value from the traces of Pope's
hand, which are everywhere discernible.
Of the moral character of Wycherley it can hardly be necessary for us to
say more. His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly
on the last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best
school, nor highest in his school. He was in truth a worse Congreve. His
chief merit, like Congreve's, lies in the style of his dialogue. But the
wit which lights up the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife is pale and
flickering, when compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us
almost to blindness in Love for Love and the Way of the World. Like
Congreve, and, indeed, even more than Congreve, Wycherley is ready to
sacrifice dramatic propriety to the liveliness of his dialogue. The poet
speaks out of the mouths of all his dunces and coxcombs, and makes them
describe themselves with a good sense and acuteness which puts them on a
level with the wits and heroes. We will give two instances, the first
which occur to us, from the Country Wife. There are in the world fools
who find the society of old friends insipid, and who are always running
after new companions. Such a character is a fair subject for comedy. But
nothing can be more absurd than to introduce a man of this sort saying
to his comrade, "I can deny you nothing: for though I have known thee a
great while, never go if I do not love thee as well as a new
acquaintance." That town wits, again, have always been rather a
heartless class, is true. But none of them, we will answer for it, ever
said to a young lady to whom he was making love, "We wits rail and make
love often, but to show our parts: as we have no affections, so we have
no malice."
Wycherley's plays are said to have been the produce of long and patient
labor. The epithet of "slow" was early given to him by Rochester, and
was frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are greatly
mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great
labor and outlay to bear fruit which, after all, was not of the highest
flavor. He has scarcely more claim to originality than Terence. It is
not too much to say that there is hardly anything of the least value in
his plays of which the hint is not to be found elsewhere. The best
scenes in the Gentleman Dancing-Master were suggested by Calderon's
Maestro de Danzar, not by any means one of the happiest comedies of the
great Castilian poet. The Country Wife is borrowed from the Ecole des
Maris and the Ecole des Femmes. The groundwork of the Plain Dealer is
taken from the Misanthrope of Moliere. One whole scene is almost
translated from the Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes. Fidelia is
Shakespeare's Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and the Widow
Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley's best comic character, is the
Countess in Racine's Plaideurs, talking the jargon of English instead of
that of French chicane.
The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could
furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It
is curious to observe how everything that he touched, however pure and
noble, took in an instant the color of his own mind. Compare the Ecole
des Femmes with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable girl,
whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honor,
morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been
hidden, and, as it might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately
bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion.
Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the
confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced.
Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith this sweet and
graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least
sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of
a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley's
indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected
against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle, and
too noisome even to approach.
It is the same with the Plain Dealer. How careful has Shakespeare been
in Twelfth Night to preserve the dignity and delicacy of Viola under her
disguise! Even when wearing a page's doublet and hose, she is never
mixed up with any transaction which the most fastidious mind could
regard as leaving a stain on her. She is employed by the Duke on an
embassy of love to Olivia, but on an embassy of the most honorable kind.
Wycherley borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of the
basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of our
meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind,
which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence,
disguised under the forms of politeness. As every extreme naturally
generates its contrary, Alceste adopts a standard of good and evil
directly opposed to that of the society which surrounds him. Courtesy
seems to him a vice; and those stern virtues which are neglected by the
fops and coquettes of Paris become too exclusively the objects of his
veneration. He is often to blame; he is often ridiculous; but he is
always a good man; and the feeling which he inspires is regret that a
person so estimable should be so unamiable. Wycherley borrowed Alceste,
and turned him--we quote the words of so lenient a critic as Mr. Leigh
Hunt--into "a ferocious sensualist, who believed himself as great a
rascal as he thought everybody else." The surliness of Moliere's hero is
copied and caricatured. But the most nauseous libertinism and the most
dastardly fraud are substituted for the purity and integrity of the
original. And, to make the whole complete, Wycherley does not seem to
have been aware that he was not drawing the portrait of an eminently
honest man. So depraved was his moral taste that, while he firmly
believed that he was producing a picture of virtue too exalted for the
commerce of this world, he was really delineating the greatest rascal
that is to be found, even in his own writings.
We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley, when we say that it is a
relief to turn from him to Congreve. Congreve's writings, indeed, are by
no means pure; nor was he, as far as we are able to judge, a
warm-hearted or high-minded man. Yet, in coming to him, we feel that the
worst is over, that we are one remove further from the Restoration, that
we are past the Nadir of national taste and morality.
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 cocklofts 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 wanting 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 horn,
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, had 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 falling 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 home. 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 defence 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 a
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 forbodings,
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.