Volume IV Part 9 (2/2)

The reception this play met with, compleated our author's disgust to the theatre; upon which Mr. Dennis, who was a warm friend to Congreve, made this fine observation, 'that Mr. Congreve quitted the stage early, and that comedy left it with him.'

It is said that when Congreve found his play met with but indifferent success, he came in a pa.s.sion on the stage, and desired the audience to save themselves the trouble of shewing their dislike; for he never intended to write again for the Theatre, nor submit his works to the censure of impotent critics. In this particular he kept his word with them, and as if he had foreseen the fate of his play, he took an ample revenge, in his Epilogue, of the race of Little Snarlers, who excited by envy, and supported by false ideas of their own importance, dared to const.i.tute themselves judges of wit, without any just pretensions to it. This play has long ago triumphed over its enemies, and is now in great esteem amongst the best judges of Theatrical Entertainments.

Though Mr. Congreve quitted the stage, yet did not he give up the cause of poetry; for on the death of the marquis of Blandford, the only son of the duke of Marlborough, which happened in 1705, we find him composing a pastoral to soften the grief of that ill.u.s.trious family, which he addressed to the lord treasurer G.o.dolphin.

About the same time, the extraordinary success of the duke of Marlborough's arms, furnished him with materials for an Ode to Queen Anne. In another Pindaric Ode he celebrates the lord G.o.dolphin; taking occasion from that n.o.bleman's delight in horse-racing to imitate the Greek Poet in his favourite manner of writing, by an elegant digression; to which he added a criticism on that species of poetry.

As in the early part of his life, Mr. Congreve had received favours from people of a less exalted station, so of these he was highly sensible, and never let slip any opportunity of shewing his grat.i.tude.

He wrote an Epilogue to his old friend Southern's Tragedy of Oroonoko; and Mr. Dryden has acknowledged his a.s.sistance in the translation of Virgil: He contributed by his Version of the eleventh Satire of Juvenal, to the translation of that poet, published also by Mr.

Dryden, to whom Mr. Congreve wrote a copy of Verses on his Translation of Persius. He wrote likewise a Prologue for a Play of Mr. Charles Dryden's, full of kindness for that young gentleman, and of respect for his father.

But the n.o.blest testimony he gave of his filial regard to the memory of his poetical father, Mr. John Dryden, was the Panegyric he wrote upon his works, contained in the dedication of Dryden's plays to the duke of Newcastle.

Mr. Congreve translated the third Book of Ovid's Art of Love; some favourite pa.s.sages from the Iliad, and writ some Epigrams, in all which he was not unsuccessful, though at the same time he has been exceeded by his cotemporaries in the same attempts.

The author of the elegant Letters, not long ago published under the name of Fitz Osborne, has taken some pains to set before his readers; the version of those parts of Homer, translated by our author, and the same pa.s.sages by Pope and Tickell, in which comparison the palm is very deservedly yielded to Pope.

Our author wrote a Satire called Doris, celebrated by Sir Richard Steele, who was a warm friend to Mr. Congreve. He also wrote the Judgment of Paris, a Masque; and the Opera of Semele; of these, the former was acted with great applause, and the latter is finely set to music by Mr. Eccles. The last of his Poetical Works, is his Art of Pleasing, addressed to Sir Richard Temple, the late viscount Cobham.

He has written many Prose Epistles, dispersed in the works of other writers, and his Essay on Humour in Comedy, published in a Collection of Dennis's Letters, is an entertaining, and correct piece of criticism: All his other Letters are written with a great deal of wit and spirit, a fine flow of language; and are so happily intermixt with a lively and inoffensive raillery, that it is impossible not to be pleased with them at the first reading: we may be satisfied from the perusal of them, that his conversation must have been very engaging, and therefore we need not wonder that he was caressed by the greatest men of his time, or that they courted his friends.h.i.+p by every act of kindness in their power.

