CONGREVE.

WILLIAM CONGREVE descended from a family in Staffordshire of so great

antiquity, that it claims a place among the few that extend their hue

beyond the Norman Conquest, and was the son of William Congreve, second

son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once at

least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than

one are still shown in groves and gardens, where he is related to have

written his _Old Bachelor_.

Neither the time nor place of his birth is certainly known. If the

inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the

place, it was said by himself that he owed his nativity to England, and

by everybody else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him

with sharp censure as a man that meanly disowned his native country. The

biographers assigned his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds, in Yorkshire,

from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob. To doubt

whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth is, in

appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long

without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from

which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation

of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are

sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and

steady moralist, having told a pretty lie to Louis XIV., continued it

afterwards by false dates; thinking himself obliged _in honour_, says his

admirer, to maintain what, when he said it, was so well received.

[Congreve was baptised at Bardsey, February 10, 1670.]

Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and

afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that

stationed him in Ireland; but after having passed through the usual

preparatory studies, as may be reasonably supposed, with great celerity

and success, his father thought it proper to assign him a profession, by

which something might be gotten, and about the time of the Revolution

sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple, where

he lived for several years, but with very little attention to statutes or

reports. His disposition to become an author appeared very early, as he

very early felt that force of imagination, and possessed that copiousness

of sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first

performance was a novel called “Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconciled;”

it is praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the preface,

that is, indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would

rather praise it than read it.

His first dramatic labour was _The Old Bachelor_, of which he says, in

his defence against Collier, “That comedy was written, as several know,

some years before it was acted. When I wrote it I had little thoughts of

the stage; but did it to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit of

sickness. Afterwards, through my indiscretion it was seen, and in some

little time more it was acted; and I, through the remainder of my

indiscretion suffered myself to be drawn into the prosecution of a

difficult and thankless study, and to be involved in a perpetual war with

knaves and fools.”

There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have

done everything by chance. _The Old Bachelor_ was written for amusement

in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with

great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit. The age

of the writer considered, it is indeed a very wonderful performance; for,

whenever written, it was acted (1693) when he was not more than

twenty-one years old; and was then recommended by Mr. Dryden, Mr.

Southern, and Mr. Maynwaring. Dryden said that he never had seen such a

first play; but they found it deficient in some things necessary to the

success of its exhibition, and by their greater experience fitted it for

the stage. Southern used to relate of one comedy, probably of this, that

when Congreve read it to the players he pronounced it so wretchedly, that

they had almost rejected it; but they were afterwards so well persuaded

of its excellence that, for half a year before it was acted, the manager

allowed its author the privilege of the house.

Few plays have ever been so beneficial to the writer, for it procured him

the patronage of Halifax, who immediately made him one of the

commissioners for licensing coaches, and soon after gave him a place in

the Pipe-office, and another in the Customs, of six hundred pounds a

year. Congreve’s conversation must surely have been at least equally

pleasing with his writings.

Such a comedy, written at such an age, requires some consideration. As

the lighter species of dramatic poetry professes the imitation of common

life, of real manners, and daily incidents, it apparently presupposes a

familiar knowledge of many characters, and exact observation of the

passing world; the difficulty, therefore, is to conceive how this

knowledge can be obtained by a boy.

But if _The Old Bachelor_ be more nearly examined, it will be found to be

one of those comedies which may be made by a mind vigorous and acute, and

furnished with comic characters by the perusal of other poets, without

much actual commerce with mankind. The dialogue is one constant

reciprocation of conceits or clash of wit, in which nothing flows

necessarily from the occasion, or is dictated by nature. The characters,

both of men and women, are either fictitious and artificial, as those of

Heartwell and the ladies, or easy and common, as Wittol, a tame idiot;

Bluff, a swaggering coward; and Fondlewife, a jealous Puritan; and the

catastrophe arises from a mistake, not very probably produced, by

marrying a woman in a mask. Yet this gay comedy, when all these

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.”

Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in _The Double

Dealer_, which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to his

patron the Lord Halifax a dedication, in which he endeavours to reconcile

the reader to that which found few friends among the audience. These

apologies are always useless: _de gestibus non est disputandem_. Men may

be convinced, but they cannot be pleased, against their will. But though

taste is obstinate, it is very variable, and time often prevails when

arguments have failed. Queen Mary conferred upon both those plays the

honour of her presence; and when she died soon after, Congreve testified

his gratitude by a despicable effusion of elegiac pastoral, a composition

in which all is unnatural and yet nothing is new.

In another year (1695) his prolific pen produced _Love for Love_, a

comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners, than

either of the former. The character of Foresight was then common.

Dryden calculated nativities; both Cromwell and King William had their

lucky days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was said

to regard predictions. The Sailor is not accounted very natural, but he

is very pleasant. With this play was opened the New Theatre, under the

direction of Betterton, the tragedian, where he exhibited two years

afterwards (1687) _The Mourning Bride_, a tragedy, so written as to show

him sufficiently qualified for either kind of dramatic poetry. In this

play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the

versification to greater regularity; there is more bustle than sentiment;

the plot is busy and intricate, and the events take hold on the

attention; but, except a very few passages, we are rather amused with

noise and perplexed with stratagem, than entertained with any true

delineation of natural characters. This, however, was received with more

benevolence than any other of his works, and still continues to be acted

and applauded.

But whatever objections may be made either to his comic or tragic

excellence, they are lost at once in the blaze of admiration, when it is

remembered that he had produced these four plays before he had passed his

twenty-fifth year, before other men, even such as are some time to shine

in eminence, have passed their probation of literature, or presume to

hope for any other notice than such as is bestowed on diligence and

inquiry. Among all the efforts of early genius, which literary history

records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more surpasses the

common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.

About this time began the long-continued controversy between Collier and

the poets. In the reign of Charles I. the Puritans had raised a violent

clamour against the drama, which they considered as an entertainment not

lawful to Christians, an opinion held by them in common with the Church

of Rome; and Prynne published “Histriomastix,” a huge volume in which

stage-plays were censured. The outrages and crimes of the Puritans

brought afterwards their whole system of doctrine into disrepute, and

from the Restoration the poets and players were left at quiet; for to

have molested them would have had the appearance of tendency to

puritanical malignity. This danger, however, was worn away by time, and

Collier, a fierce and implacable non-juror, knew that an attack upon the

theatre would never make him suspected for a Puritan; he therefore (1698)

published “A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English

Stage,” I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honest

indignation. He was formed for a controvertist, with sufficient

learning, with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and

incorrect, with unconquerable pertinacity, with wit in the highest degree

and sarcastic, and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just

confidence in his cause. Thus qualified and thus incited, he walked out

to battle, and assailed at once most of the living writers, from Dryden

to Durfey. His onset was violent; those passages, which, while they

stood single, had passed with little notice, when they were accumulated

and exposed together, excited horror. The wise and the pious caught the

alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and

licentiousness to be openly taught at the public charge.

Nothing now remained for the poets but to resist or fly. Dryden’s

conscience or his prudence, angry as he was, withheld him from the

conflict. Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted answers. Congreve, a very

young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air

of confidence and security. His chief art of controversy is to retort

upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and hoping to conquer

Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of every term of

contumely and contempt, but he has the sword without the arm of

Scanderbeg; he has his antagonist’s coarseness but not his strength.

Collier replied, for contest was his delight. “He was not to be frighted

from his purpose or his prey.”

The cause of Congreve was not tenable; whatever glosses he might use for

the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and

tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with

universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man

better, and that their ultimate effect is to represent pleasure in

alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to

be regulated.

The stage found other advocates, and the dispute was protracted through

ten years: but at last comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see

the reformation of the theatre.

Of the powers by which this important victory was achieved, a quotation

from _Love for Love_, and the remark upon it, may afford a specimen:—

_Sir Samps_. “Sampson’s a very good name; for your Sampsons were strong

dogs from the beginning.”

_Angel_. “Have a care—if you remember, the strongest Sampson of your

name pulled an old house over his head at last.”

