1 2 WILLIAM CONGREVE' LIAM CONGREVE descended from a family in Staffordshire, of so great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line 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 shewn in groves and gardens where he is related to have written his Old Batchelor3. 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 every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country. The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob 5. X Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 25, 1780:-' Congreve, whom I despatched at the Borough while I was attending the election, is one of the best of the little lives; but then I had your conversation.' John. Letters, ii. 160. It was written in the house attached to the brewery now known as Barclay and Perkins'. Thrale, whose election he was attending, lost his seat. Ib. p. 203. 2 More commonly known as Stretton. 3 At Ilam, near Ashbourne, Johnson and Boswell were shown 'a rocky steep with recesses under projections of rock, overshadowed with trees, in one of which recesses,' writes Boswell, we were told Congreve wrote his Old Bachelor?! Boswell's Johnson, iii. 187. Leigh Hunt quotes an undated letter written by Congreve at Ilam,* in which he says:-'I am now writing to you from before a black mountain nodding over me, and a whole river in 46 'Johnson,' writes Malone, 'probably got this from the information of John, Earl of Orrery [post, FENTON, 19], with whom Southerne lived much in his latter days.' Malone's Dryden, i. 227. Memoirs of Congreve, by Charles Wilson, 1730, p. 1. Giles Jacob, in the Preface to The Poetical Register, published nine years before Congreve's death, thanks him for his communication of what relates to himself.' The statement about his birthplace (ib. i. 41) is confirmed by the following entry in Malone's Dryden, i. 225:-""William, the sonne of Mr. William Congreve, * Hunt writes Ham by mistake. To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about 3 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 petty lie to Lewis 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". 34 Wherever Congreve was born he was educated first at Kilkenny3, 4 and afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that stationed him in Ireland 5: 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 5 he very early felt that force of imagination and possessed that copiousness of sentiment by which intellectual pleasure can be of Bardsey Grange, was baptised Febru. 10th, 1669[-70]." Register of the parish of Bardsey or Bardsa, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.' 'Bardsa,' Jacob says, was a part of the estate of Sir John Lewis, his great-uncle by his mother's side.' In the Matriculation Register of Trinity College, Dublin, he is entered as 'natus Bardsagram, in com. Eboracen.' N. & Q. 3 S. xi. 280. 'On the prevalence of falsehood see Boswell's Johnson, iii. 229. 2 'Le Roi lui ayant demandé un jour en quel temps il était né, M. Despréaux [Boileau] lui répondit que le temps de sa naissance était là circonstance la plus glorieuse de sa vie. "Je suis venu au monde," dit-il, une année avant votre Majesté, pour annoncer les merveilles de son règne." Le Roi fut touché de cette réponse. . . . M. Despréaux... s'est cru depuis engagé d'honneur à soutenir un mot qu'il avait dit en pré 6 7 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 2. His first dramatick labour was The Old Batchelor; of which he says, in his defence against Collier 3, '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 in, to 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 every thing by chance. The Old Batchelor 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 It is quoted in Biog. Brit. p. 1440. Congreve boasts that his novel was begun and finished in the idler hours of a fortnight's time; for (he adds) I can only esteem that a laborious idleness which is parent to so inconsiderable a birth.' In the British Museum there is only a copy of the edition of 1700 in which the preface is omitted. It and the novel are reprinted in Congreve's Memoirs, 1730, pt. 2, p. 65. 2 Johnson is thinking of Boileau where he says:—'J'aime qu'on me lise, et non pas qu'on me loue.' Œuvres, ed. 1747, v. 98. Leigh Hunt, after quoting Johnson's words, says :-Being of a less robust conscience on the reviewing side, it is our lot to have read it, without being able to praise it.' Wycherley, &c., ed. 1840, Preface, p. 24. 3 Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations, 1698, P. 39; ante, DRYDEN, 175; post, CONGREVE, 18. 