It is said of Mr. Congreve, that he was a particular favourite with the ladies, some of whom were of the first distinction. He indulged none of those reveries, and affected absences so peculiar to men of wit: He was sprightly as well as elegant in his manner, and so much the favourite of Henrietta d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, that even after his death, she caused an image of him to be every day placed at her toilet-table, to which she would talk as to the living Mr. Congreve, with all the freedom of the most polite and unreserved conversation.

Mrs. Bracegirdle likewise had the highest veneration for our author, and joined with her Grace in a boundless profusion of sorrow upon his death. Some think, he had made a better figure in his Last Will, had he remembered his friends.h.i.+p he professed for Mrs. Bracegirdle, whose admirable performance added spirit to his dramatic pieces; but he forgot her, and gratified his vanity by chusing to make a rich d.u.c.h.ess his sole legatee, and executrix.

Mr. Congreve was the son of fortune, as well as of the muses. He was early preferred to an affluent situation, and no change of ministry ever affected him, nor was he ever removed from any post he enjoyed, except to a better.

His place in the custom-house, and his office of secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of 1200 l. a year; and he was so far an oeconomist, as to raise from thence a competent estate. No man of his learning ever pa.s.s'd thro' life with more ease, or less envy; and as in the dawn of his reputation he was very dear to the greatest wits of his time, so during his whole life he preserved the utmost respect of, and received continual marks of esteem from, men of genius and letters, without ever being involved, in any of their quarrels, or drawing upon himself the least mark of distaste, or, even dissatisfaction. The greatest part of the last twenty years of his life were spent in ease and retirement, and he gave himself no trouble about reputation. When the celebrated Voltaire was in England, he waited upon Congreve, and pa.s.s'd some compliments upon him, as to the reputation and merit of his works; Congreve thanked him, but at the same time told that ingenious foreigner, he did not chuse to be considered as an author, but only as a private gentleman, and in that light expected to be visited. Voltaire answered, 'That if he had never been any thing but a private gentleman, in all probability, he had never been troubled with that visit.'

Mr. Voltaire upon this occasion observes, that he was not a little disgusted with so unseasonable a piece of vanity:--This was indeed the highest instance of it, that perhaps can be produced. A man who owed to his wit and writings the reputation, as well as the fortune, he acquired, pretending to divest himself of human nature to such a degree, as to have no consciousness of his own merit, was the most absurd piece of vanity that ever entered into the heart of man; and of all vanity, that is the greatest which masks itself under the appearance of the opposite quality.

Towards the close of his life, he was much troubled with the gout; and for this reason, in the summer of the year 1728, he made a tour to Bath, for the benefit of the waters, where he had the misfortune to be overturned in his chariot, from which time he complained of a pain in his side, which was supposed to arise from some inward bruise. Upon his return to London, he perceived his health gradually decline, which he bore with fort.i.tude and resignation.

On January the 19th, 1728-9, he yielded his last breath, about five o'clock in the morning, at his house in Surrey-street in the Strand, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. On the sunday following, January 26, his corpse lay in state in the Jerusalem-Chamber, from whence the same evening, between the hours of nine and ten, it was carried with great decency and solemnity to Henry the VIIth's Chapel; and after the funeral service was performed, it was interred in the Abbey. The pall was supported by the duke of Bridgewater, earl of G.o.dolphin, lord Cobham, lord Wilmington, the honourable George Berkley, Esq; and Brigadier-general Churchill; and colonel Congreve followed his corpse as chief mourner; some time after, a neat and elegant monument was erected to his memory, by Henrietta d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough.

Mr. Congreve's reputation is so extensive, and his works so generally read, that any specimen of his poetry may be deemed superfluous. But finding an epistle of our author's in the Biographia Brittannica, not inserted in his works, it may not be improper to give it a place here.

It is addressed to the lord viscount Cobham, and the ingenious authors inform us, that they copied it from a MS. very correct.

As in this poem there is a visible allusion to the measures, which the writer thought were too complaisant to the French, it is evident it must have been penned but a very small time before his death.

Of improving the present time.

Sincerest critic of my prose, or rhyme.

Tell how thy pleasing Stowe employs thy time.

Say, Cobham, what amuses thy retreat?

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