“Here you have the sacred history burlesqued, and Sampson once more

brought into the house of Dagon, to make sport for the Philistines!”

Congreve’s last play was _The Way of The World_, which, though, as he

hints in him dedication it was written with great labour and much

thought, was received with so little favour, that being in a high degree

offended and disgusted, he resolved to commit his quiet and his fame no

more to the caprices of an audience.

From this time his life ceased to be public; he lived for himself and his

friends, and among his friends was able to name every man of his time

whom wit and elegance had raised to reputation. It may be therefore

reasonably supposed that his manners were polite, and his conversation

pleasing. He seems not to have taken much pleasure in writing, as he

contributed nothing to the _Spectator_, and only one paper to the

_Tatler_, though published by men with whom he might be supposed willing

to associate: and though he lived many years after the publication of his

“Miscellaneous Poems,” yet he added nothing to them, but lived on in

literary indolence, engaged in no controversy, contending with no rival,

neither soliciting flattery by public commendations, nor provoking enmity

by malignant criticism, but passing his time among the great and

splendid, in the placid enjoyment of his fame and fortune.

Having owed his fortune to Halifax, he continued, always of his patron’s

party, but, as it seems, without violence or acrimony, and his firmness

was naturally esteemed, as his abilities were reverenced. His security

therefore was never violated; and when, upon the extrusion of the Whigs,

some intercession was used lest Congreve should be displaced, the Earl of

Oxford made this answer:—

“Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Pœni,

Nec tam aversus equos Tyriâ sol jungit ab urbe.”

He that was thus honoured by the adverse party might naturally expect to

be advanced when his friends returned to power, and he was accordingly

made secretary for the island of Jamaica, a place, I suppose without

trust or care, but which, with his post in the Customs, is said to have

afforded him twelve hundred pounds a year. His honours were yet far

greater than his profits. Every writer mentioned him with respect, and

among other testimonies to his merit, Steele made him the patron of his

“Miscellany,” and Pope inscribed to him his translations of the “Iliad.”

But he treated the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed

familiarly with the great, he wished to be considered rather as a man of

fashion than of wit; and, when he received a visit from Voltaire,

disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not

as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, “that, if

he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him.”

In his retirement he may be supposed to have applied himself to books,

for he discovers more literature than the poets have commonly attained.

But his studies were in his later days obstructed by cataracts in his

eyes, which at last terminated in blindness. This melancholy state was

aggravated by the gout, for which he sought relief by a journey to Bath:

but, being overturned in his chariot, complained from that time of a pain

in his side, and died at his house in Surrey Street in the Strand,

January 29, 1728–9. Having lain in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, he

was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his

memory by Henrietta Duchess of Marlborough, to whom, for reasons either

not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand

pounds, the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her

superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient

family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his

relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.

* * * * *

CONGREVE has merit of the highest kind; he is an original writer, who

borrowed neither the models of his plot nor the manner of his dialogue.

Of his plays I cannot speak distinctly, for since I inspected them many

years have passed, but what remains upon my memory is, that his

characters are commonly fictitious and artificial, with very little of

nature, and not much of life. He formed a peculiar idea of comic

excellence, which he supposed to consist in gay remarks and unexpected

answers; but that which he endeavoured, he seldom failed of performing.

His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion: his

personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to

ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is

a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies

have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies, they

surprise rather than divert, and raise admiration oftener than merriment.

But they are the works of a mind replete with images, and quick in

combination.

Of his miscellaneous poetry I cannot say anything very favourable. The

powers of Congreve seem to desert him when he leaves the stage, as Antæus

was no longer strong than when he could touch the ground. It cannot be

observed without wonder, that a mind so vigorous and fertile in dramatic

compositions should on any other occasion discover nothing but impotence

and poverty. He has in these little pieces neither elevation of fancy,

selection of language, nor skill in versification: yet, if I were

required to select from the whole mass of English poetry the most

poetical paragraph, I know not what I could prefer to an exclamation in

the “Mourning Bride”:—