'His excuse is, he was very much a boy when this comedy was written. Not unlikely. He and his Muse might probably be minors; but the libertines there are full grown.' COLLIER, A Defence of the Short View, p. 42. 5What his disease was I am not to enquire; but it must be a very ill one to be worse than the remedy.' Ib. "Malone says that a song ('Tell me no more I am deceived,' Eng. Poets, xxxiv. 182) written in Jan. 1692-3 for Southerne's The Maid's Last Prayer was perhaps his first acknowledged publication.' Malone's Dryden, i. 227. 'It is announced,' says Malone, 'as ready for the stage in The Gentleman's Journal (by Motteaux), for January, 1692-3.' Prior's Malone, p. 451. Congreve was twenty-two. In the Dedication he says it was written almost four years earlier. Lord Falkland, in a Prologue in Mr. Dryden, Mr. Southern, and Mr. Maynwaring3. Dryden said that he never had seen such a first play; but they found it deficient in some things requisite 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 5; 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 8 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 year3. Congreve's conversation must surely have been at least equally pleasing with his writings. tended for the play, says that_the author'trusts in one and twenty.' Congreve's Works, 1788, Preface, p. 34. ' For Congreve's character of Dryden see ante, Dryden, 159. 2 For Southerne's Lines to Mr. Congreve see Congreve's Works, Preface, p. 30. 3 Post, POPE, 112. His name is also spelt Mainwaring and Manwaring. Steele dedicated to him the first volume of The Tatler. Pope submitted to him his Pastorals. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. 230. Lintot mentions his version of the first book of the Iliad. Ib. ix. 541. Pope mentions 'a very hot copy of verses against King William and Queen Mary written by the famous Mr. Manwaring, though he was so great a Whig afterwards, on his acquaintance with Lord Halifax.' Spence's Anec. p. 157. He was a member of the Kit Kat Club. Pope said of him in 1730:-'Manwaring, 4 Biog. Brit. p. 1441, where Captain Southerne is given as the authority. 5 Dryden was a bad reader (ante, DRYDEN, 190 n. 5), and so were Cor Biog. Brit. p. 1441. 'The stage perhaps never produced four such handsome women at once as Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Mountford and Mrs. Bowman; when they appeared together in the last scene of The Old Bachelor the audience were struck with so fine a group of beauty, and broke out into loud applause.' DAVIES,Dram. Misc. iii. 416. 7 8 Ante, HALIFAX, II. Johnson's authority is General Dict. 1736, iv. 428, where it is added that Halifax gave him also 'the post of secretary to Jamaica, which paid him £709 a year.' See post, CONGREVE, 29. According to Macaulay Halifax had given him the reversion of this place, c. 1694: it did not become vacant until 1714. Essays, iii. 254, 268. He held the commissionership for coaches from July 12, 1695, to Oct. 13, 1707, and that of winelicenses from Dec. 1705 till Dec. 1714. Dict. Nat. Biog. Coxe says Walpole gave him one of the places. 'Walpole considered poets as not men of business. When 9 10 11 Such a comedy written at such an age requires some consideration. As the lighter species of dramatick 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 Batchelor 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 comick characters by the perusal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind'. The dialogue is one constant reciprocation of conceits3, 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 Wife, and Sheridan crowned his reputation with The School for Scandal, at six and twenty.' MOORE, Life of Sheridan, 1825, i. 208. 2 3 Post, CONGREVE, 33 n. Johnson at first wrote 'reciprocation of similes.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 56. Leigh Hunt describes the wit of Congreve's time as 'a trick of the fancy and of words, which dealt chiefly in simile, with a variation of antithesis.' Wycherley, &c., Preface, p. 36. * Steele praises 'the distinction of characters.' The Tatler, No. 193. 'We forget Congreve's characters, and only remember what they say.' HAZLITT, Leigh Hunt's Wycherley, &c., Preface, p. 92. 5'Of Congreve's four comedies two are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a deception which, perhaps, never happened, and which, whether likely or not, he did not invent.' JOHNSON, Works, v. 134. The other play is Love for Love. |