CONGREVE, WITTIEST OF DRAMATISTS. (1670-1729.) WILLIAM CONGREVE, the most distinguished English poet of his time-in the interval between Dryden and Pope-was born in England in 1670. He received a good education and was intended for the bar, but literature proved the strongest attraction and he early began writing for the stage. His success was instantaneous, and he won fame and fortune before he reached middle age. The last half of his life he passed as a man of fashion. He lived on terms of intimacy with Mrs. Bracegirdle, the famous actress, and with Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, the daughter of the great duke. When Voltaire, then a youth, visited London, attracted by Congreve's fame, he called upon the poet. The latter begged the young Frenchman to visit him on no other foot ing than that of a gentleman, disclaiming the character of a poet and speaking of his plays as the mere effusions of an idle hour. "If you had been merely a gentleman," said Voltaire, "I should not have come to see you," and left him half-disgusted at such a whim. Congreve wrote five plays that will always hold a high place in English literature, although they are no longer seen upon the stage. These are "The Double Dealer," "Love for Love," "The Mourning Bride," "The Old Bachelor," and "The Way of the World." They are full of the most brilliant dialogue, caustic epigram, and witty and humorous repartee. They describe manners, customs, and a society that are no longer tolerated, but they are true to the period when they were written and a reflection of the life of the time. Hazlitt says: Congreve's comedies are a singular treat to those who have cultivated a taste for the niceties of English style; there is a peculiar flavor in the very words which is to be found in hardly any other writer. They belong to the comedy of manners and are for the study and the arm-chair. They are not for all companies or occasions, but have their own particular charm. The ever-delighted Elia writes: I do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of Congreve's comedies. I am the gayer, at least, for it; and I could never connect these sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a world in themselves, almost as much as fairy-land. The Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact, they do not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They break through no laws or conscientious restraints. They know of none. They have got out of Christendom into the land-the Utopia of gallantry-where pleasure is duty and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is. Undoubtedly we must take some such view, for the manners that are portrayed would be intolerable in actual life. The following passage from Congreve's Mourning Bride" was pronounced by Dr. Johnson to be the finest poetical passage he had ever read. It is a description of a temple. How reverend is the face of this tall pile; Boswell records this opinion expressed by Dr. Johnson, and describes how eagerly Garrick endeavored to combat it when Johnson had added that he recollected none in Shakespeare equal to it. "But," said Garrick, all alarmed for the god of his idolatry, "we know not the extent and variety of his powers. We are to suppose there are such passages in his works. Shakespeare must not suffer from the badness of our memories." "Sir," said Johnson in reply, "this is not comparing Congreve on the whole with Shakespeare on the whole; but only maintaining that Congreve has one finer passage than any that can be found in Shakespeare." Johnson was fond of teasing Garrick by sometimes criticising Shakespeare, but as he repeats the opinion of the temple passage in his "Life of Congreve," it was probably his matured conviction. He says: "He who reads those lines enjoys for a moment the powers of a poet; he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it with great increase of sensibility; he recognizes a familiar image, but meets it again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty and enlarged with majesty." Johnson's critical opinions are generally extremely sane, but modern criticism does not agree with his opinion in this instance, grand as the passage in question is. There are many passages in Shakespeare, the description of Dover Cliff in "King Lear," for instance, or Prospero's prophetic vision of the end of the world, that are far superior to it. Macaulay in his essay on the "Dramatists of the Restoration" says of this passage: 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, Southerne, 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 greatest of the comedies is "The Way of the World" in which we have the charming heroine Millamant, one of the loveliest of female characters, whose vivacity, spirits, wit, and beauty captivate every reader. It is one of the most dazzling of English comedies, and has been praised by every reader and critic from Voltaire to George Meredith. But all the plays have their excellences and once read the characters live in the memory. Congreve died in 1729, leaving his fortune of |