: genius an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mention-none I think, however, so great or so gloomy. CONGREVE AND ADDISON. A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the "Union ;" and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Oppositon and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thompson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge men, orators of the "Union," were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary chariot. Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of Peers and Members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an Embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in our time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire-but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse. * The wits of whose names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them. They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, seiges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. " Aid us, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. "Accourez, chastes nymphes du Permesse," says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. “Des sons que ma lyre enfante marques en bien la cadence, et vous vents, faites silence! je vais parler de Louis!" Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses. *The following is a conspectus of them :ADDISON.-Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively. STEELE.-Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of " Forfeited Estates in Scotland." PRIOR.-Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France; Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France. TICKELL-Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland. GAY. -Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.) "En Angleterre **** les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici."-VOLTAIRE: Lettres sur les Anglais. Let, 20. William Congreve's Pindaric Odes are still to be found in "Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poets'-corner, in which so many forgotten bigwigs have a niche; but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humor which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded that his first play, the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax-who, being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe Office, and likewise a post in the Custom House of the value of 600/ A commissionership of hackney-coaches-a post in the Custom House-a place in the Pipe Office, and all for writing a comedy! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe Office? † "Ah, l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables!" Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any Pipe Offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago. Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary "swell" of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives" Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. "I am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve.‡ *He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Con greve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire-a very ancient family "PIPE.-Pipa, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll. Pipe Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of Crown lands, by warrant from the Lord Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."-REES: Cyclopæd. Art, PIPE. "Pipe Office.-Spelman thinks so called, because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask. "These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe * because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills.'-BACON: The Office of Alienations." * [We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points-by experience.] His It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least; nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. place in the Custom House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year."-Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve. From the beginning of his career until the end everybody ad mired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden declared that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him: "Mr. Congreve has done me the favor to review the 'Eneis,' and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavored to correct." The "excellent young man" was but three or four and twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits who daily gathered round his chair and tobaccopipe at Will's. Pope dedicated his "Iliad" to him; † Swift, * Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend, Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called the "Double Dealer," in which he says:— "Great Johnson did by strength of judgment please; Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. In differing talents both adorned their age: One for the study, t'other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit. The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the "Old Bachelor,” but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "Swell applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "Right Honorable Charles Montague." "I was conscious," said he, "where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, * * but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer." He goes on "But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind. * * * I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood. "Instead of endeavoring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country-one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer-and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labors. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honor and satisfaction f placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of -A. POPE."-Posterift to Translation of the Iliad of Homer, Mar. 25, 172-. Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as one of the Representatives of Literature; and the man who scarce praises any other living person-who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison-the Grub Street Timon, old John Dennis,* was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve; and said that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him. Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses; as much beloved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,† the heroine of all his plays, the favorite of all the town in her day; and the Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,‡ and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe Office, and his Custom House office, and his Hackney Coach office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it, but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't.|| "When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generously took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner."-THOS. DAVIES Dramatic Miscellanies "Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed me a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle."-Dr. YOUNG. Spence's Anecdotes. "A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it."-THOS, DAVIES: Dra matic Miscellanies. § The sum Congreve left Mrs. Bracegirdle was 2007., as is said in the "Dramatic Miscellanies" of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman. * She had a "lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and "such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire." "Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers." Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. "In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla. ; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in 'Love for Love' in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve.”—Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. 1784. She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favorite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age. Johnson calls his legacy the "accumulation of attentive parsimony, which," he continues, "though to her (the Duchess) 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."-Lives of the Poets. |