‘love’ and common morality have no place in satiric comedy is either to contemplate ridicule of them or to ask comedy to be other than satiric.  We know what happened when the dramatists gave way: there followed, Hazlitt says, ‘those do-me-good, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the next age, which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the author tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath.’  These in place of ‘the court, the gala day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry, and Charles the Second!’  And all because people would not keep their functions distinct, and remember that as a comedy they were in a court of art and not in a court of law!  The old comedy is dead, and its spirit gone from the stage: I have but endeavoured to show that no harm need come to our phylacteries, if a flame start from its ashes in the printed book.

II.

William Congreve was born at Bardsey, near Leeds, and was baptized on 10th February 1669 [1670].  The Congreves were a Staffordshire family, of an antiquity of four hundred years at the date of the poet’s birth.  Richard, his grandfather, was a redoubtable Cavalier, and William, his father, an officer in the army.  The latter was given a command at Youghal, while his son was still an infant, and becoming shortly afterwards agent to Lord Cork, removed to Lismore.  So it chanced that the poet had his schooling at Kilkenny (with Swift), and proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, in 1685, rejoining Swift, and like his friend becoming a pupil of St. George Ashe, the mathematician.  In 1688 he left Dublin, remained with his people in Staffordshire for some two years, entered himself at the Temple, and came upon the town with The Old Bachelor in January 1692.  The Double-Dealer was produced in November 1693.  In 1694 a storm in the theatre led to a secession of Betterton and other renowned players from Drury Lane: with the result that a new playhouse was opened in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, on 30th April 1695, with Love for Love.  In the same year Congreve was appointed ‘Commissioner for Licensing Hackney Coaches.’  The Mourning Bride was produced in 1697, and was followed, oddly enough, by the controversy, or rather ‘row,’ with Jeremy Collier.  In March 1700 came The Way of the World.  The poet was made Commissioner of Wine-Licences in 1705, and in 1714 with his Jamaica secretaryship and his places in the Customs and the delightful ‘Pipe-Office,’ he had an income of twelve hundred pounds a year.  He died at his house in Surrey Street, Strand, on 19th January 1728 [1729].

One or two comments on these dates are obvious.  They dissipate the Thackerayan fable that on the production of The Old Bachelor, the fortunate young author received a shower of sinecures, ‘all for writing a comedy.’

‘And crazy Congreve scarce could spare
A shilling to discharge a chair,’

writes Swift, and ‘crazy’ indicates that Congreve was gouty before he was rich.  But then, the gout was a very early factor in his life, and one may call the line an exaggeration.  Another couplet:

‘Thus Congreve spent in writing plays,
And one poor office, half his days:’

probably expresses the truth.  With his plays and his hackney coaches he doubtless got through his twenties and thirties with no very hardly grinding poverty, and at forty or so was comfortably secure.  But another fact, which the dates bring out very sharply, has a different interest.  At an age when Swift was beginning to try his powers, Congreve’s work was done.  A few odes, a few letters he was still to write, but no more comedies.  Was it ill-health? or because the town had all but damned his greatest play? or because he cared more for life than for art?

III.

The question brings one to an attempted appreciation of the man.  Mr. Gosse, for whose Life I would express my gratitude, confesses that ‘it is not very easy to construct a definite portrait of Congreve.’  But that it baffled that very new journalist, Mrs. Manley, in his own day, and Mr. Gosse, with his information, in ours, to give ‘salient points’ to Congreve’s character, proves in itself an essential characteristic, which need be negatively stated only by choice.  That no amusing eccentricities are recorded, no ludicrous adventures, no persistent quarrels, implies, taken with other facts we know, that he was a well-bred man of the world, with the habit of society: that in itself is a definite personal quality.  One supposes him an ease-loving man, not inclined to clown for the amusement of his world.  He was loved by his friends, being tolerant, and understanding the art of social life.  He was successful, and must therefore have had enemies, but he was careless to improve hostilities.  For the temperament which is so plain in the best of his writings must have been present in his life—an unobtrusive, because a never directly implied, superiority and an ironical humour.  The picture of swaggering snobbishness which Thackeray was inspired to make of him is proved bad by all that we know.  A swaggerer could not have made a fast friend of Dryden—grown mellow, indeed, but by no means beggared of his fire—on his first coming to town, nor kept the intimacy of Swift, nor avoided the fault-finding of Dennis.  It is quite unnecessary to suppose that Congreve’s famous remark to Voltaire, that he wished to be visited as a plain gentleman, was the remark (if it was made) of a snob: it was clearly a legitimate deprecation, spoken by a man who had written nothing notable for twenty-six years, which Voltaire misunderstood in a moment of stupidity, or in one of forgetfulness misrepresented.  His superiority and his irony came from a just sense of the perspective of things, and, not preventing affection for his friends, left him indifferent to his foes.  Probably, also, a course of dissipation (at which Swift hints) in his youth, acting on a temperament not particularly ardent, had left him with such passions for war and love as were well under control.  The two women with whom his name is connected were Mrs. Bracegirdle and the Duchess of Marlborough; but nobody knew—though the latter’s mother hinted the worst—how far the intimacy went.  That is to say, no patent scandal was necessary to the connexion, if in either case Congreve was a lover.  And (once more) Congreve was a gentleman.

But why did he become sterile at thirty?  Where, if not in dealing with motives and causes, may one be fancy-free?  Here there are many, of which the first to be given is mere conjecture, but conjecture, I fancy, not inconsistent with such facts as are known.  When Congreve produced his first comedy, he was but twenty-three, fresh from college and the country, ignorant, as we are told, of the world.  He discovered very soon that he had an aptitude for social life, that, no doubt, living humours and follies were as entertaining as printed ones, that for a popular and witty man the world was pleasant.  But no man may be socially finished all at once.  In the course of the seven years between The Old Bachelor and The Way of the World, Congreve must have found his wit becoming readier, his tact surer, his appreciation of natural comedy finer and (as personal keenness decreased) more equable, his popularity greater, and—in fine—the world more pleasant and the attractions of the study waning and waning in comparison.  He was a finished artist, he was born, one might almost say, with a style; but his inclination was to put his art into life rather